sparaig wrote: > Shatananda was declared "unqualified" because he was a cook, > basically. The fact that he was Gurudev's oldest disciple didn't > matter to the scholars. > There's no evidence that I can find that would indicate that Shantanand was a "cook" by profession. According to the Times of India, Shantanand was an editor for years at Geeta Press and later a student at the Shankar Matha in Allahahabad. After Shantanand took sanyas he certainly wouldn't be found cooking food for others - Sanyasins aren't supposed to be fooling around with fire.
But in fact the committee you refer to wasn't a committee of scholars anyway and neither was Swami Brahmanand Saraswati a scholar of any repute - he was a mystic. On that basis, Shantanand was the more worthy successor to Guru Dev, not any of the other caste mongers who frequent political parties, despite their much Sanskrit learning. >From the Times of India: The Shankaracharya was born in Achati village of Basti district into a Brahmin family. He was the third son of Pandit Lal Bihari Tiwari. After taking to "Vairagya" at 20, he went to Geeta press, Gorakhpur, and there he stayed from 1933 to 1939. After that, he went to the ashram of Uria Baba in Vrindaban where he remained for 14 years and studied. In 1951, he took "sanyas" from Shankaracharya Swami Brahmanand Saraswati of Jyotish Peeth. After the death of Swami Brahmanand Saraswati, he was made the Shankaracharya of Jyotish Peeth on June 12, 1953. On February 29, 1980, he declared Swami Vasudevanand Saraswati his successor. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, Sep 11 2006 2:40 pm Groups: alt.meditation.transcendental, alt.yoga, alt.meditation Thread: The one undisputed fact about Guru DevJi http://tinyurl.com/yx4go7
