[Advaita-l] Re: A REQUEST FOR GUIDANCE.

[Sanjay Srivastava]

On Jul 17, 2006, at 9:13 PM, Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian wrote:

> Not having any experience with Ramakrishna Mutt, I don't know what
> advice their sannyaasis give householders. Of course, as you say the
> target audiences are vastly different. I would say that their
> structure is more Westernized than traditional Mutts, but not a
> Christian one. It's more a mixture of the vedaanta and bhajana kind of
> traditions.

...which again can neither be said as better or worse, but depends on 
ones aptitude. The search for 'traditional' teaching can prove to be 
elusive. I spent some time at Kailash ashram at Rishikesh with a very 
respected swami-ji in search of 'traditonal' teaching and realized very 
soon that it was not my cup of tea. His vedanta lectures would sound 
more like classes on Sanskrit grammar. He would utilize all his time 
discussing derivations of nouns and verbs and what not, hardly touching 
anything of vedanta teaching as I understand. May be that teaching 
teaching style is suitable for someone looking for a Ph.D. in shankara 
siddhAnta, not spiritual guidance. May be not. I have found the right 
balance (for me) in Sw. Dayananda's lectures, but others may certainly 
question whether his method can be called 'traditional' in the 
traditional sense.

praNAm