Why do we need to read purports while reading scripture?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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thank you so that function of helping us understand that is what the purpose is and some people like to study scripture not so much for the purpose of studying maybe study or maybe just recite scripture out of some sense of religious piety some people like to recite Bhagavad Gita which is good definitely reciting Bhagavad Gita is good but quite often these people recite Bhagavad Gita throughout their life without really understanding the Gita without really reviewing the Gita so then what has happened it is just a part of the of religious culture it is not a spiritual transformation that is happening by the contact with God so that transformation happens when there is intellectual comprehension and so we see the verses as revealing the spiritual truth and we see the commentaries as helping us understand the scriptures and if we study the scriptures without any commentaries the amount of understanding that we will get is very limited in epistemology epistemology means knowledge about prior knowledge that’s a branch of knowledge what we can know depends on what we know what we can know depends on what we know you know say somebody says my friend does not say why your name is so white the doctor comes and says you have got anemia now what is happening somebody who does not know about medical knowledge they say your fingers are white your fingernails are white somebody says whiteness is a symptom of anemia so the point is what we can know depends on what we know so if we just study scripture ourselves what we can know will be very limited because we are just not able to connect with scripture how is the scripture important what do I do with this knowledge so by by studying the acharyas commentaries we can actually we can understand the scripture so we should see the acharyas commentaries as their gifts to us to aim in our understanding and of course the focus should be on understanding the scripture so in some cases from one acharyas commentary we can understand something from other cases we can understand something from another acharyas commentary that is all fine so the point is you keep the understanding as the first words and then study scripture not just for the sake of oh I have cited scripture no if I want to understand then the acharyas commentaries are invaluable and often indispensable aid for understanding that’s all I would say questions from Aditya