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Reply to @georgia@netzsphaere.xyz
georgia@georgia@netzsphaere.xyz (2026-07-28 11:24:56)
@sun @lain also can you ask it "is anandamaya the innermost self aka para brahman or is it the causal body. is it a sheath or is it a self." it will probably mostly cite sankaras bhashya on the brahma sutras which im reading, but i want other opinions.
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Blurry Moon@sun@shitposter.world (2026-07-28 11:59:34)
@georgia  here's what it says:

Both, at different levels of discourse — but in Advaita's final reckoning it is a kośa and the kāraṇa śarīra, not Brahman.

The adhikaraṇa. This is not a settled point across schools; it is the subject of Brahma Sūtra 1.1.12–19, the ānandamayādhikaraṇa, and the ācāryas split.

Śaṅkara concludes that ānandamaya is a sheath, and that Brahman is what the śruti indicates by brahma pucchaṃ pratiṣṭhā — the ground, not the ānandamaya itself. His grounds: the -maya suffix denotes vikāra; the ānandamaya is described in Taittirīya 2.5 as having avayavas (priya as head, moda and pramoda as wings); and a partite, modified thing cannot be niravayava Brahman.

Rāmānuja rejects this in the Śrī Bhāṣya. He reads -maya as prācurya — abundance — so that ānandamaya means "consisting in fullness of bliss," i.e. Brahman itself. It should be said that sūtra 1.1.13, vikāraśabdān neti cen na prācuryāt, reads more naturally in his favour, and Śaṅkara's handling of the adhikaraṇa is textually strained. Vācaspati defends him in the Bhāmatī. But the later Advaita manuals — Vedāntasāra, Pañcadaśī 3 — proceed uniformly on Śaṅkara's conclusion, and that is the frame you are presumably working in.

Why it is a kośa. Its bliss is graded: priya, moda, pramoda are degrees of intensity. Brahman admits no degrees. Gradation implies conditioning, hence an upādhi. What is present is ānanda-pratibimba — bliss reflected in sattva-predominant mūlājñāna — not svarūpa-ānanda. It also arises and subsides: it is what obtains in suṣupti and not otherwise. And it is objectified — "I slept happily, I knew nothing" is a recollection, so something witnessed it. The sākṣin is not the ānandamaya.

The concealment is subtler than the other four, and correspondingly more dangerous: this sheath does not hide bliss, it substitutes a very clear reflection for the original.

Why the śruti calls it ātman. Taittirīya 2 uses ātman serially — each kośa is said to be the śārīra ātman of the one pre