[Advaita-l] Fwd: Dayanand Saraswathi interview - Very interesting stand taken by Swami

[Balasubramanian Ramakrishnan]

A reply of mine was sent inadvertently to Kripa Shankar by private email
instead of through the list. You can see the exchange below.

Rama

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kripa Shankar <kripa.shankar.0294 at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 3:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Dayanand Saraswathi interview - Very interesting
stand taken by Swami
To: Balasubramanian Ramakrishnan <rama.balasubramanian at gmail.com>


For sure! Your mail will be inline anyway.

AchArya ghAtinAm lokA na santi kulapAmsana ~
There is NO region, O wretch of your race, for those who seek to slay an
AchArya
  Original Message
From: Balasubramanian Ramakrishnan
Sent: Saturday 14 January 2017 2:10 AM
To: Kripa Shankar
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Dayanand Saraswathi interview - Very interesting
stand taken by Swami

I realized that my original reply was not sent to the list, just to you.
Can I forward that with the rest of the thread to the list?

Rama

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 3:30 PM, Kripa Shankar <kripa.shankar.0294 at gmail.com>
wrote:
In that case, if I may ask, ‎why do you think that Mahasannidhanam is
saying with certainty that RM was not a jivanmukta? Please note that it is
not merely an opinion / assumption. There is no ambiguity in his statement.
He is quite certain and even compared him with others whom he considers to
be jivanmuktas.
‎
Can there be any other logical explanation to this?  ‎

Regards
Kripa ‎
‎
AchArya ghAtinAm lokA na santi kulapAmsana ~
There is NO region, O wretch of your race, for those who seek to slay an
AchArya
  Original Message
From: Balasubramanian Ramakrishnan
Sent: Saturday 14 January 2017 1:47 AM
To: Kripa Shankar
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Dayanand Saraswathi interview - Very interesting
stand taken by Swami

Couple of things:

1. The sastra does in fact recognize cases like RM (assuming he was
realized). In fact, Sankara himself points out that for Vidura and
dharmavyAdha the rise in knowledge was automatic due to puNya in previous
lives. So yes it can happen. The vishNu purANa also supports this.

2. While there is a whole lot of press given to silence and so on, RM was
hardly unaware of shAstras. He even translated and gave a precis of a
difficult work like vichAra sAgara into Tamil. There are other instances,
but I don't want to waste a lot of time on this.

I think you should ask yourself what issues you have with RM. 99% of his
followers do the same thing as any other smArta. I think the issue is that
even if someone is realized, it's not possible to recognize this. Cases
like dharmavyAdha are certainly possible, unlike what you think. But,
typically they do not become teachers. It's easier to follow a parampara.
However things are not fool-proof even there, that's a fact of life.

Rama


On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 3:03 PM, Kripa Shankar <kripa.shankar.0294 at gmail.com>
wrote:
Namaste,

Thanks a lot  for this reference. Really fascinating. I glanced through a
few pages of the book that's available online. From it, I could gather
that, the author classes RM somewhere between traditional and
Neo-Advaita(he explicitly says so). ‎It however seems to me, like a
politically correct way of asserting that RM cannot be aligned with the
traditional school. Just to give an example, if there is a fruit, it has to
fall under a specific category / family. It is either an Apple or an
Orange. Here we are certain that the fruit is not an Apple. Whether it is
Orange or not is irrelevant. This reaffirms my opinion.

If we consider the statement given by Mahasannidhanam, Gurugal * is certain
* that RM was * not a jivanmukta *. That is a strong statement in my
opinion. ‎There is no other way to interpret it, is there? This is in
alignment to what Dayanand Saraswathi Swamy ji said that he was a mystic
not a Vedantin.

What is the implication of the above statement? - That RM did not attain
liberation! In other words, he is bound to be reborn! ‎In other words, he
was not a jnani!

Now we may wonder how Mahasannidhanam is so sure that, RM was * not * a
jivanmukta. The only logical conclusion would be that, the pramana for the
state of jivanmukti is the shastras alone and none other! Neither does the
Shastras acknowledge an instance such as RM nor RM recognises the
importance of ShAstra pramana.

As for as the Gurugal's remark that he was a mahant, I am not sure why you
seem to attach so much importance. It is certainly in line with what
Dayanand Saraswathi Swamiji said that there are millions of housewives in
India who are engaged in taking care of their family, but have the same
level of understanding. What does swamiji mean by this? Everyone knows that
RM was ignorant of Shastras. Further, an average woman in our tradition
will not engage ‎in scriptural studies but rather engage in devotion to
rituals and hymns. So Swamiji's comparison implies that, RM is, at best,
 as good as an ajnani.

This will translate to the core issue - that Advaitic experential knowledge
/ aparoksha jnana cannot occur magically without proper paroksha jnana /
shastra jnana. Again, because the only pramANa for such an experience is
the shastras!

Thanks again for this great information.

Regards
Kripa ‎
‎
AchArya ghAtinAm lokA na santi kulapAmsana ~‎
There is NO region, O wretch of your race, for those who seek to slay an
AchArya
  Original Message
From: Balasubramanian Ramakrishnan
Sent: Friday 13 January 2017 11:56 PM
To: Kripa Shankar; A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
Cc: Vidyasankar Sundaresan
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Dayanand Saraswathi interview - Very interesting
stand taken by Swami


In "Jivanmukti in Transformation", Andrew Fort reports speaking to
Mahasannidhanam (Bharati Tirtha SwamigaL) in Hindi and reports that his
opinion is that Ramana was not a jivanmukta like Vidyaranya or Abhinava
Vidyatirtha, but a mahant. I think that's a trustworthy source.

Of course I wonder what your issue is. If you look at what RM actually
wrote and translated, they are solidly in mainstream advaita. His (at least
Indian) devotees pretty much engage in the usual practices - srichakra
worship, vedic recitations, so on and so forth. Yes, it's problematic that
some people go to Thiruvannamalai and declare themselves "enlightened", but
that's hardly the problem of Ramana Maharshi? Such people will find
something or the other to fool themselves/others with.

Rama

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 12:51 PM, Kripa Shankar via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
Namaste Vidyasankar,

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, that is the only option. However, I am
not sure if Bharati teertha Swamiji will entertain such questions. On a
second thought, he is also known to be a large hearted person. So perhaps
I'll get an answer to this one way or the other.
‎‎
‎Regards
Kripa ‎