pUja

[Anand Hudli]

 Sadananda wrote:

>- although it is hypothtical, in the  Kanakadaasa story,  if he had
>known
>Purusha suuktam even in a distorted way and chanted immersing in his
>devotion, I do not think Krishna would mind.  Ultimately what he >cares
for
>is the devotion and not the chanting per sec.  Without a tint of
devotion,
>chanting is of little use.

 You bring up some interesting points here.

 It may have been possible for Kanakadaasa to have secured Krishna's
 grace in this way but it is unlikely. In olden days people always
 used to learn  the Vedas from a Guru. It is only in this century,
 perhaps, that we see people picking up a Veda book from the shop
 and reading the mantras from the book. So in those days if a person
 chanted the Vedas _after_ his training he was more likely to be
 chanting correctly.

 The Sringeri and Kanchi Swamiji's seem to be in agreement over the
 fact that Vedic mantras chanted correctly have great potency even if
 the reciter does not understand the meaning. Of course, it is much
 better to understand the meaning. On the other hand, chanting wrongly
 may have a bad effect. The story that comes to mind is that of the
 great aShTAvakra who heard his father chanting the vedas while still
 in the womb. Unfortunately, the father was making mistakes while
 chanting. So the baby's body was bent and ill-formed in several
 places.

 At the same time we hear the story of a person (can't remember his
 name) who chanted the Vishnu sahasra nAma wrongly. For this he was
 taken to task by another devotee who happenend to be a Sanskrit
 scholar. This scholar was in turn chastised by the Lord Himself who
 said that even if His devotee made some mistake in chanting it did
 not matter as much as the bhakti.

 I agree that bhakti is important but trying hard to be meticulous
 and correct in worshipping God does not indicate that there is no
 bhakti. A bhakta may feel, "Let me take  pains to make sure that I
 do this worship correctly." This is not inconsistent with bhakti.

> That is the reason I quated two B.G. slokas
>-patram pushpam and yat karoshi ... in my prvious posts - to say that
it is
>not my statement but Krishna's from smRiti only.
>
>I have no disagreements only a different perspective.
>

 My perspective is: if a bhakta wants to worship God but does not
 have the requisite training for the Vedic way of worship, he will
 put forth the effort to acquire the proper training rather than
 worship in a haphazard way. If there are no opportnities for
 training he will follow a less stringent form of worship such as
 singing bhajans, reading excerpts from the epics/purANas, associating
 with other devotees, etc. ie. one or more of the nava-vidha bhaktis
 that he can handle such as shravaNaM, kIrtanaM, etc.

 Anand


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