UNDERSTAND ORIGINAL CASTE SYSTEM CLEARLY AS BELOW, THEN YOU WILL UNDERSTAND HOW IT WAS MISUSED IN PAST AND THEN YOU CAN EFFECTIVELY FIGHT AGAINST IT. IF YOU NOT KNOW WHERE IT WENT WRONG HOW CAN CORRECT IT.
The origin of the caste system, formulated by the great legislator Manu, was admirable. He saw clearly that men are distinguished by natural evolution into four great classes: those capable of offering service to society through their bodily labor ( Sudras); those who serve through mentality, skill, agriculture, trade, commerce, business life in general (Vaisyas); those whose talents are administrative, executive, and protective%u2014rulers and warriors ( Kshatriyas); those of contemplative nature, spiritually inspired and inspiring (Brahmins). "Neither birth nor sacraments nor study nor ancestry can decide whether a person is twice-born (ie, a Brahmin);" the Mahabharata declares, "character and conduct only can decide."Manu instructed society to show respect to its members insofar as they possessed wisdom, virtue, age, kinship or, lastly, wealth.
Riches in Vedic India were always despised if they were hoarded or unavailable for charitable purposes. Ungenerous men of great wealth were assigned a low rank in society.
"Inclusion in one of these four castes originally depended not on a man's birth but on his natural capacities as demonstrated by the goal in life he elected to achieve," an article in East-West for January, 1935, tells us.
RE:ORIGINAL CASTE SYSTEM
by sridhar gorantla on Nov 12, 2007 02:15 PM Permalink
"Inclusion in one of these four castes originally depended not on a man's birth but on his natural capacities as demonstrated by the goal in life he elected to achieve," an article in East-West for January, 1935, tells us. "This goal could be (1) kama, desire, activity of the life of the senses (Sudra stage), (2) artha, gain, fulfilling but controlling the desires (Vaisya stage), (3) dharma, self-discipline, the life of responsibility and right action (Kshatriya stage), (4) moksha, liberation, the life of spirituality and religious teaching (Brahmin stage). These four castes render service to humanity by (1) body, (2) mind, (3) will power, (4) Spirit. "These four stages have their correspondence in the eternal gunas or qualities of nature, tamas, rajas, and sattva: obstruction, activity, and expansion; or, mass, energy, and intelligence. The four natural castes are marked by the gunas as (1) tamas (ignorance), (2) tamas-rajas (mixture of ignorance and activity), (3) rajas-sattva (mixture of right activity and enlightenment), (4) sattva (enlightenment). Thus has nature marked every man with his caste, by the predominance in himself of one, or the mixture of two, of the gunas. Of course every human being has all three gunas in varying proportions. The guru will be able rightly to determine a man's caste or evolutionary status.
Serious evils arose when the caste system became hardened through the centuries into a hereditary halter.
RE:ORIGINAL CASTE SYSTEM
by sridhar gorantla on Nov 12, 2007 02:16 PM Permalink
Social reformers like Gandhi and the members of very numerous societies in India today are making slow but sure progress in restoring the ancient values of caste, based solely on natural qualification and not on birth. Every nation on earth has its own distinctive misery-producing karma to deal with and remove; India, too, with her versatile and invulnerable spirit, shall prove herself equal to the task of caste-reformation.
"To a certain extent, all races and nations observe in practice, if not in theory, the features of caste. Where there is great license or so-called liberty, particularly in intermarriage between extremes in the natural castes, the race dwindles away and becomes extinct. The Purana Samhita compares the offspring of such unions to barren hybrids, like the mule which is incapable of propagation of its own species. Artificial species are eventually exterminated. History offers abundant proof of numerous great races which no longer have any living representatives. The caste system of India is credited by her most profound thinkers with being the check or preventive against license which has preserved the purity of the race and brought it safely through millenniums of vicissitudes, while other races have vanished in oblivion."
THIS ABOVE EXPLANATION IS FROM WORLD FAMOUS BOOK "AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI" by Sri SWAMI PARAMAHAMSA YOGANANDA.
RE:ORIGINAL CASTE SYSTEM
by sridhar gorantla on Nov 12, 2007 02:38 PM Permalink
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