[Advaita-l] Advaita and Caste System

[Praveen R. Bhat]

Hari OM, Satish ji,

I've already answered this when I said "Orthodox systems believe in
the same thing but the span is *not* restricted to this life, its
spread across lives, which an average human being cannot see. The
present life is a result of such acquisition
across past lives and hence the birth in a particular caste in this
life, defining the eligibility."

Either you conveniently ignored it or you misunderstood it. The word
*acquisition* is a loaded word which means both merits and demerits
acquired in previous lives, which includes education, experience,
intelligence, etc. I wonder if you are aware
of karma theory at all? Without learning that, your stand that I
presented a flawed reasoning is meaningless.

Kind rgds,
--Praveen R. Bhat
/* Through what should one know That owing to which all this is known!
[Br.Up. 4.5.15] */



On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Suresh <mayavaadi at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Praveen,
>
> Thanks for your reply.
>
> I have a problem with the following statement of yours:
>
> "modern thinking
> suggests that the eligibility of a person to do anything is to be
> based on the education, experience and level of intelligence he
> acquired. Does anyone question this and if not, why not call all equal
> and fight that out?"
>
> Your reasoning is flawed because in this case, eligibility is determined by education and NOT by birth. You cannot become a doctor unless you have MBBS; merely taking birth in a family of doctors isn't enough. But in caste system, even a crook is a Brahmin provided he is born to Brahmins. A good person is a non-Brahmin if he's born to non-Brahmin.
>
> As you can see, there is no consideration of experience, education, intelligence, or virtues - birth alone seems to be the criterion. And that's racist.