[Advaita-l] Vegetarianism

[Sudhakar Kabra]

--- On Mon, 4/16/12, Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Vegetarianism
To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Date: Monday, April 16, 2012, 5:15 PM



Third, just because an act of adharma is done by an atma jnani or for that
matter even god does not make it dharma. Dharma shastras are
eternal. Bhagavatham describes that when Lord Krishna killed a demon in the
form of a bull, the gopis ask him to bathe in holy waters as a prayaschitta
for killing a member of the bovine species. Lord Krishna had to invite all
the holy rivers in to Shyama Kunda  and bathe in it. Madhusudana says that
all acts of a great person, if they contradict sastras, are not to be
followed by the intelligent as if that were so, then there will arise the
contingency that it is essential to spit because vasishta maharishi did so.
Even if Ramakrishna Paramahamsa were a jivan mukta, we cannot eat fish if
it is not a remnant of a yajna. In which yajna, do you offer fish? If
Ramakrishna was not a paramahamsa, it is just a fishy behaviour :)



Some observations on above:
1. For whom are the dharma shashtras? It is for the agyani people like us who have kartritva bhavana and expectation of a result. A true atma gyani is not affected and no dharma shashtra as such applies to him.
For atma gyani even if apparently it appears as adharma, we sometime fail to see the benefits like a betterment for a good and wider cause. (Lok sangraha)

2. In Bhagwat Geeta Krishna says: O Arjuna, there is no karma left for me to do. yet I do it so that the deluded people of the world do not take it as a wrong example.
Probably what Krishna did to take bath in kunda is to show us a way that there is a prayaschita for karmas that we do.
Similarly if Ramkrishna Paramhansa asked someone to eat fish, it must have been apt for that context. For eg: During the killing of Karna in mahabharata Krishna had justified the killing (even though Karna was nishashtra and it was against the rule to fight) by saying that it is not adharma or himsa.

Sudhakar kabra
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