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Re: kaNNan piRandhAn! - 2

From the Bhakti List Archives

Mani Varadarajan • September 4, 1998 


Dear Sri Sadagopan,

Thank you for explaining the "fall" of jaya and vijaya
in a much more satisfying and less contrived manner
than I had done earlier. This should teach me to not
issue conclusive answers without properly studying
the source material!

Further, you wrote:

>General comments : many of the confusion come from 
>trying to develop a unified theory to accomodate 
>Sruthi , Smruthi , IthihAsAs , BHaagaavtha PurANAs and 
>Sthala PurANAs .

This is one of the most insightful statements I 
have seen in a long time, and it struck a chord
in me.  We struggle many times to create a watertight
system to accomodate all the various mystic anubhavams
of various writers and saints, even when they are
not strictly writing philosophically.  When we
try to put such rapturous accounts into the
straightjacket of intellectual consistency, we
are both missing the point and doomed to failure.
I am often the first person to fall victim to
this tendency.

Your timely advice reminded me of a beautiful post by 
P.B. Anand some years back.  Everyone's anubhavam is 
different, and leads them to follow differing paths. 
He wrote:

> There are different milestones or signposts if you like, for use by
> those at different stages in our discovery of this unfathomable beauty
> of lord.  When I as a pedestrian see that you in your car are focusing
> on some kind of signposts, shall I discord my own signposts and start
> following yours because apparently you are in a stage which seems to
> me to be better than mine? As long as I stick to the path suggested to
> me by my acharya and use the signposts he has given me, I should not
> have such self-doubts.  Eventually I will reach a stage where I may
> have to use some other signposts and I am sure my acharya will give me
> those at that time.

adiyEn
Mani