[Advaita-l] Is the concept of maya essential to explain advaita?

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> Rajaram: I agree. Personally, I think it is a fortune to learn from
> scholarly practitioners who are aligned to the sampradaya. I would even say
> that this list should have a rule that only those who are sampradaya vids
> should post. Others like me should be content to only ask questions.
> However, when you have an open list, people share different view point from
> other schools, scholars and own speculations about advaita. 
 
Such a rule would be counter-productive. As it is, this list doesn't see postings 
from a wide variety of people. The number of regular contributors is quite 
small, although there are 500+ members. This list began as a forum for all
interested people to exchange views and learn together. It would be good for
it to remain so. Moreover, whose responsibility would it be to define who is
a sampradAyavit? No matter which way one looks at it, that will definitely
open a whole new can of worms, so let's not go there. Even if there is broad
acceptance of someone as a sampradAyavit, at least at an intellectual level,
there always needs to be room for differences of opinion.
 
e.g. I am prepared to read Prof. Balasubramanian's use of the word concept
quite leniently, as applying largely to the explicit appearance of the terms in
a text, because of my expectation that he knows advaita in sufficient depth
and wouldn't have got it totally wrong. Then again, you may be valid in your
expectation that if so, he should not have used the word concept thus. When
even printed writings can lead to such differences in how one understands
an author's intent, with all the opportunity to edit and correct at numerous
stages, it stands to reason that an email list will fare worse. But that is not
necessarily a bad thing.
 
Vidyasankar