Ann, you *are* so funny. I am laughing up a storm over here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <awoelflebater@...> wrote:
So you know, I think Share has gotten to me with all this "stimulation" talk. I actually read your "Brahmasutrabhasya" as a play on the world "Brah masturbation". Lord help me. ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <emptybill@...> wrote: When we examine the works of Sankara, however, we find a very sparing use of the word samadhi. In the Brahmasutrabhasya he makes three references to samadhi as a condition of absorption or enstasis. In the first (2.1.9) , he implicitly refutes the idea that samadhi is, of itself, the means for liberation, for he says: Though there is the natural eradication of difference in deep sleep and in samadhi etc., because false knowledge has not been removed, differences occur once again upon waking just like before. What Sankara says is that duality, such as the fundamental distinction between subject and object, is obliterated in deep sleep and in samadhi, as well as in other conditions such as fainting, but duality is only temporarily obliterated for it reappears when one awakes from sleep or regains consciousness after fainting, and it also reappears when the yogin arises from samadhi. The reason why duality persists is because false knowledge (mithyajana) has not been removed. It is evident from this brief statement that Sankara does not consider the attainment of samadhi to be a sufficient cause to eradicate false knowledge, and, according to Sankara, since false knowledge is the cause of bondage, samadhi cannot therefore be the cause of liberation. The Question of the Importance of Samadhi in Modern and Classical Advaita Vedanta By Michael Comans, Ph.D.
