truce required

[Gummuluru Murthy]

The threads "Disciples of Sri Ramana Maharshi" and the ensuing thread
"Guru-disciple-enlightenment topic" are taking a shape of their own and
are almost on the point of destroying the Advaita Group. It is producing
more heat than light lately.

While Sri Ken Stewart's original enquiry is harmless, later discussion
brought in names of disciples of Sri Ramana Maharshi whom someone branded
as false gurus without producing evidence.

What I consider an unfortunate editing mistake by Sri Ramakrishnan
attributed that statement wrongly to Sri Ken Stewart and that took a
shape of its own. Under such circumstances, Ken's plea for proper
attribution of statements is not getting much of attention. Similarly,
the request by Sri Giri to stop slandering people without any evidence
is not getting much attention either.

The Group seems to be in a charged atmosphere, and the peace required
(for the contemplation in the Self) is getting destroyed.

May I suggest, before any further damage is done, that we refrain posting
on this topic anymore for the present. Many wrong attributions and false
slanders are still in place, but I think, it cannot be helped to clear
this without causing further damage.

Only a suggestion.

Regards
Gummuluru Murthy
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Adau ante ca yan nAsti vartamAnepi tat tathA !
                                GaudapAda in Mandukya kArika
What did not exist at the beginning and what is not going to exist at the
 end is as good as non-existent even in the present.
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>From  Thu Oct 31 18:40:37 1996
Message-Id: <THU.31.OCT.1996.184037.GMT.>
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 18:40:37 GMT
Reply-To: kstuart at MAIL.TELIS.ORG
To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: Ken Stuart <kstuart at MAIL.TELIS.ORG>
Subject: Re: truce required
Comments: To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.961031111941.11320A-100000 at plato.ucs.mun.ca>
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Hello,

I agree that we should drop this thread at this point, but first I'd
like to clarify a few things, so as to not leave any wrong
impressions:

1) My statements were about "the teachings of Ramana Maharshi".
As such my statements were not about Advaita in general.   This was
explicit.

2) Not so explicit was that my statements were about "what we,
especially Westerners, perceive as being the teachings of Ramana
Maharshi".  In other words, we read books that claim to be the
teachings of Ramana.   They include certain things and leave out other
things.   By doing so, the editors impose their own personal
conception of the teachings.   Thus, my statements are not about what
Ramana himself actually taught, because I was not there in Arunachala
at the time.  Rather, my statements were about what people *perceive*
to be the teachings of Ramana.

3) I explicitly said this at the beginning, but it seems to have been
glossed over.   All the followers of Ramana Maharshi that I have
encountered are well intentioned people whose ultimate aim is to lead
everyone to realization.   Some of these people think they are
realized, and perhaps are not, but my perception is that their
conscious intention is only to do good.

PS  One of my thoughts about the various Westerners who claim to be
realized teachers and followers of Ramana, is that I can't imagine one
of them who would be willing to spend a week in the basement of the
Temple in South India, let alone the much longer period spent there by
Ramana Maharshi himself....


Namaskar,

Ken

kstuart at mail.telis.org