Guest guest Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 On Sat, 17 Apr 2004, krishna_susarla wrote: > achintya, "mikegrantt" <mikegrantt> wrote: > > however, Jaiva-dharma is a major work of Bhaktivinoda Thakura's and > > not a minor one. It is arguably his magnum opus, so his opinions > are worthy of consideration especially since Jaiva-dharma is penned in > > the form of a novel. How does the choice of genre contribute to the worthiness of his opinions? > I think Mukunda Datta Prabhu's unstated concern was that the selected > passages might be interpolated or adulterated in some way. He did > bring up several pieces of shaastric evidence that seemed to > contradict "Bhaktivinod's" position as described in Jaiva-dharma... Right. This slight doubt about the original text (which I haven't seen) is why I said "probably" while offering one interpretation that could reconcile the apparent contradiction. Obviously, we don't want to reject any of our acaryas, though it can be argued that Srila Prabhupada's direct instructions to us should be given precedence over those of any of his predecessors. That said, Rupavilasa prabhu's understanding also seems most reasonable. MDd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted April 17, 2004 Report Share Posted April 17, 2004 Not performing Vedic yajna by non-brahmana born persons is a social consideration, not a spiritual one. Bhaktivinoda Thakura makes this perfectly clear in Jaiva-dharma. Also consider the case of Haridasa Thakura: no one was more qualified, and yet he always presented himself as low-born and never tried to enter the temple in Jagannatha Puri and always behaved according to social attitutudes so as not to disturb others. He was very reluctant to take the first offering from Advaita Acarya, due to his Vaisnava humility but also due to the social reaction of the brahmana community. In the West such considerations are more or less irrelevant, since practically everyone comes from a meat-eating background where sinful behavior is the norm from birth, and self-control, etc. are not considered to be any sort of qualifications. Since birth is a material consideration, this prohibition of performing yajna is more or less a mundane consideration and not very important; sankirtana-yajna being the exception as it is completely transcendental and universally available for all. Hare Krsna! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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