A letter

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

On Tue, 30 Jul 1996, Sankar Jayanarayanan wrote:

> I received this letter from a Vedic scholar, who is very knowledgeable
> in advaitic philosophy.
>
> The letter has undergone very minor editting, although it may appear
 otherwise.

Some of the points in this letter resonate completely with what I was
reading just the other day, from H. H. Sri Chandrasekhara Bharati's writings.
The point about sAmAnya dharma is really well made. All of us here talk
about advaita from theoretical standpoints and from mere bookish knowledge.
If we do it convincingly, we will all be hailed as mature philosophers, I
suppose. Meanwhile, what about the jIvanmukta that Sri Chandrasekhara
Bharati was? Sadly, most people couldn't understand him. Some even thought
he was mad.

As someone else pointed out on this list a few months ago, actual advaitic
realization can be frightening to most people. Maybe that is why we take
comfort in talking about it all the time, ensuring thereby that actual
experience is put off completely! Thanks a lot for sharing this letter.

> (1) I normally seldom read the puranas. Unfortunately, I could not get hold of
> of a copy of the padmapurANa and cannot confirm or deny the allegation about
> Shankara. There is no doubt that he is hailed as an incarnation of Shiva, but
> that he took birth to delude people is what I cannot confirm...

I don't doubt at all that the verse about Sankara from the PadmapurANa is
actually found in some manuscripts of that work. It makes little difference
what it says. Except some gauDIya vaishNavas who want to take a cheap shot
at Sankara, nobody else cares about it too.

> Regarding the durgA sUktam.h...it is part of an upanishad (mahAnArAyaNa)
> which has not been commented upon by Shankara and is considered to be more
> recent than the Vedas. Moreover, the familiar sUktam which goes by the name of
> durgA sUktam (jAtavedase...) is not a prayer to durgA at all. They are all
> prayers to agni. People have named it durgA sUktam just because the word durgA
> appears in the mantras. Such incongrencies are found abundantly in our use of

This is interesting news. I used to wonder that the durgA sUktam actually
says jAtavedase..., and that jAtavedas is agni (as used in the kena
upanishad, for example). I used to wonder what the connection to durgA was.
This clears my doubt. The use of the word durgA in this sUktam is probably
in the literal sense - durgA means "difficult to approach." Similarly,
the words Siva, vishNu etc. are meant in quite different senses in the
vedas than is popular nowadays.

> (7)There is no mention of Krishna in the Rigveda, or any veda for that matter.
> The Krishnopanishad was maybe written by a devotee of Krishna and then
 labelled
> as an upanishad. We have many upanishads which are very recent.

kr.shNa devakIputra is mentioned as a student of ghora AngIrasa in the
chAndogya upanishad, I think. However, it is only a passing mention, and
there is no suggestion in the upanishad itself, that this kr.shNa is the
same as the one who taught the gItA on the battlefield. Conversely, in all
the mythology associated with kr.shNa, the popular God, there is no
mention of ghora AngIrasa as his guru. The only teacher who is mentioned
in connection with kr.shNa is called sandIpani in the legends.

S. Vidyasankar