reading - Madhva in his own words Madhva came after Ramanuja vasista dvaita and Adishankara.
Overview
Madhva doesn’t like seeing people become nihilistic. Madhva says - reality is real. Things are separate, and our aim is to understand independent reality - Svatantara (Ishvara). The Sakshi is a person’s intuitive base observer of reality. In understanding the world, we perceive things, we see arguments, we have “mind-stuff” try to make understanding of what we see. However, no matter how much this mind stuff tries to understand something, we don’t truly understand it until it hits the Sakshi, and we get that intuitive understanding - this is what we call reality. Interesting question here of Temporal limits - what about when we think we intuitively understand something but don’t actually? The answer is that everything is timestamped - things are real as they are experienced, there’s nothing more we can say about absolute reality. If Advaitins say that something didn’t really happen, or that it was just maya, then what about the act of understanding Brahman? How do we know that that’s not false? We can only accept them both as real, and separate, other positions need additional steps.
we can only understand relative reality
Working
It’s a response to muslim invasions to some extent - Madhva thinks that the “Mayavada” view is leading to the loss of agency and essentially nihilism. He wants to say things are real, even more strongly than Vasista Dvaitins.
Panchabheda: Jiva, Jada, Isvara are all separate from each other, and there are differences between Jivas and Jadas.
Sakshi - the “witness” - different from jiva but nucleus of conscious experience. There is order in the world → dependence of some sort on rules → someone made those rules?
There are distinct independent things, but because they are able to interact, there must be an independent intermediate between them.
Svatantra and Paratantra - independent and dependent reality.
interpretations of the Upanisadic phrase:
Advaitans would say you are that one, but Dvaitans would say that you must know that one - Ishvara.
Sakshi - the intuitive mind
when do we accept something as real, as fact? There’s infinite regress on how we test reality or our conception of it, but eventually something must accept it as real, and that is the intuition, or the Sakshi. (p41 and 42)
But what about when we have false intuitive understanding?
Validity cannot be temporally limited
Should pick up here: God or Brahman?