[Advaita-l] Is study of Vedanta necessary?

[kuntimaddi sadananda]

Shrinivasji - PraNAms

Thanks for interesting analysis of why the study of Vedanta, necessary. If I can express in short - No need to reinvent the wheel. 

Nevertheless - the analysis also indicates that someone in the line has invented the wheel - even though we do not know when and clouded in the word - anaadi.

However it does not indicate that there are no other paths for the discovery of the truth. It is assumed that in the chain they have explored all other paths and found those are not successful. 


Hari Om!
Sada






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On Tue, 2/2/16, Shrinivas Gadkari via Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

 Subject: [Advaita-l] Is study of Vedanta necessary?
 To: "Advaita-l List" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
 Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2016, 2:39 AM
 
 Namaste,
 Q. What is Vedanta?
    Let first ask what is siddhanta? A person engages in an
 intense    sAdhanA for a prolonged period of time, and
 achieves his goal    (sAdhya) and perfects it. That is,
 he attains siddhi of that goal,    or in other words, he
 becomes a siddha as far as that goal is    concerned.
 Then this siddha who has a clear vision of various  
  aspects of this specific goal may decide to formulate a
 theory    to clearly explain this goal and precise
 sAdhanA for it. This would    constitute the siddhAnta.
 For example, the laws of motion, law of    Gravitation
 and the mathematical tools of calculus developed by  
  Newton together with various illustrations of how one may
 make    sense of measurements of various physical
 phenomenon using these    together constitutes Newton's
 siddhAnta on Mechanics.      Similarly, there have been
 people who have devoted themselves to    study of various
 vidyA-s (a comprehensive collection of vidyA-s is  
  referred to by the term veda). This is a rather prolonged
 exercise.    If some person, say A1 wanted to embark on
 this quest, it is almost    mandatory from practical
 considerations for A1 to seek guidance of    someone say
 A2, who has already made clear progress on this path.  
  So A2 is the guru of A1. For similar reasons A2 has also
 earlier    sought guidance of some A3 who has embarked on
 this quest earlier.    A3 in turn has received guidance
 from A4, and so on. Since "existence"    is anAdi (and
 also ananta - and I will maintain this view irrespective  
  of what opinion anyone else may have voiced on this), this
 succession    of guru-s A2-A3-A4-A5 .... is unending. So
 when A1 is seeking guidance    of A2, he is not seeking
 guidance from a limited embodied being A2,    but from an
 infinite sequence of gurus A2-A3-A4-A5 .... Let us call
 thus   cumulative effect of infinite gurus "guru-tattva"
 or "sadguru-tattva".      The siddhanta formulated by
 people who have mastered innumerable vidyA-s    (thorough
 succession of gurus) is termed as Vedanta.   Q: Why study
 Vedanta?   Let us again ask why study the Newton's
 siddhanta on mechanics. So that    we can apply it to
 solve practical problems. So by studying Vedanta one  
  should be able to understand and master ANY vidyA-s from
 the veda - for    understating and dealing with all
 aspects life. For this reason it is said    that vedanta
 teaches "THAT WHICH WHEN KNOWN EVERTHING ELSE IS KNOWN".  
  Needless to say that to understand vedanta in this manner
 one needs the    ultimate grace of "sadguru tattva".
 There may be people who claim that    vedanta teaches
 "that through which everything else is known". In my 
  opinion this is a highly watered down version of the lofty
 goal of vedanta.      (In my opinion it is much better
 to keep seeking grace of "sadguru tattva"   with original
 lofty goal of vedanta intact - almost certainly it will
 take    several lifetimes to reach this goal.)   Hari
 Om.   Regards,Shrinivas Gadkari               
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