Was ShrI Shankara a Vaishnava?

[Vivek Anand Ganesan]

Thanks ShrI Ganesh for the pointer. I have to thank ShrI Ramakrishnan for his excellent article.

If I may, I would like to request a further clarification.

1) What exactly is the concept of an isshTa-daivam among advaitins?
    The reason I ask is that I have often heard slants( from sectarians of course) that
Advaitins
do not actually have bhakti firmly established in one deity. One detractor went so far as to
call
Advaitam crypto-polytheism, as they "tolerate" worship of many forms. Are SmArtha-s required to
worship multiple deities? Does Advaitam advocate monolatry at any point?

-Vivek.
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>From  Thu Aug 12 15:47:33 1999
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Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 15:47:33 +0800
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To: List for advaita vedanta as taught by Shri Shankara
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From: Venkataraman <venkataraman at PACIFIC.NET.SG>
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Subject: Re: Was ShrI Shankara a Vaishnava?
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This is my maiden post to this list.  Pardon me if I transgress any of
its  rules out of ignorance.

Advaita does not talk of multiple *deities*. We are free to worship
any one or more of many different names and forms, ALL of which
represent the ONE and ONLY sat-cit-aananda svaruupam.

Even the non-advaitins worship differnt forms of Naraayana as
Narasimha, Krishna, Rama.   But they classify them as avataras.  Along
with Vyuhas, and archa forms, they treat them as different
manifestations of the Supreme Being. They imply some sort of a
gradation among these manifestations.  That is not  seen as
crypto-polytheism but monolatry.

Advaita looks upon all the  manifestations as being of equal "status"
as objects of our bhakti.
There is no sub-optimisation of aspects of the Infinite.  Worship of
any particular *deity* is neither compulsory nor prohibited.  Shankara
 himself has composed Stotrams in praise of Vishnu, Siva, Shakti,
Ganesa,  and so on.

---  VMSundaram




Vivek Anand Ganesan wrote:
>
> Thanks ShrI Ganesh for the pointer. I have to thank ShrI Ramakrishnan for his excellent article.
>
> If I may, I would like to request a further clarification.
>
> 1) What exactly is the concept of an isshTa-daivam among advaitins?
>     The reason I ask is that I have often heard slants( from sectarians of course) that
> Advaitins
> do not actually have bhakti firmly established in one deity. One detractor went so far as to
> call
> Advaitam crypto-polytheism, as they "tolerate" worship of many forms. Are SmArtha-s required to
> worship multiple deities? Does Advaitam advocate monolatry at any point?
>
> -Vivek.
> _________________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com