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 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger http://im.yahoo.com
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