[Advaita-l] 'VinAyaka' in ShAnkara GItA BhAShyam

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

It makes perfect sense to accept worship of all deities in visuddha
sattva mode as pointed out by Anand Hudli. He has offered defence of
the position from a traditional perspective. I'd like to offer defence
of the same position from another perspective.

First of all, if you don't worship Vinayaka, who is pleasing, you will
miss out on modhaka :) if you are looking for reasons that appeal at
higher levels, please read on. Let us assume that BG has 700 verses
and was not constructed from multiple sources as some schiolars of
questionable intellect claim. In Ch. 10, the Lord says I am Skanda. It
will be strange to say that it is okay to worship Skanda but not
Vinayaka form.  In many places, sastras recommend us to see every form
as a form of Vishnu or Brahman. It will be strange to exclude some
forms such as Vinayaka which sastras themselves specifically say is
worshippable.  One of the names in Vishnu Sahasranama is ganeshwara.
It is mandated in bhagavatham and temple traditions both saiva and
vaishnava. In the famous suklambharadharam verse, Vigneshwara is
called Vishnu. It is not only smrti but sruti also recommends worship
of Vinayaka.

And in spite of all these  you don't worship Vinayaka, you will lose
elections in Maharashtra!

The only valid argument to not worship Vinayaka is Siva as Sankara
renounced his worshippable "family" :)

On 04/07/2011, Anand Hudli <anandhudli at hotmail.com> wrote:
> *Satish Arigela* satisharigela at
> yahoo.com<advaita-l%40lists.advaita-vedanta.org?Subject=Re%3A%20%5BAdvaita-l%5D%20%27VinAyaka%27%20in%20ShAnkara%20GItA%20BhAShyam&In-Reply-To=%3C1309756281.94219.YahooMailRC%40web161315.mail.bf1.yahoo.com%3E>wrote:
>
>>Have been seeing over the past many years. Every time it is shown that this
>> is
>>somehow untenable citing various reasons, showing various evidence, the
>> usual
>>answer is to quote this again and again. Amazing!
>
> Does it occur to you, before making allegations, that your line of reasoning
> of questioning shankara and his tradition as it exists today, for whatever
> reason, can be extended to your own conclusions? If one wears a skeptic hat,
> one has to do a thorough job of it and not make assumptions to suit one's
> conclusions. For example, if one were to view everything about shankara's
> tradition with a skeptical eye, there are scholars who question the
> authorship of the gItAbhAShya itself and doubt that it was the same shankara
> who wrote the Brahma Sutra Bhashya. So, you see, whatever issue you are
> making of Vinayaka in the gItAbhashya instantly becomes irrelevant,
> according to this view! And there are scholars who think that the gItA
> itself  contains many contradictions, that it was originally a smaller
> version and much text was added later under Vaishnava influence. If the gItA
> itself is a text constructed from multiple sources, where does it leave
> shankara's bhAShya? Do you see where all this is leading to? These
> controversies are not going to get resolved any time soon, perhaps not even
> in our lifetime. Such being the case, is it not wise on our part to accept
> shankara's tradition as it has been handed down to us? So we accept shankara
> wrote the gItA bhAShya but must have meant some other being when he
> commented on Vinayaka, not the Vinayaka Ganapati celebrated in the Vedas,
> Upanishads, and the Puranas. It also makes sense to assume that shankara is
> critical of the tAmasika form of worship because his comment about Vinayaka
> and the others points to tAmasika worship. He is not against any particular
> deity. The same deity can be worshipped in sAttvika, rAjasika, and tAmasika
> modes. What is to be avoided are the rAjasika and tAmasika modes of worship.
>
>
> Anand
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