tks
0
Dear TKS ji,
I read what you wrote about the Brazilian beauty who was well versed in Vedanta etc and the usage of the terminology Guna Brahmana.
I understand the context in which you are using it cos as far as I have known your style of thinking in Forum I feel you classify Varna status of a person according to his/her Guna and not by birth...hence you feel the Brazilian lady is a Guna Brahmana..going by that I am sure you will not hesitate to classify a Janma Brahmana as even a Guna Vaishya for example.
But frankly speaking not everyone accepts this sort of classifications cos Varna has been birth based I think since time immemorial and I have no problems with that too.
Just to add sometimes the usage of the term Guna Brahmana might be not go down well all the while if we really dissect the terminology.
For example by calling the Brazilian lady a Guna Brahmana just denies her Brazilian heritage the honour of having such a wonderful beauty with Vedanta brains and it sort of implies that anything "good" has to have a Brahmana link.
As I mentioned in Forum before that many people from other communities too show wonderful qualities and intelligence par excellence..so I feel let them be known by their own community names and not 'confer' upon anyone any Varna terminology so that the credit also goes to their own community and this might actually encourage people of that community to emulate this person.
For example if we call a Dalit a Guna Brahmana based on his virtues....other Dalits are not going to emulate him..they will feel "Oh he is now known as Guna Brahmana and he is no more one of us".By this thinking this Guna Brahmana is now a total outsider to his own community and neither will he be accepted in the real sense of it by Janma Brahmanas and this Guna Brahmana will be "extinct" and not be able to be a role model for anyone in society.
If we let him remain and give him the due respect without branding him a Guna Brahmana he will remain a role model for his community and others will start looking up to him and emulating him...after all all we want for a society,a nation and the world is peace loving individuals and not Varna knighthood.
Would like your feedback on this.
Dr Renu
It is not either/or - that is what leads to the problem of interpretation.
Varna is about Jati and hence birth based.
The word used to describe various Varnas have a meaning of its own.
There are several classification we find in describing a person - Birth based (Jati, varna) , Character based (Gunas) and Karma (type of work) based
At an individual level it is all about qualities that they have control over- proportion of the three Gunas that a person exhibits..
If Satvic nature is predominant in person born in a Vaishya family then we can say Jati Vaishya and Guna Brahmana. It is possible to improve oneself but one cannot change where they are born
It is not about conferring a title which would be be about belittling someone.
There is no reason to think that an acknowledgement of a quality of person changes their identity.
Nothing changes a Brazilian national's identity by calling that person with a name that describes their quality.
A Guna Brahmans is someone who has predominance of Sattva with lesser amount of Rajas and least amount of Tamas.
To understand what I have stated one has to get rid of their bias towards a name of Jati Varna.