[Advaita-l] Proof for 84 lakhs of birth

[jaldhar at braincells.com]

On Sat, 27 Feb 2021, Indira Sastry via Advaita-l wrote:

> Thank you so much for your reply. With all due respects to you, I don't
> have the same respect for Prabhupada, as he was our Shankara Bhagavatpada
> hater. He ridiculed our Acharya so badly. So, I don't take his word as an
> authority.

Yet sometimes he is right on some things.  My attitude to people like him 
is to treat their words as a pointer and platform for my own investigation.
After all the Bhagavata is not a closed book.  We can readily check for 
ourselves if someone is telling the truth or not.


But about 84 lakhs.  I don't think it should be taken literally.  It is an
example of a "round" number.  For instance in English a dozen means 12. 
We definitely can't call 3  or 1000 a dozen but you can describe 11 or 13 
that way.  84 lakhs simply means "a lot."  What thw shastras are trying to 
convey is not an exact number but that human birth is very precious as it 
is the result of a long and arduous journey through many births so one 
should "bhaja govindam" and not waste it on frivolous pursuits.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>