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Re: superstitions
In article <38p3n7$kjj@ucunix.san.uc.edu>, vidya@cco.caltech.edu (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) writes:
|> In article <38hov7$hkc@ucunix.san.uc.edu> vijaypai@rice.edu (Vijay
|> Sadananda Pai) writes:
|> >
|> > In article <383k3o$50@ucunix.san.uc.edu>, vidya@cco.caltech.edu
|> (Vidyasankar Sundaresan) writes:
|> > |> steadfast refusal to eat meat? Before you sit in judgment over
|> > |> Vivekananda, remember that it was because of his path-breaking work
|> that
|> > |> Prabhupada could even think of coming to the US in the first place.
|> Also
|> >
|> > You have accused Krishna and Manish of getting their facts wrong;
|> > check your own. Prabhupada was inspired by the 1896 visit of
|> > Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura to Canada. While Vivekananda came in
|>
|> Precisely my point. In fact I have got all my facts right. It was because
|> of Vivekananda's success and visibility that Prabhupada and Bhaktivinoda
|> before him came to the U.S., so that their voices could also be heard. In
I think you still do not have your facts straight
1) Vivekananda was not the first person to bring Hindu
work to the US -- Pres. John Adams read the Bhagavad Gita
every day, as did Ralph Waldo Emerson & David Thoreau
2) U.S. society was primed for Prabhupada by the hippie
culture and the opposition to Vietnam in the '60s
3) Part of the hippie culture was a revival of interest in
Emerson & Thoreau, who constantly talk about the Gita
in their books
4) Prabhupada benefitted tremendously from the lax visa
laws of the '60s (he actually didn't apply for a visa;
the son of a man that he impressed in India applied for
him)
Vivekananda doesn't fit into this picture, for he was only
known in the US to a few college professors & Indologists
(the comment on the Spanish translation was by an Indian
reviewer living in Latin America), not the crowd that first
got into ISKCON; they were more likely to have gotten their
interest in Indian culture from Nehru jackets and what they'd
heard about Thoreau.
-- Vijay
