Samdhya Meditation and Agnihotra

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

--- miinalochanii paashamochanii
<miinalochanii at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

> It is better to support these with quotes from
> shruti or smRti.
> According vaidyanAtha dixitIyam -VD, two sources
> think contrary to what
> you have stated above. It comes under the section
> anupanita dharma and
> talks about children less than 8 years or younger.

Thanks to Ravi and Kartik for pointing this out. I am
fairly certain I read that the prAyaschitta rituals
for children are for the mistakes they make. However,
I have been unable to locate the source. I'll do more
research on this when I get the time. For the time
being let's assume I'm wrong.

> Also the book I quoted is Hindu Dharma (re
> mAdhyAhnikam) which is
> compiled from talks of kAnchi paramAcharya. He is an
> authority on
> dharma shAstra.

My point was that it's better to do mAdhyAnnikam at
the wrong time than not do it at all. I don't think
even the paramAchArya would have denied that. We have
to distingusih between rhetorical statements and
otherwise.

> Also to Anand's note. There is a section in VD
> called prAyashchitta
> prakaraNam. That deals a lot with those issues. Many
> smRtikara-s think
> that commiting a sin with knowledge that it is wrong
> has NO
> prAyashchittam.  But few like manu (quoting shruti)
> differs from them.
> These are very very complicated matters. Better to
> state the source and
> views on these sources separately.

Of course there are many prAyaschittams and so on.
That is no excuse for not even learning what one's
duties are. Sure we can jump from the top of a big
building and have an ambulance waiting down to save
our lives. Would anyone do that? The law of karma is
as inexorable as the law of gravitation. That's the
point I (and Anand I think) was trying to make.

Just because the effects are not as apparent with
regard to karma, compared to the gravitational force,
does not mean anything. And what is the guarantee that
the prAyaschittam was done properly, when an even an
effort to do the original karma was not made? I'd bet
my last dime that a fellow who ignores karma would
just ignore prAyaschittam or do it sloppily.
Typically, the prAyaschittams are for people who just
cannot do karma for some valid reason. For example, in
times of danger to life and fleeing from that are and
so on. Some smR^itikAra-s deny prAyaschittams even in
such situations, but that's not the majority view. I
don't think Manu or anyone else would say "ignorance
is bliss".

Rama


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