[Advaita-l] Prasna regarding Aruna Prasna

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Sri Venkatesh,

 

I'm responding to your last point first.

 

> Like Sandhyavandana and some Nitya Karma. We have to do the Karma carefully
> and avoid mistakes. I asked the Aruna Prashna question but nobody has given
> the meaning of mantras where the pregnant ladies have to leave. What is the
> meaning of those Mantras dangerous for babies in the womb. All are talking
> about some other thing.


I would have been inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt if your questions had
been, "What is the meaning of these sentences in the aruNa praSna, beginning with
ashTayonIm ashTaputrAm and ending with atha purushas saptapurushah? Why should
these not be recited in the hearing of pregnant women? Do these mantra-s affect the
expectant mother or the foetus negatively?"


Did you ask for any of this? I think everybody on this list knows that it was not so. Let

me remind you nevertheless.

 

Your questions were, and I quote verbatim, "If living like Sanyasis why they are saying
pregnant women have to leave and come back after some mantras? Why they were
sitting with pregnant women and saying mantras?"

Your bringing up the correct performance of nityakarmA is a specious argument here.
It just does not apply. You did not ask for advice about what to do when reciting the
aruNapraSna at home or in a public place in today's context. If you had asked that,
some may have thought that you had a genuine question about veda pArAyaNa in
the 21st century. But that was not what you asked either, was it?

 

You get answers for the questions you ask. If you want to know about one thing, do
not ask about some other thing. If you ask for some other thing, don't blame those
who give you answers about that some other thing. The history of your postings to 
the list shows that it is almost always about some other thing, not about the focus
topic of this list. And every once in a while, I get annoyed with it all and ask you why
you feel the need to ask the questions that you do ask.  Every once in a while, as a
moderator and a member of this list since its inception, it becomes my responsibility
to remind you that it would help this list and all its members, including you, if you
asked other questions instead of the ones you usually ask.

 

> If we have to discuss only Advaita here it is not possible. Because SILENCE
> is the one and only way to teach Advaita. Dakshina Murthy is teaching
> SILENCE only. All the doubts of the students are cleared by SILENCE only.


If you are already qualified enough to teach advaita through silence, may I urge you to
practice some of this teaching of silence yourself? 

 

> If you say Brahman I say that word Brahman also is not describing real
> Brahman. Because real Brahman cannot be called by any name. Real Brahman
> has no name. A name is not real. Brahman word is not real. Thinking in this
> way we have a conclusion. It is impossible to discuss Advaita. Because any
> word will not reach Brahman. Yato Vacho Nivartante Aprapya Manasa Saha.
> Kindly remember this.


Thank you for reminding me about the importance of silence, after forcing me to break
my recent relative silence on this list!

 

Would you perhaps like to reach back in time and give the same advice about silence to
Sankara bhagavatpAda himself? The pages after pages of bhAshya that he wrote on the
prasthAna traya and additional pages on independent texts were all about something
other than advaita, right? It would have to be so, because in your book, it is impossible
to discuss advaita. We can only discuss marriage, pregnancy, food, politics and other
such topics.

 

And we have to feel sorry for all those poor deluded disciples of Sankara, down through
the generations, right? They wrote even more, and kept speaking, down to this day,
instead of just sitting silent. Or talking about all sorts of topics under the sun instead,
anything except advaita.

 
> What we can discuss? We have to discuss preparatory things for Advaita. How
> we can become prepared for Advaita Sadhana? I once saw a email from Sri
> Jaldhar He wanted to discuss Smarta culture and other things you can say
> tangential to Advaita. But the tangential things are very necessary for
> preparatory stage.


Really? Raising idle questions about the presence of pregnant women in forests, along
with speculation about how Rshi-s of the AraNyaka-s lived, is relevant to smArta culture, 
performance of nitya karmA and preparatory to sAdhana towards advaita? How? 


Vidyasankar