[Advaita-l] Acarya Shankara is not ablind followerof theScriptures

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

Sri Brahmayogin has indeed commented on the vajraSUcika upanishhad. 

First of all the upanishhad merely says a brahhmaNa is not one by mere
birth. Now braahmaNa has two meanings. One is the mere caste, which is
the basis of doing rituals etc. The other is knowledge of the supreme
brahman. The latter is "real" braahmaNa-hood. This is indeed
accessible to all. This what the upanishhad says. The basis for
rituals is the body associated with the jiiva in the current birth.
This depends on caste. This is NOT what the upanishhad is talking
about. Real braahmaNa hood is complete, direct knowledge of brahman.
This is is emphasized in the last verse.

Please read the upanishad carefully before thinking it is a social
statement on rituals and karma. It is an affirmation of the advaitic
philosophy that knowledge is accessible to everyone.

In the taittiriiya aaraNayaka (aruNa prashna, anuvaaka 11), it states
striyassatiiH | taa u me pugm sa AhuH | etc. The gist of the verses is
as follows: in the world some one is praised as a manly person, the
father is respected and so on. The mantras then turn common wisdom on
its head by declaring that a "real" man is one who is realized be it a
"man" or "woman". The rest are "women". The real father is one who is
realized and so on.

Does this mean on realization women turn into men and a son would
transmogrify into his grandfather??!!

The mahaabhaarata verses are also fairly simple. Careful reading +
some miimaaMsaa show the true meaning.

Why would Buddhists praise vyaasa, gautama and vashishhTa in a
upanishhad and then go on to praise the knowledge of brahman?

What is shruti and what is not is known only from good tradition. If
we get into all this late upanishhad stuff, then we will also have to
go along with "the R^ig veda was older" and stuff like that. Well, we
have even people here claiming that the braahmaNas, as opposed to the
saMhitAs, are not svataH praamaaNya! But then we have even had people
say that the atharvaNa veda was composed by barbarians! So should we
be surprised? I guess not. Anyway, Bhagavan Kumarila Bhatta makes it
quite clear that shruti and smR^iti are known as such only from good
tradition. The shakha argument is also not feasible. No one knows what
shaakha the upanishads like maaNDUkya belonged to. Not to mention a
host of other "major" and "minor" upanishads which have a solid
commentarial tradition.

Rama

On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:52:34 -0800 (PST), S Jayanarayanan
<sjayana at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- "Jaldhar H. Vyas" <jaldhar at braincells.com> wrote:
> 
> [..]
> 
> > other ways to do it too.  For instance did Upanishadbrahmayogi
> > comment on
> > Vajrasuchika?
> 
> I have given below three casual online sources, according to
> which upanishad Brahmayogin has commented on both the
> Kalisantarana and VajrasUchika upanishads (in fact all of the
> upanishads on the muktika's list), The last link is to a posting
> in the Bhakti list by Ramakrishnan B. of this mailing list who
> has (or had) access to the commentaries by upanishad
> Brahmayogin, so perhaps he can clarify.