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Introduction

From the Bhakti List Archives

Srinivas Sunder • September 27, 1994 


Hello, all.

My entry into this group is thanks to Sudarshan (Austin, TX) who I met last 
Sunday at an informal local gathering. 

I might be a bit out of place here, as I would classify myself as an Advaitin
rather than a Visishtadvaitin. And then again, it might be a bit early for 
such categorizations, since my exposure to Vedanta as a field of study and 
experience is only a year or so old. At a fundamental level, I am still feeling 
my way around, and will probably be doing more reading than discussing while I 
am on this list. How I'll turn out - more confused or more enlightened - is 
anybody's guess.

I have been in the US for 5 years now. I am from Madras, and was born and 
raised there. I did my schooling at the DAV Hr. Sec. School, Gopalapuram, Mds.
I was at IIT-Madras for a year (1988-1989) and then transferred to the Univ. of 
Texas at Austin, graduating in 1991 with a BS in EE. I went on to the Univ. of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for graduate studies and returned to Austin in 
Sept.'93 as I got a job with a local firm (Crystal Semiconductor). I am 23 1/2 
and single.

My background in religion has been strictly limited to what I was told to do
- which I normally did faithfully. Puja, temple, ablutions and Vishnu 
Sahasranamam at home; recitation (with swaram being more imp. than meaning)
of selected mantras from the Vedas and the Gita and the weekly homam called
the Deva Yajna at school (my school being an Arya Samaj school). Last year
represented the first time I actually began the process of trying to figure
out what we do and why we do it - to what end, precisely. It began, to be
honest, as an intellectual quest, but it didn't take too long before I
realized that an objective approach to understanding a subjective experience is 
clearly futile. I hope my association with the people in this list will help 
increase my (subjective and objective) understanding and aid that quest.

Regards

Srinivas Sunder 
(512) 320-0062 (R)
(512) 442-7555 x 3602 (W)

PS: I am also known as Ramdas to many people, and I often introduce myself that
way. It is a source of perennial confusion to people that Ramdas does not
appear anywhere in my name on official documents. You may offer your thanks
to my grandmother as the source of that confusion.