[Advaita-l] Ritual Purity, Svadhyaya, and Commute

V Subrahmanian v.subrahmanian at gmail.com
Sun Sep 11 04:42:34 CDT 2016


Actually on such topics smrits, śiśṭācāra, aitihya are all pramāṇas. We
have known śiṣṭas to be performing trikāla sandhyā vandanam.  Hence that is
pramāṇa as per Shankara.

I have seen in Sringeri too several people, not just those from the
Tamil/Kerala origin, perform mādhyāhnika at the riverside.  Even the
present Sannidhanam, before sannyāsa, used to perform it as I have myself
seen it.

The Paramaguru Sri Chandrashekhara Bharati Swamiji, several decades ago,
had asked a devotee in his thirties, when the latter submitted to him his
daily practices,'How about mādhyāhnika?' (in Telugu).  From that day till
the end, not a single day he missed the mādhyāhnika. He used to recount
that incident to us saying 'The Guru's question that day in Sringeri
 sounded like an command and even to this day his voice and the tone
reverberates in my mind.'

On Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 2:40 PM, Venkatraghavan S <agnimile at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Namaste Venkatesh ji,
> I don't want to argue about mAdhyAhnika - my family has been doing it for
> generations so it's not something I can give up, however if you feel
> differently that is of course your prerogative.
>
> I had a general mImAmsa question on this statement: "When Sruti is one
> thing and Smrti is saying extra things we may or may not do it."
>
> The question is, isn't the rule that if Shruti is prescribing a
> vidhi/niShedha and the smriti contradicts it, then the smriti should not be
> considered?
>
> However, if smriti is prescribing additional vidhi/nishedha (ie not a
> contradiction, but an addition) then both smriti and shruti taken together
> (ie the complete set of rules) will have to be followed? That is, the
> additional smriti injunction is not optional, it is mandatory.
>
> Regards,
> Venkatraghavan
>
>
>


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