[Advaita-l] Guidelines on discussions about Swami Saccidânandendra Sarasvatî

[Guy Werlings]

Dear Friends,

I am very much indebted to the moderators of the Advaita-List for their very 
sound and wise guidelines on which I do agree totally.

If such an ignorant, insignificant and incompetent person as this small self 
of «i» may nevertheless be allowed, I should like to elaborate on two 
details. I only wish to stress that I have not the slightest intention to 
teach anyone and especially not the authors of those guidelines for whom I 
have the greatest personal admiration and respect. I just would like to 
share a few of my personal experiences accumulated during 45 years of 
vicAra.



Point a:

a. the topic of Swami Saccidanandendra Sarasvati's writings and whether he
is right or wrong is not going to vanish,
    ^^^^^^^^^^-> emphasis mine;

this statement does not seem to me a 100% up to the point. From a purely 
philosophical point of view the point is to know whether what SSS said and 
wrote is true or not and not to know if he is right or wrong. This is one of 
the biggest traps with debates;

·                     As far as I am concerned, between 1970 and 1980, aged 
from 25 to 35 years and then living in Paris, I delivered 104 lectures on 
various aspects of sanAtana dharma and mainly advaita vedAnta. After every 
lecture, I readily accepted to answer questions in order to clarify any 
point that might have been imprecise to somebody in the audience, but I 
always refused to indulge in any kind of debate; the reason was that from 
previous experience, when you start a debate, one of the protagonists just 
tries to prove that he is right and that the other is wrong, but none of 
them is searching for truth - and it is only truth «tattva», based upon 
«vastu tantra» that matters and not «mata» based upon «kartR^i or puruSha 
tantra». As rAjasEvAsakta V. SubrahmaNya Iyer used to say the philosophical 
inquiry starts only when one asks oneself: «How do I know that what I think, 
what I say is true?» Until this moment one is engaged only in theology or 
religion but not philosophy as such.

·                     Suggestion number 4: although this is pure mata from 
my side and not «truth», I cannot agree more on this point. To comeback once 
again selfishly on my own experience, I had already in my teens included 
this in a series of guiding principles I had then established for my 
personal intellectual as well as professional life, which I unfortunately 
was not always able to match with. Even today when I receive an irking piece 
of news, an unpleasant letter or of that I hear that somebody is telling bad 
things about me, I immediately start writing a letter or an e-mail the 
content of which is often very harsh and sometimes even rude. Then I store 
the letter or the e-mail on the hard disk of my computer for a few days. 
After sometime I read the message again, make corrections and/or alterations 
and decide whether it should be sent or not. In most cases I prefer not to 
send it but instead of just erasing it from my computer, I print it down and 
burn it: to entrust the fruit of my anger and even possible hatred to Agni's 
care seems to me the best solution, hoping my possible bad karma will be 
burnt as well.

·                     Another of my own guidelines was formulated like this: 
«whatever is not indispensable to do, it is indispensable not to do - 
whatever is not indispensable to think, say or write, it is in dis pensable 
not to think, say or write».

This post has been lying in my computer for several days and after reading 
it again and amending it I decided to send it. I cannot say that I am a 100% 
sure that it is indispensable to send it but I hope at least that it will 
not be considered as completely useless and worthless and mainly that it 
will not have be vexing or irking anybody.

Namaste

Guy/Gî