Request Asssitance

[Ravisankar S. Mayavaram]

On Sun, 2 Aug 1998, Kamal Kothari wrote:

> b) *How* does one normally study such a text on one's own? Merely
> reading through does not seem to be good enough.

namaste

I forwarded part of Kamal's message sent to me because I think
question (b) is a very important question. Many of us undertake
self-study in some sense or other.

It was suggested to me that the following the way to read a
spiritual texts. Read it immediately after you perform your nitya
karma-s.  Before starting the reading, pray and meditate
on your guru or other of the text (in this case shrI
shankara). Longer it is better. After the deep prayer and
meditation. Read little bit and meditate on it. Do it in a slow
and steady pace. Reading spiritual text is like eating food. If
one eats more than what he can digest, it will lead to problems.

It is difficult to follow. I am not doing this with all the
texts, I am reading. But at present, I trying to do this while
reading mAdhava-vidyAraNya's shankara digvijaya. It is a
wonderful book. Author nicely explains, many issues related to
dharma, along with the text. When read at slow and deep manner,
the amount imbibed is so much.

Ravi

bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam