[Advaita-l] mithya and maya

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Dear Vaidehi, 

The great Adi Sankaracharya was eminently successful in explaining Advaita. Unfortunately it was not easy for the successive generations to understand that or to teach that the same way Adi sankaracharya did during his time.. For example did the eminent Acharyas like Ramanujacharya, Nimbarkacharya or Madhvacharya totally agree with Adi Sankaracharya. It happened that the explanations of Adi sankaracharya did not percolate down systematically.  Ramakrishna Paramhansa said that Dvaita, Visishtadvaita and Advaita are the conceptions all true but at different levels of understading and if  we have to believe Ramakrishna Paramhansa he predicted that a time is approaching when one will understand Vedanta in a day a. He probably referred to the advancement of science. Today science tells us about the Big
 Bang. It is easy to understand that Big Bang was probably the time when the Brahman decided to be many. Today we know the Matter can be converted to Energy and does it not show the equivalence of Matter and Energy? The famous mathematician  Sir Eddington calculated and showed that if a single atom is removed from this world then the world will not exist. Thus whether before the creation or after the creation the Brahman does not change. His totality remains the same as ever. So he is called Immutable.  In fact in the eternal time scale there is no change brought about in the Brahman by His creation.

The Lord did create the world as Lord Krishna says that from a small portion of His he created the world. This world is anitya or impermanent as it is always changing. One must know about this change in the worldly things in relation to the unchangeable totality of the Brahman . He is as He ever was or ever will be. It may not in fact be proper to speak of time when we talk
 about Brahman the same way as we relate changes in the world with time.

As the Lord says that He created the world by His Maya, the best definition of Maya will be as His creative power. The the next best thing will probably be to accept the two types of Maya ie the Maya of the Lord and the other form of Maya called Avidya of the others, who look at Lord's Maya from their individual perspective.ie by those who have not attained the real  knowledge.

Regards,

Sunil K. Bhattacharjya

--- On Tue, 1/6/09, vaidehi chaitanya <vaidehi.chaitanya at gmail.com> wrote:
From: vaidehi chaitanya <vaidehi.chaitanya at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] mithya and maya
To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Date: Tuesday, January 6, 2009, 9:40 PM

dear michel, hari om

in fact i read some of the discussions on maya through this discussion
forum. now, in the first place all these discussions by you as well as
others treat maya as an entity which has existence - SAT. please see, if it
were to be real (SAT) then, it can not change or disappear. if it is unreal
it doesn't exist. At one and the same time if some thing seems to exist and
not-exist, how can you
 attribute Reality to it and treat it as a entity? it
is here that Shankaracharyaji excels bringing in the concept of maya which
is not there yet to serve the purpose of explaining the cause of creation.
for this, in Advaita vedanta sastra, an example is used: three sons of a
father inherited one third share each of the entire property which was 17
horses. now, the question was how to divide equally among the three? then a
passerby helped them by including his horse to the 17 to make the number 18.
now, he told them to divide among them selves equally. after the division is
over, he took his horse back. in the process, neither the external person
lost his horse nor the three brothers had difficulty in sharing.  like wise
maya is only a concept brought in to explain the seemingly created universe.
nothing whatso ever happens to the SAT - reality. hence, maya is an to be
treated as an independent entity. if done so, it
 amounts to negating the
very nature of reality as unchanging.

hence, the discussions should take a shift from treating maya as an
independent entity to maya as a concept brought in to expalin to our weak
minds the REALITY - SAT which changeless, eternal and all pervasive.

hari om

vaidehi chaitanya
acharaya
chinmaya mission, mysore

On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 6:16 PM, Michael Shepherd <
michael at shepherd87.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

> I'm curious to understand how maayaa, as the magic of Creation, should
have
> come, in time,  to be regarded as a veil, an obstacle, in 'seeing
through
> mithya'.. why did the 'wonder' disappear from maayaa ?!
>
> Some commentators on Shankara seem to blame him for making maayaa seem
like
> this, an obstacle to be overcome by jnana rather than by bhakta..
>
> Could you explain how this misunderstanding was inevitable in some
 minds ?
>
> Michael Shepherd
>
>
>
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