Question on Advaita (Women in Advaita Vedanta) (fwd)

S. V. Subrahmanian svs_shankara at HOTMAIL.COM
Wed Jul 26 15:59:42 CDT 2000


My 2c worth:

A wise man who used to teach me for some time gave me a sound advice on how
to approach Sruti (especially when faced with conflicting responses):

If you ask the Srutis:  I am a woman, what should I do ?

(Here in the question one has already assumed that you are the body, you
have parents, gender, lineage, language everything ....)

The Srutis would reply:
"You are allowed to do this, you are allowed to do that ...etc"  for that is
the right answer for somebody who has conditioned herself into a definition.
  For her that is the right answer.

But if you ask the Srutis:  Who am I ?

(Here the questioner has no prior assumptions about herself).  The very same
Sruti replies : "tat twam asi".  When you asked Sruti "Who am I ?", It did
not even bother mentioning any gender or heritage or anything.

The answer you get from Sruti depends on the question you ask.

Infact when one sees the confusion that arises out of the statements on
vyavahAra it seems to be an implied message from Srutis that

"Aha!! this is how you get lost if you focus only on vyavahAra.
Controversies and conflicts are implicit in vyavahAra, get past it!!"

Just my opinion.

Regards.
S. V. Subrahmanian.

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