Practical Vedanta

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

Vidyasankar Sundaresan <vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

>>But if you're not a samnyAsin and cannot sit in meditation the whole
day and
>>have to attend to secular duties, then karma is inevitable. When you
perform
>>duties without any attachment, then it is karma yoga.
>
>Sitting in meditation is still "doing" something,
>and jnAnayoga is not about doing anything.
>Equating jnAnayoga with sitting in meditation is
>based on a total misunderstanding of the whole
>thing. Anand's reply is quite appropriate and I
>second it.

Vidyasankar has brought out an important point. Sitting in meditation
is NOT GYAna-yoga. Sha.nkarabhagavat and especially Srimad Sureshvara
never tire of pointing this out. Even Sri MaNDana Mishra who advocates
GYAnakarmasamuccaya and does not call meditating as GYAna. It should
be done (according to him) to stabilize GYAna. Note: I am simplifying
his views here. Meditating is certainly not classified as a karma and
sannyAsis certainly can do it. But, it's not GYAna yoga.

Rama