Richard, I've heard that when tamas guna dominates, maya is a covering over reality; when rajo guna dominates, maya is a veil; but when sat guna dominates, maya is actually a means to ultimate reality. What do you think?
On Monday, January 20, 2014 9:40 AM, Richard Williams <pundits...@gmail.com> wrote: > A popular view of Advaita Vedanta (sometimes an accusation) > is that it is Maya-vada... > Maybe you lost them, but you have to begin with a definition of the term "maya" - which I already posted: maya is neither real nor unreal, nor both, nor neither. Maya is not an illusion or something that is not real, because even an illusion is presented to us. Maya is actualy a superimposition on the real. So, maya is not real but not unreal. It's like a zen koan: Daibai asked Baso: `What is Buddha?' Baso said: `This mind is Buddha.' Mumon's Comment: If anyone wholly understands this, he is wearing Buddha's clothing, he is eating Buddha's food, he is speaking Buddha's words, he is behaving as Buddha, he is Buddha. This anecdote, however, has given many pupil the sickness of formality. If one truly understands, he will wash out his mouth for three days after saying the word Buddha, and he will close his ears and flee after hearing `This mind is Buddha.' Under blue sky, in bright sunlight, One need not search around. Asking what Buddha is Is like hiding loot in one's pocket and declaring oneself innocent. This Mind is Buddha: http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/gateless-gate/30.html On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 4:35 PM, <emptyb...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >A popular view of Advaita Vedanta (sometimes an accusation) is that it is Maya-vada ... the doctrine that everything is mere Maya. > > > >This is a classical misrepresentation that began with Ramanuja (11th Century head of the Sri Vaishnava-s) and continues down to today. Probably one reason for the misunderstanding is that different teachers presented alternate explanations of the Brahma Sutras. In essence, they held contrary preconceptions. Another reason is that discussions about the nature of Maya became continuous in debates between Advaita scholars. This led to the belief that “Maya talk” was the core of Advaita. The reality is that Advaita is more accurately call Brahma-vada, the teaching about Brahman. It uses the principal Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita as a threefold authoritative Vedic source. > > > >However, leading up to the 14th Century, the Yoga Sutras became an alternate source for understanding the path to realize Brahman. By the middle of the 14th-15th Century, this view so infiltrated Advaita Vedanta that the works of Shankaracharya Swami Vidyâranya (who wrote Pañchadâši and Jivanmuktiviveka) presumed that students of Advaita followed a yogic path to realize Brahman. > > >The modern proponent of this view was Swami Vivekananda. MMY just continued that mode – which included the division of the Bhagavad Gita into three topical sections, a theme also found in Sri Aurobindo Ghose. Scholars now call this interpretation “Yogic Advaita” - an interpretation that is more about yoga and less about Advaita Vedanta. > > >Perhaps more perplexing for those studying Advaita, the concept of “enlightenment” (so over-popularized) was borrowed from the Buddhists – and is neither Yogic nor Vedantic. The Yoga Sutras, in fact, do not even propose yoga as a goal but rather discuss the necessity for “vi-yoga” … separating, dis-uniting, dis-joining. Thus the question … “separating what from what”? In this case, separating the apparent con-fusion (fusing together) between awareness (purusha) and the field of experience (i.e. body, senses, mind). > > >Contrary to this Yogic assumption of two orders of reality (purusha and prakriti), Shankara’s Vedanta teaches the inherent unity of Reality (Brahman). Rather than chitta-vritti-nirodha, nirvikalpa-samâdhi or Buddhist dhyana-samâpatti, Advaita points to the direct ascertainment of one’s own true nature. The purpose of such recognition is seeing directly that moksha (freedom) is already the inherent nature of human beings. It also recognizes that moksha is freedom from any experience, while realizing that like waves moving across the ocean, experience is itself nothing but Brahman.
