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Original Message -----
Sent:
Tuesday, December 09, 2008 3:48 PM
Subject:
Re: [Oppiliappan] Cost of srardham
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@xxxxxxxxxxx> 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
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Oppiliappan Koil Varadachari Sadagopan
http://www.sadagopan.org
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