Search:

From the Bhakti List Archives

krish • October 18, 1995 


I understand prapatti to be complete surrender to Vishnu, a goal
for one to attain salvation. Bhakti is a marga or way. An Acharya
is the intermediate who shows the way to practice bhakti and thus
attain the staus of prapatti.
My more fundamental question is why all these. At least in these
times, life and work is in the realm of a technolgical world
whererational plays a significant part. My work as an engineer
is based on scientific facts and one strives to acquire the
various skills. Modern knowledge provides an opportunity to 
include more and more variables thanks to computer capabilities,
to determine the efffects. The recent study of the effect
of a plane 5 miles away on the crash of another is a typicla 
example. We design the shapes of reflector antennas to an 
extent not possible a few decades ago.
In such a world of reason, how does bhakti and faith come in.
Is it because of our own inability to associate our fortunes
and misfortunes to one of statistical probabilty. Is our
search for the ultimate controller is a way to find why all of
us are not identical and somr seem to be more fortunate.
The ritualistic aspects, bottu, satari and so on can be compared
to the srate of getting into acceptable groups. A simpler 
way of putting it, a few decades ago, IBM Watson required all 
employees to wear a tie. Such dress codes were found to be
useless. Anyway, it is an interesting discussion.