Neeraj Narayanan's and ranga's questions

[Guest guest]

before answering neeraj narayanan's questions I would like to see an

introduction

from him briefly stating - background in philosophy, etc. to assess the

questions appropriately. reading the questions I could not pin point

what exactly he wants to know! looks dumb on my part, since he has

fairly well worded his questions.

 

Let me try to answer his questions briefly and state why I could not get

a better feeling of what he wants to know:

 

Both faith and intellectual understanding are necessary. some may get away

with just faith but pure intellectual understanding cannot help by itself.

one needs faith in addition to understanding for one's spiritual progress.

intellectual understanding could be confusing even to the brightest indi

viduals. but it sure acts like a rudder, ie stabilizes one's bhakti to the

people who can figure it out appropriately.

 

the second issue he deals with is how can one get faith opposing so many

obstacles?

 

there is no easy way to attain this. one needs god's grace, the company of

devotees (sadhus), the reduction of one's bad karmas, self effort (analytical

and devotional), the anugraha of acharyas, etc. Rahasyatrasara goes into

details of nature of grace - sahaja kaarunya, vishesha kaarunya. one other

factor is yaadrichchika sukrutam - ie. unintended punyas done by a person

for example - a person is chasing a cow for instance and the cow happens to

circle around a temple and this person unknowingly goes "pradakshina" or

circum ambulates God, then he will unintentionally evoke the grace of God.

as stated so: there are many reasons that should concurr to bring faith in

a human being. no wonder Lord Krishna says : bahoonam janmanaam ante

jnanavaan maam prapadyate - vaasudevaha sarvam iti sa mahatma su durlabhaha

 

after many births, one attains knowledge and surrenders to Lord Vasudeva

knowing that "he alone is my everything", and Lord Krishna himself states

that such a jnani is very very rare to be found. THis means that even though

sruthis state that Lord Narayana is our everything, due to ignorance we

never realize it enough so we drift away from our sole saviour - ie. God.

 

Note that the important point is that self effort is very important since

one cannot control other causes needed to bring faith in oneself! first

self effort is to search for a guru and resort to that guru with trust, respect

and true openminded enquiry.

 

Coming to the question of ranga:

 

what is prapatti? -

 

many books deal with this question very well.it is tough to re write this

on the email. if anyone needs the answer - one can go through SMS chari's

book on vaishnavism or dr. N.S anantha rangachar's thesis. if some one needs

a copy of just this chapter from both these books one of us - mani, sudarshan

or myself may be able to mail you a copy.

 

krishna