"Jagat satya!"

Vaidya Sundaram vaidya_sundaram at HOTMAIL.COM
Wed Aug 7 10:36:45 CDT 2002


Namaskaram.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ashish Chandra" <ramkisno at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Forget about being a sannyasi or not. Then our Adi Shankaracharya had no
> business doing his mother's antyeshti. The question is : Has any Guru any
> right to give yajnopavit to a person. I don't just mean Guru as in
teacher:
> I mean a fully realized person. If such a person gives yajnopavit to a
> person (or performs His mother's antyeshti), are you going to challenge
> that. I can give you at least one example I personally know of where a
non-
> Brahmin was made a pujari of a temple after his Guru performed his
> yajnopavit. Are you going to say that is wrong? Is this reforming Hinduism
> when a Guru does this? You have a copy of Shankardigvijaya, you can look
up
> the opposition Adi Shankara faced then as well. How would you explain
that?

Ashish.
 One can go ad infinitum giving examples and counter examples and acheive no
end. Yes. You are right. Shankara had no right by the accepted tradition to
go and do His mothers final rites. And yes, giving the "yajnopavit" to one
who cannot use it as a necessity in the performance of yajna's is wrong too.
So, are we going to follow the right things great people did, or are going
to follow **every thing** they did? Sri Rama, the Bhagavan Himself descended
from Vaikuntam sent His Wife, Sri Sita, the Divine mother, away to the
forest upon hearing the stupid comments of the dhobi. So, are we all
expected to start sending our respective spouses, be they husbands or wives,
away to the forest because some one complained?? Or are we going to follow
in Sri Rama's valiant efforts to follow dharma while following the varied
difficulties a **human** faces?

 The point I am trying to make is this: we have a system. Every one strays
from the system. There are cops who set things right. The system is for our
benefit. Lets follow the system. Great personages are like the police men.
They follow the rules as long as there is no problem. Once there is a
problem, such as an escaped convict going 100 mile an hour on the roads,
they turn their sirens on, and throw road rules away and speed and weave
thru traffic the way a convict does. Are we going to follow the rules?, or
are we going to assume that we have the same authority and priviliges of the
policeman and just forget about the rules? This is not a matter of opinion.
There can be many opinions. This is a matter of using one's intellect to
arrive at a judgement that one can follow in one's life; a judgement that is
consistent with the established system called the shastras.

This is my last note on this topic.
bhava shankara desikame sharaNam
Vaidya.



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