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Re: New site needs your point of view
In article <4i5c1j$iog@babbage.ece.uc.edu>, Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <rbalasub@ecn.purdue.edu> writes:
|> >>The previous tejas had disappeared and he wore a
|> >>sheepish grin on his face.
|> >
|> >Communications Decency Act Alert! You have mentioned tejas (the
|> >original name for Texas), sheep, and grinning all in the same
|> >sentence. We try to keep this newsgroup totally free from anything
|> >which might run us afoul of the CDA, and this borders dangerously
|> >close. The only worse thing you could've mentioned would've been the
|> >K*** S****.
|>
|> Kama Sutra and sheep??!!! You ISKCONites!
Actually, not quite.
I haven't seen anyone from ISKCON post here in a while, and
I doubt that you have either, although you might be convinced
otherwise. Most of the people who post here in support of Srila
Prabhupada's philosophy are not from ISKCON. Surprising? Hardly so.
I've noticed this tendency of yours to try to bash ISKCON in these
posts, and I'm not quite sure. My original post barely dealt with
religion, but was, instead, a satire of the series of pointless
off-topic (IMO) articles which had appeared on SRH recently.
Your response was basically just a bunch of ISKCON-bashing, as
was this most recent response from you. Personally, I didn't
find either very funny, not because they bashed ISKCON, but because
there wasn't anything particularly funny about the way it was done.
I receive quite a few jokes about ISKCON, from people both within
and outside of ISKCON, and I have no problem with the humor, but
there's always a (not necessarily) fine line between tasteful and
pointless, and in my opinion, your attempts at humor have been
pointless.
I have, both in this newsgroup and in other newsgroups, stated
my preferences as far as belief go, but let me restate them -
I find neo-advaita significantly less appealing, both from an
intellectual standpoint, and from a standpoint of "beauty", than
it's claimed predecessor. I have no problem with disagreement,
and I have no problem with people stating viewpoints which differ
from mine, but I find a vast range of quality in the posts which
these days get lumped under "advaita". Needless to say, these stem
not only from the authors themselves, but also from the people
whose viewpoints those authors are representing. To put it nicely,
a lot of the people who claim to be philosophically linked to
Sankaracharya just don't seem to be on his level. Granted, these
are my personal opinions, and I'm sure that you can do a
search-and-replace to generate yours, etc.
However, this continual ISKCON-bashing is quite funny to me,
especially since you don't even have the major players right.
A little personal history, if you don't mind the diversion -
I am not in ISKCON proper. I most definitely help ISKCON, and
I support them, but here's the catch - it's with the approval
of my family's guru back in India. Surprised? Don't be. We descend
from the Gaudiyas.
Now, beyond that, you'll probably be surprised to find that
we're also not exclusive. There are three large temples in Houston,
and my family's helped all three of them. Only one of them is
ISKCON. Likewise, my family still has life membership at a major
temple in New York (no prizes for guessing which one), in addition
to the life membership we have at the ISKCON temple in New York.
My early religious schooling included the Vivekananda Vedanta
Society in Houston, but even back then, I was doing my own reading,
and I didn't particularly find everything quite appealing. However,
it wasn't all terrible, and the general background and philosophy
part was reasonably OK. I'm still on friendly terms with my old
teacher whenever I see her.
I have a hard time understanding the stereotype of fanaticism you
try to project upon your opponents. Would it surprise you to find
that even recently, I encouraged someone to attend a non-ISKCON
Gita study course? If so, why? It made perfect sense to me - I knew
that she'd stick around for the course, I knew her parents would go
for it, and given that she's at an age when some religious exposure
is better than none, I had no problem suggesting that she join.
Likewise, would it surprise you that I also support other temples
besides Vaishnava temples?
Everyone seems to be talking about "Hindu Unity" these days, but
they seem very unclear on what that means. At this rate, there won't
be any Hindus born in the US in about a generation or so. This
nihilistic approach to being a Hindu "either be an all-accepting
Hindu or do nothing" will yield the latter. Already I see a lot of
people suggesting that any belief is fanaticism, and that's just
from within the Hindu community. In the end, it'll be "cool" to be
a "know-nothing". It's already that way to a large extent.
You can brand me a heretic for helping ISKCON (among others), but
at least I'm doing something. Likewise, you can sit back and
comfortably lambaste Srila Prabhupada for not meeting your standards,
but let's face it - take a look at the newer generation of Hindu
kids. Find something Hindu about them. Now take a look at some of
_Westerners_ that have come into contact with ISKCON. It shouldn't
be too hard to find cases where these "foreigners" came into contact
with this <your favorite denigratory phrase here> and suddenly became
quite a bit more "Hindu" than the natives.
You are welcome to rant all you want. All I ask is that you get
your facts straight. You might, however, want to consider what
you accomplish.
-Vivek
