[Advaita-l] Taittiriya Upanishad question

[Venkatesh Murthy]

Namaste

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Bhaskar YR <bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com> wrote:
> praNAms
> Hare Krishna
>
> I feel our discussions sometimes tend to prescribe how a jnani should be.
>
>>  dont you think we have to do this exercise to differentiate the genuine
> jnAni-s from the charlatans, who, in the name of god & religion engaging
> themselves in every questionable activity and justifying the same!! And
> jnAni-s are the role models for the ordinary mortals like us, if he, in
> the name of prArabdha karma, doing all sorts of gibberish work, what is
> the use of krishna's definition of sthitha prajna in geeta??  Once, Sri
> Vidya prabhuji has told me, though it is very difficult to pick genuine
> jnAni among the mass, it is not that much difficult to find out the
> impostors!!


We must be intelligent to find out who is genuine. Otherwise we will
fall into a trap. What example you have for Jnani doing bad work in
the name of Prarabdha? One example Kashyapa but there are many other
Jnanis like Hanuman.  They never did bad things like Kashyapa. Why
don't you look at them? Why are you looking at Kashyapa only? That
also he did  once only. Not many times.

>
> When such discussions used to take place Bhagavan Ramana used to quip "Let
> jnani look after himself. You look after yourself first".
>
>> I do agree that we the loukika-s do not have any authority to scale the
> credence of the jnAni..but, we the mortals would definitely  look for
> guidance from the shreshTa-s and try to follow what they do!!
> yadyadAcharati shreshTaH......sa yatpramANam kurute lOkastadanu
> vartate..says geetAchArya.  If the jnAni engages in 'gOdhUli saMbhOga' and
> blames it on his prArabdha karma, dont we, the ordinary mortals, find the
> same reason for all our illegitimate activities also prabhuji??
>

Your logic is not correct. If we do like that we are foolish. We must
not cheat our own Atma like that. Kashyapa story shows it is bad to do
Sambhoga in Sandhya Kala because Daityas are born from Diti. Knowing
this if we do Sambhoga in Sandhya Kala we are fools. It is like
falling into a ditch when some person is saying there is a ditch in
front of you.


> Jnani is said to be free. It means he is free to कर्तुम्,
> अकर्तुम्,
> अन्यथाकर्तुम्, i.e.,  to do, not to do or to do anything else
> he likes.
>
>>  No, jnAni never ever engages himself in any shAtra bAhira or dharma
> bAhira act..this is what shankara clarifies in sUtra bhAshya.  kartum,
> akartum, anyathAkartum will well be within the boundaries of shAstravidhi
> though he (the jnAni) is beyond the shAstra & dharma.
>

He will not do any Adharmic act. In case he does it we should not
follow. Like Krishna had fun with Gopees. Rama had only one wife. We
can follow Rama to have fun with legal wife only. We must not follow
Krishna and search for fun with some cowherd girls. We take only
Dharmic examples.


> Though lay people's dos and don'ts are not binding on a jnani, he appears
> to follow them for our sake I think.
>
>>  yes, you are right prabhuji, now you tell me, if he does something
> which is quite contrary to dharma vihita/ shAstra vihita and later on pass
> the buck on his 'prArabdha karma' how many of us going to understand this
> prArabdha karma theory of jnAni & accept him as genuine jnAni:-))


We must be intelligent and understand what we can follow and we cannot
follow. If you watch a magician eating burning charcoal you will
follow him to eat burning charcoal?


>>>  So, what I am trying to say here is though there is no stipulated rules
> & regulations for the jnAni,  we, the mortals, would like to recognise the
> 'jnAni' through some inherent qualities that we understood from shAstra &
> AchryOpadesha. And one of those qualities is, says the lord in geeta :
> prajahAti yadA kAmAn sarvAn manOgatAn, AtmanyevAtmanA tushtaH..He is Apta
> kAma, he is krutakrutya that is the reason why he is called 'sthitha
> prajna'.

But if a Sthita Prajna makes some mistake  we must not follow his
mistake like sheep. We must show intelligence.

-- 
Regards

-Venkatesh