Is God bound by his/her attribute?

[smaranam]

to offer that the supreme cannot be cornered into any one description.
Sure there is no doubt the supreme is all good, most kind, most full, yet words cause differention to occur. This causes containment, some level of being contained, and that is not possible with the supreme.

Iti sivam

praNAm Yajvanji

First, I would like to understand how, say

1. all-attractiveness
2. all-auspiciousness
3. sweetness
4. kindness & generosity

bind the Supreme Lord, cause differentiation or put Him in a container if they are present in Him in infinite degree?

The BhAgvat defines the Supreme Lord, BhagvAn, is He who has the following six in infinite amounts:
1. wealth - Shri
2. fame - kIrti
3. strength - shakti
4. knowledge - jnana
5. beauty - lAvaNya
6. renunciation - vairAgya

Also, Shri KRshNa Himself states:
BG 10.34: I am all-devouring death, and I am the generating principle of all that is yet to be. Among women(feminine principles) I am fame, fortune, fine speech, memory, intelligence, steadfastness and patience.
BG 10.36: I am also the gambling of cheats, and of the splendid I am the splendor. I am victory, I am adventure, and I am the strength of the strong.
BG 10.38: Among all means of suppressing lawlessness I am punishment, and of those who seek victory I am morality. Of secret things I am silence, and of the wise I am the wisdom.

He says elsewhere "I am the liquidity in water" etc.

How does that bind Him?

-----

That was the first question. At least you are saying He cannot be described in words (although i would say we can partly).

2. However, advaita says He [ultimately] has no attributes! Why should the preference of a mumukshu remove God's qualities? Let the mumukshu be attributeless. Why apply that to Brahman?

Brahman is NirguNa - without any blemish (such as hunger thirst birth death anger attachment temptation greed interest etc.)
but He has transcendental attributes, qualities.

Can we say He is not all-auspicious?

_/\_

om namo bhagavate vAsudevAya

[Kumar_Das]

Namaste


I'd like to offer this... If we say the supreme is the creator of the universe we are saying what the supreme does not who he is.

God is Ever-Living(which itself is an activity) and Always Active.

Thats why all His Holy books mention his existence(Beingness/Alive) along with his mode of existence(Activity)

Hebrew Torah

Hast thou not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? (Is. 40:28.)

also Psalm 121:4

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

Quran

Allah - there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of [all] existence. Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Who is it that can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is [presently] before them and what will be after them, and they encompass not a thing of His knowledge except for what He wills. His Kursi extends over the heavens and the earth, and their preservation tires Him not. And He is the Most High, the Most Great.

finally from the Gita

This material nature, which is one of My energies, is working under My direction, O son of Kunti, producing all moving and nonmoving beings. Under its rule this manifestation is created and annihilated again and again. ~ Chapter 9 Verse 10

Creatorhood of God, is one of His attributes/activity. God does not lose anyone of His attributes, nor does He acquire any, nor does He need to, nor can there ever be any attribute for Him to acquire. He is Infinite.(there is no "constraint")

His attributes have always been with Him. There is no better attribute for Him to gain. Nor is anyone of His attributes inferior to anything else. God is always Superior.

So how is that(Him Being Who He Is) a constraint?

All of the attributes of God are that of His Supremacy. Which He Exercises.

God is identified by what He does. That's how we know Him. And that is who He is. We exist in a material world. That is reality.

All created is rooted in these two; know that of all included in this universe I am as well the source of manifestation as its dissolution. ~ Chapter 7 Verse 6

Whatever forms are born, O Arjuna, in any womb whatsoever, the great Brahma (Nature) is their womb and I am the seed-giving father. ~ Chapter 14 Verse 4

The question "who" indicates personhood.

The Personal Attributes of God are terms such as Lord Cherisher(as is stated "And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good"), Master, Most Merciful, Most Gracious etc

And how He relates to us "love".

[yajvan]

hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namast�

praNAm Yajvanji

First, I would like to understand how, say

1. all-attractiveness
2. all-auspiciousness
3. sweetness
4. kindness & generosity

bind the Supreme Lord, cause differentiation or put Him in a container if they are present in Him in infinite degree?

The BhAgvat defines the Supreme Lord, BhagvAn, is He who has the following six in infinite amounts:
1. wealth - Shri
2. fame - kIrti
3. strength - shakti
4. knowledge - jnana
5. beauty - lAvaNya
6. renunciation - vairAgya
He says elsewhere "I am the liquidity in water" etc.
How does that bind Him?

I thought to let a few days pass before answering this. The list above is quite apt and very useful. Yet from the point of view I offered that quantifying the supreme limits this Being in some way is what I wish to address here. It is not that the list is wrong or the list is not a noble and worthy view of the Supreme.

My point to offer ( not as a challange) is this supreme Being is so magnanimous It is not only infinite-and-all by nature , it too is finite by nature. This Being is not only the wonder of all positive qualities, but also the 'raw materials' of that which is small, confined and defined.
Why so ? Because by His nature he unfolds complete Creation in all its forms that is not apart (different) from HimSelf.
Within the śāṁkhya school this 'raw materials' is called out as 24 to 25 tattva-s; in kaśmiri śaivism we see 36, not to mention paramaśiva that goes beyond and within each of the 36 tattva-s. In vedānta we we would say it this way:
pūrṇamadhaḥ pūrṇamidaṁ �
that is full, this is full. Fullness comes from Fullness.


This is the notion... This Being is whole, complete full (pūrṇa). It is total and complete. When we give qualities to It we do the best we can, yet we also leave things out because we do not imcompass all thinking /all being / all knowing ourselves.

See the point of view being offered ? We always wish to understand this Being, so we do the best we can with the words we can come up with, yet we fall short when we try to quantify, because by definition the Being is beyond all quantification. So, our greatest śāstra-s try and help us get hold of the magnificence of this Being and give us the insight for our best comprehension. Yet it is our own śāstra-s that also inform us that this Being is nameless, and cannot be contained.


iti śivaṁ
1. the invocation we find as the śānti-pāṭha of the iśavāsya upaniṣad

[smaranam]

This is the notion... This Being is whole, complete full (pūrṇa). It is total and complete. When we give qualities to It we do the best we can, yet we also leave things out because we do not imcompass all thinking /all being / all knowing ourselves.

See the point of view being offered ? We always wish to understand this Being, so we do the best we can with the words we can come up with, yet we fall short when we try to quantify, because by definition the Being is beyond all quantification. So, our greatest śāstra-s try and help us get hold of the magnificence of this Being and give us the insight for our best comprehension. Yet it is our own śāstra-s that also inform us that this Being is nameless, and cannot be contained.

Namaste

I understand, but who says that saying the Parameshwar is A implies He is not B,C,D and infinite other things?

Shri VishNu, the purNamidam of the scriptures: The scriptures declare that He is infinite, unlimited, and His transcendental (divya) names, forms, qualities and glories are uncountable - but they do exist eternally. Not that any of it "comes into being" by projection or reflection - it is all in Him, whether we can see it or not.

This means that glorification has to be in accordance with shAstra - what the scriptures tell us about Him. For instance, the upanishads and shrimad bhAgavatam, give us pointers to SOME OF His best aspects, like skimming the cream on top.

The logic that because our list of His glories will never be complete, necessarily means that we should not breathe a word about Him, and worse, declare Him literally attributeless, is what i am questioning.

That is why i said the goal of the mumukshu should not be mixed with what the ultimate Absolute Truth is, especially given that the mumukshu's existence itself is illusory per Advaita theory. The mumukshu reaches near-zero because that is their goal -to stop existing as the mumukshu. Unfortunately they perceive the Supreme as near-zero in the process.

om namo bhagavate vAsudevAya

[Aum_425]

Consciousness (God) , from my limited perspective, is only bound by the tendency to manifest itself in creation. In order to avoid the adinfinitum chain of conscious beings perceiving one after the other, consciousness must perceive itself (per the Devi Gita). This, then, transmits into Isvara manifesting himself into creation.

He must see himself, that is His only bondage

[jmaf6556]

What I'd add is for sovereignty to be invalidated and bondage to occur, there must be something greater and freer, but if omnibenevolence is synonymous with greatness and freedom, which I think it is, sovereignty isn't invalidated and bondage doesn't occur!