[Advaita-l] Advaita / Dvaita Clarification requested contd.

[Ramesh Krishnamurthy]

On 20/09/2007, Vishnu <ck.vishnu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If the world is unreal then why does one have to work his way up towards
> salvation or mokhsha by only following good karmic deeds as mentioned in our
> holy scriptures and constantly be in fear of deviating from the good deeds.
> What ever good or bad (deeds) karma one does again could be treated as a
> perception since the world itself is unreal and all things/actions good or
> bad therefore are neither real too, since we are living in an unrealistic
> world. After all, the individual is going to be united with Brahman anyways
> as there is no such thing then, which differentiates between the good or bad
> deeds as they are all unreal too.
>

Yes, from the paramarthika perspective, notions of good & bad deeds
are unreal. Karma itself is unreal.

One can understand this through an incident in Sri Sankara
Bhagavatpada's life. When he was in Varanasi, he discussed Advaita
with several scholars. One day, he was walking through a lane when an
elephant charged at him. He jumped aside to avoid getting crushed. A
scholar who observed the incident asked - "if the elephant was mithya,
why did you jump aside?", to which the acharya replied, "the elephant
was mithya and my jumping aside was mithya too".

Even moksha and samsara are unreal, from a paramarthika perspective

Ramesh