Do what Rama DID and what Krishna SAID

[Guest guest]

Namaste

 

Sri Venkatraman (Message no.17624) has brought an interesting

maxim for spiritual growth. Never attempt to DO the

extraordinary things that great men, saints or avatars have

DONE; on the other hand listen to them and DO WHAT THEY ASK YOU

TO DO ORDINARILY. Let me explain, by quoting an extraordinary

incident from Nanak's life.

 

One day Guru Nanak was lying flat on the floor of a temple with

his feet extended towards the sanctum sanctorum. Every one

thought he was committing the greatest act of disrespect to the

deity enshrined in that temple. 'Why don't you turn your feet

away from God?' someone asked. His quick retort was: 'Show me a

direction in which God is not there!'. The moral of the story is

that it is the attitude that matters and not what you do.

 

And, to come back to our topic, one can never imitate a

personality like Nanak (or, for that matter, a Sankara, or a

Krishna) and DO what they did. Nanak can extend his feet in the

direction of the idol that is considered by every one as God,

because for him God is everywhere and he lives in that identity.

For us ordinary mortals, so long as we do not have that feeling

of identity or the feeling of the omnipresence of God not only

everywhere but in every being, we have to conform to the

standard norms of discipline and tradition. For, this

discipline-cum-tradition is almost a ritual that trains us in

the controlling of our natural vAsanA to do what the mind likes

to do. Great men, on the other hand, are not bound by rules and

regulations because it is they who make the rules -- not that

they sit down and concoct them for us but what they say becomes

the rule BECAUSE they say it; Krishna's Gita, for instance.

 

Of course, Rama is a single exception. He DID, in the ordinary

course of his life, what all great men have asked us to DO and

that is why he is quoted as an ADARSH PURUSH, the ideal Person.

Rama practised all that Krishna preached in the Gita. It is said

that Hanuman sat on the flag of Arjuna's chariot and was

listening with great interest, to all that Krishna was preaching

to Arjuna; for he was wanting to know whether Krishna was saying

it right -- the right thing being what his own(Hanuman's) hero,

Rama, had really shown in action!

 

PraNAms to all advaitins.

profvk

 

 

 

 

 

 

=====

Prof. V. Krishnamurthy

My website on Science and Spirituality is http://www.geocities.com/profvk/

You can access my book on Gems from the Ocean of Hindu Thought Vision and

Practice, and my father R. Visvanatha Sastri's manuscripts from the site.

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Namaste

 

Just two elementary observations on Post no.17868

1. Benjaminji, after you arrived on the list, there was a

contribution by me (Message #17769) where there was a specific

reference to your post. The topic was on Spiritual Growth.

2. Post # 17868, misses the word 'Do' in the title though it is a

natural sequence to #17865 which had the 'Do' in the title. This may

hamper the proper indexing of the posts. Let us all be advised that

it is safer to copy and paste the title from the original (if we are

not hitting the Reply button), rather than type it from memory.

 

A third elementary observation. This may be of interest to all the

members of the list. Message nos. that emanate from the

Groups advaitin page and those that emanate from the advaitin date

index are DIFFERENT. The former is 240 nos. ahead of the latter. I

do not know the reason for this. But we should be aware of it. My

nos. quoted above pertain to the advaitin pages.

 

PraNAms to all advaitins

profvk

[Guest guest]

Namaste ProfVK:

 

Pranams,

 

We are very fortunate that you are back and we do value your wisdom

and scholarship. As always, your observation was mathematically

precise regarding the discrepency between post # reported at the two

archive locations:

 

URL 1: advaitin/messages

URL 2: http://www.escribe.com/culture/advaitin/

 

The first archive site is the site where all posts

originate. The second site (escribe.com mirror) is secondary archive

site where the messages are sent by by email. During

the course of 5 years of the list existence, 240 mails were lost due

to computer failures. Both the archive sites provide free service and

it seems that exactly 240 times, the email transaction failed.

Statistically speaking error due to this problem is about 1.34%!

 

The escribe.com site has a powerful search engine and members can

search by using key words such as Vedanta, spirituality, etc., to

find all the postings containing those key words. The search engine

at the site is less satisfactory. Our list is quite

popular in the escribe.com archive site. The site contains over

10,000 lists and in terms of ranking based on number of visitors, our

list ranks 75th.

 

Warmest regards,

 

Ram Chandran

 

advaitin, "V. Krishnamurthy" <profvk>

wrote:

>

> A third elementary observation. This may be of interest to all the

> members of the list. Message nos. that emanate from the

> Groups advaitin page and those that emanate from the advaitin date

> index are DIFFERENT. The former is 240 nos. ahead of the latter. I

> do not know the reason for this. But we should be aware of it. My

> nos. quoted above pertain to the advaitin pages.

>

> PraNAms to all advaitins

> profvk

[Guest guest]

Namaste Sri Prof. V. Krishnamurthy

>1. Benjaminji, after you arrived on the list,

>there was a contribution by me (Message #17769) ...

>

>2. Post # 17868, misses the word 'Do' in the title

>though it is a natural sequence to #17865 ...

>

>A third elementary observation. ... Groups advaitin

>page and those that emanate from the advaitin date

>index are DIFFERENT. The former is 240 nos. ahead

>of the latter. ...

 

 

Evidently, we have a contributor who exhibits, not only literary

grace, but mathematical precision. We are fortunate indeed!

 

 

Om!

Benjamin