[Advaita-l] Re: Question: Swadharma

[Ram Garib]

--- S Jayanarayanan <sjayana at yahoo.com> wrote:

> This doesn't seem correct. The Kovilur Math (
> http://www.kovilur.com/
> ) teaches Vedanta in Tamil to virtually any good
> human being, and one
> of the past Sringeri Acharyas has actually visited
> the place and
> commended them on their practice and studies. Many
> of those initiated
> into Sannyasa from this Math may not be dvijas,
> IMHO.

--- Sanjay Srivastava <sksrivastava68 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Just as the much debated punishments of manusmriti,
> here also there is
> wide lattitude between the strict theoretical
> stipulations and actual
> practice. I am not sure about shankara maTha-s, but
> otherwise pretty
> much no other established institution insists today
> on a particular
> caste. Chinmaya Mission, Arsha Vidya, Divine Life
> Society, R. K.
> Mission and even Kailash Ashram do not officially
> ask for caste of
> their students. Of course the official shankar maTha
> policy still
> remains ambiguous, but deserving students should not
> find any dearth
> of other equally qualified teachers.

I have no doubts that in every age there have been
mahatmas who have considered the official line
invidious and imparted the vedic knowledge beyond
caste considerations. As I said, the practice here is
not that important since hardly anyone ever reaches
this knowledge. It is the theoretcal stipulations that
take away the self esteem of an entire community. As a
hindu, how do we deal with such issues? These are
important questions that will keep us nagging unless
we develop broad consensus.

With regards,
Ram Garib




		
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