[Advaita-l] My Questions and My Mails

[Sanjay Srivastava]

On Sunday, March 19, 2006, at 10:52  AM, Santhosh Nair wrote:

> -Alcohol/meat-now this is one thing for which I got a variety of 
> different answers. And this is exactly why I am confused. Because 
> whoever supports/opposses this has a source to attach the idea to. 
> Which of these should one follow. I don't know if it helps, but I am 
> Not from a Brahmana community. I think caste-wise, I will be a 
> kshatriya). I could not read what was discussed about caste here and 
> how correct/incorrect the caste-system is. But I believe certain 
> activities are allowed in some castes and not allowed in some other 
> castes (I think what Shri Senaniji meant by "Sadhaka" is a priest, 
> which would mean that the Sadhaka is from the Brahmana community. IS 
> this correct. Or have I gone wrong again??)

If dietary practices are your concern then it should not be very 
difficult to find out what is appropriate for you. Surely, if you are 
going to directly jump into veda-s or start looking into this or that 
smriti-s to find out what is appropriate for you, most likely you will 
come out empty handed. Why not  start from a point that is closest to 
you? Look around you, consult your elders in the family, ask learned 
members of your community and very likely you will get some very clear 
cut answers on this subject. Note that even when people are not exactly 
following their dharma, they have usually a fairly decent idea of what 
is expected of them in terms of dharma.

praNAm