Download - Jagadguru Shri Adhi Shankara Jayanthi
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http://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2011/05/jagadguru-shri-adhi-shankara-
jayanth.html
Today is JAGADGURU SHRI ADHI SHANKARA JAYANTHI and it is so
unfortunate that the birthday of the avatar who is responsible for expoundingritually, philosophically and spiritually all the nectars of available literature of
Sanathana Dharma passes of as an event unnoticed except for some small
celebrations in the mutts that he has established.
Well, even he would not have advocated or welcomed or bothered about any
celebrations but are we not guilty of our indifference in failing to at least resort
to calendared concerns of the glories of such avatars?
While many in the west have taken pains to study in detail the grand philosophy ofADVAITHA propounded by JAGADGURU SHRI ADHI SHANKARA in their own
usual analytical philosophical approach and have written volumes of excellent
literature praising its greatness, we INDIANs have abysmally failed in even making
our children know who he is?
Fortunately nowadays, thanks to the social media networks and technology there
are many individual souls who feel the necessity to share the greatness of
JAGADGURU SHRI ADHI SHANKARA and do so through many blogs, web sites
and groups. The information and literature provided by these souls are really
voluminous, worthy and welcome and they all will have the secret blessings of the
avathar.
While most these present his works, some through critical analysis and
clarifications for those who would find it difficult to understand his works.
While mentioning about understanding his works I feel there is a basic and huge
difference in the very manifestation philosophy of the East [mostly Indian and
Chinese] and the West. What it is? And why?
What it is?
In the West most of the great philosophical works have very well laid out
analytical, critical, theoretical and carefully and verbal loaded exposition of ideas
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which grips your attention intellectually and clarifies concepts and they are
therefore, undoubtedly the works giant intellects from SOCRATES to SARTRE nad
so on . To put it briefly the western philosophy is the manifestation of ideas of
giant intellectuals. Whereas in the East most of the philosophical works are the
manifestations of spiritual enlightenment emanating from the spiritually
enlightened souls starting from JAGADGURU SHRI ADHI SHANKARA through
BHAGWAN SRI RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA, SWAMI VIVEKANNADA,
SHRI AUROBINDO, SHRI RAMANA MAHARISHI TO SHRI J.KRISHNAMURTHY
TO OSHO TO SRISRI RAVISHANKAR TO SHRI VENKATA PRASANNA
CHATHURVEDI AND MANY MORE. So to evaluate the eastern philosophies by the
same intellectual parameters of western intellectual analysis may not even allow
you to understand the essence of eastern philosophy. In eastern philosophies if you
are looking for great palatable ideas and verbal constructions to quote in social
gatherings or in text books to explain intellectual concepts you may not have many
but when you use eastern philosophical works to use as reference manual in any
realm of life then I think there are no better source than these philosophies.
With western philosophies, which I enjoyed reading like many do, you can engage in
prolonged and pleasant ideological, analytical and verbal masturbation culminating in
ultimate and pure intellectual pleasure, in eastern philosophies you are married to
the purpose of life in all its elements, broadly classified as body, mind and thedivine spirit which enables and ennobles the other two [body and mind].
Now we have seen what it is now let me go to the next question. Why it is so?
I would be arrogating myself and sound ethnocentric and subjectively biased if I
resort to conclusions as if the western intellectuals, who too were great souls
created by the same divine spirits, were not enlightened souls and it would be
wrong to conclude as if the spiritual enlightenment is the preserve of only eastern
philosophers. Then why did I make such a clear distinction of the western andeastern philosophies.
The why can be very easily answered it was because in the west, unfortunately,
even the enlightened souls and giant intellectuals were not allowed function as free
souls they were forced mostly to get approved by and accepted by the tenets of
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institutionalized religions and their self appointed managers, who would not allow
anything that may even remotely affect their established theories of life and
universe; sometimes the political bosses; sometimes the approved scientific
theories; sometimes the mania of mass opinions and so on so forth and in addition
the philosophers themselves were wedded to the label and enjoyed it as a
profession with all its concomitant comforts whereas in the east the philosophers ,
I mean those enlightened souls as indicated in the list above were and are least
bothered about any label or profession and that is the reason why none of them
mentioned above find a place in any Encyclopedia of Philosophers, it is a irony that
the greatest philosophers do not find even passing reference in Encyclopedias of
Philosophers. The eastern philosophers had no need to fall into any narrow groves
set by any institutionalized religious percepts or social mores or boundaries
intellectual contours or approval of scientific proof or acceptance by the mania of
mass opinions; they were the free birds scanning the entire gamut of life with its
multiple facets, splendors and its seamless interconnectedness with the all the
universes and all that is there in all the universes as divine spiritual energy whose
ultimate aim was realization and not conceptualization or endless verbal
conversations. To understand them all that you need is to brush aside all your
preconceptions and conditionings and get tuned into the frequency of spiritual
sanity uncluttered by anything and everything so that you can savor at least the
nectar of at least some of the esoteric, profound and spiritual philosophies.
Well, why all these when talking about JAGADGURU SHRI ADHI SHANKARA
JAYANTHI. I was reading many of his works and among them especially one that I
am trying really hard to decipher the esoteric and really spiritual meanings is
Brahma Sutra Bhashyam what an introduction in adhyAsa bhASyam . This can be
reference manual for anyone wanting to explain with utmost clarity in preface what
he intends to expound in the book .He does it with such ease on a subject as heavy
and as excellent and extraordinary as Brahma Sutra is something really amazing ,for the uninitiated herein [I mean in the preface ] he lays the fundamentals of
ADVAITHA
AdhyAsa bhASyam, shankara sows the seed for all the important aspects of his
tradition of advaita:
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1) What knowledge gives us knowledge of Ultimate Reality?
2) What is the obstacle to knowledge?
3) What is the nature of this obstacle?
4) How is knowledge of brahman attained? What are the means of knowledge, and
why is Sruti the ultimate means of knowledge?
5) What is the role and purpose of shastra in revealing this knowledge?
6) What is the method used by the shastra to reveal brahman?
And this adhyAsa bhASyam, is, in my view, one of the greatest texts written on
Vedanta. It is a Upanishad by itself, for in it, we find no quotation from other
shastra in this introduction to support his statements. They are simply outpourings
from anubhava, or experience, of an enlightened sage/soul, and which appeal tothat sArvatrika-anubhava, or universal experience, that belongs to each and every
one of us.
I can go on and on as far as my ignorance takes me but then IPL ,lack of time,
other priorities and the limited ambit of this forces me to end this.
But before I end as humbling note I read SWAMI VIVEKANANDAS assessment
of
JAGADGURU SHRI ADHI SHANKARA ,
By solid reasoning he extracted from the Vedas the truths of Vedanta, and
on them built up the wonderful system of Jnana that is taught in this
commentaries. He unified all the conflicting descriptions of Brahman and
showed that there is only one Infinite Reality. He showed too that as man can
only travel slowly on the upward road, all the varied presentations are needed
to suit his varying capacity.Swami Vivekananda.
And I am proud to quote from one of my writing inspired by the works of swami
vivekananda
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Sanathana dharma is perhaps the best known way which gives sketchy guideline
for this process of souls slow but sure search for spiritual enlightenment
/evolution/improvement. The crux of the matter is to grasp the essence of
spiritual vibrations in every aspect of life in our own way and leave out theextraneous factors, however greatly revered by tradition or promoted by religious
institutions or eulogized by the elite. Everything in any process of growth is just
a step, important and inevitable, but not a stop. It is so with mothers milk [our
biological aspect of life]; it is so with learning of alphabets, words and numbers
[our intellectual aspect of life]; it is so with hugging, kissing and cajoling as babies
[our emotional aspect of life]; it is so with our learning and understanding of
different concepts [ our philosophical aspect of life]; it is so with all forms of
worship, devotion and all its concomitant rituals and religious practices [ our
spiritual life] and so on. This is the inherent wisdom. A normal human being has to
go through a process to grow in everything or into something. There may be
exceptions like a Adi shankara, or a Bhagawan Ramanamaharishi. Link to my article
in bloghttp://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2010/02/sanathana-dharma.html
http://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2010/02/sanathana-dharma.htmlhttp://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2010/02/sanathana-dharma.html