[Advaita-l] Question on Mayavada

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Mon, 6 Dec 2010, Sunil Bhattacharjya wrote:

> Dear Jaldharji,
>
> Well put. May I add that In Mahayana when one gets out of the clutch of 
> Prakriti (ieone sheds / leaves the body of the five skandhas ) one gets 
> the state of Zero-Identity or Shunyata, where there is no individual 
> identity and there is only awareness and no separateness. This means 
> that though the individual identity is lost, a non-separate awareness 
> remains. Shall I be wrong if I say that many see there some similarity 
> between the Advaita and Buddhism.

You shall.  The buddhists are resolutely agnostic about the nature of that 
awareness.  Vedantins of any stripe including Advaitins refer to Brahman 
in positive terms as an entity that can be objectively known.  Or in other 
words, goal of oneness in Buddhism = emptyness.  Goal of oneness in 
Advaita Vedanta = fullness.  This is a vast difference that renders any 
other superficial similarities meaningless.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>