Forwarded message [serious doubt]

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Shrisha Rao

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Cc: " Meera Tadipatri " <mtadipatri; <shrao

Thursday, November 21, 2002 10:08 PM

Re: serious doubt

 

 

Could you please forward this to the VMS list? I am not having any

luck trying to post it myself. -- SR

 

> , " Prasanna Kovalam " <kovalamp@t...>

> wrote:

> dear

> all,

>

> i read the indian website www.sulekha.com regularly. today i was

> browsing

> through the articles section and saw an article " An Indo-

> American

> Perspective on Dalit Lynching " by Renu S.Malhotra. It was a good

> article

> but

> in the end, i saw a quote which really puzzled me. I reproduce it as

> follows:

>

>

> " Only the Advait Vedantic Hindu concept of cultural unity with full

> freedom to

> worship in our chosen ways can give our trouble world even a

> semblance of

> Peace. "

>

> Does this statement seem to imply that Dvaita is universally opposed

> to

> peace and it doesn't give the full freedom to worship in their chosen

> ways.

 

Several issues arise -- chiefly, does the author of the quote really

mean to badmouth all traditions except one? If so, virtually the whole

world except for a small segment of it would take umbrage. Also

considering the extreme unlikelihood that the rest of the world will

convert en masse to adherents of Advaita, the observation is

impractical as well. One might as well suggest grabbing the moon as a

means for world peace.

 

The notion that Advaita is somehow a goody-goody tradition filled with

roses is neo-Vedantic hogwash. The traditional Advaita taught by

Sankara is in fact as strait-laced as any other tradition. We just

have to note that Sankara decrees that j~nAna (spiritual knowledge) is

only for male brahmin sanyAsI-s, and for none others. Ramanuja does

not completely disagree with this but offers the solution of

sharaNAgati/prapatti (surrender) to those not qualified for j~nAna

(though under his system it remains an open question how meaningful

surrender is given ignorance). It is only Madhva who states that

j~nAna is for all sincere seekers regardless of their stations in life

-- every seeker obtains as much of it as (s)he is capable of,

regardless of birth or gender, and even karma, which is of myriad

variation, is ultimately a tool for j~nAna, not otherwise. If one

thinks about it, the last position is actually the one that deprives

none and thus has a better claim to cogency.

 

It also passeth all understanding how having the freedom to worship

would, ipso facto, " give our troubled world even a semblance of Peace. "

Men riot for food, for land, for status or for other rights, even when

they are free to worship as they may. Evil ones repress or hurt

others, even those who worship as they do, because of their greed for

such mundane ends. How then would freedom of worship alone cause peace?

 

I do not follow sulekha.com myself (who has the time?) save in those

rare instances when someone suggests an article to read. I thus have

no notion of whether the given quote represents the standard for

writings in that forum. However, be as it may, a certain degree of

skepticism that informs one's perceptions is certainly warranted. The

old adage of " do not believe everything you read " is certainly no less

true in the information age as it was for our ancestors.

 

> I am

> asking what the truth is because I am only 16 and I have a very small

> knowledge of the

> basics (I have just started reading the Cardinal Doctrines

> of Madhva by

> Shanbag).

> Yours Sincerely

>

> Prasanna Kovalam

>

> P.S: I cannot post to dvaita.org

> website so if anyone wants to continue this

> conversation there, they can post it.

 

It is not a good idea to port threads of discussion in this fashion.

Doing so causes confusion and is not fair to readers of either forum.

 

Regards,

 

Shrisha Rao