Introduction

[Guest guest]

Hello, all.

 

My entry into this group is thanks to Sudarshan (Austin, TX) who I met last

Sunday at an informal local gathering.

 

I might be a bit out of place here, as I would classify myself as an Advaitin

rather than a Visishtadvaitin. And then again, it might be a bit early for

such categorizations, since my exposure to Vedanta as a field of study and

experience is only a year or so old. At a fundamental level, I am still feeling

my way around, and will probably be doing more reading than discussing while I

am on this list. How I'll turn out - more confused or more enlightened - is

anybody's guess.

 

I have been in the US for 5 years now. I am from Madras, and was born and

raised there. I did my schooling at the DAV Hr. Sec. School, Gopalapuram, Mds.

I was at IIT-Madras for a year (1988-1989) and then transferred to the Univ. of

Texas at Austin, graduating in 1991 with a BS in EE. I went on to the Univ. of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for graduate studies and returned to Austin in

Sept.'93 as I got a job with a local firm (Crystal Semiconductor). I am 23 1/2

and single.

 

My background in religion has been strictly limited to what I was told to do

- which I normally did faithfully. Puja, temple, ablutions and Vishnu

Sahasranamam at home; recitation (with swaram being more imp. than meaning)

of selected mantras from the Vedas and the Gita and the weekly homam called

the Deva Yajna at school (my school being an Arya Samaj school). Last year

represented the first time I actually began the process of trying to figure

out what we do and why we do it - to what end, precisely. It began, to be

honest, as an intellectual quest, but it didn't take too long before I

realized that an objective approach to understanding a subjective experience is

clearly futile. I hope my association with the people in this list will help

increase my (subjective and objective) understanding and aid that quest.

 

Regards

 

Srinivas Sunder

(512) 320-0062 ®

(512) 442-7555 x 3602 (W)

 

PS: I am also known as Ramdas to many people, and I often introduce myself that

way. It is a source of perennial confusion to people that Ramdas does not

appear anywhere in my name on official documents. You may offer your thanks

to my grandmother as the source of that confusion.