[Advaita-l] Vegetarianism

[rajaramvenk at gmail.com]

I agree. There is no binding rule for an atma jnani or god. But due to lack of selfish desire, they don't have tendency to do prohibited actions. What if they do due to purva karma vasana or for sport? Even if a sage like Vishwamitra eats dog's meat or Lord Krishna dances with other's wives that can't become a general rule. 

Those who claim to be practising Hindus should only eat what is offered in a yajna. As daily and mandatory  yajnas don't involve animal aughter, they should eat vegetarian food offered to god. That is the general rule.

BTW, there is an indiscriminate slaughter of animals going on in a never before seen mass scale. Those who follow dharma have a duty to nurture these animals. Hindus, who eat and don't eat meat, cannot justify this cruelty on the grounds that a few non-mandatory yajnas involved animal sacrifice. 

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-----Original Message-----
From: Sudhakar Kabra <sudhakarkabra at yahoo.com>
Sender: advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 21:27:22 
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
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	<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Vegetarianism



--- 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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