Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00157)

hi

seems there is a lot of misconceptions about sankaracharya !

there were times, when people who claimed to be rational started spitting
venom, on him, his ashram and his followers - There were times, in my school
days, when I was called '...' by the so called rational people - people with
the sixth sense, according to them, conveniently, for political gains, b'cos
i followed the teachings of sankaracharya !

These 'rational scholars' were atheists - but, without understanding what
spirituality was all about, they said it was wrong & persons like
sankaracharya were using it to deceive people ! One guy even ventured to
ask 'c'mon, buddy, show me Lord Vishnu, I will start believing in God - till
then, I will not & nor will I allow anyone else to'.

This was the time, when Sankaracharya spoke out that it was absolutely at
the discretion of the people whether or not to believe in God & one has not
ought to make comments about something, without understanding the essence of
it, if at all, he is rational. Nothing like - pouring hot molten metal into
the mouth...' , as put by someone.

Please understand the life of the saint, before making such sweeping
statements.

Raghu Seshadri.

-----Original Message-----
From: stevestubbs [mailto:stevestubbs@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 4:24 AM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Theos-World Re: High esteem or arrogance ??


--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "arielaretziel"
<arielaretziel@y...> wrote:
> I would like to have the exact reference and quote where Sankara
> actually say this. Sounds like another crazy "internet story" like
> the ones we here from Netenara and Frank all the time.

Nope. I studied Sankara many years ago before I ever heard of the
Internet. His sadhana catustaya was one of the great discoveries of
my life, but I was disturbed by some of the other things and was not
comfortable with him. Some of these issues were philiosophical (the
objective idealism of Samkhya seems more true or at least more
acceptable than his subjective idealism) and some of them were
comments such as the one cited. He was quite a controversial
character during his lifetime. It is possible that some of the
disturbing things I have read were canards spread by his enemies (and
he did have enemies) but the nature of them is such that they would
have been representative of the time in which he lived. I think an
enemy would have concocted a different story, in other words.
Anyway, Patanjali and the underlying philosophy of Kapila which
supplies the theoretical unbderpinning for Patanjali's system, were
just more palatable to me. Part of that is, we do not know anything
about Patanjali except for the name and the content of his book,
which is arguably the premier work on yoga ever written. Since we
know nothing about him, it is impossible for any warts he may have
had to sully our appreciation of his masterpiece. Maybe it is just a
question of individual taste, who knows?

Anyway, there are scholarly books on Sankara and you can read all
about him if you choose. Many of his works have also been
translated, especially his BRAHMA SUTRAS (also known as the VEDANTA
SUTRAS), etc.

I try not to spread "crazy" stuff unless I am in a joking mood.





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