Randy Good to have someone else questioning Vaj's BS.
This guy postures himself here as an american natha-guru and buddhist dzogchenpa. However, his simplistic identification of Narayana (as the source of the tm puja) with the vaishnava sampradaya shows an amazing ignorance. In reality this guy is just another american spiritual hack who makes error after error in his claims. He has been on this forum for four or five years. He is here because he wants to "critique" (read denigrate) maharishi's accomplishments and maharishi's personality. What he brings to the forum is a quite partial intellectual knowledge of Buddhism, some nomenclature from Swami Rama's lineage, claims of initiation into the Nath sampradaya and many other speculations he has generated from his reading. As you probably know Shankara instituted five form of deity worship, later amplified into six: Surya, Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti, Ganapati and Skanda. He viewed and taught all as faces (identities) of Parameshvara Saguna Brahman. What Vaj is saying is that sectarian Shaiva-s trace their lineage from Shiva and sectarian Vaishnava trace their lineage from a form of Vishnu-Krishna. Vaj is therefore claiming that those Dashanami lineages of Adi-Shankara who view Narayana as the source-origin of their sampradaya must be Vaishnava by definition. This is a gross blunder confirming him to be just another cheap hack. So if you are wondering - "why he is here? He is here because: 1. FFL provides him with a large forum to display his ponderous claims to esoterica. 2. Most people here are not deeply conversant with other Asian meditative traditions much less Western spiritual traditions. Thus he can present himself as a pontiff. His main problem is that there are a few people here on the forum having both knowledge and experience in other meditative traditions. However, the unfortunate reality is that they don't always have time to follow his many threads and negative comments. If his employer only knew how much time he spends on ffl each day they would probably fire him on the spot. So, as a consequence, our good buddy Vajra-duta gets a free pass most of the time. Please join us if you can and keep this rabid skunk under some kind of control by questioning and examining his every claim and assertion. Odious-vajra-duta had proved to not only to be rabid but also dishonest. We need help maintaining some type of vigilance here. PS: By the way, as far as Bhaja Govindam is concerned, Govinda was the name of Shankara's guru, who was also a direct disciple of the famous advaita teacher Gaudapada. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <vajradh...@...> wrote: > > > On May 31, 2009, at 2:08 PM, Randy Meltzer wrote: > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <vajradhatu@> wrote: > > > >> Yes I have read Bhaja Govindam. Shankara is famous for being an > >> advaita teacher but also having the ability to have the devotional > >> aspect of bhakti. Just because he refers to Govinda in that > >> treatise does not make him a vaishnavite. And just because > >> Narayana is mentioned in the tradition does not make him one either > > Have you been to Guru Dev's ashram in Allahabad? There are no > > Krishna/Vishnu images there. There is however a huge shiva lingam > > in the middle of the ashram. No self respecting Vaishnavite would a > > shiva lingam without a vishnu or krishna statue. > > And have you been to Jyotir math? No Vishnu images there either. > > > > The point is you know nothing of the tradition of which you claim to > > speak. Everything about the shankaracharya tradition is shaivite. > > > > Anyone else what to chime on this other than Vaj. I am open to > > someone else who is knowledgable to comment on this. Vaj thinks he > > knows something about this, but I don't believe he does. > > > You are correct, all the Maths do perform Shiva-lingam worship. It is > common to see the admixture of Vedic ritual and tantric and it is > common to see Shiva-lingams in the Maths. It sounds to me like you're > confusing the fact that Shiva lingam worship is ubiquitous within > Vedic ritual with the line being a Shaivite one. > > When I was initiated into a Shaivite sampradaya the origin of the line > was Adi-shiva, not Narayana. >
