[Advaita-l] Jnana-karma samuccaya.

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> 
> But frankly, I cannot draw an honest demarkation line between jnAni's 
> vipareeta pratyaya activities and charlatan's 'real' lustful activities 
> to adjudge who is genuine and who is an impostor!! We may have some belief 
> (shraddha) in some individual and treat him as a genuine jnAni and if he 
> does anything wrong, we will console ourselves by taking the theory of 
> prArabdha karma and resultant 'vipareeta pratyaya'...whereas if somebody 

Your only alternative is to say that even the appearance of a jnAni in our
midst is the projection of the avidyA of us ajnAnI-s.
 
If you treat some individual as a jnAnI out of SraddhA and he does something
that you evaluate to be wrong, you have two choices - find out whether your
SraddhA was misplaced or find out whether your evaluation is itself wrong.
This is not such an impossible task and you don't have to merely seek some
consolation. Your own intellectual honesty is needed, nothing else.

> 
> And with regard to luxurious life of swamiji's...I dont see any of our 
> present day Acharya-s/ swamiji-s/ vedAnta guruji-s using their 'pAda-s' to 
> travel from one place to another and preferring 'kuteera' to stay...They 
> have always posh cars (their own and devotees as well :-)) at their 

For some reason, people like to make impossible demands of their traditional
Swamiji-s nowadays. They have to be in places hundreds of miles away on
consecutive days and if they don't, they are criticized for not providing
sufficient religious leadership. If they travel in a car or an aeroplane,
they are then criticized for not traveling on foot. Meanwhile, everybody
conveniently forgets that we ourselves have access to a lot of conveniences
that our grandmothers and grandfathers never even dreamed of. 

There is a story about a monk who once helped a woman cross a rushing river.
His disciple was very disturbed for a long time about this and eventually
told the monk that this incident continued to bother him. The monk's answer
was that he had left the woman on the other bank of the river long ago. It
was the disciple who was still carrying her in his heart. Similar with
jnAnI-s who may have cars and disciples with resources at their disposal.
 
> disposal and have well furnished cottages to stay and sumptuous food for 
> the 'bhiksha':-)) I dont think we can evaluate the level of jnAna they 
> have from their life style...if we do that nobody would qualify:-))

King janaka had a kingdom, and no doubt, fine chariots with swift horses,
a throne, a crown, servants, ministers etc. The lifestyle of royalty did
not in any way take away from his greatness as a sAdhaka and a jnAnI. 
Looking at these externals is certainly no way to evaluate, assuming that
ajnAnI-s have some small measure of ability and authority to evaluate in
the first place.
 
Vidyasankar