[Advaita-l] Ramana Maharshi - Advaitin or Neo Advaitin?

[V Subrahmanian]

On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 11:57 AM, Praveen R. Bhat <bhatpraveen at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Namaste Kripaji,
>
> I am hoping that this will be my last posting on this thread, since there
> doesn't seem to be more to add, unless we go into repetitive mode...
>
> On Mon, Oct 3, 2016 at 9:02 AM, Kripa Shankar <
> kripa.shankar.0294 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> >> I will have to say the same thing, please read it :
>> *ShastrArthasampradAyarahitatvAt ShrutahAnim kurvan* then what does it
>> become?  *AshrutakalpanAm*. Here Shankara has emphasised on SampradAya both
>> implicitly and explicitly. Besides, This alone is enough to determine
>> whether someone is orthodox or not. Without ascertaining the background of
>> the prospective groom will a father give away his daughter randomly to
>> anyone?
>
>

I will address just the above point that Praveen ji did not choose to:

Shankara is making the ShastrArthasampradAyarahitatvam, that is the absence
of ShastrArthasampradAya, as the hetu, cause for someone doing ShrutahAni
and  ashrutakalpanAm, the two defects that make a person an
asampradāyavit.  By saying this, Shankara is implying that one who does not
do  ShrutahAni and  ashrutakalpanAm is ShastrArthasampradAya-sahitaḥ. Thus
ShastrArthasampradAya does not have anything to do with lineage but *only*
to the teaching-content.

So, since Ramana did not engage in the two defects stated by Shankara, he
cannot be put in the category of someone who lacks ShastrArthasampradAya.
For Shankara this is enough reason to hold someone a Guru as he
demonstrated in the Manishāpanchakam: even a chāndāla, since he is not
distorting the shāstrārtha, is admissible to him as a Guru, on the same
pedestal of a dvija.  Shankara did not go to find out who is the one from
whom the chāndāla learnt or when he did sādhana and became a jnani.  That,
again, is the sole consideration for the Chandogyopanishad to have Raikva
teach the Atma tattva to Janashruti, the King. Again, Bālāki the Brahmana
did not go into the Guru-lineage of King Ajātashatru, a Kshatriya-Jnani,
when the former surrendered to to get brahmavidyā.  Same case with the
vaidika sampradāya Acharyas to acknowledge Ramana as a Jnani; and the
earlier Sringeri Acharya pointing to the Jnani identified as  'Para
Brahma'.

An account on Para Brahma here:

*http://tinyurl.com/hl6wt4e <http://tinyurl.com/hl6wt4e>*

Read p.92 to 95



regards
vs



> It's amusing to see we are even arguing about this point when it is
>> considered as the basics.
>
> That is because you think that those basic are the basis of ongoing
> debate. It is not. Recall that the whole thread started with the assumption
> that what Ramana Maharshi say is opposed to sampradAya. All this, including
> my last post, is in that context itself. I have already agreed in my
> earlier mail that he is not the person that shAstra encourages one to go
> to, to study shAstras from. Even in sampradAyavits, not all sampradAyavids
> can be studied from. I rest on this point.
>
>
>
>
>