[Advaita-l] SRI SUKTAM - Meaning

[Dr D Bharadwaj]

 Sunilji,

Namaste

I have been following the discussions among you learned ones here. Even as
it was getting intense I too felt that the paddhati one had learnt from
one's Guru was the one to be considered right by each, not the source book.

Here, I would like to remind you that the books had never been
there at all, at least as far as the Vedas are concerned..it has always been
the Guru that was the right carrier of the tradition.

Of course the Lord had asked the best of the disciples to do as he
liked...but only at the end, *after  *He had finished telling whatever he
wanted to. In between too the disciple *was* allowed to question. *But the
pramana was not any text but only what the yogacharya himself had
uttered.*He did not say or even suggested to the disciple to refer to
the
source texts.

The Guru had always been questioned with all due humility, as you had said.
But even in your examples they did not go to the source texts...they had
gone to or were directed to other scholars or to meditation, as in the case
of Goutama.

Shri Ramanuja and Shri Madhva questioned their teachers. True. Shri
Shankara, the one way above all of them, did not question the teacher. But
it is not true that Shri Sankara was not questioned. He did allow people to
challenge him. He *was *questioned, and was questioned by many, even
by highly learned pandits. They all studied the same texts...interpreted the
same texts... debated and discussed among them. It was Shri Shankara that
won and carried the day. That was because of Shri Shankara's mastery over
the text.

In India the source text, even the one that existed as a book, was never
held above the Guru. Guru's word is final. Only the Guru can put an
effective conclusion to the various debates and interpretations that a plain
text can throw up.

Also many nuances and finer aspects often were held back from the text by a
shrewd shastrkara and were dedicated to the traditional parampara channels,
to minimize the possibility of the valuable knowledge going into the wrong
hands. Even Panini resorted to this.

It is because of this consciously introduced lacunae that these texts are
open to disparate, heterogeneous interpretations.
The key is only with the one that is a part of a live traditional
parampara....and is therefore guhya.

 The word and the deed (achara) of the sistha is final in the case of
differences in the way the text gets perceived by many.

The freedom to do as one likes is granted *after* one listens to all that
the Guru has to say with Shraddha, as Arjuna did.

If Guru can be questioned and put down vis a vis a text...we are not too far
from questioning the source text itself. After all the text could have been
written by yet another questionable person.

*Until one gets personally enlightened as in the case of some of your
examples, the word and the instruction of the Guru is final.*





Regards,
Dr. D. Bharadwaj
drdbharadwaj at gmail.com


On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Sunil Bhattacharjya <
sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Dear Ramakrishnan Balasubramanianji,
>
> Namaste,
>
> Excuse for butting in the great discussions among you and Sundareshan ji
> and others and digressing a little from the main discussions. I felt very
> sad when I saw your following staement and felt like expressing my views.
>
> Quote
>
> The correct procedure is what is taught by the guru and not what is traced
> back to source texts. This procedure of tracing everything back to source
> texts is a Western notion - the Indian idea is quite different.
>
> Unquote
>
> I could not quite agree that the Guru is always right. True that we must be
> respectful to the guru and talk to him with all humility yet if we find that
> the guru may not be correct we have to differ from him. The ancient
> tradition has been to accept only what you are convinced about. At the end
> of the discourse on the Bhagavad Gita the Lord gave that liberty to Arjuna
> to choose what the latter wanted to do. Lord Buddha learned Sankhya and Yoga
> from his guru Allara kalama but did not agree with his guru on the plurality
> of the souls. His next guru taught him Yoga but his doubts were still there.
> His gurus admitted that they had no answer to what Lord Buddha asked and
> advised him to seek the answers elsewhere. Then Lord Buddha found the
> solution through meditation. Shri Ramanujacharya also did not agree with his
> guru but never disrespected his guru. Similarly Madhvacharya also went ahead
> of his guru and his guru became his sishya. Now you may ask me
>  as to why then nobody found fault with the logic of Adi Sankaracharya. It
> is because Adi Sankaracharya was way above the others and he was sound in
> his knowledge. This reminds me one episode from the Bollywood. Around the
> 80s or so someone asked the superstar Jitendra as to who was the number one
> superstar in the Hindi films. Jitendra replied unhesitatingly that it was
> Amitabh Bascchan at that time. Then to the next question as to who was the
> number two Jitendra said that there is no number two and in fact the next
> superstar is the eleventh.  Such has been the status of Adi sankarachaya.
> What I mean is that almost always the gururs are right but exceptions can
> occur and the vigilant disciple may sometimes disagree. In such a case the
> disciple can ask his guru, with utmost humility, about his doubts like Lord
> Buddha did. The broad-minded guru may send the disciple to someone else. Did
> not Ashtavakra's father himself send Ashtavakra to take
>  additional lessons from king Janaka.
>
> Secondly inspite of meeeting the prerequisites (ie. Vyakarana, Nirukta nd
> Chanda etc.) there could be variation in the oral transmission of the
> Samhitas. For these aspects one needs to consult the other scholars, who
> inspire one's confidence. In the Mahabharata Vaishampayana says that there
> are 745 verses in the Bhagavad Gita and Lord krishna spoke 620 verses but in
> the Sankarabhashya we find that there are only 700 verses and Lord Krishna
> spoke 574 verses. Why this discrepancy? We know that Adi Sankaracharya asked
> someone to fetch him the Lalita Trishati for writing a bhashya on it but the
> latter got him a copy of the Bhagavad Gita , which we now know had 700
> verses. It could be that there might have been the other version with 745
> verses, which that person could not find and thus was not available to Adi
> Sankaracharya at that point of time. Once Adi Sankaracharya wrote his
> bhashya the other version might have got obscurated.
>
> Therefore I feel that we cannot say that the western way of seeking the
> source is entirely wrong.
>
> Regards,
>
> Sunil K. Bhattacharjya
>
>
>
> --- On Thu, 2/12/09, Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <
> rama.balasubramanian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <rama.balasubramanian at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] SRI SUKTAM - Meaning
> To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <
> advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
> Date: Thursday, February 12, 2009, 9:00 AM
>
> On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Sundaresan, Vidyasankar (GE Infra,
> Water) <vidyasankar.sundaresan at ge.com> wrote:
>
> > Similarly, in the composite navagraha sUktaM, the last
> > verse sacitra citraM ... is from Rgveda and should be
> > chanted as candraM rayiM puruvIraM ... and NOT as
> > candra(g) rayiM ...In this case, most people recite it
> > correctly!
>
> I would like to disagree here.
>
> My book from Sringeri, compiled by Anantarama Dikshitar, former
> AsthAna vidvAn of Sringeri gives this as chandraGm .. etc. I myself
> chant chandragm rayim in private (as I was taught), but the other way
> in public since most people have used mantra pushpam to learn the
> sUktam. The correct procedure is what is taught by the guru and not
> what is traced back to source texts. This procedure of tracing
> everything back to source texts is a Western notion - the Indian idea
> is quite different.
>
> > As a last note, for Bhaskar, svara-s do not change, per
> > se, between Rgveda and yajurveda. That is, an udAtta
> > sound is udAtta in both, an anudAtta sound is anudAtta
> > in both and a svarita is svarita in both vedas. What varies
> > is only the style of reciting the svarita in special cases
> > (with long vowels, or with visarga at the end of a sentence).
> > These are codified in the respective prAtiSAkhya texts
> > and maintained with fidelity by recitation experts.
>
> As per pANini or any of the prAtishAkhyas, there is nothing called
> dIrgha svarita. It is known purely from tradition. Not only that - the
> definition of the svarita in these texts have no connection to how
> they are chanted by the sampradAyavits even in the hrasva case. So
> it's important to follow a guru who is a sampradAyavit. I am
> submitting a paper to the next Vedanta conference on the dIrgha
> svarita in which I compare the Tamil yajur and Rg traditions and a
> preliminary comparison with the Nambudiri yajur style. The latter is
> drastically different from the Tamil yajur tradition in terms of the
> dIrgha svarita, apart from other things. I'll make the study available
> when I get done with it.
>
> BTW, apart from the case of the svarita, there are a whole number of
> artifacts in traditional chanting either not found in the prAtishAkhya
> texts, or are outright contradicted by them.
>
> Rama
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Regards,
Dr. D. Bharadwaj
drdbharadwaj at gmail.com


On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 6:45 AM, Ravisankar Mayavaram <abhayambika at gmail.com
> wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 4:30 PM, Sundaresan, Vidyasankar (GE Infra, Water)
> <
> vidyasankar.sundaresan at ge.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> > But all this gets to be too technical, so perhaps we can discuss
> > privately?
> >
> >
> There are lot of interested -  but -   silent  readers on this list. I
> request that the discussion be carried on here itself - but with a more
> appropriate subject line.  Other possibility is discussing this on the
> shrouta list.
>
> With best wishes,
> Ravi
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