[Advaita-l] The Advaita-L list and the Advaita Vedanta website

[Ravishankar Venkatraman]

>From: "Vidyasankar Sundaresan" <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
>
>1. The Advaita-L mailing list is different from and is not circumscribed by 
>the website contents at http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp. This list is 
>participatory in nature while the website is largely the output of one 
>individual.
>
I certainly thought of the two being inter-related in some way. To subscribe 
to the list we need to go through advaita-vedanta website, at least that is 
what I did.

>4. That said, all my articles in the past, whether on alt.hindu or on one 
>of various mailing lists, were considerably more than opinion. Over the 
>years, I have consistently maintained that I am not officially speaking for 
>any maTha, but that does not mean I was merely stating opinions. It is one 
>thing to hold an opinion but quite another to make critical assessments of 
>mutually conflicting material and arrive at conclusions. The latter is what 
>I always attempted, perhaps with varying degrees of success in different 
>instances.
>

I can agree that you have painstakingly worked on correlating conflicting 
material to a conclusion. To my consternation however, I find that 
researchers like W.R. Antarkar and others, after exhaustive work on the same 
material, come up with different conclusions. In that light, I have noted 
the conclusions to be personal opinions. While that may be the case with the 
hagiographies, other material evidences could be studied in a non-partisan 
faction, to bring more credibility to the correlations.

>5. Finally, I think it is not necessary to club these issues with the 
>discussion on the writings of Swami Saccidanandendra Sarasvati. We, the 
>moderators, have posted guidelines on that discussion separately and we 
>hope everyone abides by them. The only thread in common that I see is that 
>Ramakrishnan and Kartik are both professedly followers of Sringeri, but it 
>is not as if Sringeri followers have banded together to raise controversies 
>against everybody else. Each member of this list writes solely in his or 
>her individual capacity, according to his or her assessment of the issues 
>that arise on the list. There are core philosophical and doctrinal issues 
>under discussion and those are what we should focus on, leaving 
>personalities aside. I hope we can all agree to do that.
>
Since last two days, I have been thinking about my posts and the rejoinders. 
I was wondering whether I had a gross misunderstanding of the situation 
leading me to connect multiple events. I was a bit naïve too, I guess, in 
linking Ra. Ganapathi’s article in my post, without thinking too much of how 
the same link was used earlier to bring in controversies. No more reasoning 
to be applied at this stage…I rest my case here.

I have been a list member for several years (more than 5 if I remember), and 
I must admit that my knowledge did grow in multiple areas associated with 
Advaita Vedanta. Currently, I have decided to take some time off from this 
forum. I will be missing Sri.Anand Hudli’s posts on Vivarana and Advaita 
Summation by Sri. Ramakrishna.

Thanks to all of you (Jaldhar Vyas, Ravi Mayavaram, Vidyasankar Sundaresan 
and Vaidya Sundaram?) for having me as a member for this long period.

Seeking the grace of BhagavAn KArtikeyA residing on top of Palani hill and 
BhagavAn DattAtreyA, I end this note wishing you all peace and happiness.

God bless,
Ravishankar Venkatraman

_________________________________________________________________
Get a FREE Web site, company branded e-mail and more from Microsoft Office 
Live! http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/mcrssaub0050001411mrt/direct/01/