[Advaita-l] Vedic sacrifices (was moxa/ moxa sAdhana)

[Praveen]

praNAm all,

Hari Om, Kris-ji,

On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 3:07 AM, kman <krismanian at gmail.com> wrote:

You seem to have misunderstood where there was hardly a scope of
misunderstanding! Working on own desires means controlling and
nullifying them, not working towards fulfilling them. To clarify:
(i) if one has desires, and wants to fulfill them,
(ii) shAstrAs sanction sacrifices.

Now, if you can work on (i) so that desire itself doesn't come up,
then (ii) is not required. But instead if you say (ii) is wrong and
have (i) let loose, what good is it to the humanity? In fact, AFAIK,
(ii) provides a least harmful and most beneficial method to achieve
(i) than any other means to achieve the same.

> This sort of tendency to discourage any one to question/judge bad practices
> advocated in the sastra is the reason for the down fall of humanity.

"Advocated" is definitely a misleading word. If your intention is
wrong, the practice is wrong too. eg, if I want to shoot someone and I
manage to find a gun-seller, its not the gun-seller's problem that I
shot someone! shAstrAs are useful for all, not only a handful of good
men. It *also* provides the right means to do a wrong thing. Perhaps,
a better example would be war theory and practice. If a country wants
to wage a war against another country, there are valid ways to do it.
But nobody goes out for a war just because manuals are available and
nor does that mean the manuals are bad, left to themselves.

>
>>We live in a society where tons of meat are processed
>>every day, on an industrial scale, for human consumption.
>>Is animal sacrifice sanctioned by the Vedas really that
>>big a problem for anybody?
> Why do you have to defend a bad thing with another bad thing? Who  said the
> other thing is ok? The discussion is about Vedas, sastras.
>

I'll provide you one context for this please. In our village areas
there are some rituals where a balii is called for. There are a sect
of people who consume meat nonetheless and although brahmins conduct
the ritual themselves, the balii is given by the class of people who
consume meat. Its just that they offer it to the village gods before
consuming during the ritual. Some years back, there was a question
raised by some non-Vedic religious institutions who wanted to stop
these rituals. One of the village seniors asked that if the rituals
were stopped, could this institution guarantee that meat will not be
consumed? IMO, the question is very much valid, since the discussion
is not about Vedas, but only about animals being killed, be it for
sacrifice or human consumption.

Also on a related note, balii or sacrifice need not necessarily mean
of an animal in all cases; if the right sources are approached, there
are vegetable substitutes for the same.

kRshNArpaNamastu,
--praveen
/* Through what should one know That owing to which all this is known!
--Br.Up. 4.5.15 */