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Post by meeno8 on Jan 25, 2020 9:32:42 GMT -6
It is just a fact that nearly all the adherents of Caitanyaism are in India, mainly West Bengal and Braj-mandal. The rest that are a tiny fraction of them are either in the Bengali diaspora living outside India (those born into the tradition) or non-Indian shishyas of gurus in the tradition. The likelihood of some expansion outside of India in a significant way is questionable for the foreseeable future. Even what IGM has accomplished in that respect has not been all that significant compared to missionary activities of other faiths over the past century, and Christian missionaries historically over the past several centuries. Islam is the fastest growing faith worldwide, and that is the reported statistic. It just seems that people tend to stick with whatever religion they were born into and raised within. Converting to another faith has obstacles of various types. Nitai and I both experienced some very negative feedback from our families when we joined up with ISKCON back in the 1970s, even though they did not know much of anything about the organization. The orange robes and shaved heads were enough to cause extreme concern, and the chanting in the streets with khols and karatals. Converting to Judaism would not have provoked such a reaction. People becoming adherents of CV, on the other hand tend to have the viewpoint of taking up a practice rather than coverting to some other religion. Traditional CV is not about particular institutions like IGM (which is set up more as a missionary organization similar to the Catholic church) anyways. So, there it is: My talent for pointing out the obvious.
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Post by Ldd on Jan 25, 2020 11:30:44 GMT -6
Ramdas -ji, I wanted to say about literalism in sastra, (which was mentioned in one post) for those translating, there is a book called Nirghantu grantha - with the rules for double meaning in Vedic language.
You probably know or might want to know.
Maybe one reason people are not getting convinced is : all that literal stuff being preached.
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Post by Ldd on Jan 25, 2020 11:43:55 GMT -6
I'm his minute proposing to one person that animal sacrifice to Kali (Bengali practice) wasn't meant to be done literally, because of the language it was written in. Krishn says men are misled astray and wrongfully hurting animals in sacrifice ( 11 canto) I'm now delving into why it may have happened.
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 25, 2020 12:04:56 GMT -6
I'm his minute proposing to one person that animal sacrifice to Kali (Bengali practice) wasn't meant to be done literally, because of the language it was written in. Krishn says men are misled astray and wrongfully hurting animals in sacrifice ( 11 canto) I'm now delving into why it may have happened. It is not just a Bengali practice. Human sacrifice is described in the Vedas. It is called purusa-medha. It may have actually been performed way back then. Even the Asva-medha seems to have started out as a form of human sacrifice. The horse is clearly a replacement for the king. It may once have been the case that one of the functions of the king was to be the human sacrifice for the benefit and welfare of the kingdom and its citizens. |
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Post by Ldd on Jan 25, 2020 12:30:01 GMT -6
I'm using the bengali sacrifice as example. But the language used should determine interpretation. Is it double language, as in the book I mentioned ?  |
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Post by Ldd on Jan 25, 2020 12:34:41 GMT -6
I am aware of human and bull sacrifice propagated ( similar to Bible) ..Rituals are in srauta (mimamsa) texts.. another matter I will come to..
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 25, 2020 13:05:21 GMT -6
I'm using the bengali sacrifice as example. But the language used should determine interpretation. Is it double language, as in the book I mentioned ? The nirgaNTu just means vocabulary. It was created rather late (5th cent. BCE?) in order to prevent the loss of meanings of words in the Vedas. Some words in the Vedas rarely occur later, if at all. The NirgaNTu was composed to preserve their meanings, but in many cases it was already too late. Of some Vedic words we no longer know the meanings. It wasn't a code book with secret secondary meanings. Rather, it was in some cases a collection of wild guesses. |
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Post by Ldd on Jan 25, 2020 13:57:47 GMT -6
I'm using the bengali sacrifice as example. But the language used should determine interpretation. Is it double language, as in the book I mentioned ? The nirgaNTu just means vocabulary. It was created rather late (5th cent. BCE?) in order to prevent the loss of meanings of words in the Vedas. Some words in the Vedas rarely occur later, if at all. The NirgaNTu was composed to preserve their meanings, but in many cases it was already too late. Of some Vedic words we no longer know the meanings. It wasn't a code book with secret secondary meanings. Rather, it was in some cases a collection of wild guesses. I'm just trying to caution we need not go literal full blast. 🙂 |
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Post by meeno8 on Jan 25, 2020 14:47:45 GMT -6
And I was making the point of putting any texts in context. There has been a development and evolution of the theology in CV over a great span of time. It needs to be presented as just as relevant today as it was 5 centuries ago, sans any excess baggage in texts that purport to describe outdated cosmologies that we know today to be out of touch with reality. Galileo was forced to recant and put under house arrest for the rest of his life for describing the solar system with the sun at the center based on observations with his telescope, and it took until the 1990s for the church to finally exonerate him. The age of the universe was calculated in ancient India to be the same as that calculated by modern astronomers, and that is very interesting. The late astronomer Carl Sagan pointed that out in his series Cosmos. How they arrived at that is just a plain mystery. Is the cosmology in the BP meant to be just mere poetry? Perhaps, but I think not likely. I think whoever put that in there (maybe some interpolation anyways) just based it on other sources that considered the earth as the center of the universe, just as church doctrine did during Galileo's time.
The religion of the Vedas is distinct from the religion of the Puranas. The devatas worshipped have shifted from the time of the writing of texts in Vedic Sanskrit and those written in classical Sanskrit, which are not exactly the same languages. Any tradition has to be a living, breathing one in order to continue from one generation to the next. Otherwise, it could perish from stagnation and indifference on the part of adherents that may fall by the wayside.
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Post by Nitaidas on Jan 25, 2020 15:35:14 GMT -6
The nirgaNTu just means vocabulary. It was created rather late (5th cent. BCE?) in order to prevent the loss of meanings of words in the Vedas. Some words in the Vedas rarely occur later, if at all. The NirgaNTu was composed to preserve their meanings, but in many cases it was already too late. Of some Vedic words we no longer know the meanings. It wasn't a code book with secret secondary meanings. Rather, it was in some cases a collection of wild guesses. I'm just trying to caution we need not go literal full blast. 🙂 Right! And it is a good caution. We certainly cannot take the descriptions of the Purusa-sukta as literal. It is a metaphorical representation of the creation of the universe out of the dismemberment (sacrificial offering) of a primordial giant (Purusa). It establishes sacrifice as a way of rejuvenating the universe periodically, the universe as originating from divine substance, our deep connection with the divine source, our own divine identities (a thousand-headed, a thousand eyed; one of those heads is yours and another is mine) etc. etc. |
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Post by meeno8 on Jan 25, 2020 16:37:59 GMT -6
I looked at the ISKCON Mumbai website recently out of curiosity, and it says that the founder/acharya installed the murtis there, which is a complete lie. I was there for the ceremony, which was conducted by brahmins from Vrindavan that are not part of ISKCON, and was a couple months after the passing of the founder/acharya. I sent them a message to update their site. Maybe they will. There might still be hope for IGM, if the younger crowd can get genuine reforms from within to bring it back into the fold of traditional CV and provide initiation via gurus that are part of the Nityananda poribar with real initiation themselves. That might just be wishful thinking on my part though.
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Post by Ldd on Jan 25, 2020 19:06:09 GMT -6
And I was making the point of putting any texts in context. There has been a development and evolution of the theology in CV over a great span of time. It needs to be presented as just as relevant today as it was 5 centuries ago, sans any excess baggage in texts that purport to describe outdated cosmologies that we know today to be out of touch with reality. Galileo was forced to recant and put under house arrest for the rest of his life for describing the solar system with the sun at the center based on observations with his telescope, and it took until the 1990s for the church to finally exonerate him. The age of the universe was calculated in ancient India to be the same as that calculated by modern astronomers, and that is very interesting. The late astronomer Carl Sagan pointed that out in his series Cosmos. How they arrived at that is just a plain mystery. Is the cosmology in the BP meant to be just mere poetry? Perhaps, but I think not likely. I think whoever put that in there (maybe some interpolation anyways) just based it on other sources that considered the earth as the center of the universe, just as church doctrine did during Galileo's time. The religion of the Vedas is distinct from the religion of the Puranas. The devatas worshipped have shifted from the time of the writing of texts in Vedic Sanskrit and those written in classical Sanskrit, which are not exactly the same languages. Any tradition has to be a living, breathing one in order to continue from one generation to the next. Otherwise, it could perish from stagnation and indifference on the part of adherents that may fall by the wayside. Not everything is poetic.some is true. The universe age was confirmed by science and many other things have and will be. However consider that sastra was written a long time ago, and in that time changes have occured in the cosmos.(trillions of years ) Nothing is stagnant. Some of the things described do not exist anymore. |
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Post by meeno8 on Jan 26, 2020 9:16:39 GMT -6
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualismOne thing is that Cartesian dualism has been debunked. Also there are paradoxes of consciousness. A subject on an fMRI scan will move an arm, but the arm moves a fraction of a second prior to the subject being actually conscious of the willing of the arm to move, which means one part of the brain sends the signal to the arm muscles before the other part of the brain is aware of that signal being sent. Plants as inanimate life is a meaningless idea. They are hardly inanimate. Watch a fly enter a Venus flytrap's pod, and you will see it instantly close to trap the fly. Sunflowers face the sun and move along with its position in the sky throughout the day. We now know (via the use of microscopes) that all organisms are made up of cells, and even single celled organisms are endowed with consciousness. Colonies of bacteria in the gut communicate with each other of the same species with chemical signals. The sperm cell searches for the ovum cell in human reproduction. That is a conscious act. Whenever you touch your skin or pull on a pair of socks, you are murdering many single cell organisms that live on your epidermis. There is no change for non-violence in this world, so ahimsa is really just some ideal and abstract concept in the final analysis. Does that excuse factoring farming and cruelty to animals for a profit? That is a question of morality, and PETA could get those operations shut down in due course due to public outrage along with consumer pressure, and the almighty dollar does rule in America. The point is that we have to consider current knowledge available, and not just some knowledge passed on in books, irrespective of when those books were written or published. The validity of any knowledge needs to pass reasonable tests, and perhaps it may be invalidated and revised as needed. Theology does not easily fall under the category of what can be validated, however.
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Post by meeno8 on Jan 26, 2020 13:45:56 GMT -6
CC is just as important as the Gita and BP as basic texts for CV. When I was staying with the babajis in our poribar, the afternoon program included readings from CC, and the evening program included kirton. BP was read in the bhagavata-saptaha ceremony over 7 days. That is not quite the same as the program in IGM, although I would recite from CC at lunch prasad every day at the Mumbai ISKCON temple. The English translation of the text by BBT could be questionable in its accuracy in places though. Nitai could expound more upon that. The late Ed Dimock and Tony Stewart came out with their translation, and I would rely more upon that one.
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