[Advaita-l] New member introduction: Ram Garib

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

Name: Ram Garib, M 46 from Lucknow, India.
Profession: Civil Servant
Caste: Shudra

I was introduced to vedic teachings in my teen age through SriVaishnava 
Satsanga Mandal. This ignited my interest in vedic teachings however it 
could not take me far because of some caste barriers. I was not interested 
in superficial study/bhajan mandals and was not welcome in the hardcore 
study groups. Disgusted, I left my pursuit and vowed not to look again 
towards vedic teaching.

However, I could not keep my vow for long. My thirst for knowledge kept 
pushing me and led me to pursue post-graduate study in philosophy. Through 
this I got a basic understanding of aastika schools. Once again I got 
interested in vedanta and met Sri Punja-ji for teaching advaita. However, 
though at a deeper level his message seemed to be the same, I found little 
resemblence in him with shankara's method I learned in philosophy classes. 
I had great admiration for shankara and I wanted to learn pristine 
shankara.

At this time, one of my subordinates in office who happened to be a 
priest, performed my yagyopavita and introduced me to nitya karmas. This 
also did not seem to help much and rather created unnecessary antagonism. 
Therefore, after sometime I gave up my yagyopavita and nitya karmas.

By sheer luck, I met Dr. Anand Mohan Srivastava, professor of philosophy 
at Benares Hindu University who had studied shankara with Swami 
Krishnananda-ji of Rishikesh. He agreed to teach me shankara but wanted me 
to start with navya nyaaya. I started learning from him navya nyaaya, 
shankara's commentary on Gita and Ananadagiri teeka. Unfortunately for me, 
Dr. Srivastava, moved to USA, and my studies remained incomplete.

Now I am trying to augment my knowledge of vedic teaching through self 
study of books by Swami Dayananda Saraswati. I hope to get more knowledge 
of advaita through this forum. Please let me know, if you need any other 
information.

Yours Sincerely
Ram Garib