Practical Vedanta

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

 mmsudan <mmsudan at BOL.NET.IN> wrote:

>In view of responses I think I need to explain context of some of the
words
>i.e Practical Vedanta,materialism and consumerism etc. I have used in
my
>posting.
>
>What I mean by Practical Vedanta is those basic  principles of
Advaita
>Vedanta which needs to be applied by all persons, irrespective of
their
>position, in their daily life.

There is nothing called practical vedAnta or theoretical vedAnta.
vedAnta is just vedAnta and  requires no other adjectives. Some people
may refer to just reading books as theoretical vedAnta, but it's a
misnomer because they don't understand what vedAnta means. Just
reading books is not vedAnta in the first place. Calling various
things as "practical vedAnta" has been perpetuated largely by
ignoramuses. This is mainly the case with the "web-gurus", namely the
many people you see advertising the GYAni-hood by setting up
web-pages. Typically they get illumination either by staring very hard
at a picture of some saint or get certification from some swami or the
other in India :-). Best to ignore all these people. If you actually
read some of the stuff in these pages you start wondering whether they
can tie their shoe-laces, let alone teach advaita. Unfortunately, the
WWW is giving a presence to all these people.  Fortunately, India is
largely free of such drivel till now, though I hear that it is
changing now.

I suggest that you read sha.nkarabhagavAns first few chapters of the
upadeshasAhasrI or VidyaraNya's introduction to the study of
upanishhads to understand what vedAnta means.

Rama