[Advaita-l] Ramana Maharshi - Advaitin or Neo Advaitin?

[Kripa Shankar]

Namaste Subramanian - I hope you can read my comments (with >>) 
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I will address just the above point that Praveen ji did not choose to:

Shankara is making the ShastrArthasampradAyarahitatvam, that is the absence
of ShastrArthasampradAya, as the hetu, cause for someone doing ShrutahAni
and ashrutakalpanAm, the two defects that make a person an
asampradāyavit. By saying this, Shankara is implying that one who does not
do ShrutahAni and ashrutakalpanAm is ShastrArthasampradAya-sahitaḥ. Thus
ShastrArthasampradAya does not have anything to do with lineage but *only*
to the teaching-content.

>> I respectfully disagree. Here Shankara says ShastrArthasampradAyarahitatvam is the * only cause * for ShrutahAni(how can it be shruti if there is no successive order? And hence ShrutahAni by definition , ) , which * by default or by definition * becomes Ashrutakalpana. This is ascertained as Shankara goes on to say * Sarva shastravid * which means fully versed in Vedanta etc, who imitates Vedanta to the word, *api* even if that be the case, *Moorkhavat eva*, still only a fool (should be regarded as such) . ‎

So, since Ramana did not engage in the two defects stated by Shankara, he
cannot be put in the category of someone who lacks ShastrArthasampradAya.
For Shankara this is enough reason to hold someone a Guru as he
demonstrated in the Manishāpanchakam: even a chāndāla, since he is not
distorting the shāstrārtha, is admissible to him as a Guru, on the same
pedestal of a dvija. Shankara did not go to find out who is the one from‎
whom the chāndāla learnt or when he did sādhana and became a jnani. That,
again, is the sole consideration for the Chandogyopanishad to have Raikva
teach the Atma tattva to Janashruti, the King. Again, Bālāki the Brahmana
did not go into the Guru-lineage of King Ajātashatru, a Kshatriya-Jnani,
when the former surrendered to to get brahmavidyā. Same case with the
vaidika sampradāya Acharyas to acknowledge Ramana as a Jnani; and the
earlier Sringeri Acharya pointing to the Jnani identified as 'Para
Brahma'.

An account on Para Brahma here:

*http://tinyurl.com/hl6wt4e <http://tinyurl.com/hl6wt4e>*

Read p.92 to 95

>> I wish to point out that you are quoting almost every example that features in the classic texts and thereby you are quoting it completely * out of context *. In Soundarya lahiri, Shankara says Shivakare manche. So should we conclude that Shiva is in fact a helper in the house and not Ishana mentioned in the Upanishads. Or should we conclude that one diety is inferior or superior to another? No! It is used in a poetic sense to highlight the greatness of the subject (Devi). Here too in Manishapanchakam, Shankara is trying to highlight the greatness of Atmavidya (anyone can have Atmavidya is the inference ). Else, he would be contradicting his own statement made earlier about Moorkha. 

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