[Advaita-l] Re: Dasa Avatara

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Mon, 19 May 2003 ShankarPll at aol.com wrote:

> The Puranic Kathas may be reduced to metaphysics and from metaphysics to
> psychology and vice versa. However, its import transcends even this for the
> bhakti induced is perhaps the primary purpose.  To put in another way, for me
> there are multiple ways of looking at the Puranas because they "occurred"
> with multiple designs. By this I mean that each view does not preclude
> another but occur simultaneously and naturally. And yet at the same time
> viewing it in the historical sense was perhaps how it was primarily intended
> - for it is by this means that bhakti could be propagated and the vast mass
> of humanity could progress to higher spiritual states.
>

Ok.  I can certainly concur with such a view.  What I'm leery of is
attempts to reduce the Puranic stories to an abstraction.  To some extent
Campbell was guilty of this too.  As a follower of Jung, he believed all
religions could be reduced to "universal archetypes."  But the compelling
power of these stories is that the hero doesn't have a thousand faces he
has _one_.  One face that we are intimately familiar with.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
It's a girl! See the pictures - http://www.braincells.com/shailaja/