Theos-Talk Archives (August 2008 Message tt00063)

Dear Daniel,

I just read you post, which reposted a message from three years ago.
First of all let me say that I am glad to hear from you again after a
long hiatus. 

Many things have happened in the last three years and life has made me
busier. I have just come back from Brazil where my wife and I gave an
intensive course at the Brasilia Theosophical Institute on N. Sri
Ram's book "Seeking Wisdom". After that we went to my hometown, Porto
Alegre, to visit my father who is suffering from pulmonary fibrosis.
We are now back in Sydney were there are a lot of things to do.

When one reads the archives of this list, impeccably kept by Eldon, it
looks like theos-talk is like a battlefied on which several "wars"
have been fought: the Leadbeater wars, the HPB Letters wars and,
recently, the God war. Personally, I don't think the list (or the
posters) should necessarily be proud about some of the things which
were posted here in the past. Perhaps there is a sense in which the
intellectual dabate loses its meaning when courtesy and consideration
go out of the window.

The Sanskrit word "kuru" denotes, among other things, according to the
 Monier-Monier Williams Sanskrit-English dictionary, "probably a
country beyond the most northern range of the Himalaya, often
described as a country of everlasting happiness." However, the word
"kurukshetra" in the Indian tradition is associated with the
background scenario - a battlefield - for the teaching of the Bhagavad
Gita.

There may be many aspiring "Arjunas" on this list, sincere seekers
after Divine Wisdom, but it seems to me that one of the important
questions is: where is Krishna? Is he not Theosophy, Divine Wisdom
itself? Are we losing sight of Krishna in our sometimes feverish
attempts to "prove" someone wrong? Shouldn't we become more concerned
with wisdom than knowledge, or, to put it differently, learn to see
knowledge in its right perspective? These are some of the things that
occupy my mind at the moment. 

When I was in India, some thirteen years ago, I read a review about a
book with a very interesting title: "Hinabharata". The author
contrasted the epic and cosmic dimensions of the Mahabharata - The
Great War - which  presents great universal truths in a kinectic form,
with the now mostly universal humdrum of daily life, in which we fight
"hinabharata-s" or smaller, petty wars, the majority of which are
fuelled and caused by the personal self and its contradictions.

Is theos-talk a kurukshetra or a hinabharata?

Let me end this rather long rambling with a quote from an an early
Theosophist that has crossed all the divides in the movement: T. Subba
Row. I think that his words can take us closer to the real country of
the "kurus", "a country beyond the most northern range of the
Himalaya, often described as a country of everlasting happiness":     


"Let us then each take the solution that best suits our mental and
spiritual constitution, and let us leave our neighbours an equal
freedom of choice; let us never hesitate to state and defend our own
views and oppose those other views that we think wrong, but let us do
all this as we would defend our own and oppose our opponent´s game at
chess, with no more feeling against our opponents than we have against
an adversary at the noble game. 

Above all let us remember that in this present life, the high
theoretical questions of Personal, Impersonal, and No-God, are of less
concern to us than our own everyday life about the right conduct of
which no similar difficulties exist."

(Subba Row, T., Esoteric Writings, Theosophical Publishing House,
Madras, 1931, p.457.)


with every good wish,

Pedro