svadharma

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Ashish Chandra <ramkisno at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

>If I remember correctly, the late Paramaachaarya of Kanchi Jagadguru
>Chandrashekharendra Saraswati visited the Self Realization Fellowship
>temples in the US sometime in the 1950s. I thought that usually the

It was the Shankaracharya of Puri, Swami Bharati Krishna Tirtha, who visited
the US and UK in the late 1950s.

>Paramaachaarya would not even go to Mumbai because it was once an island
>(and he would have to travel over water). Are the rules for Sannayaasis

That is stretching the point a bit too much. By this token, no Sannyasi
should be able to visit the temples in Srirangam or Rameswaram, as they are
on islands. And taking it all literally, every Sannyasin should travel
around the source of a river instead of crossing it. That is not the case.
True, during the Caturmasya period, they are supposed to stay within
one village, and therefore do not cross rivers. At other times, they can
travel in boats or swim across. However, even this rule about Caturmasya
has been violated in recent times, and none of the orthodox people really
seem bothered about it. I don't remember if the previous Kanchi Acharya
visited Bombay or not, but the present one has, numerous times, as have
various other heads of Mathas.

>different. Swami Vivekananda and Paramhansa Yoganandanda both spent a good
>deal of time outside India. (They weren't Brahmins but does that matter in
>terms of the injunction of not travelleing over the seas?)

The rules of proper conduct for Sannyasins are given in texts like
Yatidharmasangraha. For possibilities not covered by such texts, one has to
refer to the conduct of eminent people, i.e. what is called SishTAcAra.

Vidyasankar

--
bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam

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