Sri: Srimathe Ramanujaya nama: Dear Sriman Kasturi Rangan, Good to see your post after a(yuga) long time:-) You have lot of questions in your mind and I'm sure there are guys in this forum who would answer your questions on vedas! I'll try to fill the gap in places where others may or may not touch. So,please forgive me if the wordings conveyed different and we can clarify later. I guess you're a cool dude and your posts are always thought provoking. So post your questions daringly. Without questioning knowledge can not expand. Learning is a "continuous and not discrete" process. What caused your faith to decline??? Have you heard of or come across any Chain stores like Wal-Mart selling weed seeds for you to plant weeds? Weeds grow by themselves. Negative thoughts are like weeds. It does not require "any effort" on our part to grow/nourish them. On the other hand,positive thoughts require effort. For the moment let us keep aside "nirhEtuka krpa" and "sahEtuka krpa". We had series of posts on this topic with lot of mis communication among the bhAgavathAs! Do you think of yourself as mUrkha for your thought "na devo narayaNaat para:" or something else? We can not have emotions without first having thoughts. There is "conscious" and "sub- conscious" mind. What happens when we are wide awake and when we are in deep sleep or a dreamy state? You just think over it and you yourself will realize certain things. Subconscious mind accepts everything the conscious mind is thinking good or bad. In 24 hours time,we spend most of our time "talking" to our-selves. All other interactions like talking to a friend or parents or boss or husband or wife and so on would occupy less time. Sub conscious mind will use all its available resources to actualize what it believes. Mind can't think two thoughts at once. I personally do not buy Sigmund Freud's views but I go for Carl Jung's analytical psychology. I would say that Freud was pessimistic while Jung was highly optimistic. There is a link between subconscious and conscious mind. Whatever the conscious mind thinks has an effect on the subconscious mind and keeps reverting back and forth. Have you come across some depressed people who are sane academically? I have and I tell them straight on their face that if they are going to be like this(saying all negative things)I'mnot going to be in their viscinity. There is something called "association". We need/ought to associatie with people who think positively. Then the thoughts get registered in the subconsicuos mind and keeps reflecting and the conscious mind think positively all the time. Otherwise there will be ocntradictions between the subconscious and the conscious mind and that's where the person becomes confused and slowly it leads to all kinds of complications. How do you think guys get into smoking or durgs etc? It's all mainly because of association. If you're in the wrong company,your life takes a detour and don't even know where you're heading towards(what goal in life). Do we really need to make an "effort" to develop good thinkings/character? I will disprove it straight based on my personal experience. People's experiences could be different and hence I can not convince people about "nirhEtuka krpa". If they want to believe in it,well and good. If not that's equally good too! Like you,I come from a staunch TK family. I was(am and will)a steady and staunch believer in Sriman Narayana only. Although my first Lord is Ramanauja,and having been isolated from a divya desam like Tiru allikkENi,I was deprived of bhagavad viShyam. My father being a true believer in "nirhEtuka krpa" never forced any of us to learn "mandatorily" the rahasyams or any other TK sampradayam works. I started learning all these since last year. Initially when I started reading SVB,I was thinking why the Lord has to shower His grace on me so late to learn all these things. Why couldn't He have given me this knowledge say a decade ago(there was no dearth for my unwavering faith in Ramanuja). This is where the younger brother Sri azhagiya maNavALa perumAL NAyanAr's AcArya Hrdhayam comes to the rescue of Sri Vacana BhuShaNam of Sri PiLLai lOkAcArya. I should not say but the reading of these two works give me immense pleasure! "Time(sudarshana chakra handled by the Lord and He knows when to use it on us)" has to be ripe for certain things to happen. I take an interest in vedas only when either nAlAyira divya prabandham or Sriman Narayana's authority is at stake during discussion times. Only from that angle I ask "authentic" people to supply me information or I myself go to library to check out and if it confuses me I get in touch with fellow bhAgavathAs to clarify my doubts. As far I remember,according to Rg veda,agni is the lowest God and ViShNu is the highest God for worshipping. No one can go against puruSha sUktam which appears in all the four vedas. The puruSha,who is responsible for creation,sustentation and destruction of this Universe refers to none but Sriman Narayana! Vedas do not talk about only Sriman Narayana(unlike NDP)but lot of other unwanted stuffs. That's why it confuses people I guess! Anyways it is divided as karma and brahma kANdam. I have heard that according emperumAnAr's commentary karma kANdam is a pre- requisite for brahma kANdam. Karma kANdam deals withh the ritualistic part like chanting. These chantings have to come from lower abdomen and women being child bearers are not suited for it! It is no big deal to convince people along these lines(physiologically). If karma kANdam in not a pre-requisite then we are faced with the question: "how can the vedas say that "women and shudras" are not eligible". Once dear Sriman lakshmi Narasimhan(active member of this forum and now most of the active members are sleeping and thanks to Sri TCA Venkatesan's posts on TirupaLLiezhucci,which wakes us up too besides Lord SriRanganatha) said that the actual purpose of learning the vedas is to develop "dasyam/seshatvam". Since women and shudras already have that trait,they don't or need not go for learning while the other three varNa lack this and hence there is a need for them to undergo this vedic study. I told him it makes sense to me! Vedas are ocean. There are so many things said. Are you sure you're not reading some unwanted or less knowledgeable stuffs (smahitas or whatever)and getting confused with the right stuff (Sriman Narayana as paramAtmA)? After we finish our batchelors we think we know everything. After the masters,we think we know something and after phd we (should)think we know nothing! Why? Because the knowledge/realization dawns that "knowledge is like an ocean and what we have learnt is not even equal to a droplet". In batchelors we learn little of everything and hence we think we know everything while in phd we choose one particular topic(a droplet) and we study in detail. I'm sure some bhAgavathAs would answer your queries. I wanted to share with you what little I know. The word vedas are used in general. It is actually called samskrt veda which means it is not the ONLY vedam. There could be another(thamizh) vedam. That's "drAvida veda sAgaram" NDP. Whatever is not clear in samskrt veda is "crystal clear" in NDP. That's the superiority and the greatness of NDP over samskrt vedas! Forgive me for all my blabberings,incoherence of thoughts and lengthy post. Best Regards AzhvAr emperumAnAr jIyar thiruvadigaLE sharaNam NC Nappinnai
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