[Advaita-l] Sola Fide (was Re: Sraddha and Chitta-shuddhi)

[Bhadraiah Mallampalli]

Sri Siva Senaniji,

 

I was suspecting my Telugu bias, where shradha is used as a synonym for concentration, do it right, not learning mistakes etc.

 

K.U.1.1.2 says Nachiketa was overcome by shradha when he saw his father giving away limbless barren cows which have drunk waters and eaten grass (meaning outlived their best times, and no more eat and drink that well). 

 

If the barren cows are the only ones left it may be ok, as Gitacharya said 'Give me even a leaf with bhakti'. There are times when a barren cow is prescribed by Shruti, but this doesn't seem to be the case. So Nichiketa wanted to compensate the error and he became influenced by Shraddha. His father did not have Shraddha because he had other distractions like keeping good cows for himself (not directly stated but implied by Shruti). Therefore correcting mistakes is the central theme of Shraddha. Swami Ranganathananda (1908-2005) used to go at lengths to explain this term. 

 

Regards

Bhadraiah   

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