sparaig wrote: > Many/most scholars believe that nirvakalpa samadhi is > the equivalent of turiya, which IS found in the Upanishads. > Turiya, the transcendental state of conciousness, is samadhi. Gaudapada has postulated a fourth state of conciousness. According to tradition Gaudapada was the philosophical grandfather of Shankara. Gauda's karika on the Mandukya Upanishad is the oldest known systematic exposition of Advaita Vedanta.
Gaudapada shows clear signs of familiarity with Buddhist philosophy, and both his language and his doctrine are close in many cases to Buddhist originals. This has led many scholars to speculate that Gaudapada himself was originally a Buddhist and that Shankara was, ergo, a quasi-Buddhist. 1. Excerpt from mANDUkya kArikA IV by gauDapAda: "Duality is only an appearance; non-duality is the real truth. The object exists as an object for the knowing subject; but it does not exist outside of conciousness because the distinction of subject and object is within conciousness." Read more: Newsgroups: alt.meditation.transcendental From: willytex Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 Subject: dharmadAtu http://tinyurl.com/ynolnc
