[Advaita-l] SRI SUKTAM - Meaning

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

A little bit more on source texts as a follow-up to my own mail:

The R^ik in question is found in the R^ig veda in the recensions we
have at hand. There is no reason why the verse could not have been in
one of the lost yajur shAkhas. People may think this is a specious
kind of argumentation. But no - bhagavAn kumArila bhaTTa addresses the
problem of whether the mantras found in the mantra-prashna (ekAgni
khANDa, etc) are actual mantras, since some of them are not found in
the respective shruti texts. His answer is that they must have
belonged to some shAkha which was lost. The objection that the same
way Buddhist texts may be thought of the same way is answered by the
fact that the shiShTas do not consider these as accepted texts.

In the shrouta list a while back Sri Ganesh Prasad related his
experience. He realized that the agni mukha prayoga taught by his guru
very patently violated the sUtra text and was in a dilemma - to go
against his gurus teaching or the sUtra text. He consulted H.H.
Sri-sannidhAnam of Sringeri and he quoted the verses from the
taittirIya upanishad: yatha te teShu varteran | etc. He told Sri GP
that whatever form the shiShtas do things, that is the acceptable
route, and asked him to follow his gurus teaching.

I will make a general statement hopefully not offensive to anyone: I
have seen that the best thing to do is to go to people who really
follow dharma and see what they do and follow that. A subset of those
try to explain things or change stuff based on their understanding -
these often fall very short of the mark. It is hard to find someone
who is schooled in the vedas, smArta and shrouta prayoga, pUrva
mImA..nsA and other nyAya-s. It is a tough choice and I tend to stick
to what the *good* practitioners who have learnt from qualified people
do. And my criteria is that they should be absolutely uninterested in
theory! That way they don't come up with arguments about what is right
or wrong. It sounds a little crazy, but found this a safer route.

Rama