[Advaita-l] Nitya Karma question

Vidyasankar Sundaresan svidyasankar at hotmail.com
Thu Oct 13 14:44:46 CDT 2011



> The comparison of debt and loan to bring up a kid is pretty bad.
> If a parent is expecting to get back what all he did to a child to bring him
> up and more (shradha) that is a business transaction just like a bank. Love
> does not
> expect anything back, in bakti also loving God with out expecting any thing
> back
> is the big principle.
> 

I hesitate to bring up this topic again, but it is clear that you are completely
missing the point, so here is one last effort.
 
> So if you are going to demand the next generation to do Shradha that it self
> is pApa,

Whose pApa? Simple question - most probably, your great grandfathers and
grandfathers performed SrAddha for their ancestors and expected their next
generations to do it too. In your eyes, were they therefore sinners?
 
> you will incur sin. I have read in many places that you do your duty and
> whatever you get is a prashad from Ishvara. So if the parent consider giving
> birth and bringing up kids is a debt, they are not worth it IMHO.
> 

Forget about your children, focus on YOU for the purposes of this discussion. 
The point is not that you bring up a child expecting him or her to repay the
debt to YOU. The point is that YOU are indebted to a long line of ancestors,
starting from YOUR parents. A ritual observance such as a SrAddha is a
means to acknowledge YOUR indebtedness.
 
YOU inherited your name and property from your parents. YOU got a body
because of your parents. By giving birth to YOU and bringing you up, they
did not actively put you in debt, but you are nevertheless indebted to them.
Think of it as a gift, not a loan. In either case, it involves something that is
GIVEN to YOU, for which there is a way to express thanks. 

If you have read in many places that you do your duty without worrying
about results, please go back to those same many places and find out
WHAT your duty is in the first place, when it comes to your ancestors. 
No man has just one duty to fulfil and when it comes to a dhArmika duty,
if you care about dharma at all, go to the dhArmika sources.
 
Vidyasankar
                 
  		 	   		  


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