[Advaita-l] Advaitic Foods - kricchra, sin

Satish Arigela satisharigela at yahoo.com
Sat Dec 18 04:53:11 CST 2010


namaste,

shrI Subrahmaianji:

> I want to know what 'kRcchra' is. 

I dont have my books with me now but kR^icchra is something where one survives 
only by drinking water for one day,
something light akin to water is consumed the second day, and so on so forth and 
can last for 3 or more days.

There are again variants like tapta kR^icchra(vaguely remember something with 
consuming warm/boiled water- i could be totally wrong also), ati kR^icchra etc. 
It has been a while since I studied it and dont exactly remember what the 
differences are.

ShrI Ravi Chandrasekhara ji:

>4.There are also clans of a jaathis or jaathis en-masse that have become stauch 
>saatvik veg (e.g. Kshatriyas such as: some Rajput clans and Gujarati >Lohanas; 
>Braahmanas such as Vaishnava Bengali Braahmanas; and Shudras such as Gujarati 
>Patels, Saiva Velallas and Reddys that are >Vaishnavas). Now if a member of that 
>jaathi or clan that has been veg for generations decides to become non-veg 
>(because by varna he can); >would that be a sin given it is against the achara 
>of the clan or jaathi ?

Before saying anything on above, it must be stressed that there is no "sin" in 
Hinduism. There is something called pApaM. We dont have like in Christianity and 
Islam a strict definition of some sin, where one does an act X and is damned no 
matter the circumstances.  What is pApa  is fluid and depends on a thousand 
things.

Now in the above case, one will say correct AchAra is based not only on smriti 
but  also on tradition. If looked that way, then the person from one of the 
above jAti-s is looked upon as "sinful" if we really want to say it. In the 
above case, his act could potentially cause him some social damage which in turn 
would have affected his psyche and then bring him some degree of misery. Again 
all this depends on a thousand factors which we cannot list here.

But should we call "sin"? i dont know.. Maybe we could just say he lacks( and 
this has negative consequences)  proper AchAra and leave it there.

>5.If a person of any varna/jaathi on advice of a spiritual guru becomes veg and 
>reverts to non-veg; I suppose that would be a sin since it would be >going 
>against Guru.

His guru devised a program to spiritually up-lift him and by ignoring his 
teacher's advice, his spiritual progress is hampered(atleast temporarily if not 
completely). This much we can say.

For the question " is this sinful", I would like to ask, is there a need to mark 
every human act as sinful or non-sinful, which is probably an abrahmic way of 
looking at things?

shrI Sunilji:

>Why then Manu Smriti has a verse advising people to sanctify meat before eating? 
>

I dont know. May be you tell me in what context you raise this question?



      


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