[Advaita-l] Comments of an ISCKON follower

[Sudhakar Kabra]

--- On Mon, 3/19/12, abhishek sm <abhishek046 at gmail.com> wrote:

From: abhishek sm <abhishek046 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Comments of an ISCKON follower
To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Date: Monday, March 19, 2012, 12:17 AM

Recently, I had come across an internet post made by a resident of
Melbourne. It seems that while reading one of the works of ISKCON, he
came across a statement that- "Shankaracharya had know knowledge of
what bhakti is". The man had studied few works of Sri Sankara like
stotrams,etc and felt this statement was absurd. On enquiring the
chief disciples about the basis for this, the disciple replied that
none of Shankara's work contain any bhakti at all!!
Further he went up to the chief of that ISKCON branch and on asking
the same question he got the same answer. So, he asked the chief a
counter question- "Which works of Shankara have you studied till
date?".
To this, the chief replied that, Sri Chaitanya has clearly given them
instructions that they should not even look at the works of Shankara
as they are very dangerous!!!
The guy from Melbourne says he felt pity for the immaturity of those people!

During initial stages of advaita studies, we were also told not to read other writers like J. Krishnamurthy etc. But this was limited because first one has to be grounded firmly on his school of philosophy rather than get confused and get swayed away by wrong principles which others think about that school.


IMO that ISKCON are really not following advaita as taught by Sankara. This I am saying because I was in Mayapur to attend lectures on BG and found that there meaning of verses are quite different. (Eg: belief in anekjivavada i.e. atma are multiple and not one)
RegardsSudhakar kabra





On 3/18/12, Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 7:29 AM, Sudhakar Kabra
> <sudhakarkabra at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>> If ISKCON concept does not match with other thinkers, it is not wise on
>> the part of ISKCON to call others fools.
>
>
> Sankara says that those who dont accept the correct
> (advaitic) interpretation of tat tvam asi are the meanest among scholars. I
> even remember seeing the term mudha with respect to other traditions in his
> works.  If you want to turn the audience mind to an issue, criticize
> theopponent. It works like magic much better than logic. It is a powerful
> tool but should be used very sparingly as otherwise you will be branded as
> disrespectful and your words will lose value.
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