[Advaita-l] Lord's mama guNamayi mAya Vs Jeeva's avidyA

[Bhaskar YR]

praNAms
Hare Krishna

My God!!  I am in wonderment, verses in BG (like 7.14 & 7.25) can be interpreted like this also just to equate mAya with avidyA!!  Anyway, we, the 1% weaker section 😊  should not open our mouth against ‘traditional’ interpretation of these verses as they have been accepted as ‘authority’ since ages.  However, this 1% still have the conviction that they are too representing shankara vedAnta, so parallel view points need to be shared.

There is one saying in Kannada : kaamaale kanniddavarige kandiddella haladi, (a jaundiced eye would see everything as yellow)  I the jeeva have the avidyA, so whatever I  see is avidyA  and whoever termed as Ishwara / brahman must be having avidyA as well but since he is Ishwara let us say he too have avidyA but he is not influenced by avidyA let us spare him  nevertheless fact remains that Ishwara / brahman too has avidyA 😊 but when it is with Ishwara you call it as mAya ( for all diplomatic purposes) and freely call it as avidyA when it is pasted to jeeva.  IMO, atleast it is one way or the other a healthy development among avidyA-mAya abedha vAdins,  atleast now they have started to say It is Ishwara’s mAya and jeeva’s avidyA instead of asserting Ishwara’s / brahman’s avidyA due to which brahman itself or Ishwara himself got deluded etc. by quoting svayaM mOhitaH etc.😊 I sincerely hope days are not too far away when they started to say avidyA is not mAya and mAya is Ishwara adheena but avidyA /adhyAsa is jeeva’s defect which is ultimately the perspective presented by PTB bhAshyakAra.

Let us take 7.14, Lord here avidly clarifying  daivi hyesha ‘guNamayi’ ‘mama mAya’ duratyayaa etc.  Here mAya defined as mama mAya, of mine i.e. the Lord, Krishna, vishNu, nArAyaNa, my own ( its entirely belongs to him) he is owning and having the absolute control over it.  And most importantly he is describing it as ‘daivi’ divine, sublime, guNamayi constituted by guNa-s etc.  Can the anishta like avidyA fit these descriptions??  Can avidyA be divine??  Can avidyA be guNamayi when it is categorically explained as dOsha ??  can this anishta, tuccha, duHkha mUla, anartha hetu, apavitra avidyA  is hugged by the parama parishuddha lord and saying it is mine and my own etc. ??  Oh, my God, where  are we heading here?? And in 7.13 itself bhAshyakAra himself saying tribhiH, guNamayaiH guNa vikAraiH ‘raaga, dvesha mOhAdi prakAraiH etc.  how can this glaring difference between guNa and guNa vikAra rAga dvesha etc. be ignored and illogically striking the similarities between mAya (triguNa) and avidyA (rAga, mOha, dvesha etc.)??

And in 7.25 Lord saying he is yOga mAya samAvruta (being covered by yOga mAya)  does it mean Lord binding himself with this yOga mAya??  Like sun dragging the cloud covering himself to say he deluded himself due to mAya ??  This is gross misrepresentation of very Advaita tattva.  If some one sees dviteeya Chandra is it a problem of original moon??  If some rich person say See I am a multi billionaire this idiot (some other person) does not know that, can we say rich person’s wealth is as same as mUdha’s ignorance??  Illogically and unwarrantedly stretching these analogies would cause more harm than good.  Ishwara’s mAya can never ever be compared with jeeva’s avidyA.  All these gymnastics of avidyA-mAya abedha vAdins started because they deliberately ignore when we are talking about jeeva it is shAreeri ( he is encompassed ONLY is shareera) only and not Ishwara/brahman IOW,  jeeva is the nature of brahman but brahman is NOT the nature of jeeva.  It is because of this there is hell a lot of difference between mAya and avidyA which nobody can ignore.

Earlier also we have said enough of this and everything is done and dusted but despite this we are still seeing this desperate effort to strike a similarity whenever opportunity arises but unfortunately it is totally out of context and concocted inter pretation of some of the plain bhAshya vAkya-s.

Again this is a parallel view point one can think of after seeing the bhAshya from different perspective.

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar