Gayathri Mantra

[Gill Harley]

I'm sure Sarabhanga Giri will correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that the Giri are a branch of saddhus or babas and they are divided into the Thirteen Lineages and the Fourteen Lineages. I believe that they used to be led by Madhu Giri Baba, although I doubt he's still alive now.

These guys are really the creme de la creme of renunciates. They really pay their dues - unlike us armchair philosophers! - and they are usually initiated into sannyasin at the Kumbha Mela, where they renounce everything, even the clothes they stand in. They worship the three-headed Dattatreya.

One thing they do know about it is the dharma, and imho their views should always be respected on it.

[Namo Narayana]

I know , I am proud of them. I respect anyone who is trying to sustain the dharma philosophy. But the mind me keeps questioning why this has been said so. I always believe hinduism is related to science and physiology.

I have seen dattreya worshipped in bombay temples. Being a south indian, i am not aware of dattreya's history. I have also seen Jhulelal. Once I asked my mahatrashtrian friend, he said it is some gujarathi saint.

As a southindian I know vishnu brahma shiva, azhwar, nayanmars, thiruvalluvar , adisankara, ramanuja, raghavendra There may be some north indian saints that i may not know.

[Gill Harley]

This might be of some help:

http://www.avatara.org/dattatreya/index.html

[Namo Narayana]

have you heard about siddhas living in hills like mudhumalai in tamilnadu. they are not like a regular sanyasin. but they are said to be living for many hundreds of years if not thousands. their concept of living is to breath less and make your body live long. jains or samanas who had fued with siddhas in ancient tamil nadu were great experts in deep meditation/tapas or yoga nitra. Their fued was reason for Bakthi movement. It is hard to find info on them. I have leart about them thru my friends who live in villages.

[Gill Harley]

Sorry Naro Narayana, I haven't heard about these siddhis.

I'm not especially interested in yogic siddhi powers myself. I'm more interested in God consciousness. I'm not saying that the two are exclusive of another, but that they often do come separately and because someone has siddhis, doesn't mean that they are in God consciousness, or can lead others in such a direction. There are a lot of very good sorcerers in India and they are not the least interested in the dharma.

My disinterest in siddhis may seem bizarre from one who follows a guru who materialises all sorts of things out of the air. In fact, it was this very fact that put me off Sathya Sai Baba when I first heard about him in 1971. Some friends came back from India and told us about him, but I wasn't interested in someone who 'pulled rabbits out of hats'..and I found another guru. It wasn't until the late Nineties that I realised that Sathya Sai Baba was a lot lot more than that, and then I went to see him.

[Namo Narayana]

i agree with you. it is upto you to choose your path. like my path of hinduism. i think my path is different. i have not learnt many scriptures. i have groomed it by just praying to the deity. and occassional listening to discourses.

[sarabhanga]

Namaste,

Shri Shankaracarya established 10 families of Sannyasins, with the names: Giri, Parvata, Sagara, Vana, Aranya, Ashrama, Tirtha, Sarasvati, Puri, and Bharati.

The Giris are divided into 27 houses, and those houses are arranged in two groups ~ the house of 13 and the house of 14.

Gurudeva Dattatreya is the Devata of the Juna Akhada, which today only includes three of the original ten names (i.e. Giri, Puri, and Bharati). The Juna Akhada has always worked at the front line of Dharma, and the other lineages have all been lost in past battles (mainly with Muslims), but the full set of ten names is still present in some of the other Akhadas.

[Gill Harley]

Namaste,

The Juna Akhada has always worked at the front line of Dharma, and the other lineages have all been lost in past battles (mainly with Muslims), but the full set of ten names is still present in some of the other Akhadas.

Thank you Sarabhanga for that information.

Could you kindly answer another couple of questions that I have?

What exactly is an Akhada, and how does the Juna Akhada differ from the other Akhadas. Is it merely a geographical appellation or does Juna mean something else?

Secondly, does the Akhada accept women yoginis?

Many thanks indeed.

[sarabhanga]

Namaste,

I have only been considering formal initiation with the Gayatri (which is generally equivalent with either Upanayana or marriage). But of course there is no problem if a young girl hears the mantra in the natural course of things and begins to repeat it of her own volition. In which case, questions may arise, which should be clarified as required; and there can certainly be no harm in anyone repeating Shri Gayatri Mantra.

Upanayana makes one responsible for the continued and correct practice if what one has learned ~ until the time of Sannyasa, when even the Vedic Gayatri is generally renounced. And so I hope you can see that Upanayana before the age of five years (at the very earliest) is not wise. To do so is a bit like the Christian custom of infant baptism to save the poor child from some unspecified inborn evil.

If Kaya learns the Gayatri that is wonderful ~ but just wait a while for any formal initiation.

[Gill Harley]

Thanks Sarabhanga.

I wasn't intending to do any kind of initiation. I don't have the skill or power to do that, even should I want to. I just thouight it would be better for her to learn to sing the Gayatri Mantra rather than Baa Baa Black Sheep or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, as she does at the moment. She very much enjoys the sound of words for their own sake, without knowing what they mean. Here is her favourite nonsense poem:

On the Ning Nang Nong
When the cows go Bong!
And the monkeys call go Boo!
There are Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the teapots Jibber Jabber Joo!
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang!
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So it's Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go Ping!
Nong Ning Nang!
The mice go Clang!
Waht a noisy place it is!

Spike Milligan

Now this may not seem very 'dharmic' but, at a closer glance, it does illustrate a universal truth. This is that young children are born with the love of the sound of words for their own sake - which is a step further along the road towards understanding Vedic mantras as opposed to the West's bastardisation of language into words being solely functional tools.

On top of that, my feeling is that if she can learn to recite the above poem, the Gayatri Mantra would seem simple by comparison and, not least, do her a lot more good (to use a dualistic concept)!

So given that I'm not going to do an initiation, I think that I will go ahead and teach her it - that is, unless Sai Baba lets me know otherwise!