[Advaita-l] How can one claim to know Brahman?

[Mahesh Ursekar]

Pranams:

Your points are well taken. However, I think in the spirit of this
inspired list, continuing this thread further would bring us no closer
to what a Master or philosopher or even your 'friendly neighborhood
priest' :-) are likely to extoll about Advaita...so with a healthy
spirit of accepting our apparently differing views while at the same
time viewing our obvious agreement on the greatness of Advaita - your
being the Moderator and me a participant in the list is proof enough,
I would propose us discussing other topics on possibly future posts.
Of course, only if you consider my posts to be knowledgeable enough to
even evince a comment,,, :-)

With regards, Mahesh



On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 12:09:42 -0500 (EST), Jaldhar H. Vyas
<jaldhar at braincells.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Mar 2005, Mahesh Ursekar wrote:
> 
> > The only reason for my last remark is that the lives and teachings of
> > Masters teach one more about Brahman than the theory of philosophers.
> > It is easy to sit in a comfortable study reading about loftly thoughts
> > and flights of genius but how these ideas can be bought into our lives
> > can only be learnt at the feet of the Masters
> 
> But you quote Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and you haven't learnt at their
> feet.  You have only sat in a comfortable study and read about them.
> Just like a philosopher.
> 
> >and by reading about
> > their lives.
> 
> And another thing, how do you know books about the master lives are
> accurate?  There was a notorious case a couple of years back of some
> person who wrote a book about Ramakrishna which alleged some pretty
> heinous things.  People lie.  How will you know the difference?
> 
> And for that very reason Sri Sankaracharya is not the
> > best example. A genius no doubt but only his ideas are well
> > established. His biography, other than a few facts, is shrouded in
> > mystery. Which is probably apt since the whole purpose of his life was
> > to settle the storm of confusion that prevailed in India in those
> > times by stellar debate and argumentation. The danger in that is that
> > if one takes to the study his works, one could become a proverbial
> > pundita but be nowhere closer to the real knowledge of Brahman!
> >
> 
> Would you recommend to an MBA student that instead of reading accounting
> textbooks he study the lives of great accountants lest he doesn't get
> close to the real knowledge of accounting?
> 
> --
> Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
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