Guest guest Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 hare krishna, traditionally Srutis were never written down on paper but passed on orally and that is why they are called Sruti. There are four stages in sadhana : Sravanna - Studying scriptures. Manana - Trying to understand them as a whole using logic. Nidhidhyasana - Uninterrupted meditation[devotion] on brahman. Darsana - This is where one gets vision of Supreme. Sravana and Manana are aid to nidhidhyasana. and without nidhidhyasana one cannot have darsana and hence no moksha. Now Srutis were passed down from sages to sages, orally. So anyone who was interested in learning them had to go to a sage who will teach it to the student. While teaching the text, meaning of it was also explained so that student may not speculate and any questions a student had were answered. So basically without going to a guru no one could have ever imagined to learn about Brahman. It is said "a non knower of veda cannot know Supreme". Now the source of vedic knowldge were sages, who would communicate the truth orally to their disciples. Hence sravanna and manana without which nidhidhyasana is impossible could not be performed had the student not seeked lotus feet of a guru. In kali yuga srutis were put down in writing for reasons already known. Now following this the meanings of text were also put down in writing by acaryas. Just as Sabda brahman vedas are representation of Supreme so is the bhasya of an acarya repr. of him. So if we possess Gita as it is in our house we actually have krishna and SP in our house. Verse of Gita represents Krishna and words of purport represent SP. Similarly Gita bhasya of ramanuja means we have Krishna and ramanuja with us. So we are always in proximity of our guru. We should not think guru always needs to be physically present before us. Take for example Ramanuja. Who taught him Sruti in the formal and traditional ways ? No one. anyone here familiar with his life knows no one taught him all the upanisads in the traditional way as has been mentioned at the starting. Yamunacarya didn't teach him Srutis. Yet he wrote works like Sri bhasya and Vedartha Sangraha. Are we to reject him saying you never learnt Sruti at Guru's lotus feet so you are unqualified ? He didn't even teach him Gita. Yamuna had left a work on Gita and Ramanuja faithfully followed it while writing bhasya on gita. His Guru was always there with him in form of that work on gita. For his VS bhasya he followed ancient authority called bodhyana. Bodhyana never taught him VS but all that ramanuja did was get his vritti on VS and expound vedanta philosophy accordingly. Ramanuja went to Kashmir from almost the southern most part to find a script of this vritti. That just shows the value of a written text. Infact it is known that ramanuja objected to yadva prakasa explanations of Chandogya and Taittariya without having been taught vishistadvaita or any non advaitic interpretation of the texts formally by a guru. It was considered to be unholy by Yadva but ramanuja was right in his interpretations, though he had no formal training in interpreting those texts in the traditional style, while yadva was famous teacher of advaita in that area. This is what happened: http://www.gosai.com/chaitanya/saranagati/html/ vaisnava_sampradayas_fs.html "A few days later a second incident occurred. While explaining a verse from the Taittiriya Upanishad beginning with satyam jnanam anantam brahma, Yadava said that Brahman was intelligence, truth, and the infinite. Hearing this explanation, Ramanuja politely added, "Brahman is endowed with the qualities of intelligence, truth, and the infinite— this means that He is not covered by ignorance as are ordinary living entities, He is never untruthful, and His energies are unlimited, not limited. The Supreme Brahman is the reservoir of all good qualities, yet He is superior to those qualities, as the sun globe is superior to sunlight." The agitation which Yadava felt within his mind made his voice tremble. "You young fool!" he shouted. "Your conclusions do not agree with those of Shankara or any of the previous masters! If you are going to persist with this useless talk about a personal God, why come here at all simply to waste my time? Why don't you start your own school and teach whatever you like? Now get out of my classroom immediately!" So you need guru's training to understand Sruti but here you see a person who later became celebrated vedantin contradicting a bonafide persons interpretation even though he lacked proper training in a traditional way. So how to reconcile this ? Answer is look into SP's purports for gita 10.10 and 10.11 10.10 purport "A person may have a bona fide spiritual master and may be attached to a spiritual organization, but still, if he is not intelligent enough to make progress, then Krsna from within gives him instructions so that he may ultimately come to Him without difficulty. The qualification is that a person always engage himself in Krsna consciousness and with love and devotion render all kinds of services. He should perform some sort of work for Krsna, and that work should be with love. If a devotee is intelligent enough, he will make progress on the path of self-realization. If one is sincere and devoted to the activities of devotional service, the Lord gives him a chance to make progress and ultimately attain to Him." 10.11 purport "There are very, very learned scholars who have put forward the philosophy of devotion, but even if a devotee does not take advantage of their literatures or of his spiritual master, if he is sincere in his devotional service he is helped by Krsna Himself within his heart. So the sincere devotee engaged in Krsna consciousness cannot be without knowledge. The only qualification is that one carry out devotional service in full Krsna consciousness. The modern philosophers think that without discriminating one cannot have pure knowledge. For them this answer is given by the Supreme Lord: those who are engaged in pure devotional service, even though they be without sufficient education and even without sufficient knowledge of the Vedic principles, are still helped by the Supreme God, as stated in this verse." And SP is not supporting speculation over here. So the simple point is anyone who has devotion, will have knowledge no matter what. And who has knowledge is qualified though he may not look so according to traditional way. Well this is not to give an impression that yeah i am a perfect devotee so i have knowledge and i am qualified even though i haven't learned Srutis in a traditional way. In cases of people like me one can see it by comparing them with what predecessors like ramanuja and baladeva have written. If asked i am willing to show that those interpretation of Srutis are in line with ramanuja and baladeva and **are not my mental speculation**. Unfortunately i am quite busy this week but sure in near future[most likely coming week or this weekend] i will get back to the topic of arca murti and brahman svarupa. So in short i would just say, we have krishna and guru both in our house in our proximity if we have gita as it is or any other version. One must offer them all respects and in ones heart worship them as if they were physically present. Just become absorbed in reading these texts in mood of absolute self surrender and meaning will gradually manifests itself. When one does this, one will realize how texts from different scriptures are interconnected and will be able to assimilate the truth with utmost ease by grace of guru and bhagavan. Guru is the commentary or purport and vedic verse is krishna. So yeah if one has gita with bonafide vaishnava commentary in house one should never think he lives alone, rather he lives with Vishnu and Sri Guru. This is how one should think. Svetasvatara Up. VI-23: "Only to that seeker who has supreme devotion to God, and an equal degree of devotion to the spiritual teacher, are the truths of vedas revealed." All glories to Sri Sri Guru and Sri Krishna. Your Servant Always, Sumeet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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