[Advaita-l] Advaita and Caste System

[Praveen R. Bhat]

Apologies, I meant Suresh ji.

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 3:04 PM, Praveen R. Bhat <bhatpraveen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>