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SriRangaSri List Archive: Message 00013 Jan 2002

 
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Shrimathe Nigamantha Maha Desikaya Namaha

While I agree with most of the points that Shri Keshava has mentioned, I thought it would be pertinent to mention one aspect which U.Ve. Karunakara Swami mentions time and again during his upanyasams. He mentioned it last week once again during the Thiruppavai discourse at Vani Mahal. He is of the decisive opinion that parents / elders must not bring up children by telling them "Ummachi kanna kuthiduvaar" etc. Obviously, God is not around to keep pricking children's eyes all the time. When such inputs are given to children at such a young age when their minds are like blank pages, these thoughts get firmly established in their mind that Bhagavan is someone who is a demon who is out to punish small children. (Whereas the truth is that He is always available to anyone to help him or her. We have ample references to such instances in Swami Desika's works and chiefly in Dayashatakam and Paduka Sahasram )On the other hand, we need to project Bhagavan as the Supreme Being who would like small children to do such things that He would like,(e.g.,speaking the truth, being kind, refraining from fights with other children etc.) so that He showers His affection on them. We need to portray the correct picture about Him and tell children that such a great God may not be in a position to help if we do things which He has asked us not to do. We should keep telling them stories where children are helped by God like those of Prahlada, Dhruva etc. I think U.Ve. Karunakara Swamy has a big point here so far as fear is concerned. If children learn the right things from a tender age, they would be able to differentiate between good and bad very easily as they grow up and the presence of fear would be restricted to a minimum number of circumstances in life. We need to be practical and understand that fear cannot be totally eliminated from our lives but can only be minimised with faith in Sriman Narayana. We do not belong to the category of Swami Desikas to be totally devoid of fear at all times. I hope I have made myself clear here and any error or mistake is purely my interpretation and certainly doesn't belong to U.Ve.Karunakara Swamy.

Adiyaen Ramanuja Dasan

  "KESHAVA B. PRASAD" wrote:

Harihi Om

Dear Rajagopalan:

Your colleague does not seem to have grown out of his childhood. I don't know
if it still true but when I grew up, it was customary for the elders to
instill some fear in the hearts of little children with words such as "God
will get angry if you do bad things, etc". You are absolutely correct in
saying that if one has faith in God (Srimannarayana) one will not be tempted
to do wrong things. But again, in this age of "moral relativism", people will
argue about what is wrong and what is not. It depends on whether one takes
conservative view of things or a liberal view.

The bottomline is that we are all provided with a mind and intellect. We are
expected to use them to shape our lives. The answer to your colleague
therefore, should be that " the fear is not what Narayana would to us but
what we might do to ourselves by not exercising self-control and principles
of ethics and falling prey to the temptations of our times. We have as a
guide, what we have been taught by our Poorvaachryas well versed in the
scriptures. Since these teachings are sometimes voluminous and overwhelming
in the sense that we cannot know it all in one lifetime, we tend to take easy
way out seeking instant solutions.

Some modern day thinkers such as Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Chinmaya, and
so on,  realized this predicament of the humanity and attempted to provide us
with solutions to the day-to-day problems. They however, appealed to the so
called elite in the society. Saints such as Basavanna, Sarvajnya,
Purandaradasa, Sant Surdas, Sant Kabirdas and so on attempted to bring the
values of Truth and Ethics to the people not so intellectual. Present day New
age religiosity represented by Sathya Saibaba, Swami Narayan and so on in the
East, Self-realization, Ammachi, many a meditation center and so on in the
West are all attempting to provide instant solutions and hence, are more
appealing to the masses.

It is my humble opinion that our contemporary acharyas may consider
attempting to bring the spirit of scriptural message to our day-today lives
as we live them in this day-and-age. Unfortunately, without this happening,
for the sake of "changing with times", people have been losing track of moral
absolutes that Narayana is endowed with and which we are expected to emulate.
At least if those of us who have understood the value of the teachings of our
poorvaacharyas maintain that as a goal, we can hardly go wrong. The
realization has to come from within and is not something that one can win in
an argument.

Adiyen Narayana Dasan

Keshava Prasad




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