THE Doctrine of Maya - HolyBooks.com

124 THE DOCTRINE OF MAYAwe deny the concealment (tirodhana) of Brahman byignorance(avidya).3. The Charge of Svarupdnupapatti.What is the essential nature of Avidya ? As longas it is a thing at all, it must either have the nature ofreality or of unreality. But it is not admitted to bea 1reality and it cannot be an;unreality, for, as longas a real misguiding error, different from BrahmanHimself, is not admitted, so longit is not possibleto explain the theory of illusion.If Brahman Himself have the character of the misguiding error, then,owing to his eternity, there would be no final releaseto the individual self.Criticism. The whole difficulty ispurely factitious. Certainly we do not admit the reality ofMaya, but at the same time we do not hold that it isunreal from the empirical standpoint as well.Empirically it is sat (existing) : the world is, but itis Maya. Ramanujais too anxious and tactful tocorner us by his dilemmas. But as a rule thesedilemmas have one of the two horns already broken,since he generally starts with self-assumed premises,and draws his own inferences from them, most logically,of course.The question as to what isthe cause of Maya is,in the sense in which it is asked, an illegitimate one.1 Here Ramanuja rightly understands the standpoint,but at once again makes a great confusion and becomesinconsistent when criticizing the theory on the basis of theassumed reality of Maya.