How is Mayavada offensive?

What is their conception of Vishnu?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Question. What is the Mayavadi conception of God and why is it offensive? Answer.
Mayavad. The word itself means vad is argument. Maya is illusion.
So Mayavad essentially means that everything that we see around us is primarily an illusion. And beyond what we see is ultimately Brahman. So Brahma Satya Jagan Mithya.
Now Mayavad itself does not have… Mayavad itself is not Mayavadi in the sense that although Mayavadi say everything is one but they themselves have more than one. They have thousand opinions. So there are… Since Shankaracharya propagated Mayavad over one and a half decade ago nearly Mayavad has morphed into many many branches.
So I won’t go into technicalities of the differences between different Mayavadis but focus on one important point is what makes their conception offensive is that they consider the form of the Lord to be an illusion. Now this… What do we mean by an illusion? They can have various meanings. One is that sometimes they say that there is a nirguna Brahma which is considered to be ultimate reality and then that nirguna Brahma manifests also as Saguna Brahma.
So the Brahma without qualities manifests as Brahma without qualities. And that is… Why is that done? That is so that we can have a convenient tool for meditation. So then that means we cannot think about the impersonal beforehand right now, the formless right now.
So meditate on a form and then you can go beyond the form. You can go beyond the form to the formless. So now they consider that the form, the manifestation of Brahman with form Saguna Brahma that is actually just a transitional tool for meditation.
It is a convenient fiction. And they consider the form ultimately has to be transcended because it is a product of Maya. What do you mean by product of Maya? That means that it is at two levels because now there are two different things over here.
One is our conception and also the ontological reality of the universe. So the Mayavadis also accept the cosmos as described in the Vedic literature. So for example, they also understand that there are various planets and there are various Devatas and then there is a Shweta Sagar and beyond the Shweta Sagar there is Vishnu.
So as is described in the scriptures they also accept that Vishnu is the supreme among the gods. But then they say that we are… So are they theistic? If they are accepting Vishnu as the supreme among the gods they are accepting all the gods? Not exactly. They claim themselves to be transtheistic.
They say yes, all this is a reality but all this is vyavaharik, all this is practical reality and beyond that there is a paramarthic reality. Paramarthic is the supreme reality. Now this idea of dividing reality into two levels vyavaharik and paramarthic actually this does not come from the Vedic literature.
This was an idea which was used by Buddhist philosophers especially Nagarjuna and others and Shankaracharya adopted that and interpreted the Upanishadic literature accordingly. So the problem with this is that it does not have a basis in scripture explicitly and some verses can be used to extrapolate it but something which is supposed to be a fundamental device for interpreting, fundamental hermeneutical tool a strategy for interpreting scripture then it should be repeatedly mentioned in the scripture but it’s only one Upanishad an indirect reference can be made to something like this. But then what happens by this as Ramacharya points out in the refutation of Shankaracharya that essentially the large majority of the scripture is talking about forms, about persons and their reciprocations it’s talking even about the past times of the Lord.
So it’s almost like 95 to 98% of scripture gets degraded down to a lower level reality and only a small fraction of scripture is considered to be describing higher reality. This is violence against scripture. So this is actually clearly imposition of one’s own philosophy on scripture that is offensive because one is taking one’s own philosophy and imposing on the scripture and then one is also denying the transcendence of the personality of Godhead.
So do they deny his existence? Well, they do not deny the existence in the sense that they say there is a Vishnu but then they say he is also ultimately under illusion and when we go truly beyond illusion we will go beyond all form and we will merge in that Nirguna Brahma. So now how that Nirguna Brahma become or how illusion ever comes from how the Brahma, if all of us are Brahma how does Brahma come under illusion? These are questions which baffle Mayavadi philosophers always and they try to escape in various ways around it but essentially their conception of God is that of the absolute truth ultimately it’s impersonal and all forms are illusion but within this illusory framework to come from a lower level of illusion to come from a very Tamoguna to Satvoguna one can adopt some kind of worship but eventually one has to go beyond worship. So now Krishna says matah parataram naanyat kinchi yasthi naanyat there is no truth higher than me no truth beyond me so this is directly contradicting scripture this Mayavadi philosophy and that’s why we need to counter it so do the Mayavadis consider that now the Mayavadis often try to wiggle around there are many problems that are created by the imposition of their philosophy on scripture for example they say okay why is this Brahman not talked about in scripture this Nirguna Brahma if that is the absolute truth why does scripture talk so much about other things and they say oh actually that can’t be talked about only because that is beyond words now if that is the case if it is beyond the words then it is not just beyond the word of scripture it is beyond the words of Mayavadis also but the Mayavadis talk a lot about it so now and actually to say that it is beyond words it is beyond description beyond qualities is actually contradictory because to say that something is beyond qualities is also a quality you will say the word is ineffable ineffable means that which cannot be expressed in words but ineffability is also a quality so we just cannot have something which is qualityless because qualitylessness is also a quality so therefore Baldevidya Bhushan very strongly in the Vedanta Sutra points out that the Mayavadis do say that Brahman is filled with Ananda but then often Mayavadis names also have Ananda prominently in them but then they say that actually Ananda is also a quality of Brahman when you say that it is Ananda it already has a quality so we cannot get out of the point that Brahman will always have qualities but rather than acknowledging that the qualities are transcendental that there is no such difference between Nirguna Brahma which is Nirakar and Samuna Brahma which is having Rupa Sakar actually there is only one Brahma and it is Nirguna in the sense that it does not have any gunas coming from the three gunas it does not have any qualities coming from the three modes but it has infinite transcendental qualities as Ramacharya says Ananta Gunasampanna Narayana that Narayana is Ananta Gunasampanna he is not just qualityless he is filled with infinite qualities and wherever scriptures say that Yato Vachonivartante that words go towards him but cannot reach and come back that means that words are inadequate to describe him but that does not mean that words cannot be used to describe him at all rather the idea is we cannot fully describe him with words but we the best use the fullest use of our power of words is to glorify him by that the words become engaged in the best possible way our faculty of speech and our intelligence get engaged in the best possible way and we get purified others who hear those words also get purified and that’s why the devotees actually desire to speak more and more about Krishna and desire more and more senses to hear about Krishna and desire to know more and more past tense about Krishna so it is through words that actually the glory of the Supreme Lord is manifested in the world is accessed in this world Anavarti Shabdaat so the uncovering of consciousness happens through Shabda through divine sound and ultimately one attains Krishna through Shabda so it’s true that words cannot describe him exhaustively but words can surely develop him enough describe him enough so that we fall in love with him and by falling in love with him we come to know him more and more and more the purpose and perfection of words is to use to glorify him to be used to glorify him so by denying the form of the Lord as transcendental by considering the form of the Lord to be just a transitional tool, a convenient fiction by by by dividing by relegating a major part of scripture to a lower level reality by denigrating the path of Bhakti Yoga which worships the Supreme Lord as for less intelligent and by denying the by denying the very authenticity of scripture scripture describes the glory of the Lord by saying that actually the Lord is beyond all those descriptions by saying all this the Mayavadis offend the Lord especially they are saying that the form is material and we have to go beyond this form to the transcendental level so that is offensive when they say the form is material what it means is that actually Vishnu also is not the topmost reality there is a Brahman reality which is beyond so Vishnu is also in some way material and also whatever deity we make that is also material, whatever form that we worship that is also material it’s a convenient tool for meditation and you need to go beyond that so this is offensive this minimization of Bhakti and the manifestations of Divine for the sake of Bhakti that minimization and denigration is offensive Krishna says they are avajananti, they are mudha and then he says rakshasin prakriti maashita rakshasin prakriti maashita he says so they are offensive and they are ill-fated and that’s why we have to be very cautious in not getting entrapped by the Mayavadi misconceptions about the absolute truth thank you