prapatti

[Guest guest]

I understand prapatti to be complete surrender to Vishnu, a goal

for one to attain salvation. Bhakti is a marga or way. An Acharya

is the intermediate who shows the way to practice bhakti and thus

attain the staus of prapatti.

My more fundamental question is why all these. At least in these

times, life and work is in the realm of a technolgical world

whererational plays a significant part. My work as an engineer

is based on scientific facts and one strives to acquire the

various skills. Modern knowledge provides an opportunity to

include more and more variables thanks to computer capabilities,

to determine the efffects. The recent study of the effect

of a plane 5 miles away on the crash of another is a typicla

example. We design the shapes of reflector antennas to an

extent not possible a few decades ago.

In such a world of reason, how does bhakti and faith come in.

Is it because of our own inability to associate our fortunes

and misfortunes to one of statistical probabilty. Is our

search for the ultimate controller is a way to find why all of

us are not identical and somr seem to be more fortunate.

The ritualistic aspects, bottu, satari and so on can be compared

to the srate of getting into acceptable groups. A simpler

way of putting it, a few decades ago, IBM Watson required all

employees to wear a tie. Such dress codes were found to be

useless. Anyway, it is an interesting discussion.