(BTW-Stop hijacking this thread and start your own) Maintaining caste boundaries is part of the social duty of a Shankaracharya. SBS gave out mantras in India and therefore taught in the classical mode, i.e. by caste and family affiliation.
Westerners don' t have a caste system and the Indians were at first trouble by this. Westerners were initially put into the "women and chandala" category by the Brahmins. Then they tried occupational status but that was too fluid. Although Westerners had no gotra, the Western-living Brahmins decided that anyone taking diksha (initiation) through an SBS puja had a valid connection and could even use the Om sound. I received excellent instruction in Mahamrityunjaya and Gayatri from a pundit who was very high class and he accepted diksha in front of SBS as valid. Also, the educational level of most Westerners seeking instruction in traditional Temple Hinduism far exceeded most Indians - that is until all the trained Indian programmers arrived to our shores. Even then our college education and intellectual mode went beyond most of them. For his part, Vag distorts it all to conform to his negativity. The truth is that most Buddhist mantras have origins in the purana/tantra practice of India which is Hindu/Jain in composition. Some mantras, particularly the dharani-s, are peculiar to each tradition. However, many of the very same mantras are scattered throughout all three traditions - Hindu, Jain and Buddhist. I even have transcribed Tibetan Sadhanas that contain mula-mantras in the exact manner as given by MMY. This is what you would expect having even a brief knowledge of Indian or Tibetan meditative traditions. Most Tibetan meditation deities are ported over from Hindu Tantras, such as Yamantaka/Vajrabhairava (a form of Shiva), Ganesh, MahaKala, etc. Some, like the Tibetan Tara, have reversed over into the Hindu Tantric (Cina-Tara) practices of the Great Mother (Maha-Devi). Above all, this Shankaracharya is uninformed about the extensiveness of his own tradition, which is why Vag wants to quote him. Mantras can be a form of Puranic or Tantric worship, or contrarily, can be used merely as sound sources for leading attention into awareness itself. I have posted this point (as discussed by Baba Hari Dass, a pure Vairagi Muni) a number of times. People don't take it to heart, so Vag delivers polemic to confuse people. He has no reason for being here other than troll-like entertainment and ego maintenance. At this he is adept. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "shukra69" <shukra69@...> wrote: > > by this Vag would have all the commonly used Buddhist mantras as spoiled mantras as they come from non-Brahmins and have been given to more than 6 ears... this is the worst most destructive and discriminatory form of caste-ism but he is happy to propagate it if he thinks it suits his sick purpose.
