Questions about sabda

[Guest guest]

Dear devotees! Please accept my humble obeisances.

 

I have some philosophical questions about the sabda-pramana as the only reliable source of the Absolute Truth. The sabda covers the sadhu, sastra and guru.

1. If I ask that "How could I decide whether something is bona fide or not?", I get the answer "According to sadhu, sastra, and guru." It is further explained that sadhu who is verified by the sastras and gurus (thus we know that Vamsidas Babaji Maharaja was a sadhu despite their smoking)*; sastra what is verified by sadhus and gurus (thus we accept Caitanya Upanisad as a sastra, and not as a fake, while Tattvavadis think that's a fake)*, and gurus are verified by the sadhu and sastra (because sadhus and sastras determine the gurus external and internal qualities - nowadays we only know the external qualities, and not the internals (at least in ISKCON), and thus we use another method: guru is someone who is said to be guru by another guru...

Is it not a vicious circle, or rather many of it, considered as a wrong method in philosophy?

2. Is it guaranteed that the sources of sastra remained clean through the millennia? What if someone wrote in something, or wrote new sastras (as Mayavadis think about Srimad-Bhagavatam)* in order to become famous or have followers or whatever reasons? What if the inwriter was one of our sadhus, who exhibited the external qualities of a sadhu according to the sastra, and was accepted as a guru/sadhu by the contemporary gurus/sadhus, and even his disciples thought that the sastra is as their master explained/wrote?

Or what if the caste brahmanas overwrote them (they had thousand and thousand years to do so) to establish their power - and wrote false statements in them because they thought them true (for example the thunder as Indra's weapon, or the Sun nearer to Earth than Moon).

3. What is the difference between a sadhu and a guru? One who is a sadhu was a guru at that time, and considered as a siksa guru for now.

 

Although I didn't know English perfectly, I hope that my questions became understandable. I am eagerly waiting the answers written by those eho have more knowledge than me.

 

Thank you

Chanahari

 

*These examples are directly chosen as the most extreme cases, and only meant for example. I'm not Tattvavadi nor Mayavadi, and my situation doesn't allow me to judge Vamsidas' or anyone else's state.