[Advaita-l] Holenarsipur Swamiji's remarks and why even Avidya is not necessary for Advaita

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 5:21 AM, Venkatesh Murthy <vmurthy36 at gmail.com>wrote:

> What is the role of Mayavada now? It is like driving a military tank
> to the office everyday. It is heavy. We cannot use it. We have to use
> a small simple civilian vehicle.  It is pure Brahmavada. Brahman is
> One and everything is Brahman.
>

Rajaram: There are two roles as always and there is no need to change
Sankara's teachings.(Who are we to do that anyway?)The first is to explain
the appearance of duality. You also attribute a cause of duality saying it
is absence of knowledge. There are reasons why this ignorance is considered
a positive entity. The second is for sagunOpasana. Though saguna brahman is
beyond names and forms, we worship Him/Her as with names
and forms. To worship any form of Ishwara, we need to understand that they
are due to His maya shakti, non-different from Him.