After Naming Virtue and Fault, Rama Reveals Both as Maya's Work
Uttara Kanda, Doha 41
Doha 41 · Movement 2 of 2
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Rama has spoken with uncompromising clarity about saintly qualities and harmful ones. Then the teaching turns. Virtues and faults alike arise within maya, he tells Bharata.
The true virtue is not to fasten sight upon either. To keep seeing beings through these opposing labels as though the labels were final truth is itself a form of ignorance.
Ethical discernment is not cancelled. It has already been taught and must guide conduct. But Advaita prevents discernment from hardening into identity. Actions may be compassionate or cruel, company may liberate or bind, yet the deepest Self is not captured by either category. Rama leads the seeker through distinction and then beyond the pride of the one who distinguishes, leaving wisdom clear without making judgment a prison.
Rama teaches the difference between fragrance and blade, then refuses to imprison the Self inside either name.
Read the passage from the Manas
सुनहु तात माया कृत गुन अरु दोष अनेक। गुन यह उभय न देखिअहिं देखिअ सो अबिबेक।।41।।
Listen, dear one: Both virtues and vices are maya's creation. They have no ultimate reality. To see either as truly existing, that itself is ignorance. Transcend the pairs: good and bad, virtue and vice. In the light of true knowledge, these shadows dissolve.