Usage guidelines for ADVAITA-L (fwd)

[Ravi]

namaami | My respects to you all

        This message was sent to advaita-l-request by
mistake. I am reposting it.

BTW, the messages sent to Neelakantan ( Wipro), H.P.Raghu
and M Suresh were bouncing for quite sometime. So I have set
their status to "NOMAIL". In case you have someway of
contacting them, please let them know.

Even in the future, if mail sent to one you keeps bouncing
for more than a week, I will set it to "NOMAIL" status. You
can change it back to "MAIL" status using
SET ADVAITA-L MAIL
which should be sent to listserv at tamvm1.tamu.edu
To find out your mail options. please use the "QUERY"
command. Feel free to contact me anytime if you have any
problems. I will try my best to fix it.

With Respects,
Ravi


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 10:09:15 +0530 (IST)
From: NAVNEET BHUSHAN <nabhu at brahma.iitm.ernet.in>
To: ADVAITA-L-request at tamvm1.tamu.edu
Subject: Re: Usage guidelines for ADVAITA-L

Dear Friends,

      My name is Navneet Bhushan. I am a computer scientist working in
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), India. Presently, I
am doing my MTech at Indian Institute Of Technology, Madras, India.

    As such, I have very little exposure to Advaita. I am willing to
listen and be part of this wonderful forum. I am introduced to this forum
by my Uncle Mr. Arvind Kumar.

   I am looking fwd to find out answers to questions such as

" Why do I exist? Or for that matter, Why does this Universe exist".

These questions have troubled me through out my life ( I am nearing 30
yrs).


  Looking fwd to more interesting talks in cyberspace

with regards to you all,

Navneet Bhushan.

>From  Tue Nov 12 18:29:09 1996
Message-Id: <TUE.12.NOV.1996.182909.GMT.>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 18:29:09 GMT
Reply-To: kstuart at MAIL.TELIS.ORG
To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
From: Ken Stuart <kstuart at MAIL.TELIS.ORG>
Subject: Re: Advaita 1001
Comments: To: "Advaita (non-duality) with reverence" <ADVAITA-L at TAMU.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A32.3.91.961112090847.53674A-100000 at appn.ci.in.ameritech.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello,

On Tue, 12 Nov 1996 09:22:04 -0500, Anand Hudli
<ahudli at APPN.CI.IN.AMERITECH.COM> wrote:

>On Mon, 11 Nov 1996, Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian wrote:
>
>>
>> I have sometimes wondered about the same thing, i.e., sha.nkara's stressing
 of
>> the sanyaasa aashrama. Since the aachaarya has also written a bhaashhya on
 the
>> giita, which separates the sanyaasa from the sanyaasaashrama. Perhaps he did
>> not want dedicated aspirants into being mislead that they had actually
>> renounced everything when they had not. After all suffering the pangs of
> hunger
>> (quite a possibility as a sanyaasi) would be much more difficult.
>
>   True.
>   In the giitaa bhaashhya, Shankara makes it clear that karma done
>  with renunciation of fruits thereof acts as a great purifier and leads
>  one to jnaana. However, he is quite emphatic in saying that it is jnaana
> alone, not a combination of karma and jnaana, that results in mokshha.
> He makes the same argument in the upadeshasaahasrii also, regarding the
> combination of karma and jnaana. But the Achaarya does recognize that not
> everyone is fit for sannyaasa, citing Arjuna as an example, and points out
> that Krishna prescribes karma yoga (and bhakti) to such persons.

Could you please provide some specific quotes from Shankara on this
subject?

I hear this type of dangerous comment quite often, and find it hard to
believe that Shankara was really proposing it in quite such a way as
this.

The reason it is dangerous, is because it is totally circular and
totally relative.   Two example will suffice to make clear what I am
saying:

1) Some Vaishnavas on the net say that Shankara was actually a
dvaitistic worshipper of Vishnu, based on a single bhakti tract that
he wrote, and that all the advaitistic writings were merely for the
less advanced people who couldn't understand devotion.

2) A Buddhist on the net once argued that all the statements that
Ramana Maharshi had made that contained any Hindu content, including
references to Shankara, were made merely to be nice to all the Hindus
who came to see him, but in reality, he was really a Buddhist !  :-)


Namaskar,

Ken

kstuart at mail.telis.org
http://www.zynet.com/~castlerx/kstuart/KSphilosophy.html