[Advaita-l] Women and Vedas

[Ger Koekkoek]

A few days ago I wrote that in the ideas around Maya (and the Supreme Truth 
or Brahman) there is a pearl in your tradition. It would be a good thing 
when somewhere in future this ideas will become the centre of science in the 
way the number 0 became the worldwide centre of all mathematics. (This 
number was an Indian idea also.) Here you have an important thing to do that 
even could save the world from a too early selfdistruction!
(Without a philosophy that is at one hand strong and firm and at the other 
hand is open, free and completely transcendental, and above all, is also 
true, the world goes down in all kinds of different ideas and all kinds of 
wildgroing sorts of agression. Science until now was very succesfull in many 
ways, but for this problem it has no answer at all!)
But when I read in this mailbox about women and tradition, well, there you 
can learn something from the west. Many of the best talks I had about 
adwaita was with a woman with a very sharp intelligence and a very awake 
alertness, and a very good heart.  And that are the qualities that are 
needed, it has nothing to do with gender. And if your tradition sais 
something different in this matter, well, this time your tradition is wrong!
With greetings,
Ger
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "hemang Chamakuzhi Subramanian" <hemangcs at rediffmail.com>
To: <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 8:20 PM
Subject: [Advaita-l] Women and Vedas


Sanjay, That was an Awesome Story..Really enjoyed the part where you said " 
That is the way its always done"...Heard that many times earlier.

What about those portions of the smArta literature
>which directly or indirectly hint women performing
>shrauta karma-s? I am not not talking about the wife
>participating in yAgA-s along with husband.
>
>I am sure people have come across enough references on
>the above.

If any of us remember high school history textbooks, when the great western 
scholars purported Aryans to be living on swiss lakes  Recently BBC came out 
with a report saying that swamiji's (prediction) was true and still our high 
school history text books claim that the Indian race descended from Swiss 
Alps.

http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_vivekananda.html Â

A similar analogy can be put forward to all modern literature regarding most 
of the Puranas, Smritis, etc, that are translated unscruplously.

In fact during the course of research, several manuscripts of the puranas, 
and smritis contained passages that were inserted, that enforced certain 
rituals, which we follow blindly to date. In fact in one of the versions of 
ManuSmriti, I came across a verse that mentioned "pouring  molten lead into 
a shudra's ear if he listens to the Vedas"..

Could Manu have written this? and still expected "Dharma" to continue. How 
could a dharma that proclaims ahimsa to suddenly become ruthless that too 
for something so trivial.

Anyway, who knows the intentions for these insertions, and their 
antecedents. To me it looks like some incompetent folks wanted to maintain 
control over society, so went and inserted this and claimed it to have come 
from Manu.

Now to some serious-talk,

To indeed really know what is truth, what is not truth as far as the 
scriptures go, realize it from an Enlightened master(guru). Even your 
parents, grandparents, etc. can teach you traditions, but not the truth..

Note, if the goal is to reach the highest, the stature of the master should 
be that one has reached the ultimate. Else, if a person is satisfied by just 
learning,understanding or chanting, anyone could be considered a 
teacher(acharya). A subtle difference is that the Guru gives the Diksha -> 
Or the ability to percieve beyond the Dhi(intellect) whereas the acharya 
gives you the Shiksha(Knowledge with discipline). In India, there are really 
so many of these enlightened beings...

How do you know when you see your guru? Your heart swells with gratitude and 
opens out like the sky, and you just sit in wonder at the expanse of it.

Anyways, the choice is not your own...it is that of the Guru's...

JAI GURUDEV.

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