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SriRangaSri List Archive: Message 00021 Jun 2006

 
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SrI:
SrImathE Ramanujaya namah:

Dear Sri Lakshmi Narasihman,

I am only in kinder garden student in our sampradaya... adiyEn 
referred to the archives and found this wondreful paragraph [written 
by our Sri Mani Varadarajan] on the subject based on Sri U VE SMS 
Chari's clarifcations: 

'para vidyAsu sarvAsu saguNa mEva BrahmOpAsyam. phalam
caika rUpamEva atO vidyA vikalpaha

Sri Ramanuja is saying that by definition the Supreme Being always 
has qualities (sa-guNa).

He is 'saguNa' in that He has all manner of auspicious and
edifying attributes, such as infinite consciousness, infinitude,
His being eternally true, infinitely blissful, etc.  He is 
also saguNa in that the mass of jIvas and prakRti are in
an adjectival relation to Him.  He is 'nirguNa' because He 
is unaffected by and absolutely bereft of the three material
guNas in His essence or svarUpa, and in His divine manifestations.

A confusion typically arises in the usage of the term 'nirguNa'.
We accept that the Supreme Being is nirguNa in the sense as
described above.  The Advaitins including Sri Sankara define
nirguNa as meaning totally devoid of any distinctions or
attributes whatsoever.  In Advaita, if someone describes the
nirguNa brahman as being true, infinite, and blissful, it
is only understood as denying falsity or unreality, finitude,
and misery to brahman.  To Advaitins it does not mean that
the nirguNa brahman actually has the qualities of truth, 
infinitude, and bliss, since by definition It cannot be
said to have *any* qualities.

To avoid this confusion, Dr. S.M. Srinivasa Chari had mentioned 
that the great Sribhashya exponent Sri Abhinava Ranganatha 
Parakala Swami preferred to describe the Advaita doctrine
as 'nirvisesha brahman' (brahman without any *attributes* 
whatsoever) rather than 'nirguNa', since the word 'guNa'
has many meanings, many of which we in the Visishtadvaita 
school accept as well.  We then can speak freely of the
Visishta Brahman as being truly nirguNa as well
******************
He is anantha kalyANa guNagaNouka mahaarNavan; and akila hEya 
prathyaneekan [ocean of innumerable auspicious attributes and devoid 
of any imperfections] 
Thanks and Regards
Namo narayana
dAsan 

 

--- In SriRangaSri@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, lakshminarasimhan seshadri 
<lakshminarasimhan_seshadri@...> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>    
>   I had a query and I could look no further than asking here the 
experts on Srivaishnavam. In fact it is a sort of clarifying about 
our philosophy. Basically I want to know whether our acharyas and/or 
azhwars and others believed in "nirguna brahmam". 
>    
>   Regards,
>   Lakshminarasimhan
>    
>    
> 
>  __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
> http://mail.yahoo.com 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>








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