Regarding Tulasi Maharani

[Guest guest]

Hare Krishna to all the Vaishnavas.

 

Tulasi is tulasi whether she is grown with meticulous intent for the service

of the Lord or otherwise.

As such, the Vaishnava principle is to respect Tulasi devi in whichever

condition one may find her in and never to use her for cleansing the human

body in any condition.

 

Tulasi is a personality in terms of spiritual understanding unlike manjal,

etc.

 

Therefore we should decide what is to be used and what is to be avoided, and

how they are to be used or avoided as per shastric principles and the

instructions of our Acharyas, not otherwise. To dwell on mundane logic or to

bring as evidence analogies and conjectures produced by the relativistic and

imperfect mind to understand something that is achintyam is not I would feel

vaishnavic at all.

 

Ayurvedic medicine may recommend the use of Tulasi but our ultimate

authority is not Ayur Veda or the Ayur Vedic kaviraj.

Our ultimate authority is Krishna, the sad-agamas and the Vaishnavas.

Therefore the vaishnava principle overrides the other here.

 

For example garlic and onion is recommended to be of good medicinal value

but vaishnava principle is to avoid them. Medicine is to be taken where we

are sick, not always as a principle of staple diet. Often, when medicine is

taken when one is well, it only makes him or her more sick. So here, more

than the routine medicinal aspect, the spiritual dimension is taken into

account. Rajasic and tamasic foodstuffs do not facilitate in our remembering

the Lord. Vaishnavas ought to focus on this principle more than anything

else since it is not the eating of onions and garlic or the use of tulasi on

the body that will solve our problems. Only our eternal absorption at the

Lotus feet of the Lord can do that and our guiding light should be to

practise any sadachara that facilitates that principle and reject anything

that does not.

 

As such Vaishnavic sattvic living is more important than mere rules of

medicine or well-being.

 

 

Your servant,

 

R. Jai Simman

Singapore