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

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 5:21 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <
svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> I think you are reading into Prof. Balasubramanian's comment more than what
> he intended. In his introduction to the Sruti sAra samuddharaNa, he is
> simply
> making the point that it is possible to talk of the key point of advaita
> vedAnta,
> "jIvo brahmaiva", in a manner that quite avoids usage of the words mAyA and
> avidyA. This is what is done, really beautifully, by toTakAcArya. It does
> not
> mean that the concept of mAyA as an explanatory device is wrong in any way.
> As Sri Subrahmanian pointed out, even though toTakAcArya did not explicitly
> use these words in his text, they are implicitly there.
>
>
Rajaram: I agree with Shri Subrahmanian because he showed evidence that the
concept exists though the words do not. But Shri R. Balasubramanian is not
saying that these words do not exist in the text. I quoted him verbatim at
the start of the thread. And repeat it here: "Though the *concept* of
maya-avidya is important in Advaita, there is no reference to it in the
text. ... The reason for this is that it is quite possible to explain the
central thesis of Advaita without bringing in the *concept* of maya-avidya
... "