Au Revoir: Farewell till we meet again! -- and two residual matters

November 10, 1999

Shortly I am going to be requesting Ram Chandranji to keep my membership on hold

for a month or so from November 17th until I go back to India and set up my

internet connection. It has been a great intellectual-cum-spiritual delight for

me to be in association with the members of the advaitin list. My understanding

of advaita has improved enormously in the past one year I have been a member. I

have all along been on one track and now I have come to know how different minds

may react, effectively and significantly, to the concept and practice of advaita

and how many different ways there are in which the great leap into advaita could

be taken and imbibed. I look forward to a continued association with the list,

once I am ready to resume my membership.

There are two residual matters.

The first is on my posting on The Self on which Murthygaru had raised a

question. I am sorry I did not reply to it so far. The question was: Why was

one’s Self separately named, as if it was apart from the Self? The separate

naming is only a beginning; only to be told later that it is the same as the

Self. It is like talking of two things, namely jIvAtmA and paramAtmA in the

beginning and then identifying them.

Murthygaru, your posting on the Saundaryalahari is excellent and valuable. I

look forward to catching up with all your postings, that I may miss, as soon as

possible.

The mirror archives is a kAma-dhenu, in this context. Kudos to the co-moderators

and the others who designed it.

The second matter is a side thought which came to me during the various

discussions we had on the Vedas. The Vedas have been preserved for us orally,

without any writing, for several centuries, by the pundits of India – each one

of them having learnt the recitation of the text from their elders by a standard

process of oral transmission. Maybe for the future generations we are now

keeping records of all this by audio-reproduction electronically. Still it is

going to be well nigh impossible to learn the recitation just by listening to a

reproduction. During the Navaratri for nine days I listened to the complete

yajur veda recited by six pundits trained in that recitation. It took about four

hours each day for the nine days. I recorded it during a live Veda-parAyaNam

which I had set up at my residence in Madras by six pundits in summer of 1998.

You have to listen to it to believe it. Particularly yajur veda is mostly in

prose and so the paragraphs which are as long as five or six pages sometimes,

have to be recited without even a stop for breath; this being achieved by the

several people continuing even when individuals pause for breath. The real

breaks occur only at the end of the paragraphs or at the end of chapters. The

ramifications involved in the text, the recitation from memory not faltering

ever, the intonations being kept exactly as it was millions of years ago, the

sandhi-rules being followed so meticulously that not a single fault is made by

even a single member of the group and then, the meanings implied by the text (if

you know the meaning, that is) -- all this is a great marvel. As I was following

with the book I mentally kept prostrating myself in admiration at the

technicalities of the recitation involved, at the rhythm and music, at the

spotlessly perfect coordination of the six pundits through all the maze of ups

and downs of the svaras and the tongue-twisting contours of seemingly unending

torrents of words, as also at the enormous content that our ancients have

collected so early in the Ascent of Man.

My writing about all this is to make the following plea to fellow Indians: When

we make a trip to India we should set apart at least a day ( in the worst

situation, at least a full hour) to listen to live recitation of the Vedas by

pundits – not only for the pleasure and privilege of listening, but to

liberally, very liberally, honour them, at the end, with cash presents. They

deserve this for the amount of time and patience they have devoted in their

lives to the task of learning all this and for the sacrifice they have done in

terms of material prosperity which they willingly or otherwise have missed

because of their occupation with learning the Vedas. They deserve our

recognition for their being the only means of our keeping up this invaluable and

irreplaceable tradition. I would wish every fellow Indian to keep this as a

pledge for redemption every time when one makes a trip to India.

Thanks and praNAms to all advaitins.

Yours, profvk

Prof. V. Krishnamurthy

The URL of my website has been simplified as

http://www.geocities.com/profvk/

You can access both my books from there.

Bid and sell for free at Auctions.

November 10, 1999

Hari Om Profvk:

The list was quite honored to have you as a member and your contributions were

well cherished by all the members. On behalf of the members and fellow

comoderators, I want to thank you for your unselfish service. Your enthusiasm at

your age is quite commandable and we hope to get your continued guidance. We

want to extent our warmest regards, greetings and respects. I will make

appropriate changes to stop the mails filling your mailbox.

Bon Voyage,

Ram Chandran

"V. Krishnamurthy" wrote:

> Shortly I am going to be requesting Ram Chandranji to keep my membership on

hold for a month or so from November 17th until I go back to India and set up my