[Advaita-l] Dharma

Kiran B.R. kiran.br at gmail.com
Fri Dec 3 01:01:31 CST 2004


Dear Sri Bhadraiah:

> Now, if sanyasi is some one who renounced karmas, by your 
> definition it is impossible for some one to be a sanyasi. Or one can become 
> a sanyasi only after death. Or do we call the works done by a sanyasi by 
> another name?

Onlookers see a sanyasi engaged in karma, not he himself. It is in
this sense that he is said to have renounced karmas, and not in the
sense of not getting his hands dirty, not in the sense of not lighting
the fire, not in the sense of not earning his daily bread through a
hard day's work.

Please note that I do recognize that the word sanyasi is also used to
name the fourth Ashrama. But one can be a sanyasi (in the true sense
of the term) in any Ashrama. Those who are incapable of being a
sanyasi in the first three ashramas (for whatever reason - svabhAva,
prakRuti, learning, old age, isolation from family, death of family
members, noise in cities, nagging wife, disappointment in love,
physical weakness, worldly defeat, unbearable sorrow, etc) take
recourse to the fourth. But it is illogical (and disastrous for
economic well-being as in the case of India) to make people in this
fourth Ashrama the idols for those in others.

bhIShma tells yudhiShThira in the mahAbhArata (shAMtiparva?):

dAMtasya kimaraNyEna tathAdAMtasya bhArata |
yatra nivasEddAMtaH tadaraNyaM sa chAshramaH ||

Of what use is the araNya for the dAMta? Of what use is it for the
adAMta? Where the dAMta lives, that is the araNya, and that is the
Ashrama.

This dAMta above is the true sanyasi, indifferentiable from the true karmayogi.

Cheers
Kiran

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