"Jagat satya!"

Ashish Chandra ramkisno at HOTMAIL.COM
Wed Aug 7 15:51:20 CDT 2002


On Wed, 7 Aug 2002 10:36:45 -0500, Vaidya Sundaram
<vaidya_sundaram at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

>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?

Vaidya

I was only making the point that great saints have their ways of doing
things that are not open to us. I am not advocating that we do as they do -
we simply cannot. My contention was (is) that one must not complain that
such things (as giving janeu to a non-Brahmin) occur. I am *not* saying
that we should do that. Rather, our blanket opposition to such things is a
little dogmatic. Saints work in mysterious ways - that is all I am saying,
and some of those things include getting a dull disciple to recite in
Totaka meter or giving janeu to a non-Brahmin. Please do not think that I
am advocating any straying from Dharma. Rather, dharma includes the
following of saints and sages.

>
> The point I am trying to make is this: we have a system.

And I am not questioning it at all...

>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.

...rather this is what I am saying happens all the time - for good and for
bad.

>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.

I agree. We have no choice but to follow dharma.

>There can be many opinions.

Please understand that I am not trying to say its ok to sidestep what
dharma says. Rather, what I have maintained in this thread is that if great
saints do things that are seeminlgy not vedokta, then we should not hold
onto our orthodox position and oppose such a one.

>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.
>

If my Guru tells me to shave on a Tuesday, would I say no, the Shastras
forbid it? I am going to shave. I might be tempted to ask why but I will
shave nonetheless.

ashish



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