[Advaita-l] Knowledge, renunciation and varNASrama rules

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> From the beginning of the sentence, I deduce that even a woman can become a sanyasin. But when I come to the second sentence which deals about recognition, perhaps there is exclusion of female.
> 

Thanks for catching that. I didn't mean to exclude women in this context.
 
In my opinion, eligibility for saMnyAsa in the context of brahmajnAna is
best decided on a case-by-case basis by qualified AcArya-s. When the most
authentic representatives of the Sankaran tradition have recognized specific
cases of women saMnyAsins and non-brAhmaNa male saMnyAsins for a few
centuries now, what locus standi does anyone today have to second-guess
that and describe it as political pressure or as compromise from tradition?
By this I mean not only Sringeri and other maTha-s in the south, but also
numerous daSanAmI akhADA-s in the north, where saMnyAsins from a wide
variety of backgrounds and births have been acknowledged and accepted.

I will collect my thoughts and post separately on saMnyAsa as an ASrama in
general terms and as an intimate correlate of brahmajnAna.
 
Regards,
Vidyasankar