[MD] Lila's

[MarshaV]

Hinduism

Advaita Vedanta

Advaita is one of the six most-known Hindu philosophical systems, and literally means "non-duality". Its first great consolidator was Adi Shankaracharya, who continued the work of some of the Upanishadic teachers, and that of his teacher's teacher Gaudapada. By analyzing the three states of experience—waking, dreaming, and deep sleep—he established the singular reality of Brahman, in which Brahman, the universe and Atman, the self are one and the same.

In the Hindu model, Brahman, the god identified with the ultimate all-inclusive reality, plays a game of hide and seek with itself. In this game, called Lila, Brahman plays with individual people, birds, rocks, and other features of the world both separately and together, while forgetting that the game is being played. At the end of each session, Brahman is said to wake up, cease the game, applaud itself, and resume the game all over again. The state of wakefulness and enlightenment is knowing one is simply playing a game; one is simply acting as a human being, having an illusion of being locked within a physical body and separated from the whole of the cosmos.

One who sees everything as nothing but the Self, and the Self in everything one sees, such a seer withdraws from nothing.
For the enlightened, all that exists is nothing but the Self, so how could any suffering or delusion continue for those who know this oneness?

— Ishopanishad: sloka 6, 7

The philosophy of Vedanta, "Aham Brahmasmi" (roughly translated as "I am the Absolute Truth"), could be interpreted as solipsism in one of its primitive senses, as the world is but an illusion in the mind of the observer. However, Advaita Vedanta can be understood to be non-solipsistic when it is recognised that it does not actually deny the existence of a world 'external' to the Self or Atman. Rather, it is asserting that the consciousness and awareness of the individual pervades all of that person's experience, to such an extent that absolute notions of 'inside' and 'outside' are arbitrary. The universe is the same as the self, as the universe can only be experienced through the self and the self is submerged within the universe as an integrated part.

However, Advaita is strongly divergent from solipsism in that the former is a system of exploration of one's mind in order to finally understand the nature of the self and attain complete knowledge. The unity of existence is said to be directly experienced and understood at the end as a part of complete knowledge. On the other hand solipsism posits the non-existence of the external void right at the beginning, and says that no further inquiry is possible.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism 
 
 
  
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