[Advaita-l] Fwd: Devotional aspects of Goswami Tulsidas

[Shashi Vishwanath]

I would highly recommend reading Tulsidas  - reading it is extremely soothing.

The Ramanandi Sampradaya was mentioned below- they of course regard Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas as their central scripture. Most Ramanandis view their sampradaya as a vehicle for developing Rama Bhakti. While the focus of reverence is Lord Sitarama, Lord Siva is accorded high reverence. A subsect of the renunciant Ramanandis even pour ashes over themselves and tie their hair into knotted dreadlocks, partly to emulate Lord Siva, whom the regard as the highest Yogi, and the originator of the hatha yoga practice so central to their sadhana. Go to the Pashipatinath temple in Nepal on any Sivaratri and a high proportion of the worshippers will be Ramanandi ascetics. Rama nama, the Ramakatha, Rama puja, and saranagati to Rama is the important thing - not the status of Lord Siva vis a vis Lord Rama.



Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 8, 2022, at 2:53 AM, V Subrahmanian via Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
> 
> A lengthy post on this topic is available here with images:
> https://groups.google.com/g/advaitin/c/Zm08WqY24xs
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, Aug 8, 2022 at 1:01 PM
> Subject: Devotional aspects of Goswami Tulsidas
> To: Advaitin <advaitin at googlegroups.com>
> 
> 
> FB post by Sri Divyasanu Pandeyji.
> 
> Goswami Sri Tulsidas Ji was a smarta Brahmana who without any
> discrimination among Ganesha, Shiva, Devi, Vishnu and Surya, worshipped
> Panchayatana and, his ishta was Sri Sitaramamurthy. This is evident from
> his works.
> 
> He had no such insistence that "Vishnu is the only supreme (and others like
> Ganapati, Shiva etc are not)" - as is often seen in Vaishnava sects of
> Srivaishnava, Madhva, Ramanandi, Gaudiya etc. In light of the following
> points, one should ask the vaishnava Acharyas of the Madhva, Srivaishnava
> and other sects to decide whether Tulsidas ji was a smarta brahmana, just
> like Adi Shankara, Appaydeekshita, Shyamashastri and Tyagaraja-
> 
> 1- Shri Tulsidas ji Maharaj starts his works with offering prayers to
> Ganesha and not with the praise of Vishvaksena. In his Vinayapatrika, he
> has praised even Bhairava, but there is no separate stuti for Vishwaksena.
> 
> 2- Sri Tulsidas ji has praised bhagavaan Shiva in many places with
> adjectives like parabrahmaswaroopa, nirguna, nirvikalpa, nirakara,
> pranavamoola, tureeya, goteeta, Ishvara etc. He has described Rama, his
> ishtadeva, as Shiva's servant in vinayapatrika [दूसनरिपुसेवक... song 9], as
> well as, devadeva, i.e., the god of all gods [song 9]. Madhvas, who
> consider Shiva (Rudra) even below Vayudeva, and shrivaishnavas who who
> consider Shiva to be Paramavaishnava, cannot agree to this description.
> 
> He has often referred to Shiva as Rudra which is same as the smarta
> tradition of Adi Shankara and different from the opinion of shrivaishnavas
> with respect to Rudra. He has described Shiva in Vinayapatrika as
> sachchidananda, sarvajnya, yajnyesha, achyuta, vibhu, and what more to
> state, even brahman (the supreme) which is not in accordance with the
> Vaishnava opinion.
> 
> 3- Sri Tulsidas ji has praised Shiva, in the 11th song as
> विष्णुविधिवन्द्याचरणारविन्दम् which means that the feet of Shiva ji are
> worshipped by Vishnu and Brahmaji. This is a different opinion from
> Vaishnavacharyas.
> 
> 4- Shri Tulsidasji Maharaj has worshipped Devi as Mahamoolamaya. He has
> praised her as Vishwamoola [Vinayapatrika/song 15]. He has said all this,
> not for Lakshmi, but for the Trishuladharini Mother of Ganesha and
> Kartikeya. In Gita, bhagavaan has stated about his trigunatmika maaya with
> respect to his incarnations as per अजोऽपि सन्नव्ययात्मा etc (bhagavadgeeta
> 4/6) and the same has been described by Adishankara in his bhashya as
> vivartaroopa Mayashabalita Parabrahma. She is the same trigunatmika
> prakriti, worshipped by tulasidasa. She is the Haimavati Uma of
> kenOpanishat.
> 
> See the full post here:  https://groups.google.com/g/advaitin/c/Zm08WqY24xs
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