Question

[Anand Hudli]

 >Dear Friends

   >Every one of us know that ATMA or SOul never dies. Still when we
   >meet our elders they bless with "AYUSHMAN BHAVA" ( Long live).
   >Why and in what context??, Are they blessing the material body ??
   >because the jeeva or Soul has no death.


    In the context of advaita, blesssings such as aayushhmaan bhava, are to
    be interpreted as follows. Shankara says in his VivekachuuDaamaNi that
    obtaining a human life is extremely difficult. But even after obtaining
    a human body, if one does not endeavor toward Atma-vidyaa, then an
    extremely rare opportunity has been lost. Who knows how many rebirths
    we will have to experience among animals and other species, before
     we get a human body? So it is extremely important to not waste time
    in useless pursuits while we have a human body. Because, ultimately Time
    is an important factor. If we spend our life time in making even a
    little progress toward Atma-vidyaa, we may or may not attain Mokshaa in
    this life  time, but we have made sure of getting a human body in the
    next birth and that too in a good family.  This has been confirmed by
    Lord Krishna in the Giitaa.

    It follows that if our life time is prolonged, we will have
    more time   and hence a better opportunity to learn Atma-vidyaa,
    provided, ofcourse, that we have rightly resolved about Atma-vidyaa. It
    is in this context that "aayushhmaan bhava" is to be interpreted. The
    intended meaning is "May you live long so that you will have the fullest
    opportunity to acquire Atma-vidyaa." It does not mean "May you live long
    and enjoy all sense pleasures to the fullest."

    Of course, many Mahaatmaa's did not live long and still achieved
    Brahma-saakshhaatkaara. These are to be taken as exceptions or as
    persons who had almost attained Brahman in their previous lives
    and who needed just a little more extra time as human beings to
    complete the process.


  >regards
  >prasad


   Anand
>From ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU Tue Apr  1 20:47:08 1997
Message-Id: <TUE.1.APR.1997.204708.0600.ADVAITAL at TAMU.EDU>
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 20:47:08 -0600
Reply-To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: "Ravisankar S. Mayavaram" <aum at UNIX.TAMU.EDU>
Subject: some administrative changes
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

namaste

I have changed the subscription option from "open" to "By_owner". Change
was motivated by an unknown hacker, who arbitrarily  added many users to
advaita-l. Initially I changed the option to "open, confirm" but problem
persisted, hence decided to make it "By_owner".

This may not directly affect you. But indirectly it can. For instance if
you are going for a vacation and want to stop the mail temporarily,
instead of getting out and getting in, now it is better to use
"NOMAIL" option.

To do that you should send a mail to
listserv at tamvm1.tamu.edu with a blank subject line and body of the
message containing,
SET ADVAITA-L NOMAIL
to revert back, you can send a mail again to same address with
SET ADVAITA-L MAIL

Soon I will prepare a file explaining these commands and post it
regularly on the list. In case you have any problems with list, please
send a mail to aum at unix.tamu.edu, I have this address for dedicated use for
advaita-l and the associated error messages.

Thanks for your patience.
Sincerely,
Ravi
aum at unix.tamu.edu