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Ramanuja List Archive: Message 00034 Jul 2003

 
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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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