[Advaita-l] The essence of advaita

[Ravisankar Mayavaram]

On 9/24/07, S Jayanarayanan <sjayana at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- S Jayanarayanan <sjayana at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Prabha,
> >
> > Your question(s) can be rephrased as: "If the Supreme Self is of
> > the
> > very nature of Itself, how can it come under Ignorance? If not the
> > Self, who or what is the locus of Ignorance?"
> >
>
> The above should read:
>
> "If the Supreme Self is of the very nature of the **Knowledge of**
> Itself, how can it come under Ignorance? If not the Self, who or what
> is the locus of Ignorance?"
>

As you pointed out in your previous message, Sureshvara gives a
brilliant argument that if one looks for a locus it has to be Self
only as there is nothing else.  But the bottom line is this question
can drive one nuts, sooner one abandons it better off he/she is.

A simpler approach is trust in shruti. shruti states that ultimate
reality is non-dual brahman, but on a practical level we see duality
which is caused by so called avidya/mAyA.  shruti also affirms there
is a way out of it.  When try to explain and understand how this
non-dual brahman became all this dual stuff, we seem to get stuck. If
this non-dual brahman is beyond the grasp of one's mind, why should we
assume that somehow we will grasp how "that" became "this"? The
explanation that ties the ultimate non-duality to perceived duality
too is beyond the grasp of mind. Ultimately we progress only by
shraddha and it better not to get trapped in this. shraddhaavan
labhate jnAnam.


Ravi