saattvika tyaagam

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Sankaran Panchapagesan wrote:

> Hi.
>   This post is from my brother Karthik.

Btw, Karthik should be resubscribed by now.

> If you mean the Ishvara is unaffected by the jiiva's karma, don't you think
> that's obvious: one cannot freely sin and then simply say the actions were
> God's! Well...one can say so, but it wouldn't be true :-)
>

Unfortunately, there are such people and they mean it.

[...]

I just want to comment on this part because I think it has a lot of
bearing on how we look at tradition.

> Well, there are great minds in other traditions too.

Certainly.

> And tradition is for
> Man, not Man for tradition.

Such a formulation implies that both tradition and Man are static.  Just
as tradition is the sum total of all the generations of Man.  Man is
moulded by the traditions he has inherited, sometimes willingly and
sometimes unwillingly.

Theoretically the modern "stick a finger in every pot" types should know
and understand more than your typical orthodox "frog in the well" type.
But in reality you find that they do not.  Because they get no resistance,
no push on their beliefs they sink to the level of whatever is the most
easy or comfortable for them.  When I think about these things I often
think back to when I was learning Sanskrit.  Certainly I didn't have to.
No one was forcing me to and I had English books available.  Not to
mention it was very difficult at first not to mention boring.  But I stuck
with it and Whole new worlds opened up for me which I would otherwise have
missed.  I'm glad I did it and I daresay other people are too.

>  One ought to choose whatever helps one the most.
> If there is something in a tradition that is good for a certain person,
> he/she could/should take it up whole-heartedly, IMO.
>

A "not invented here" mentality is not good but we must ask ourselves help
to do what?  A sampradaya gives a framework, goals and an objective way to
judge the value of things.  We should think very carefully about what
kind of help is being given and why.

--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>

--
bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam

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