Guest guest Posted December 15, 2009 Report Share Posted December 15, 2009 ayyappa kamalanathan <ayyappa_kamalaHellopara_anulomaDate: Tuesday, December 15, 2009, 4:24 AM Dear Sreeraam Anna, Are non-initiates allowed to chant Soundaryalahari? Becoz its written by Sri Adi Shankara and most of His stotras have no restrictions. Also, some say that mere parayana without the prayogas is acceptable for non-initiates. Is it true? Are non-initiates allowed to chant only chapter 4 and 11 of Devi Mahatmyam without the poorva bhagas like Kavacha and Uttara bhagas? (as in just start reading the first verse of Chap 4/11 and stop at the last verse of Chap 4/11) Are non-initiates allowed to chant Sri Durga Sahasranamam which begins with "Om Shree Durga Trijaganmatha Srimath Kailaasavaasini Himaachala kuhaakhaantha Maanikya manimandabaa" and ends with " Badatham shrunvathaam chatra putrabauthrapratham shubam sahasra naamakam shreshtam durgaaya: kaamatham param"? Thank you, Thambi Ayyappa Dear Ayyappa, Ambithame', Devithame', Vedathame'! Shakthithame',Vidhyathame',Guruthame'! Vanakkam! Saundarya Lahiri has not been penned by Adishankara, as if popularly believed. He scribed it from the walls of kAilAshA when He had been there and reproduced it.My GurunAthar confirmed the authenticity of the story and thus I tend to believe this. Thus,he is not technically the author of the verses. Moreover, if you look at Saundarya Lahiri the style of the verses seem far advanced than his rhythmic style.It also gives descriptions of the female beauty which are non-pareil and thus for a Celibate monk, it does seems quite something else to do. Few points to note: 1. Saundarya Lahiri is not some ordinary verse which can be chanted for pleasure or for mundane things. 2. Saundarya Lahiri contains lot of Tantric Beejas,niGuditha arthAs(hidden and cryptical meanings) and also the chandAs(the way it has to be chanted clubbing some words and leaving some) differs. 3. In days of yore ordinary initiates into s'rIvidhyA themselves do not chant Saundarya Lahiri for the fear of negative vibrations.Only after some years of upAsana they used to venture into even chanting Saundarya Lahiri.They call this the "Baking process" 4. For the practice of prayOga-kriyAs one definitely needs initiation.Especially the Gold and other yantras need powerful niyamas to be followed and mind stability. People these days publish books freely(most having lot of printing mistakes). Talk liberally,thinking themselves to be great Yogis in a state of ecstacy and say every damn guy can do it.I know people who drink regularly reading this sacred litany.I know what unfortunate things happened to them after a few years too! Some self-faked Gurus give initiations building unique and neverbeforeheard style temples(the whackier the temple or person,the better the 'kick' for people).I know one 'Guru' who sits in the garbhagruha of his self-styled Devi temple and initiated people over cellphone.He chants a few lines of Lalitha Sahasranama and Saundarya Lahiri and declares the hungry devotees as initiates. All these are frankly charades, eliciting no proper reponse from divinity.Else, by now all these 'initiates' must be blissfully floating in nirvAnic realms as promised by the sthothrAs and mantrAs. It takes years of practice,devotion,discipline,etc for even initiates to even achieve some miniscule portion of the Bliss.This is the hard reality and people dont like bitter pills.They need instant results,fast acting mantras and deities,some titillation in the name of Saundarya Lahiri and other erotic sounding Devi Stotras and the end product is disaster. Many online groups too come with lot of intellecutalizations about the concept of Devi, forgetting that GurubhAva is more important than even DevibhAvA.Only when the GurubhAva preceds then DevibhAva can automatically come. So, with this background information,judge whether Saundarya Lahiri needs initiation or not. Whatever you feel might be right as fas as you are concerned from your perceptive reference frame, is all I can say. Now a days, I have toned down a lot, I used to be aggressive fighting all this.But these are all a waste of my time. My most beautiful experiences with Amba increase day by day and am slowly losing interest in all these arguments.However as per a promise made to my Gurunathar Im still conducting this cozy club for those who want to listen and ready to receive the Love of Divine Mother. What am I? not even the speck of dust falling off Her Divine sandals! This is what I truly feel.Who am I to compare,contrast and judge? "Pasum thangam pudhuvelli maanikyam mani vairam... avai aavum oruthaaikku eedaagumaa..."(Gold,silver,rubies gems and diamonds are these by the kiloes equivalent to Mother?)....".The simple lyrics flow from one song in the neighbourhood as Im typing these lines for you(situational I should say that too at this odd hour!)So, are we really doing enough by any number of stanzas or sthotras, tell me Ayyappa Tambi? Mere surrender to Her feet is enough.... (Let me resume the email after sometime...Im emotional here) (Ok...after the break...) The above song which I mentioned can be seen here on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjUZJs7uSaI Devi Mahathmyam needs minimum navAkshari initiation and also a few lacs(some say 9 lacs) of mantra japA to even start the book.There is no concession given to any few chapters alone anywhere.All these are fabrications of later day enthusiasts. It is a powerhouse of mantras and needs discipline and purity again. Durga Sahasranama might not need initiation. However, a sapthAkshari durgA mantrA initiation when there,would take the sAdhakA to a higher level in durgA upAsanA. As always even the most powerful stotra when chanted wrongly would create havoc.So caution is needed here too to chant it properly. Nowhere, am I trying to sit upon judgment and say: Do this or do not do that.These are merely guideposts... Normally, when there is a great and authentic Guru, it is enough. The Guru would then bend certain rules,eliminate certain rituals,etc to suit the spiritual needs and maturity of the disciple. So, there I come back for the need to have a proper Guru. The more liberality(sexual and monetary mainly) you see with the Guru(unless He is some great avadhuthA in rags on the streets who doesnt care for conventions or have any parmaparic strings attached or can take people's karmas on his head),the more suspicious you must be of Him.(This kind gets good reception from Westerners or Wannabe Westerners-->Indians who fancy themselves to be Westerners and try to act Hip) The more you see a person simply quoting from texts and not showing any real love, you must be wary of such egoistic people and stay away from them.(These kinds get the following of puritanical people,people who come from Brahmin and other higher communities intent on intellectualization and less of service-orientedness.Constantly exercising their brains and thinking that is the be all and end all to divinity and reaching ParAmbikA.) The more you see gasbagging and no quoting at all from texts or minimal knowledge of texts and talking airy things about Divine Mother,love,mushy-mushy things,and all sorts of sweet words(This kind gets the MAXIMUM following these days),the more is the reason to avoid such scums. Keep these with you... A good Guru must have a balance,He must Himself have had lot of experiences,He must truly love you, He must trily love more than anything else His own Guru and Goddess,He must have some scriptural knowledge but not depend on it totally like one moronic parrot repeating the same thing over and over again.It is very rare to get such a Guru.Maybe the tribe is dwindling these days in the face of heavy onslaught of commercialization,fast life and quickfix mentality. Many complain that mantrAs do not work these days: They forget that mantras need a certain incubation and pre-requisite procedures for it to "hatch" Pre-requisite: 1. Abstinence from meat(non-vegetarian food as Indians call),alcohol,smoking,etc. 2. Sexual purity. 3. Sadhanic mind. Incubation: 1. Having a deeksha from an authentic Guru. 2. Having a seva-bhAva towards such an authentic Guru.Many people get initiations from Gurus and run.This is not gold coin to grab and run away.I especially find NRIs who come to my Gurunatha get the initiation and Hey presto! Thats it they vanish from the scene as if the earth had swalloed them! They do not even make a courtesy phonecall to their Gurunathar.Nothing would be achieved in the long-run by such ungrateful people. 3. So this takes us to the next incubatory phase which is Grace of Guru and His/Her Guidance. The following points (4 to 8,most relevant points have been picked from random writings of Pandit Upasaka.) 4. Initiation is not merely "murmuring" of mantra into the ears of the disciple. Knowing the verbal form of a mantra is not everything. During the deeksha process, the Guru should be capable of passing a portion of His/ Her mantraic energy to the disciple as an "account opening balance" to activate the mantraic account. The Guru definitely loses a portion of His/ Her mantraic energy with each initiation, which reverts back to the Guru if the disciple is regular in the mantraic chanting and worship as ordained by the Guru. Even mere command from a competent Guru to chant a mantra (why a command - even mere Glance of a satguru can be a deeksha sometimes) can be a powerful deeksha; while even an elaborate fire Ritual conducted by a person who is not competent (but is perceived as Guru) may not give complete results. Anyway, mantras by their very nature can bestow some power - at least on and off - i.e. sometimes they work and sometimes they don't work sort of power, to anybody who just recites them with abundant faith and devotion (this is the reason why many of us experience that sometimes the mantra seems to give much peace while sometimes it just fails to respond to our urgent calls; we play with the mantraic formalities, and they sometimes play cruel games during emergencies by not responding to us!). 5.Please note that there is a Deity called "Tiraskarinii" (Tiraskarini literally means "One who denies with a screen") who can create illusion in the minds of a person who is not properly initiated in the shri Vidya procedures - just to ensure that no incompetent person attains siddhi of a procedure (this is basically to avoid misuse of the mantraic power; just as nuclear power experiments are always shrouded in mystery, mantraic processes are veiled by different powers who ensure that any person who accidentally comes across such procedures will either forget the procedure or will understand the procedure in a distorted way so that they cannot use the mantra without proper authentication!). 6. Often times when I see empty ego-based debates on mantra shastra matters in forums, when I see persons claiming "right to recite any mantra without any Guru deeksha", when I see persons abusing the concept of Guru tatwaa (in one of the vedic astrology groups, there was a post from a person which said "All Gurus should be dumped into the ocean"!), when I see disciples challenging their Gurus (this happens when the Guru refuses a particular deeksha or mantra thinking that the time has not come for the disciple; immediately some disciples say that prashna will reveal how devoted they are, etc. and take the matter as a personal affront while the Guru is acting on the best interests of the disciple,Many even cunningly take this as a chance to berate brahmin-gurus who do thus and spread the poision of casteism in the name of being cheated or denied due to their caste when nothing is there in the first place), etc.,I cannot but wonder if this is Maataa Tiraskarinii in Her full Form gleefully spreading illusion and deluding the unworthy aspirants along the slippery path of maayaa so that they never come near the Higher Truths that are reserved for the highly deserving aspirants. 7. Attitude of the person doing the mantra If the two earlier steps are correctly followed, the mantra will definitely give effects. But, what sort of effects it will bestow depends to a great extent upon the attitude of the aspirant. To give you an example....take the 73rd slokha of Soundarya Lahiri depicting the breast-feeding of Goddess's milk and its consequence on Lord Ganesha and Lord Subramanya.....if the sankalpam of the aspirant is "wisdom" (Aatma Gnaanaa), this slokha recital can keep a person anchored firmly in Blessed spotless Celibacy and lead the aspirant all the way to BrahmaGnaana which will be ultimately productive of moksha. The same slokha can also be recited for increasing lactation in women/ cows! I mean to say that the same mantra with its same vibration can give different results based on attitude of the aspirant (of course, there are only certain results possible with each mantra which are well-codified by savants of yore). Many of us today lack the "attitude". When I say attitude - it is the resolute attitude towards the practice, complete faith in the process, and an unconditional surrender to Divine Grace with the firm belief that Divine Grace know better what to bestow upon us. Lot many persons "shop" for mantras....shifting from one mantra to another, ultimately losing faith in mantras and even upon themselves which is the greatest tragedy because, the Royal Road of Mantra shastra should take us Higher and Higher, and make us much better persons with supreme confidence stemming from the belief that God will not Forsake us.If all the above factors are perfect, there is absolutely no way that a mantra can fail to give results. The mantra in such cases will start giving results even before the full cycle of rituals are over. 8. Our sages knew of the limitations of this kali yuga where such perfection may not be always possible. That is why they have given sugar-coated pills to us to enable us to digest the incomparable and infinite potency of mantras easily. Various slokhas of saints of yore come under this category which need no initiation whatsoever. While Soundarya Lahiri needs proper initiation from a competent Guru, the other works of Shankaraachaarya like Bhavani Bhujangam, Subhramanya bhujangam, Ganesha Pancharatnam, Shiva panchaakshari sthothram, etc. need no initiation, and yet can be highly powerful in giving results to us. Similarly, Shri Vedaanta Desikan has capture highly potent mantras in beautiful sthothras which can be chanted by anyone (sudarshana mantra needs initiation; but the sudarshana ashtaka by Shri Desikan needs no initiation, and yet it attracts the Grace of Lord Sudarshana). Similarly Shri Vaadhiraajar has left many such wonderful compositions for our benefit.Let us follow the footsteps of those great souls humbly and enjoy the benefits of mantras in the form that suits us. Of course, those of us who can get proper deeksha should strive to get mantra deeksha and live faithfully by the mantra doctrine and get benefitted. Those who are not in a position to be initiated due to any reason should rather benefit by the sthothras without touching the scorching flame of mantra shastra playfully. May Medha Dakshinamoorthi - the JagatGuru guide our intellect. May the Grace of those wonderful souls who have left us wonderful mantraic power loaded sthothras for our easy recital guide us and give us the devotion and faith to chant those sthothras which are our legacy rather than hunting after "advanced" mantraic procedures out of vain ego (Mantraic processes are definitely powerful; but I say "vain ego" because many of us feel sthothras are "basic" and we are above that "level"! Spirituality has no place for such egoistic attitudes.); May we all develop good respect and perfect faith - because Faith is at the root of all miracles, and it is unconditional surrender and Love of God that makes us Divine. Being Divine is every soul's birthright. Let us achieve it the proper way - because there is no short-cut to success in mantra shastra. Let Maataa Tiraskarinii lift the veil of illusion and allow us to step into the Royal Road of mantraic devotion under the guidance of competent Gurus of various traditions. Chidrupini paradevathA!! Yours Yogically, Mythreya Mythreya Sreeraam Ballyhjayappalle «·´`·.(*·.¸(`·.¸ ¸.·´)¸.·*).·´`·» «....Hreem Rajarajeshwari!....» «·´`·.(¸.·*(¸.·´ `·.¸)*·.¸).·´`·» Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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