|| Maya || by Swami Sarvapriyananda(Part-2)

 Maya _by Swami Sarvapriyananda

Maya by Swami Sarvapriyananda

Maya_by Swami Sarvapriyananda, Are ignorant you cannot say that it is seeing that once you become enlightened it is not one Swami put it very beautifully this question about Maya why all this how did the one become the many ones Swami said very beautifully he said on our side of enlightenment when we are not enlightened on our side we have the question there's no answer and on their side after enlightenment they have the answer there is no question 

so sad I said Mohammed in Virginia, it you cannot say my eyes and ultimate reality because after the Enlightenment there is no Maya for you the enlightened person but you cannot say that it does not exist either but seeing that we see all this our entire life is lived in Maya 

so you cannot say it is not such I said beyond a near version, 

Maya by Swami Sarvapriyananda

Maya_by Swami Sarvapriyananda I am cannot be expressed as is or is not the second thing is trigonal maqam this is Maya what is it composed of can you say what is Maya made of and the answer the non-dualistic from this Sankhya cosmology three gunas sattva rajas tamas separatist Thomas I will not go into all this we discuss it again and again but this is something that we have borrowed from Sankhya cosmology sattva rajas tamas three Gunas Maya's made of three Gunas then very important Jana v-rod he Maya is opposed to knowledge opposed to knowledge is must understand carefully Maya is that which is destroyed by knowledge it's a fancy way of saying that knowledge removes ignorant 

so what you are ignorant about what I am ignorant about I need knowledge about that if I do if I don't know chemistry and then I need I am ignorant of chemistry 

so I need knowledge of chemistry yes if I don't know French I am ignorant of French, 

I need knowledge of French and that will remove that particular ignorance if I do not know my real self as a trait of a land claims I am ignorant of my real self then I need knowledge Ganim of my real self and that will remove ignorance 

so ignorant is Guiana V rotate is canceled by knowledge are negated by the knowledge that's another characteristic of ignorance of Maya then the next one is Amparo BAM these are all very controversial bhava rupa it's not an absence ignorant is not just an absence of knowledge it's a positive something why a positive something because in Advaita Vedanta Maya has two functions it does two things one it obscures the reality, Brahman, it veils the reality it does not allow you to know yourself as you are one this is called a Verona and the second one is the wick shape big shape a means error it projects the reality as it is not it's not 

so difficult to understand I do not I see a snake by mistake it's a rope 

Maya by Swami Sarvapriyananda

Maya_by Swami Sarvapriyananda I did not know the rope as a rope veil and next what happened because I did not know the rope as the rope I mistook it for a snake because you can miss mistake it for something else also 

so you mistook it for a snake so that is projection error that is called wick shaper the two functions Sri Ramakrishna in his beautiful the example he says one of the functions of Maya is our Verona it hides the reality and it gives a beautiful story from Ramayana where Rama and Sita and Lakshmana are on their way to the forest in exile and Rama walk walks ahead here Rama is Paramatma the supreme self and Lakshmana is Eve Atma the individual self we and Sita is the Veil of Maya, 

so she is in between and Rama is in front and us we the individual being select Maya is at at the back and Lakshmana can see Rama only if Sita graciously steps aside and lets him see 

so that's Sudama Krishna's beautiful example in fact when I was preparing this the talk I looked up what Sri Ramakrishna had said about Maya and really that's a subject in itself we should have a separate lecture of on Sri Ramakrishna on Maya very beautiful things we have discussed it from time to time he speaks about the serpent the Cobra which has poison in its mouth little bit of that poison is enough to knock out a mouse or a frog but all the poison is in the mouth of the Cobra but it doesn't do anything to the Cobra it's the power of the Cobra Sri Ramakrishna says Maya is the power by which we are all deluded we are trapped in samsara but the entire power is wielded by god Ishwara Simon a Brahmin but he sure is not trapped by Maya 

Maya by Swami Sarvapriyananda

Maya_by Swami Sarvapriyananda so that's an example he gives another example he gives his when the water is muddy he says it does not form a good reflection of the Sun or the moon the Sun of the moon is not reflected properly in muddy water but it was clear then the reflection is good similarly he says in the mind deluded by Maya art massage shot car the realization of the self it's not clear that man is right here but it's not clear covering this is our and a veil another very simple village example he gives for this you have to see villages in Bengal there are lots of these little ponds they are called cuckoo, in fact, Salama Krishna's birth, please come out cuckoo it's a pond a village pond and you remember you must know that Bengal is a very fertile the place I mean it's always overgrown it's luxurious there 

so the ponds are often covered with a kind of creeper a water plant it covers the surface of the water Panna isis's hyacinth its hyacinth and Sri Ramakrishna says you can't see the water when you go and push it aside then the sparkling water underneath you can see but the moment you let go it dances we said it dances back and cover everything similarly it says that when you are no contemplating Vedanta when you're in the holy company when you are meditating and praying it seems to disappear samsara goes away but the moment you let go it dances back into you again 

Maya by Swami Sarvapriyananda

Maya_by Swami Sarvapriyananda so these are the examples he gives the two functions of Maya wick shape an hour and availing and projection how can it have two functions if Maya is nothing it must have some kind of positive entity remember I'm talking about the five characteristics of Maya in volant is also one characteristic is power room it has a positive dimension that it is a positive entity there is something called Maya it's not just an absence of knowledge when you say ignorance you can say ignorant is an absence of knowledge but no the non-dual is told that this Maya is not just an absence of knowledge it's not that I don't know that's it no there is a positive force which has these two powers 

Maya by Swami Sarvapriyananda

Maya_by Swami Sarvapriyananda so it's called bhava rupa as if it exists and then finally the last one yet clinched it's a mysterious something what do you mean some mysterious something there that the description is that you cannot characterize Maya as it is this in Sanskrit edom it thumb it is like this you cannot say that about Maya it is it kind it's hard to pin down and that's the very nature of Maya 

so Ramakrishna talks about this he says that it's like a man possessed by a ghost, he did not know he was possessed by a ghost until he thinks about it and it leaves him immediately we say it you know it's a figure of speech whatever possessed you we say 

so when you contemplate upon look upon it suddenly disappears 

Maya by Swami Sarvapriyananda

Maya_by Swami Sarvapriyananda so my eyes like that yet kingship which does not bear the light of reason if you focus if you reflect upon it if you concentrate upon it vanishes in ultra-current in the inner The Himalayas the Saudis have a saying the monks I was saying about Maya about again we say in Hindi first a Bianco pratishta political party streetcar negotiation Nakashima's mafia gang coca tea don't try to establish agora ignorance try to cut a cut down ignorance don't try to establish that ignorance is by these proofs you can never do that and that's not the point of non-dualism the point is there is something which we do not know let's try to know it that's the thing 

so these are the five characteristics and I will come I'll tell you why I'm saying all this we are getting up a taste of what the classical analysis of Maya was what is the classical presentation of Maya this is from Vedanta Sara which was written about 700 years ago and this idea of the nonduelists came 

under heavy attack by the other schools for nearly 500 years and the non-duelists responded 

so to get a taste of the kind of attack and that came from the other schools Ramanujacharya who lived about a thousand years ago 

who wrote the commentaries laid the foundation of vashisht at Dwight a qualified monism 

so he attacks non-dualism Advaita Vedanta he attacks non-dualism in his masterpiece Shrieve Hashem 

Maya by Swami Sarvapriyananda

Maya_by Swami Sarvapriyananda so there the style of debate in ancient India was that if we are going to have a debate if you say something before I reply I must restate to you what you said to your satisfaction is this what you said do you have to agree yes then 

I can reply you can see how many quarrels it would prevent most of the time when we are very arguing it goes into the quarrel develops into degenerates into quarrels because I'm not really listening to what you are saying I'm thinking of my reply you know like a tilde this reply is going to blow you away I'm really not even listening to the other side I'm just listening to nowadays it's like that they call it an echo chamber 

so we just listen to our point of view and then keep giving replies without listening to the other people look here you have to restate to that other person's satisfaction is this what you said and then I can I'm allowed to reply

so Ramanujacharya  when he's attacking Advaita Vedanta in the classical style he restates the position of Advaita Vedanta what is Advaita saying non-dualism saying they are saying this 

so in that in his book, it's called maha brown Paksha the great opponent who's the great opponent the non-duelists and he does such a fair job of it and often when people argue you set up a straw man and knock it down and say I've won the argument but here Ramanuja gives a very fair statement one of our swamis was a great scholar of non-dualism and a very staunch non-duelist he admits that Ramanuja is a gentleman he measures he does a fair job of stating our position is