matarisvan

Who is degrading avatars? Read my posts once more. The people here have no idea what an avatar means. I was illustrating the meaning of an avatar by explaining the concept of Vishnu in Vaikunta coming down to earth for a finite period of time as Rama or Krishna. Seeing the responses I doubt these people are capable of understanding anything. Instead of acknowledging the simple truth of the avatar list found commonly everywhere people are avouding the issue and posting stupid responses. Someone came up with an avatar list which has some Baladeva in place of Krishna. If you have a counter argument for the standard avatar list then post a proper response with justification. If you do not have anything meaningful why are you wasting your time on this thread?

Your list is wrong! I do not know who Jayadeva is. I do not know who Baladeva is. But the name does not appear in the list of avatars in the Mahabharata or any of the Puranas. The eight avatar is Krishna. It appears you have been misguided very badly by some unethical people. For your own good read authentic texts which have not been mistranslated. You will find out for yourself that Krishna is the eight avatar of Vishnu. Parashurama, Rama and Krishna were born on this planet lived here and died here. Shriman Narayana or Vishnu was never born and never lived on this planet. His abode is Vaikunta and when he came to the earth he came as one of the avatars.

Wrong example. Shakespeare was not translating someone else's work. If he was translating he had no liberty to invent new meanings to misread the original. Your defense is comical. Your are saying the Lord used a word incorrectly when he wrote the Bhagavatam. Now he appeared in Prabhupada's heart and revealed this incorrect usage which was reported by Prabhupada in his translation. Either the Lord was incorrect or Prabhupada was incorrect. Pick one.

I will not waste my time trying to correct them. If they are interested, they can find someone who knows sanskrit and find out for themselves. I cannot accept a false translation just because it was written by my Guru.

What a funny and incorrect translation! Did you write this yourself or did you copy it from someone? This verse is praising Vishnu as the supreme source of power where puman means Purusha or the male aspect of creation. You are translating puman to 'the original puruSa-avatAra, MahA-ViSNu'and completely twisting the verse to mean something else. Why dont you learn sanskrit and come back in a year or two? Go to a Vaishnava forum like dvaita or ramanuja and ask them if you do not believe me. Many people there know sanskrit and will point out the same error in your translation. The Bhagavatam never says Krishna is the source of Vishnu. Only an unknown book like Brahma Samhita will make such a false statement.

You are the one who is posting nonsense. Who has heard of the Brahma Samhita? You are quoting some unknown source to reject the widely accepted version of Vishnu and his avatars. Maybe you are not from India and do not know these things. You can read the Mahabharata, Vishnu Purana and the Bhagavatam to learn more about Vishnu's avatars.

According to Vaishnava traditions Vishnu descends from his abode Vaikunta several times in different forms to protect the righteous. Ten avatars of Vishnu are specially noted and classified. They are Matysa (fish) Varaha (boar) Kurma (tortoise) Narasimha (half human, half lion) Vamana (Brahmin dwarf and first human form) Parashurama (Brahmin warrior) Rama Krishna Buddha Kalki (yet to arrive)

Agreed...if you will in turn agree to the follwing. Vaishnava - It is a term so laden with a confusing mish mash of beliefs and traditions as to be meaningless. (Sri, Shuddha, Gaudiya, ..............no one agrees with the other) Christian - It is a term so laden with a confusing mish mash of beliefs and traditions as to be meaningless (Catholic, protestant, Jehovah, .....countless) Muslim - It is a term so laden with a confusing mish mash of beliefs and traditions as to be meaningless (Shiya, Sunni....they kill each other) Hare Krishna - It is a term so laden with a confusing mish mash of beliefs and traditions as to be meaningless (iskcon camp, babaji camp, ....everyone disgarees with everyone else) If we can accept all of the above, then in the same spirit we can also accept Hindu is an inadequate term. If not, then Hindu is perfectly valid... no matter what some idiots from India may have blabbered about it in America and allowed this nonsense to propogate among some dense westerners.

Liking and disliking words is entirely personal. The problem however is "Sanatana Dharma" is not found in sanskrit either. Ironically this allegedly ancient name is not even a couple of hundred years old. Many prefer to use Hindu which is much older than Sanatana Dharma. And what about those who worship Shiva, Ganesha, Durga and the countless Gods in India? These people far outnumber Vaishnavas. What name do you want to give them?

There is no evidence for Krishna either. You say proof is secondary to teaching...but what is the value of the teaching if the source is spurious?

Mithra the powerful Sun God worshipped in that region before Christianity was born to a virgin and his birthday was celebrated on December 25th. Sounds familiar? There is no independent evidence for Jesus outside the Bible. In Paul's letters he never mentions Jesus as someone who lived on earth and died recently. His Jesus is a spiritual figure with whom he communicates at a spiritual level. Fast forward a little bit and what have we? Suddenly a Jesus is created who lived as a human and was killed by Romans. The authors of the new testament took Paul's spiritual Jesus and modeled a human out of existing stories such as Mithra and other unknown prophets of that time.

Modern Christians are better than Christians of the past. A Hindu worshipping images and singing bhajans in a Christian country would have been stoned to death.

I agree with you. You will also agree similarly that because you are a vaishnava you cannot declare vaishnavism is true and everything else is false. Currently you are the one making such statements in support of vaishnavism. Only because you are ignorant of life outside your vaishnava circle. advaitins will run circles around vaishnava logic any day of the week. As someone already pointed out, vaishnava schools have been existing for 100s of years and they have not scratched the surface of advaita. the proof is in the pudding...if advaita was logically fallible it would have disappeared just like buddhism and purva mimamsa. But vaishnavism miserably failed to break Advaita. They make up stories of how their logic is superior , but keep silent on why they failed to rise above Advaita with their superior logic. Just a bunch of losers who are not willing to accept their place in the world. The dvaita web site refutes your statement of four authorized vaishnava sampradayas. only iskcon makes this claim. The quotes they provide to support their claim are bogus quotes which means you have been a victim of false propoganda.

Sir, What kind of argument is that? Which scientist claimed science has a place in religion to begin with? It is people of religion who try to introudce religion into scence. Scientists are only interested in pointing out faulty logic used by religious people to distort science. Religion answers the question of 'why', a question not answered by science? What is the answer? I know 2 answers 1. Krishna wanted to play games 2. The Hebrew God got bored and wanted company You are accusing science of not coming up with such naive answers? Well...alright. Your reasoning may make perfect sense in your own world but it makes no sense to me at all.

Dear Zeph, For proper effect, mantras should not be chanted without initation. Were you properly initiated into the Rudram? If you have not received formal initiation into the Gayathri and the Rudram my advise is to discontinue chanting until you are properly initiated. You can continue to worship Rudra and pray to him.

I am a background lurker and generally appreciate your logic, but I see some problems with this one. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:" /><o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> This line of thinking does not seem to apply to the below case...<o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> By your logic, the avatar failed to adhere to his principles. He says (as <st1:place w:st="on">Krishna</st1:place>) he follows Dharma because people will copy his actions, but as Rama he deviates from the path by killing Vali from hiding. <o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> Does not add up to your previous logic. You are now saying an avatar does not always follow Dharma which contradicts the Gita statement of an avatar always following Dharma. <o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> However, you are correct that the dying Vali criticizes Rama for impropriety and Rama provides a long justification on why Vali deserved to be killed, he fails to justify his act of killing Vali from hiding instead of direct combat. Rama even tells Vali he is incapable of comprehending Dharma as he is only a monkey! We are not monkeys and it is clear to us that Rama made a mistake and Vali's criticism was justified. <o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> Your position falters because you see Rama as an avatar and thereby you establish a link with <st1:place w:st="on">Krishna</st1:place> the avatar. Factually, the Ramayana does not see Rama as an avatar except in the first and last books. In the intermediate, Rama is a normal human like anyone else. Critics say when the Vaishnavas took over the Ramayana, they could not tamper with existing material as the Ramayana was already popular and was widespread. They made Rama an avatar by adding extra books to the Ramayana. <o:p></o:p> <o:p></o:p> If Rama is seen as a human, then many things from the Ramayana fall into place. When he sends Sugriva to engage Vali in combat, he fails to kill Vali the first day of the combat. He then tells Sugriva, he could not do it because both monkeys looked alike and he had no way of knowing which of them to kill. The next day, Sugriva wears an identifier to solve the problem of identification. The other common criticism about this section is in some cases the Vanaras are shown as highly evolved creatures living in palaces and nothing less than humans. Some other times, they are just monkeys living in the forest. When Vali talks to Rama, he describes himself as a monkey living and wandering in forests. <o:p></o:p>