[Advaita-l] Why is jagat mithya?

[Kalyan K]

Namaste Venkatesh-ji,


>What is the focus of Sruti? Brahman or non Brahman? In Advaita books
>the focus is more on non Brahman and showing it is Mithya.


Which advaita book focuses more on non-brahman rather than brahman?
Please be specific. As far as I know, in the primary works of Sri
Sankara, the focus is on brahman and its identity with the Atman. In
fact, Sankara dwells less on avidya and maya and treats them as
anirvachanIya. Ironically, it is the vaishnavas, who when criticizing
advaita, dwell more on the nature of avidya. So please tell the names
of the advaita books that you are talking about, which focus less on
brahman and more on avidya.


> We negate everything and what is left is  Brahman.


As per the bruhadaranyaka upanishad, neti-neti (not like this, not
like this) is the BEST description of brahman. There is no better
description of brahman. Please refer to the sruti itself.
advaita-vedanta is faithful to sruti in letter and spirit. This does
not mean that we shun positive descriptions of brahman. Sankara also
wrote beautiful works like soundarya-lahari, bhaja govindam etc. So
worship of saguna brahman is also advocated by advaitins.


Regards

Kalyan