One of the decrees of our Acharyas based on shastraic edicts is that women must not vocalise the pranava. Instead they should say um. The elucidation of the pranava which runs into days of discouses begins with splitting it into a,u, and m. A stands for Vishnu m for the individual soul, jeevathma and the middle u for acharyan and/or Lakshmi. When women say um they are deprived of the benefits of enunciating the very essential a in the pranava. Why this inequity? As far as individual souls are concerned the sex doesn't matter. The jeevatma is sexless. It is the prarabdha that determines what type of body the soul is going to inhabit, but by itself it is neither male nor female. That being so why cant the soul in the female shell say the pranava? In one interpretattion all souls are females and Purushottama is the only male, in which case all of us should be saying um. Once Nanjeeyar asked Bhattar whether Lakshmi had done the correct thing by ascending on to Narayana's chest admist all the males at the end of the episode of churning of the ocean of milk. As the First Lady (nareenam utthama vadhuh) so to say, she did not feel shy to get attached to Narayana so publicly. To this Bhattar replied in his classic style. Why should she be ashamed when she was going to the only male present. A lady may feel shy when in company of males but when the whole gathering is female she need not feel ashamed. A surprised Nanjeeyar asked what about the 33 crores of devas and the far more numerous asuras. Bhattar's unforgettable reply was that as far as Narayana is concerned He is the only male and all jivatmas are female whether they be the denizens of heavens, earth or the nether worlds. I humbly request some enlightened soul to explain this conundrum. Dr.S.Sundar Rajan, Trichy ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SriRangaSri/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SriRangaSri/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:SriRangaSri-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx mailto:SriRangaSri-fullfeatured@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: SriRangaSri-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
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