2023-06-22 12:07:34 by ambuda-bot

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xvi
 
This is probably the genesis of the avaccheda-vada, the
delimitation view. But here the analogy stops and the last step
has to be taken by the mind itself because the Infinite is beyond
all categorizing, beyond all cognition, while all familiar cate-
gories are within the range of cognition. So, for that last step
there no analogy and there can never be any.
 
Similarly light is the category within phenomenal experience
that comes nearest to pure awareness, consciousness or intellig-
ence. While light illumines and makes visible objects which
could not be perceived visually without it, it does not need
another light to make it visible. Likewise consciousness illu-
mines or enables all things to be perceived, including itself. It
does not require a second awareness to know awareness.
 
Another property of light also illustrates some of the ideas
regarding pure consciousness. Light reflected from a reflecting
medium does illumine dark places and the objects therein which
would otherwise remain unseen. This reflected light can be.
various and distorted or otherwise deformed by the flaws in the
reflecting media. Each such unit of reflected light could be
different from the other depending on the variety and differences
of the reflecting media. Again, because the reflecting medium
has no luminosity of its own, the light which appears to come
from it has no reality other than the reality of the original or
pure light.
 
This could be the origin of the pratibimba-vada or the ābhāsa-
vāda the reflection view or the appearance view which leads the
mind towards reality or the infinite as pure consciousness. But
this analogy also cannot be taken too far and it cannot lead the
mind to pure consciousness itself, which can never be an object
of knowing. Like the other analogy of space this also can only,
prepare the mind for the final leap beyond itself.
 
Though Sri Madhusudana Sarasvati makes the pratibimba-
vādā and ābhāsavāda two distinct views, his senior contemporary
in the South, Appayya. Dikshita, makes the ābhāsavāda a
variation of the pratibimba-vada. What happened between the
writing of the latter's Siddhanta-leşasangraha and the former's