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

[Kripa Shankar]

Thanks a lot for the reference. 

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 via Advaita-l
Sent: Saturday 14 January 2017 8:31 AM
Reply To: Balasubramanian Ramakrishnan
Cc: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Dayanand Saraswathi interview - Very interesting stand taken by Swami

The foot note says, "while RM may not have been a jiivanmuukta, he was a
mahant."

It's not completely positive, but not negative either.

Rama

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 6:05 PM Kripa Shankar <kripa.shankar.0294 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I concede that your assessment of Dayanand Saraswathi's statement is more
> appropriate. Let me just clarify that I didn't take a condescending tone
> towards housewives, in case if I have come across like that.
>
>
>
> As for the western academicians, I wouldn't trust them even if they were
> to tell the truth. Such is their credibility. ‎But my focus was on the
> statement given by Mahasannidhanam.
>
>
>
> Now my doubt is just this : There is a lot of difference between what you
> are saying and what Rama said. I just want to know, if it is possible, as
> to what is the exact verbatim of Mahasannidhanam to this question. Because
> Rama said Gurugal even made comparisons to his own Guru HH Sri Abhinava
> Vidyatirtha and even Vidyaranya. ‎
>
>
>
> ‎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: Vidyasankar Sundaresan
>
> Sent: Saturday 14 January 2017 3:59 AM
>
> To: Kripa Shankar
>
> Cc: Balasubramanian Ramakrishnan; A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
>
> Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Dayanand Saraswathi interview - Very interesting
> stand taken by Swami
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> I would urge you to be more cautious in interpreting this report by Andrew
> Fort. Western academics don't quite appreciate the mImAMsA influenced ways
> of speaking adopted by our Acharyas in such one-on-one conversations. It is
> a very different context as compared to when an Acharya gives a public
> discourse intended for a bigger and more general audience. Fort is faculty
> at Texas Christian University and he goes with an expectation of a
> Sankaracharya being like the Catholic Pope or an Anglican Archbishop,
> institutions which are in the business of canonizing and formally
> conferring sainthood upon dead people. Our pIThAdhipatis stay away from
> such things and if you think about it, that is the real strength of our
> traditions.
>
>
>
> When Fort asked, "was RM a jIvanmukta?," the Sringeri Mahasannidhanam gave
> the technically precise answer, "we cannot say whether he was a Jivanmukta"
> and then added "we can indeed say that he was a mahAn." There is a world of
> difference from this and a statement, "RM was NOT a Jivanmukta." I hope you
> see the huge and qualitative difference between these two statements.
>
>
>
> The truth is that no one person can (or should) certify or deny another's
> Jivanmukti. Within a close guru-Sishya lineage, people can make their
> conclusions. When Swami Abhinava Vidyatirtha wrote SrImukhas describing
> Swami Chandrasekhara Bharati as a Jivanmukta, that should be seen within
> the context of the traditional guru-Sishya relationship. With respect to
> other great people whom they haven't interacted directly with, and in the
> hearing of people whom they don't interact with regularly, they won't
> really venture to say much. In a position as a pIThAdhipati, with a
> traditional custodial role over the transmission of old traditions and
> texts, they definitely won't go around proclaiming things about others.
>
>
>
> Like Rama said, RM is a rare case. Yes, the then Sankaracharyas
> contemporaneous with him viewed him with respect, but they also didn't try
> to force fit him into the traditional types of Sannyasis.
>
>
>
> 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?
>
>
>
> Swami Dayanada Saraswati's statement should not be taken that way. What he
> meant was, there could be many people whom we don't even hear about, who
> are actually jnAnIs, but their external lives are ordinary, like anybody
> else. Including housewives, who are taking care of ten children at home.
> This is a restatement of a very old theme that recurs in our SAstra texts.
> We should never presume to comment upon the AtmajnAna of another person
> without intimate knowledge of that person's life.
>
>
>
> Everyone knows that RM was ignorant of Shastras.
>
>
>
> He wasn't. He had quite a good acquaintance with the texts. His way,
> however, was not to engage in the standard methods of SAstra-pANDitya.
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> Again, that isn't so at all. Some of those average women in our tradition,
> who engage in their rituals, may well have a high level of jnAna of various
> adhyAtma related matters. We just can't deny that possibility. Such women
> may be keeping up their normal lives for the sake of lokasangraha. We just
> don't know otherwise.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Vidyasankar
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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