Dear swamin,
I can understand your pain. But, no where it is compelled
that we should go beyond our limits and perform these rituals. As you have
taken pain to calculate the amount to do shraddham, you can take a bit more
pain to read Ramayanam to know how Shri Rama did "pinda pradhanam" to
dasharatha, when he was in "aranya vasa". I feel, your thought is a
direct result of "performing rituals without understanding the meaning and
purpose behind that".
While we should condemn those
Bruhaspathis who perform these rituals for the sake of money, we should
even more condemn those who are the reeal "karthas" (responsible doer) but who
want to just perform these rituals without knowing the meaning and purpose of
these rituals and end up blaming the Bruhaspathis.
Because, it is
nowhere mentioned in our shastras (as far as i know) that we should go beyond
our limits to perform these rituals, skipping shraddham itself is not a
sollution. But, we should try to understand the meaning and purpose of
the ritual and then find a way out to perfrom these rituals within our
limits.
If you want to *really* feed 25 mouths every year, i have a
better idea. We can skip one lunch every week. By this we will save 52 lunch
in a year which can feed 52 mouths every year (and not just 25). But, lets
do our rituals within our limits and also with an understanding of the meaning
and the purpose of the rituals.
I apologize if you find any of my
views offensive.
With humble pranamas,
harsha simha
On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 2:19 PM, kochappaa
<kochappaa@yahoo.co.in>
wrote:
Respected swamins,
I want to share a haunting thought of mine. I am a
retired middle
class pensioner in Banglaore. For the past 3 or so years
I find
things are becoming very costly for doing annual pitru srardhams.
The charges are like this: Rs.650 for Bruhaspathi + small coins
Rs.50, Rs.600 for 2 swmingals, Rs.700 for thaligai swami and the
provisions Rs. 600. Thus the total cost of a srardham is Rs.2600. I
have to do two per year and arrange for the srardham of my poor
sister who passed away. Many middle class bramins must be facing
this kind of music. Can any middle class person can afford such
costs? Whether any other people from other religion or even other
caste people would spend like this annually on remembering the
departed souls? Rs.500 if donated to an orphanate or oldage home
would feed atleast 25 mouths. Where is our sect heading towards. I
am sure that unless our sect wakes up and rationalise and regulate
these fleecing bruhaspathis, the whole custom of peforming such
rites would quickly vanish. It is time, our mutts start some
registered body where they should register these bruhaspahtis and
swamins and fix reasonable tariff also.
adiyen
Kochappaa