Guest guest Posted July 9, 2006 Report Share Posted July 9, 2006 Glad Sabarimala Ayappa has reacted when Lord Venkateshwara is going to react - Maybe it is already too late.. To walk from Venkateshwara Guest house to temple is totally unsafe without male escort. One hear all sort of vulger comments. This no society can put up that too in temple's vicinity. I was told that some guest houses are rented forshady and illegal purpose - I donot know how far it is true. POLITICES ENTERS EVEN IN RELIGIOUS PREMISIS. May I add this - it is my reading why no prayer's are offered on those days(mensuration) or WHEN SOMEONE IS WOUNDED. Blood is associated with injury or open wound. In olden days, it is believed that AUSURIC spirit can easy pass through OPEN wound or during mensuation. Whether it is superstitious or fact I donot know. Even in Temple Kamakya those 3 days Devi's temple door remain closed. IT IS BELIeVED THAT IT IS ONE OF THE SHAKTI PEETAM WHERE HER FEMALE ORGAN FELL. I am not bringing religion - Our hindu culture has incorporated all religion - they go out of the way to say to devotees not to get converted - this I heard Shankaracharya in 1983 and amma says the same - ramakrishna said the same. What they mean is that God is ONE - even by thinking jesus or allah one can chant any slokas. It will have same effect. Hope, other' religion also come forward and embrace all as one. This will make world much happier place. After all we are only temporary guest in this life. It is easily said than done - but atleast consciously we can try. raji.. July 1, 2006: When I first read about the "outrage" of Sabarimala, my initial reaction was one of astonishment. As far as I could tell, what had happened was this: it was alleged that 18 years ago, a woman had breached the temple's security and got within touching distance of the idol of Lord Ayappa and might have (shock! horror! gasp!) placed her feminine fingers on the deity. The woman had confessed to the deed (or not; the story changes from day to day) and accused one of the priests of assisting her in committing this mortal sin. Aforementioned pujari had hotly denied this terrible allegation but the temple authorities believed that he was bluffing because (and I swear I am not making this up) an astrologer had discovered that the poor, dear deity was disturbed and this could only be because a naughty girl had touched him. The temple authorities were now drawing up an action plan to purify the site so that no traces of the accursed female presence of nearly two decades ago remained. Whew! Now, I'm not the sort of man who gets too self-righteous about the perceived lack of logic of all religious belief or the kind of guy who regards the traditions surrounding places of worship as necessarily irrational or idiotic. I've been known to wear a Ganesh locket; I turn vegetarian on Tuesdays; am happy to queue up outside Bombay's Siddhi Vinayak temple; have made the trek to Tirupati twice; and feel guilty if I pass through Fatehpur Sikri or Ajmer without paying my respects at the dargahs of Salim Chisti and Moinuddin. In fact, my mother even claims that I was conceived in response to a mannat at the Fatehpur Sikri dargah. So, I quite readily accept that faith cannot be judged on the basis of rationality and science. But something about the Sabarimala story strikes me as deeply offensive. Part of it is the credulousness of the media. Nearly all newspapers (and I do not exclude the HT) have been eager and willing to buy into the temple's line that the mere suggestion of a female presence in the sanctum sanctorum constitutes a terrible outrage. And part of it is my anger at what I have always seen as the regressive streak in all religions, including Hinduism. We can kid ourselves into believing that the furore is about Ayappa's bachelor status (so fragile, apparently, that it was threatened when a woman touched his idol). But the truth is that it is about the primitive notion that the bodily functions of women are unclean. The injunction against women extends to those between the ages of ten and fifty. In real terms this means: women who menstruate. Children are okay. Menopausal ladies are fine. But any woman whose ovaries are in working order and whose womb is still in operational condition is to be regarded as dirty. It is an injunction that we come up against in many of the world's great religions though, of course, it is usually expressed more subtly. Why is it that a menstruating woman is not supposed to enter a Hindu temple? Why can she not take part in a puja, even within the sanctity of her own home if she has her period? Why does the ability to give birth demote a woman's moral credentials? Why do we worship the Kumari in Hinduism? Why is it so important that the most important female character in the New Testament should be portrayed as a virgin? (In contrast, the sexually active Mary Magdalene is written off as a whore.) You need only to observe the bizarre ritual of the living goddess in Nepal to understand how twisted Hinduism's take on a woman's reproductive powers can be. Each year, a pre-pubescent girl is selected as a living goddess and venerated till she reaches puberty. Once she is menstrual, she is cast aside and condemned to live a sad, neglected life. Some former living goddesses end up begging. Some sell their bodies. I cannot believe that any intelligent, educated man (let alone woman) can respect this notion that menstruation -- and the reproductive ability it symbolises -- is unclean and accept that the mere touch of a menstruating woman can desecrate a holy shine. So why does nobody tell the Sabarimala trustees where to get off? Why do we so faithfully reproduce their regressive, primitive nonsense about restoring the sanctity of the temple? Why don't we go in there and drag them, kicking and chanting, into the 21st century? I think you know the answer as well as I do. In today's India, we have come to confuse secularism with a respect for the most regressive traits in every religion. Each time there is a conflict between what we see as religious tolerance and some basic liberal value -- free speech, gender equality or anything else -- we choose "religious tolerance." In the beginning, this secular suspension of liberalism extended only to minorities and especially to the Muslims. Whenever there was an issue that involved, say, gender rights, we ignored all our traditional values and plumbed unhesitatingly for what we saw as the Muslim position. Take the Shahbano case. In the beginning, when we first read about the manner in which Muslim men sought to be exempted from the normal provisions about paying maintenance to their wives, we were outraged. But barely had the outrage sunk in when a second, more powerful emotion took over. We learnt that Muslims treated judgments about alimony as an interference in the practice of their ancient religion. Almost at once, we abandoned our liberal principles and embraced the mantra of mindless secularism: if the Muslim community believes that, we said, then it must be okay. A similar knee-jerk response overrode our normal pro-free speech reaction to The Satanic Verses. Few of us had read the book; none of the people who rioted in the streets were likely to read it anyway. But the moment we heard that Muslims were offended, we resisted the urge to say the right thing. (Which is? Well, in my view we should have said: "If you are so offended, don't read the damn thing, but don't deny the rest of us the right to read it.") Instead, we quickly supported a ban. That misplaced respect for minority religious sentiments exists to this day. Some of us were outraged when a minister in Mulayam Singh Yadav's UP government offered a reward for the head of the Danish cartoonist who drew the Prophet. But most of us decided that it was best to let this thug get away with an incitement to murder; after all, minority sentiments were involved. Even now, we shy away from any reform of Muslim Personal Law which has many provisions that are clearly gender discriminatory. (Why should a Muslim man be allowed to have four wives if a Muslim woman can't have four husbands?) We don't approve of the regressive laws, of course, but our secularism stuns us into silence. Sadly, the Christians, once regarded as India's best-educated minority, have now taken to exploiting our misplaced belief that all religious issues are best left alone. I find it truly shocking that so many state governments have banned The Da Vinci Code -- a film that ran to packed houses in Christian countries in the West -- on the grounds that a few crackpots have agitated against it. Most disturbing is how little indignation this blatant abridgement of free speech has provoked. As usual, we have told ourselves that if it involves religion, then it is best to keep our mouths shut. If the BJP, with all its diatribes against pseudo-secularism, achieved anything it was that we extended this misbegotten tolerance for religious bigotry across minorities and to Hinduism itself. Thank LK Advani for teaching us what pseudo-majorityism means. It means that any scholarly work that considers whether Vedic Aryans ate beef is to be condemned. It means that a bogus Saraswati civilisation has to be invented to cover-up the non-Hindu Indus Valley Civilisation. It means that assorted sangh parivar-ists (a trend started by the late Vijayaraje Scindia) will sing the praises of sati. And, eventually, it means that Hinduism will get official sanction to regress several centuries. In fact, history has taught us that no religion can be static, that it must adapt and evolve to changing times. Hinduism is a living example of that truth. Had reformers like Dayanand Saraswati and Swami Vivekananda not pushed for change, Hinduism would never have taken the form it has today. Had the British not banned child marriage and criminalised sati, we would still be living in the Middle Ages. Our unquestioning acceptance of the sexist abomination that is the so-called "desecration" of Sabarimala shows how far we have travelled from the path of reform. Our fuzzy, confused secularism and respect for all religions has led to bizarre political correctness ("Sabarimala is okay because Dalits are allowed" -- how loathsome, shameful and pathetic is that argument?) But any fair society cannot be based on an acceptance of sexism or prejudice. It must be based on strong liberal principles. The challenge before us is to reform religion so that it respects those principles. If we abandon our values in the face of religious prejudice, then we will have failed -- as a society, as a nation, and as human beings. SOURCE: The Hindustan Times. Counterpoint by Vir Sanghvi URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1733357,00300001.htm Fri Jul 7, 2006 4:24 pm Show Message Info -- #23063 of 23088 Msg List <Prev | Next> View Source Use Fixed Width Font Unwrap Lines -- "Devi Bhakta" <devi_bhakta devi_bhakta Offline Send Email Invite to 360° Forward < Prev Message | Next Message > Expand Messages Author Sort by Date Keeping the Faith, Losing Our Religion July 1, 2006: When I first read about the "outrage" of Sabarimala, my initial reaction was one of astonishment. As far as I could tell, what had happened was... Devi Bhakta devi_bhakta Jul 7, 2006 4:27 pm Re: Keeping the Faith, Losing Our Religion ..... I don´t care to comment about the rest of the story but that the Kumari is "cast away" or "condemmend to live a sad neglected life" and that some sell... mahahradanatha Jul 7, 2006 5:18 pm Re: Keeping the Faith, Losing Our Religion Good article! I mistakenly thought that it was written by our own Devi Bhakta... I recall reading a similar accusation of ritual impurity accused of a female... Len Rosenberg kalipadma108 Jul 7, 2006 11:31 pm < Prev Topic | Next Topic > Message # Search: Advanced Start Topic -- 2006 Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy - Copyright/IP Policy - Terms of Service - Guidelines - Help >"Devi Bhakta" <devi_bhakta > > > > Re: LalithA SahasranAma [918] >caitanyArghyasamArAdhyA >Sun, 18 Jun 2006 04:09:18 -0000 > >She is propitiated with the offering of caitanya [i.e., AtmA, the >individual soul] as arghya [i.e., holy water]. > >In other words, She is to be worshiped by concentrating on the unity >of the devotee's individual AtmA with Her. > >- Dr. C. Suryanarayana Murthy, Commentary on the Sri Lalita >Sahasranama, 1962 > > > >, "NMadasamy" ><ashwini_puralasamy wrote: > > > > > > caitanyArghyasamArAdhyA : Worshipped with consciousness as the oblation. > > > > Caitanya [ the cidrUpa] : The Siva-sUtra [i. 1] says, "Caitanya is the > > Self". Arghya, water, etc. used in the worship. The meaning is the > > NirAdhAra [supportless] worship is the nature of meditating on the > > non-duality of consciousness. The BhAvanA Up.[10] :'Wisdom is arghya". > > The SU-sam [i.5.19} : becomes oneself by one's own spiritual > > experience. That worship alone confers salvation." > > > > Or, caitanya, the self, arghya, wisdom, that in his own spiritual > > experience. The Visva says, "Arghya [masc.] means water, etc, used in > > worship, knowledge, root of a tree"; or arghya a vidyA, a mantra > > belonging to the female deity called Caitanya, that is, the > > Bhuvanesvari -mantra, samArAdhyA worshipped [by means of the above > > mantra]. It is said "The mantras belonging to the female deities are > > called vidyAs, those belonging to the male deities are called mantras" > > The SU-sam. {IV 42. 52], "By repeating the Caitanya-mantra ten > > thousand times, he is released from the multitude of great sins as > > well as from other sins" Here the commentator explains that the > > Caitanyamantra is the Bhuvanesvari-mantra. > > > > Or caitanya, the essence of the wisdom. The Visva says, "CetanA means > > wisdom...." The RudrayAmala says, "Of wisdom and mead, wisdom is the > > better" > > > > > > BhAskararAya's Commentary > > Translated into English by R. Ananthakrishna Sastry. > > > > Lalitha Sahasranama with commentaries now in SS homepage. See link > > http://shaktisadhana.50megs.com/Newhomepage/sadhana/Commentaries.html > > > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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