Practical Vedanta

[Anand V. Hudli]

On Tue, 18 May 1999 16:34:34 -0700, Sankaran Panchapagesan
 <panchap at ICSL.UCLA.EDU> wrote:


>Otherwise philosophising at the jnani level would necessarily be
>constred as escapism, as Madhavan Srinivasan did, right? (don't take
>offense, but such is the perspective from outside).
>
>

 You are absolutely right in saying that one must not philosophize
 at the jnAni level if you mean such philosophizing is done by one who
 wants to enjoy all comforts, does not want to follow his dharma, and
 escapes from all responsibilities by saying that Atma-vichAra is
 the sole goal of life after all. The key thing to note here is that
 this kind of person is interested in "best of both worlds." 1) He wants
 avoid his dharma/responsibilities saying only jnAna is important,
 and 2) he is not willing to renounce the worldly comforts. This leads
 to a situation where he is neither following his dharma nor will he
 make any progress in jnAna.

 I myself have argued against this position and the whole issue of mixing
 sannyAsa and gR^ihastha Ashramas, which Shankara and others from his
 school are totally against,  has received great attention on this list
 in the past.

 Surely, if one accepts that he must do his dharma if he wants to
 remain in worldly life, we cannot blame him. And following his dharma
 will also mean that he must "give back to the society and the environment"
 whatever success he attains in worldly life.



 Anand