"Jagat satya!"

[Ashish Chandra]

On Tue, 23 Jul 2002 09:14:08 -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas
<jaldhar at BRAINCELLS.COM> wrote:

>
>This is the kind of thing I meant when I said to Ashish the program of the
>19th century intellectuals was to "advaitize" all of Indian culture.  They
>were creating something altogether novel and needed a fig leaf of
>continuity with the past to give their program respectability.  Again this
>may not have been a bad idea but it bears further scrutiny don't you
>think?
>
>And common sense ought to tell you that dvaita cannot be a different
>approach to advaita anymore than standing still can be a different
>approach to running or gluttony another approach to fasting.
>

I am no expert on Swami Vivekananda's writings - I myself have read only a
handful of his writings, but one thing to keep in mind is that Swamiji was
not preaching to pundits and vidvaans that Dvaita and Vishishtadvaita lead
to Advaita. Rather, he was only echoing Sri Ramakrishna's message - that
what appears to be two, even when you get really really close, is actually
One. This was for the general public whom Swamiji dealt with everyday, not
the vidvaans of the various sampradaayas that participate in vidvat saudas.

Once Sri Ramakrishna was walking by the banks of a river with some of his
disciples and they saw a Sadhu coiled up in the foetal position. Sri
Ramakrishna asked him: Is God one or many, and the Sadhu replied, He is one
in Samaadhi and (appears as) many at other times. This is how Sri
Ramakrishna taught - through parables and examples that can be understood
by everyone. Swami Vivekananda did not teach anything of his own - he only
taught what Sri Ramakrishna told him to.

We cannot separate the philosophical from the mystical.

namaste
ashish