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Re: new site needs your point of view
vivek@cs.rice.edu (Vivek Sadananda Pai) offered:
>|> New Site Announcement
>>|>
>|> The Millennial Information Exchange
>|> http://orion.adnc.com/~websites/khoward/milleniale.html
>|>
>|> I am a college student gathering data on current views about the
>|> millenium, conspiracy, and UFO theory.
>|>
>Hey, perfect! I was just waiting for someone to ask me this, since a
>friend of mine asked me the following question last week, and I had
>nowhere to turn to.
>
>Basically, it started like this - my friend is a Caucasian (white) guy
>who is somewhat unfamiliar with the finer points of Indian cuisine.
>After eating a ton of samosas with tamarind chutney one night, he fell
>into a sound sleep and had a strange series of dreams.
>
>Each dream picked up where the last one left off, and to summarize, it
>went something like this: he was awoken by a TURTLE, who he thought
>might be an incarnation of VISHNU. It turned out, however, that the
>turtle was an advance man for a race of ALIEN BEINGS. He didn't have
>much choice but to cooperate, and the beamed him aboard their space
>ship. Once there, they force him to read the KAMA SUTRA, like aliens
>are wont to do, and they promised him that they knew the secrets to
>PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY, and that the Physical Immortality Project had it
>all wrong. Suffice it to say that the secrets involved ripe olives.
>
>Anyway, aboard the spacecraft, he met a variety of other beings which
>had been abucted, the strangest of which was an infinitesimally small
>Vietnamese girl who could only repeat "Niy Nauq" repeatedly, which we
>all know is the name of the HINDU GODDESS QUAN YIN, only spelled
>backwards. He asked if his captors were THUGGIES, and they assured him
>that they were not, and that he'd be released soon. However, due to a
>freak accident, they accidentally destroyed one MOSQUE, about 200
>Hindu temples, and they annoyed the inhabitants of a GURUDWARA with a
>low-altitude fly-by. They also said something to him in a language he
>doesn't understand, and he wanted a TRANSLATION into ENGLISH, if
>possible, of their statement "Ay yae yo! Thu soor pilal wah? Thook tha
>jana dissani wah? Chickeh maathentha ahkahl ghaali".
>
>It was at this point that he woke up, and he had one burning question,
>which he asked me. I naturally didn't have an answer, so I'll ask it
>here.
>
>His question was: "Am I Hindu?"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Your opinions are welcome.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Why opinions? I have a concrete answer. Yes, all questions in this world have
concrete answers and happily enough I have the answer for Vivek Pai's profound
question. Now the answer is also in the form a story (not surprisingly). I, an
Asian Indian (brown skinned), man had the following dream. My dream
coincidentally solves Vivek's puzzle.
I am not acquainted with the fine points of American cuisine and ate
2*PI*51.09913 bean burritos one night and fell asleep. I had a strange
dream. I felt that I was being transported to a huge space ship. There was a
huge legend in red on the space ship, it read NKOSCI. Suddenly I saw Vyaasa
muni and Suka Maharishi by my side. I said,
I: "Pranaams, O Vyaasadeva"
V: "Blessings be unto you, my son"
I: "O sir, A question which has rankled fine minds in srh, Are you Narada's
disciple or not?"
V: "Are you crazy or what? I clearly wrote in the Mahaabharata that I was
trained by Paraasaraa. Different puraaNas say various things, these are all
trivial details and various puraaNas say various things to emphasize
different aspects of the same truth. You must be crazy to argue about this."
We entered the space-ship and suddenly Vyaasa started singing, not unlike
M.C.Hammer,
"Naarad, Naaaarad, Naaaradaaa,
I was, I was his disciiipleee."
At the same time he was executing a series of complicated dance steps and was
also munching everything (cushions, wooden pieces etc) in sight. I was
wondering why he was doing this dancing, singing and feasting. I turned to Suka
Maharishi and was shocked. The previous tejas had disappeared and he wore a
sheepish grin on his face. He had a wooden board around his neck, suspended by
a string like a garland. On the board was written: 'I am Suka Gosvami'. Needless
to say, I was thoroughly confused.
Suddenly I saw Lord Ganesha at a distance and could make out the Bhasma
(vibhuti) on his forehead even from a distance. I started reciting
"Om gaM, namastE gaNapatayE" etc and started walking towards him. As I went
near I saw lots of people feeding him milk from spoons. I also realized as I
went nearer that it was not Bhasma on his forehead, but a white piece of paper
stuck to his forehead with the legend (in red letters): "I am a pure devotee".
I went nearer and said, "O, Ganesha, Whass goin' on?". He replied that NKOSCI
devotees were feeding him milk from spoons for the sheer joy of serving a pure
devotee. He said he'd accept milk only from NKOSCI devotees and they could be
made out by their dhothis and tilaks. I said, "But, Lord, you don't seem to be
drinking it. It's just rising by capillary action and then covering your body
and then flowing off your body. I can see that the law of conservation of mass
is not being violated."
He said, "Stop chest-beating you !*? advaitin". Then he turned to his
attendants and said, "Throw this arrogant, logical cad out". Then they threw me
out of the space ship and I went down pulled by the gravitational attraction of
a local planet.
WHEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeee! THHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhuuuDDDdddd. It took a few
minutes to recover and then I slowly got up and wondered where I was. Suddenly
a board appeared, and on it was written in huge green letters "PLANET OF THE
FAITHLESS, Welcome chest beaters and arrogant upstarts". I saw a man sitting
nearby and went to him, "O sir, Who are you? Tejas is overflowing from you.".
He said, "My boy, I am paraasara. I am an advaitin as the Vishnu puraaNa says.
And here is Ribhu, he has said said that worshiping Shiva will lead to GYaana.
". I said "O, sirs, if you had read srh, you would have known your folly. The
people belonging to the Maadhva and Gaudiya traditions would have enlightened
you: "Worshiping Shiva cannot lead to GYaana". Of course there are lots of
verses contradicting this in the puraaNas, but the M and G people just keep on
insisting that they are correct without proper research and thus it has become
a truth."
At this point I woke up.
The answer to Vivek's question should now be obvious. *Drum roll*, *** crash of
cymbals ***,
"HE IS a VAISHNAVA, but NOT a HINDU".
Some people may not see how the answer has been arrived at (to Vivek's puzzle)
from my story. Simple, just use the usual B or M or G (one of the three
tradition's) logic.
Your humble devotee,
Ramakrishnan.
PS: The above article was a parody on opinions expressed by various people in
srh and ah. Some of the incidents date waaayyy back.
--
Sitting quietly doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.
http://yake.ecn.purdue.edu/~rbalasub/
