jagadguru shri adhi shankara jayanthi

8/6/2019 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
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jagadguru shri adhi shankara jayanthi

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