Sankara's statement!

[Guest guest]

Namaste All,

 

This is my first post, I get in trouble everywhere I go. I hope that

this is the list that I won't.

 

Sankara said 'that it is real whilst one is in it', re the world.

 

I would like to know how one delineates the 'reality of the one',

from daily living. Well not delineates, however for example. Can one

overcome one's samskaras without sadhana?

 

Recently I discussed 'ahimsa with regard to killing animals', with

another group who are supposedly 'non-dual'.

 

I do not seem to be able to equate pious platitudes about 'all is

one' etc with cruelty and slaughter and the build up of negative

vibrations. It always gets emotional with the same excuses about

plants being alive etc etc etc.

 

I know some will say this is my weakness and avidya but Sankara did

say it is real whilst one is in it and presumably we are supposed to

deal with it. Sure if I am a Jivanmukta it doesn't matter, but if I

eat meat(i don't), isn't that violating ahimsa and indicating a lack

of awareness to the oneself and the animal? I mean if one cannot make

the connection, it indicates a state that is only in the manomayakosa

instead of perhaps the vijnanamayakosa?

 

Comments please!

 

Om Namah Sivaya, Tony

[Guest guest]

Greetings Tony:

 

First, welcome Tony to the list and we hope that we

can help you to get out of your illusionary troubles.

All of us constantly fear to face the self-created

real world difficulties. What we need is to develop a

change in our attitude in dealing with our daily life.

Currently, the list conducts the Gita Satsang and are

in beginning of the second chapter. Please find

sometime and review the Gita Satsang discussions from

the beginning of the new millennium and they are

available in the list archives:

http:www.eScribe.com/culture/advaitin/

A good understanding of Gita can help us to develop

the attitude that Shankara is talking about in

abstract terms.

 

The person who is well qualified to answer the

regarding Ahimsa (nonviolence) is Mahathma Gandhi.

You can also find the answers to other questions by

tracing through his life. Gandhi took his life very

seriously and he found that his life was real. He

also discovered the reality of the world that he

lived. His most important contribution to the

humanity is the discovery and true demonstration of

the word - Ahimasa. According to him, Ahimsa is not

only physical torture but also mental torture.

Actually Violence originates in the mind and the body

became the instrument for physical application.

 

You have raised several important questions and I am

confident that the members of the list will respond

them adequately and appropriately. Your questioned

demonstrate your keen interest in Advaita Philosophy

and I am quite confident that your active

participation will stimulate spiritual discussions and

spiritual atmosphere,

 

regards,

 

Ram Chandran

 

=============

The following long passage is from his book - "The

Message of Gita, by M. K. Gandhi, Navajivan Publishing

House, Ahmedabad under the chapter: Gita and

Nonviolence.

 

"My first acquaintance with the Gita was in 1889, when

I was almost twenty. I had not then much of an inkling

of the principle of ahimsa. One of the lines of the

Gujarati poet, Shamal Bhatta, has taught me the

principle of winning even the enemy with love, and

that teaching had gone deep into me. But I had not

deduced the eternal principle of non-violence from it.

It did not, for instance, cover all animal life. I

had, before this, tasted meat whilst in India. I

thought it a duty to kill venomous reptiles like the

snake. It is my conviction today that even venomous

creatures may not be killed by a believer in ahimsa. I

believed in those days in preparing ourselves for a

fight with the English. I often repeated a Gujarati

poet's famous doggerel: `What wonder if Britain

rules!' etc. My meat-eating was as a first step to

qualify myself for the fight with the English. Such

was my position before I proceeded to England, and

there I escaped meat-eating etc. because of my

determination to follow unto death the promises I had

given to my mother. My love for truth has saved me

from many a pitfall.

 

Now whilst in England my contact with two English

friends made me read the Gita. I say `made me read',

because it was not of my own desire that I read it.

But when these two friends asked me to read the Gita

with them, I was ashamed of my ignorance. The

knowledge of my total ignorance of my scriptures

pained me. Pride, I think, was at the bottom of this

feeling. My knowledge of Sanskrit was not enough to

enable me to under-stand all the verses of the Gita

unaided. The friends, of course, were quite innocent

of Sanskrit. They placed before me Sir Edwin Arnold's

magnificent rendering of the Gita: I devoured the

contents from cover to cover and was entranced by it.

The last nineteen verses of the second chapter have

since been inscribed on the tablet of my heart. 'They

contain for me all knowledge. The truths they teach

are the `eternal verities'. There is reasoning in them

but they represent realized knowledge.

 

I have since read many translations and many

commentaries, have argued and reasoned to any heart's

content but the impression that the first reading gave

me has never been effaced. Those verses are the key to

the interpretation of the Gita. I would even advise

rejection of the verses that may seem to be in

conflict with them. But a humble student need reject

nothing. He will simply say: "It is the limitation of

my own intellect that I cannot resolve this

inconsistency. I might be able to do so in the time to

come." That is how he will plead with himself and with

others.

A prayerful study and experience are essential for a

correct interpretation of the scriptures. The

injunction that a shudra may not study the scriptures

is not entirely without meaning. A shudra means a

spiritually uncultured, ignorant man. He is more

likely than not to misinterpret the Vedas and other

scriptures. Every one cannot solve an algebraical

equation. Some preliminary study is a sine quo non.

How ill would the grand truth `I am brahman' lie in

the mouth of a man steeped in sin! To what ignoble

purposes would he turn it! What a distortion it would

suffer at his hands!

A man therefore who would interpret the scriptures

must have the spiritual discipline. He must practice

the yamas and niyamas-the eternal guides of conduct. A

superficial practice thereof is useless. The shastras

have enjoined the necessity of a guru. But a guru

being rare in these days, a study of modern books

inculcating bhakti has been suggested by the sages.

Those who are lacking in bhakti, lacking in faith, are

ill-equipped to interpret the scriptures. The learned

may draw an elaborately learned interpretation out of

them, but that will not be the true interpretation.

Only the experienced will arrive at the true

interpretation of the scriptures.

 

But even for the inexperienced there are certain

canons. That interpretation is not true which

conflicts with Truth. To one who doubts the Truth, the

scriptures have no meaning. No one can contend with

him. There is danger for the man who has failed to

find ahimsa in the scriptures, but he is not doomed.

Truth-sat-is positive; non-violence is negative. Truth

stands for the fact, non-violence negatives the fact.

And yet non-violence is the highest religion. Truth is

self evident; non-violence is its maturest fruit. It

is contained in Truth, but as it is not self evident a

man may seek to interpret the shastras without

accepting it. But his acceptance of Truth is sure to

lead him to the acceptance of non-violence.

 

Renunciation of the flesh is essential for realizing

Truth. The sage who realized Truth found non-violence

out of the violence raging all about him and said:

`Violence is unreal, non-violence is real.'

Realization of Truth is impossible without

non-violence. Brahmacharya (celibacy), asteya

(non-stealing), aparigraha (non-possession) are means

to achieve ahimsa. Ahimsa is the soul of Truth. Mar is

mere animal without it. A seeker after Truth will

realize all this in his search for Truth and he will

then have no difficulty in the interpretation of the

shastras.

 

Another canon of interpretation is to scan not the

letter but to examine the spirit. Tulsidas's Ramayana

is a notable book because it is informed with the

spirit of purity, pity and piety. There is a verse in

it which brackets drums, shudras, fools and women

together as fit to be beaten. A man who cites that

verse to beat his wife is doomed to perdition. Rama

did not only not beat his wife, but never even sought

to displease her. Tulsidas simply inserted in his poem

a proverb current in his days, little dreaming that

there would be brutes justifying beating of their

wives on the authority of the verse. But assuming that

Tulsidas himself followed a custom which was prevalent

in his days and beat his wife, what then? The beating

was still wrong But the Ramayana was not written to

justify beating of wives by their husbands. It was

written to depict Rama, the perfect man, and Sita the

ideal wife, and Bharat the ideal of a devoted brother.

And justification incidentally met with therein of

vicious customs should therefore be rejected. Tulsidas

did not write his priceless epic to teach geography,

and any wrong geography that we happen to come across

in Ramayana should be summarily rejected. Let us

examine the Gita in the light of these observations.

Self realization and its means is the theme of the

Gita, the fight between two armies being but the

occasion to expound the theme. You might, if you like,

say that the poet himself was not against war or

violence and hence he did not hesitate to press the

occasion of a war into service. But a reading of the

Mahabharata has given me an altogether different

impression. The poet Vyasa has demonstrated the

futility of way by means of that epic of wonderful

beauty. What, he asks, if the Kauravas were

vanquished? And what if the Pandavas won? How many

were left of the victors and what was their lot? What

an end Mother Kunti came to? And where are the Yadavas

today?

 

Where the description of the fight and justification

of violence are not the subject- matter of the epic,

it is quite wrong to emphasize those aspects, and if

it is difficult to reconcile certain verses with the

teaching of non-violence, it is far more difficult to

set the whole of the Gita in the framework of

violence.

 

The poet when he writes is not conscious of all the

interpretations his composition is capable of. The

beauty of poetry is that the creation transcends the

poet. The Truth that he reaches in the highest flights

of his fancy is often not to be met with in his life.

The life story of many a poet thus belies his poetry.

That the central teaching of the Gita is not himsa but

ahimsa is amply demonstrated in the second chapter and

summarized in the concluding l8th chapter. The

treatment in the other chapters also supports the

position. Himsa is impossible without anger, without

attachment, without hatred, and the Gita strives to

carry us to the state beyond sattwa, rajas and tamas,

a state that excludes anger, hatred, etc. But I can

even now picture to my mind Arjuna's eyes red with

anger every time he drew the bow to the end of his

ear.

 

It was not in a spirit of ahimsa that Arjuna refused

to go to battle. He had fought many a battle before.

Only this time he was overcome with false pity. He

fought shy of killing his own kith and kin. Arjuna

never discussed the problem of killing as such. He did

not say he would kill no one, even if he regarded him

as wicked. Shri Krishna knows every one's innermost

thoughts and he saw through the temporary infatuation

of Arjuna. He, therefore, told him: "Thou hast already

done the killing. Thou canst not all at once argue

thyself into non-violence. Finish what thou hast

already begun." If a passenger going in a Scotch

Express gets suddenly sick of traveling and jumps out

of it, he is guilty of suicide. He has not learnt the

futility of travelling or travelling by a railway

train. Similar was the case with Arjuna. Non-violent

Krishna could give Arjuna no other advice. But to say

that the Gita teaches violence or justifies war,

because advice to kill was given on a particular

occasion, is as wrong as to say that himsa is the law

of life, because a certain amount of it is inevitable

in daily life. To one who reads the spirit of the

Gita, it teaches the secret of non-violence, the

secret of realizing the self through the physical

body.

 

And who are Dhritarashtra and Yudhishthira and Arjuna?

Who is Krishna? Were they all historical characters?

And does the Gita describe them as such? Is it true

that Arjuna suddenly stops in the midst of the fight

and puts the question to Krishna, and Krishna repeats

the whole of the Gita before him? And which is that

Gita-the Gita that Arjuna forgot after having

exclaimed that his infatuation was gone and which he

requested Krishna to sing again, but which he could

not, and which therefore he gave in the form of

Anugita?

 

I regard Duryodhana and his party as the baser

impulses in man, and Arjuna and his party- as the

higher impulses. The field of battle is our own body.

An eternal battle is going on between the two camps

and the poet seer has vividly described it. Krishna is

the Dweller within, ever whispering in a pure heart.

Like the watch the heart needs the winding of purity,

or the Dweller ceases to speak.

Not that actual physical battle is out of the

question. To those who are innocent of non-violence,

the Gita does not teach a lesson of despair. He who

fears, who saves his skin, who yields to his passions,

must fight the physical battle whether he will or no;

but that is not his dharma. Dharma is one and one

only. Ahimsa means moksha, and moksha is the

realization of Truth. There is no room here for

cowardice. Himsa will go on eternally in this strange

world. The Gita shows the way out of it. But it also

shows that escape out of cowardice and despair is not

the way. Better far than cowardice is killing and

being killed in battle.

If the meaning of the verses quoted by the

correspondent is not still clear, I must confess my

inability to make it so. Is it agreed that the

Almighty God is the Greater, Protector and Destroyer

and ought to be such? And if He creates, He has

undoubtedly the right to destroy. And yet He does not

destroy because He does not create. His law is that

whatever is born must die; and in that lies His mercy.

His laws are immutable. Where should we all be if He

changed them capriciously?"

 

 

 

--- Tony O'Clery <aoclery wrote:

> Namaste All,

>

> This is my first post, I get in trouble everywhere I

> go. I hope that

> this is the list that I won't.

>

> Sankara said 'that it is real whilst one is in it',

> re the world.

>

> I would like to know how one delineates the 'reality

> of the one',

> from daily living. Well not delineates, however for

> example. Can one

> overcome one's samskaras without sadhana?

>

> Recently I discussed 'ahimsa with regard to killing

> animals', with

> another group who are supposedly 'non-dual'.

>

> I do not seem to be able to equate pious platitudes

> about 'all is

> one' etc with cruelty and slaughter and the build up

> of negative

> vibrations. It always gets emotional with the same

> excuses about

> plants being alive etc etc etc.

>

> I know some will say this is my weakness and avidya

> but Sankara did

> say it is real whilst one is in it and presumably we

> are supposed to

> deal with it. Sure if I am a Jivanmukta it doesn't

> matter, but if I

> eat meat(i don't), isn't that violating ahimsa and

> indicating a lack

> of awareness to the oneself and the animal? I mean

> if one cannot make

> the connection, it indicates a state that is only in

> the manomayakosa

> instead of perhaps the vijnanamayakosa?

>

> Comments please!

>

> Om Namah Sivaya, >

>

[Guest guest]

"Tony O'Clery" <aoclery> wrote:

 

> Recently I discussed 'ahimsa with regard to killing animals', with

> another group who are supposedly 'non-dual'.

>

> I do not seem to be able to equate pious platitudes about 'all is

> one' etc with cruelty and slaughter and the build up of negative

> vibrations. It always gets emotional with the same excuses about

> plants being alive etc etc etc.

 

Tony, your instinctual reaction is right. There are a number of

groups and people who call themselves non-dual, without really

knowing what it is. Philosophical attitudes like, "there is no doer,

but there are deeds" - these are the things that lead to pious

platitudes. For, those who hold such notions misunderstand the very

nature of action and doership.

 

Man is unable to live in this world without causing violence, in some

way or the other. There may be someone who has renounced the entire

world, but he still has to beg for his food from other people (in

traditional Indian culture). It is quite likely that some of those

who offer him his sustenance resent the very act of giving alms. Or,

he has to live on naturally occuring produce, causing some violence

to plant life. Recognizing this, the goal should be to conduct our

lives in such a way as to cause the least amount of violence to those

around us. And this definitely means that breeding and slaughter of

animals for the sole purpose of human consumption should be avoided.

The very intention is cruel in such a case, and breeds negativity.

Those who say that all is one, and that therefore, there is nothing

wrong in eating veal are being hypocritical.

 

Vidyasankar

[Guest guest]

Hari Om Vidyasankarji:

 

Namaskar:

 

It is a delight to see your comments on several key

aspects of Hindu philosophy and beliefs. Those who do

not know Sri Vidyasankar, I want to say few words

about him.

 

Sri Vidyasankar is an active advaitin and has

dedicated lots of his time in developing the best

Advaita Philsophy Website:

(http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/. This Website

extensivesly discusses Shanakra's Advaita Philosophy

and was recently recognized by the Encyclopedia

Brittanica as an authentic source. Those who visit

the site will agree that Brittanica is quite right in

their assessment. I recommend every new member of this

list to visit Advaita Homepage and read its contents.

 

Sri Vidyasankar has been contributing in the

cyberspace to the cause of Hindu Religion and

Philsophy for over a decade. He is articulate in

expressing his ideas, very knowlegeable and quite

unassuming.

 

The list welcomes his refreshing ideas and scholarly

discussions. Most important, he focuses his

discussions on the subject matter and well versed in

Sanskrit and Hindu Scriptures. Those who read his last

two postings will agree with me wholeheartedly. I am

looking forward to his scholarly commentary and

guidance in Gita Satsang.

 

regards,

 

Ram Chandran