[Advaita-l] On yajna

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

om tat saditi nirdeSo brahmaNas trividhas smRtaH - gItA, chapter 17.

om tat sat has never been described as a vidhi (injunction) with respect to
any yajna, to my knowledge. It is verbally uttered as a benediction at the
end of any karmA, when offering the entire preceding act as brahmArpaNa. om
tat sat is always applicable only in the realms of meditation and vedAnta
jnAna, not as a vidhi for yajna.

Vidyasankar

On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 7:23 AM, Bhaskar YR via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> praNAms Sri Srinivas Gadkari prabhuji
> Hare Krishna
>
> Philosophizing the (vedAnteekaraNa) yajna vidhi-s (like OM TATSAT)  is
> good and palatable for the jnAnArthi-s..Like in adhyAtma rAmAyaNa we can
> always think rAma is parabrahman and seeta is mahaa mAya etc.  But IMHO,
> that should not stop us to know the practical procedure that has been
> followed in these rituals according to scriptural injunctions.  And this
> effort is in that direction only.  Hope you are with me here.
>
> Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
> bhaskar
>
> Namaste,
>
>
> Here are some points related to yajna in general, based on my
> understanding:
> - om, tat and sat expand respectively into
>   brAhmaNa-s/ brahma vAdi-s, veda-s and yajna-s.
> - Shri Jnaneshavara has clarified in his commentary
>   on gitA, that these three respectively relate to
>   states before karma is performed (om), while karma
>   is performed (tat), and after karma has been performed (sat).
> - So yajna is the act of contemplating on karmas performed
>   using 'sat' (auspiciousness) as the guiding principle.
> - So yajna can involve:
>   - offering noble karmas to gods,
>   - prayaschitta for not so noble karmas,
>   - retuning citta vritti-s that are predominant when we perform
>     karma-s if we find that they are out of alignment with our
>     desired ('sat') goals.
> - So what may be purpose of an animal or any offering
>   in a yajna?
>   - any offering must be related to some aspect of karma-s
>     performed.
>   - animals likely relate of specific strong citta vritti-s
>     within us.
>   - if retuning of citta vritti-s can be achieved without
>     actually killing any animal, that would be by far the
>     most recommended approach.
>
>
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