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Ramanuja List Archive: Message 00001 Sep 2001

 
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srImathE rAmanujAya namah,

dear bhAgavathAs,

srI. guNaseelan venkatAchAry wrote

>It means that we are also following SAstras
> for doing our karma and
> only inthe case of Bhagavan's Kaimkaryam we do
> consider all are same.

Here is adiyEn's view on that - by no means am
I erudite/learned, but this is what I have seen/
learnt/deduced from elders..

there is a dichotomy in the practices that we
follow - karma , varnAshrama dharma and
other associated, traditionally brahminical
concepts are definitely not in consonance with
what our AzhvArs/religion says - after all, if perumAL
is so kind, then why all this differentiation, 
why should there be this karma stranglehold on
anyone? why this dependence on birth for many
things?

our salvation seems to be differnt from our
real life - perumAL is our salvation - but,
in real life, we seem to be bound by age old
traditions - in many cases we may not even
know the origin of those, but we just follow them
as somone attributes them to some sruthi/smriti, and
we, not knowing what the sruthi/smriti is, 
accept the practice and propagate it.

As a community, we do a good job of talking 
a good talk - all bhAgavathAs are equal,
thirumangai AzhvAr says that anyone who is not
an advEshi towards perumAL is a bhAgavathA and
all the associated "good things" to say, but
when it comes to real practice, we, especially
those born in "brahmin" families, tend to follow
the age-old discriminatory practices - after all,
in how many temples do we allow non-brahmin
bhAgavathAs to be a part of the gOshti, let alone
talk of bringing them to our home and eat with us.
And even among "brahmin srIvaishNavAs", many 
people will not eat in front of all "brahmin
srIvaishNavAs" for whatever reason.

One other thing we need to keep in mind is the
difference between the rituals and religion -
all of the rituals (srArdha etc..) are common to
all brahmins (vEdics??) - our AchAryAs tried to
modify some of thsoe rituals to make it more
in accordance with the religion, but went only
half-way due to whatever reason - even to this
day, there are tons of differences among
srIvaishNava families as to how they conduct
certain rituals - these can be traced generally
to the sect of brahmins that these families
originate from, as well as the adaptation of 
local customs wherever these families settled.

coming to your specific question about srArddha,
the version we perform is the common brahmin
custom, and it necessitates the presence of
a brahmin - our AchAryAs have tried to modify
that a little bit, started calling it thiru
adhyayanam, and introduced the practice of offering
amsai, taking srIpAdha theerhtam from our
AzhvAr AchAryAs on that day also - but, obviously,
did not go all the way in taking out the caste
of the person out of the equation for whatever
reason that we do not know. It is interesting
to see that even to this day, in some srIvaishNAva
families, they do not take srIpAda theertham from
AzhvArs during that day, and many people 
quote different reasons for that -

adiyEn madhurakavi dAsan,
Varadhan


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