[Advaita-l] Dayanand Saraswathi interview - Very interesting stand taken by Swami

[V Subrahmanian]

On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 10:37 AM, Kripa Shankar <
kripa.shankar.0294 at gmail.com> wrote:

> ‎It is not me who is twisting anyone's words, but unfortunately, you are
> the one who is viewing this with lot of bias. Vidyasankar said something
> contrary to what Rama originally said. In all earnestness, I immediately
> requested for the verbatim, which Rama has so kindly provided.
>
> "while RM may not have been a jiivanmuukta, he was a ‎mahant."‎‎
>
> This clearly means one thing, because it cannot be inferred in any other
> way. It means, it is possible to determine whether someone is jivanmukta or
> not. Would you agree with this or not?
>
> Because you go one step further and say - HH Sri Abhinava Vidyatirtha
> swamigal has said RM was a jnAni!
> By this stand of yours, two things come to light : it disproves the view
> that - no one can judge if a person is jivanmukta or not.
> Another thing is that Mahasannidhanam as stated above, is at best,
> speculative of him being a Jnani.  Because otherwise, he would have said
> with the same confidence that - RM was a jnAni!
>

You are again wrong! The word 'mahān' (and not 'mahant' which only means  //A
chief priest of a temple or the head of a monastery.//
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/mahant ) is commented upon by
HH Sri Chandrashekhara Bharati Swaminah in the Vivekachudamani verse:

शान्ता महान्तो निवसन्ति सन्तो वसन्तवल्लोकहितं चरन्तः। तीर्णाः स्वयं
भीमभवार्णवं जनान् अहेतुनान् यानपि तारयन्तः॥ ३७॥

शान्ताः निर्विकारमनस्काः, अत एव महान्तः (this is the plural of the word
'mahān' used by the Jagadguru) *अपरिच्छिन्नब्रह्मात्मसाक्षात्कारवन्तः,* अत
एव तादृशसद्ब्रह्माभेदेन सन्तः ’ब्रह्मवित् ब्रह्मैव भवतीति’ श्रुतेः...

So, the word 'mahān' that HH Sri Bharati Tirtha used means an aparokṣa
jnāni.

There are some parameters on which the jivanmukti gradation is made. Hence
it may not be possible for another, even if he is a jnani, to place another
on a certain pedestal of jivanmukti. But for a jnani it will be possible to
say that another is a jnani with a certain amount of input or intuition.
Even about Shankaracharya no one can be certain that he was a Jnani if it
is insisted that he should be someone who must be mentioned in the shruti
as one. It is on the parampara that one bases his convictions.

regards
vs



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