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Confused souls confused questions on Adi sankarar..

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I am a follower of santhana dharma and the following are just my questions and i m not in any way hurting the sentiments or being offensive to any one or the great acharya.
  1. Sankara starts his bhaja govindam and says worship o govinda and he says rules of grammar will not help in the last stages of life. Does he say we can all leave our karma and just keep chanting the name of god?. As a brahmin there are some karmas which need to be performed and god will be happy only with that right. A master will be happy only with the servant doing the work correctly and he wont be happy with the person who always sings his praises.
  2. In his Sharadha Bhujanga priyashtakam: Sankarar says Puras Thungabadram:Where is Goddess Sharadha? In sringeri or in Kudali? Remember only the tunga flows in sringeri and the tunga and badra join in kudali and there is mutt in kudali which has a sankaracharya. Welcome to Srimad Jagadguru Sri Kudali Shringeri Shankaracharya Mahasamsthanam
  3. Did Sankarar curse the entire people of kerala for not coming to the funeral of his mother and that the 2 families who came and stood near the feet and the head are still called by a particular name?.
  4. Any records of sankar visiting the mylapore kapaliswarar temple? He has visited the thiruvottiyur temple and installed a sri chakra there. Still the pooja for vaduvidai amman is done by a brahmachari namboothiri
I understand the above questions are irrelevant to sadaka but these questions were there in my mind and i thought i will let them go off from my mind and if i find answers then nothing like it
 
I am a follower of santhana dharma and the following are just my questions and i m not in any way hurting the sentiments or being offensive to any one or the great acharya.
  1. Sankara starts his bhaja govindam and says worship o govinda and he says rules of grammar will not help in the last stages of life. Does he say we can all leave our karma and just keep chanting the name of god?. As a brahmin there are some karmas which need to be performed and god will be happy only with that right. A master will be happy only with the servant doing the work correctly and he wont be happy with the person who always sings his praises.
I will try to answer your 1st question..I think you need to see the context in which the famous Samprapte Sannihite Kale,Nahi Nahi Rakshatin Dukren Karane was written.

Here I feel we need to understand in a broader sense about why Dukren Karane(one of Panini's rules of grammar) was quoted.

Adi Shankara was not telling us to abandon Nithya Karma but instead was emphasizing that no matter what we pursue always keep in mind that any intellectual or material pursuits wont get us anywhere if the goal of life is not realized.(Dukren Karane here meant worldly pursuits.)
The goal of life being realizing God hence Bhajo Govindam Bhajo Govindam.

Adi Shankaracharya's compositions have very deep meaning..I remember reading sometime back(I cant remember the name of that composition) but Adi Shankara was addressing Lord Shiva lovingly in a stanza which said "I can offer You the vehicle of my mind which moves faster than the bull(Nandi) You mount"

I am sure Adi Shankara was not asking Lord Shiva to abandon Nandi and take a newer model of mode of transport.
He was just emphasizing the fleeting speed of the human mind which finally needs to be offered to God.
 
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When Swami Vivekananda first visited Ramakrishna Paramahansa he asked: "I have read the Bhagavad Gita and other scriptures several times, i lecture and give discourses on the Gita and Ramayana. Do i still need harbour of a saint; do i still need a guru?" Ramakrishna didn't reply to Vivekananda's question.

After a few days Ramakrishna called upon Vivekananda and handed him a parcel to be delivered at a nearby village a few hours away by the sea route. Early morning the boat and sailor would be ready and all he needed to do was to go to the village and deliver the parcel to the designated person. Vivekananda agreed and decided to start early. He found the boat and the sailor ready to put out to sea. Suddenly, upon sitting in the boat, Vivekananda realised that he didn't know the road to the village. He inquired of the sailor who had no clue, either.

Vivekananda decided to go back to his guru to ask him the shortest way to the village. Upon this Ramakrishna said, "Narendra, this is my reply to the question you asked me when we met the first time: Today, you have the medium (the boat), you have the resource (the sailor), you have the road (the sea), you know what to do (deliver the parcel) and you also know where to go but you don't know the way. Likewise you have read all the scriptures, and you can conduct wonderful discourses on them. However, to realise the wisdom of scriptures one needs a guru, someone who has already traversed that path so that he can guide you through the journey and encourage you to not give up."

Good luck
 
When Swami Vivekananda first visited Ramakrishna Paramahansa he asked: "I have read the Bhagavad Gita and other scriptures several times, i lecture and give discourses on the Gita and Ramayana. Do i still need harbour of a saint; do i still need a guru?" Ramakrishna didn't reply to Vivekananda's question.

After a few days Ramakrishna called upon Vivekananda and handed him a parcel to be delivered at a nearby village a few hours away by the sea route. Early morning the boat and sailor would be ready and all he needed to do was to go to the village and deliver the parcel to the designated person. Vivekananda agreed and decided to start early. He found the boat and the sailor ready to put out to sea. Suddenly, upon sitting in the boat, Vivekananda realised that he didn't know the road to the village. He inquired of the sailor who had no clue, either.

Vivekananda decided to go back to his guru to ask him the shortest way to the village. Upon this Ramakrishna said, "Narendra, this is my reply to the question you asked me when we met the first time: Today, you have the medium (the boat), you have the resource (the sailor), you have the road (the sea), you know what to do (deliver the parcel) and you also know where to go but you don't know the way. Likewise you have read all the scriptures, and you can conduct wonderful discourses on them. However, to realise the wisdom of scriptures one needs a guru, someone who has already traversed that path so that he can guide you through the journey and encourage you to not give up."

Good luck

This is what called the typical indian way of replying. I dont have an application based brain. Please answer my point. I too know many stories like this
 
Dear Sri Kameshratnam Ji,

With all humility, may I suggest that you have just insulted a posting of a person, who thought that he was really helping you answering your question?

Are there not better ways and expressions to tell Sri Prasad1 Ji that he missed the mark in assisting you? Why would you treat someone who tried to help you this way?

Regards,
KRS
 
I am sorry it was Post#3 from Prasad and not Post#4. It was an error on my part.I think this post#3 has no relevance to the points raised by Kameshratnam. Hence my response.
 
I am sorry it was Post#3 from Prasad and not Post#4. It was an error on my part.I think this post#3 has no relevance to the points raised by Kameshratnam. Hence my response.

In this day of Instant gratification you need condensed answer. Once you get your number right you may realize that the story had a meaning.

You have read all the scriptures, and you can conduct wonderful discourses on them. However, to realise the wisdom of scriptures one needs a guru, someone who has already traversed that path so that he can guide you through the journey and encourage you to not give up.

Reading books alone is not enough, you need a guru (a learned person) to guide you. We all can post in a web site, but you may not find the correct Guru.
 
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Has adi sankarar commented anything on the hymns of devaram or the thirumuraigal?


Sir,

I feel the tirumurai and tevaram came into fame during the glorious days of the Chola dynasty only, i.e., the 10th. century or thereabour only. AdiSankara lived much earlier and secondly, he was a Namboodiri in essence and has cited from sanskrit scriptures only. he has not referred even to Srimadbhagavatham and so there are some who say that this Srimadbhagavatam is a later concoction to project Krishna as the supreme god.

Permit me to record my views on the original post for this thread also.

I am a follower of santhana dharma and the following are just my questions and i m not in any way hurting the sentiments or being offensive to any one or the great acharya.

1. Sankara starts his bhaja govindam and says worship o govinda and he says rules of grammar will not help in the last stages of life. Does he say we can all leave our karma and just keep chanting the name of god?. As a brahmin there are some karmas which need to be performed and god will be happy only with that right. A master will be happy only with the servant doing the work correctly and he wont be happy with the person who always sings his praises.

Sir,

Some scholars are of the view that many, many items have come to be called as the kritis of Sankara but they are not works of Adisankara. Sankara did not emphasize bhakti at all in his most important bhAShyas, but this bhajagovindam and its legendary origin have somehow been incorporated into Sankaravijayam. But all the available sankaravijayams are much later than Sankara's time and have been written when Sankara had passed on from being an ordinary ascetic with a pseudo-buddhistic philosophy to be spread, into a very avatAra of Lord Siva. So, we can entirely dismiss bhajagovindam from any serious discussion about Sankara's views.

AFAI have read, heard eminent orators and understood, Sankara recommended only "nididhyAsanam" as the method for acquiring BrahmajnAnam; but He said that the veda and Dharma-prescribed Karmas helped a man to acquire the competence to do the necessary "nididhyAsana" and helped in knowing the Brahman.

1. In his Sharadha Bhujanga priyashtakam: Sankarar says Puras Thungabadram:Where is Goddess Sharadha? In sringeri or in Kudali? Remember only the tunga flows in sringeri and the tunga and badra join in kudali and there is mutt in kudali which has a sankaracharya. Welcome to Srimad Jagadguru Sri Kudali Shringeri Shankaracharya Mahasamsthanam

Here again, I think we cannot proceed on the basis that the literal meaning of "purastungabhadrAm" must hold and hence Sarada is not in Sringeri. The koodali matham has its lineage details from the year 1546 only and that appears to me to be a very important point. Secondly, bhadrAm can be translated as auspicious and purastungabhadrAm can mean the auspicious tunga in the front.

1. Did Sankarar curse the entire people of kerala for not coming to the funeral of his mother and that the 2 families who came and stood near the feet and the head are still called by a particular name?.

At least the Namboodiris of Kerala do not believe that Sankara cursed them; as regards other castes, I am not aware, but considering the social set up which seemed to have existed in Kerala, other castes would not even be allowed near Namboodiri areas and so, there is no prima facie reason to doubt an intelligent monk like Sankara cursing all of them, especially when he knew that even as a boy he and his mother were subject social ostracization based on some doubts about his paternity.

But, for reasons which are not quite clear to me, Namboodiris (at least some whom I have known) make a ritual of something like cutting the corpse (with some darbha grass, the corpse is sort of cut by a mime action) and I was told that this is to show remorse for having compelled Sankara to cut his mother's body, etc.
1. Any records of sankar visiting the mylapore kapaliswarar temple? He has visited the thiruvottiyur temple and installed a sri chakra there. Still the pooja for vaduvidai amman is done by a brahmachari namboothiri

No idea, sir.
 
  1. In his Sharadha Bhujanga priyashtakam: Sankarar says Puras Thungabadram:Where is Goddess Sharadha? In sringeri or in Kudali? Remember only the tunga flows in sringeri and the tunga and badra join in kudali and there is mutt in kudali which has a sankaracharya.
Dear Shri KameshRatnam,

I am just responding to one of the points listed by you.

The wordings in Sharada Bhujanga Stotram also need to be seen in the context of a poem praising the deity. There is no scope for hairsplitting as to whether it is Tunga or Tungabhadra. Goddess Sharadha was established in Sringeri on the banks of the Tungabhadra by Adi Shankarar as tradition always says.

To give you another example, we have the quite popular song on Sri Raghavendrar, viz., "Tunga Theera Virajam Bhaja Manu Raghavendra Yathirajam or so on. We all know that the saint lived on the banks of the Tungabhadra in Mantralayam and not on the banks of Tunga river itself, so to say.
Just because the song says Tunga and not Tungabhadra here, one should not speculate whether Sri Raghavendrar lived elsewhere.

If one's motives is to create some mischief while reading these stotras or songs, then it is a different story . altogether.There have been people with such motives in the past
 
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