[Advaita-l] aruNa prashna & upanishad chanting in evening

[Balasubramanian Ramakrishnan]

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 2:51 AM, Venkata sriram P
<venkatasriramp at yahoo.in> wrote:
>
> //
> without using artha-vaada
> //
>
> My acharya Br.Sri. Narendra Kapreji clarified this vAkya saying that this should
> not be taken as arthavAda prayoga.
>
> The word "swAdhyAya" should be taken as vyApaka artha which includes
> vedAnga, purANa, itihAsa etc.
>
> So, when purANa, itihAsa etc. are taken as a part of swAdhyAya, there are no desha, kAla ityAdi niyamAs.  However, with respect to brahmayajna which too falls into
> the gamut of swAdhyAya, vidhi & nisheda should be observed w.r.t kAla.
>

Sorry, but I respectfully disagree. Here are key excerpts from
saayaNas bhaaShya to 2.12 which I quoted earlier.

yat-puurvamuktam-praacyaandishi-- (my note: 2.11 gives a number of
rules to be observed during svaadhyaaya. However 2.12 seemingly
reverses it on the authority of R^iShi shauca-aahneya).

After all the relaxations on doing svaadhyaaya either standing,
sitting, lying down etc., saayaNa makes the following remarks:

kvacideva tiShThan vaa niyamam-antareNa svechyaivopavishya vaa
shayaano vaa ***shaktyanusaareNa** svaadhyaayam-adhiiyiitaiva | ** na
tu a~Nga-lopaanusaareNa pradhaanasya lopo nyaayyaH ** |

Furthermore:

taadR^ishas-svaadhyaayayukto api tapasvii bhavati | adhyayanaphalam praapnoti |

Further more his explanation to the passage namo brahmaNe, etc., makes
it clear that it is indeed the vedas 2.12 is talking about here and
not just puraaNas, etc.

Note I do agree that it is *very desirable* to adhere to the "rules".
But let's be realistic - if you really want to adhere to the rules in
2.11 which you quoted, you have to walk *out of the village* either
east, north or north-east and practice outside the village after
taking a bath. Let's be realistic here. In any case saayaNa aloows
quite a bit of leeway. There are lots of constraints on working folk -
so if the chance presents itself to recite vedas while driving the
car, or not getting sleep, etc., it is quite acceptable and in fact
desirable to do svaadhyaaya. As a matter of fact, Vidyaranya in his
jiivanmukti-viveka compares the realized person always absorbed in
brahman to the student who is practicing his lessons while walking and
doing other work.

The reason why I think shauca etc., are only arthavaada and not
viniyoga vidhi is a little more technical - unfortunately I don't have
the time to get into it at this point of time.

Rama