CV and Superstitions

[malati]

There are some practices in CV that I don't do anymore, for practical reasons.

I'm laughing while typing. I use dishwashing liquid to clean my plates, not soil from the ground and I use scourer to scrub my plate not just with my fingers. I eat from a ceramic plate because they look nicer with those designs not from a stainless steel plates, though I still have them in my cupboard.

I eat carrots and eggplants. I think not eating carrot is a prohibition from Hari Bhakti Vilas and I think there's a story behind it. I can't remember now. I recall reading that in the M_sl_m faith, you shouldn't let the vegie seller put your tomatoes and carrots or were they eggplants in the one paperbag. Yes, religious prohibitions are sometimes really ridiculous.

I don't always shower after going to the toilet or change my clothes, just not practical.

I don't notice if I use my left or right hand to clean myself when showering.

There are more that I can't think of at the moment.

With not eating grains on ekadasi, it makes sense not to, not only because of the moon's gravitational pull's on our blood but also because carbohydrate is a heavy source of energy and much of it gets converted into fat which makes us lazy or sluggish.

[Deleted]

Sounds like a Sample Bias again just like Karate is better than anything - it depends - did the real J. Astrologer give a deceitful response not reply.




Otherwise, it's always true.

[Deleted]

"With not eating grains on ekadasi, "

Wow, The Ancient Vimana Civil Architects new about the innovative "Ketogenic Diet" regulations. That's Grrrrrrrrr8 like Tony the Tiger roars.

[meeno8]

I perform intermittent fasting for health reasons, such as an 18 hour fast (not food, but some water) 3 days a week.

[meeno8]

Krishna and Caitanya Mahaprabhu had their horoscopes drawn up (and their palm and footprints read) by jyotish pandits. Just part of Indian culture.

[Nitaidas]

Interesting discussion here. Thanks, Krsnadasji, for raising the question. I guess I will weigh in briefly.

In my view, the CV we received in the West and perhaps in modern India as well was/is burdened with a lot of cultural baggage. Most of it can safely be discarded without harming one's development of Krsna-bhakti. Much of what is described as sadAcAra, for instance, is really unnecessary in the modern world. Most of it was instituted in a pre-modern world in which maintaining good hygiene was difficult and the results of poor hygiene were sickness and death. Using the left hand to wipe one's ass, for instance, and only the right hand to eat with is a good example. That was probably a good way to avoid the spread of germs and impurity. Today we have much more facility to maintain a high level of hygiene and by extension a high level of ritual purity for japa and puja. Wash one's hands regularly, bathe every day, wear clean clothes, eat well-prepared, fresh vegetarian food (offered to the Lord), do puja and japa in states of ritual purity and you have surpassed all of the rules of sadAcAra.

As for the observance of ekAdasi, it is more of an opportunity to focus one's mind on Krsna and Radhika than an act of superstition in my view. When we observed ekAdasi when I lived with Baba and the babas who lived with him, it was an important day of austerity. We observed it as a nirjal fast, that is, we had no food and not even water for 24 hours. In addition to executing all our duties and practices (japa, kirtan, arati, etc.) we performed kirtan all night beginning at about 6 in the evening and ending about 8 the next morning. I remember them rather fondly, though they seemed scary and exhausting at the time. They were also rather amusing from another perspective. The whole group would start out doing kirtan (fundamentally the Mahamantra with some other opening kirtan songs). By about 9 or 10 in the evening half the babas had vanished (ie. crawled off surreptitiously to their beds). By midnight it was just me. My lone little voice carrying on in the darkness of night with just one small karosene lamp pushing back the darkness. By about four in the morning some baba would again join me and by 8 most of the crew was back. I don't know how I carried on, but somehow I did and this was always the case for the dozen or so Ekadasis I observed while living with Baba. I remember on one occasion Baba emerged from his room about 7 in the morning and looked around. He asked a question of one of the other babas, Vanamali das baba, I think. Nodding towards me he asked ei ki koreche? Vanamali replied ei sararat kirtan koreche. Baba looked at me again and maybe for the first time he looked upon me with some affection and respect. Naturally, I could never quit in the middle of an all night kirtan after that. I always somehow stuck it out the whole night. I occasionally went into a kind of trance during which the whole night passed while I sang and suddenly it was dawn. I felt extraordinarily peaceful and fulfilled after such nights and not hungry at all. So I regard many of these various observances not as superstitions, but as opportunities to remember Radhika and Krsna and cultivate one's growing love for them, to put oneself last and them first for a change. The fundamental principle of sadhana is Hari-smarana.

As far as astrology goes I think it is a pile of horse manure. It is not a science at all. I am rather surprised that my gurubhai Mina, who is usually quite rational, accepts astrology as in some way more than a method to extract money from a bunch of gullible bumpkins. Surely Krsna and Gauranga only had charts done because it was socially expected of them, much like their going to school and receiving diksa. When in Rome do as the Romans do, sort of thing.

So CV comes to us wrapped in brightly colored Indian cultural wrapping paper. We have to tear the paper off and enjoy the wonderful gift within which has little essentially to do with India. That's just where the space ship landed.

[meeno8]

I have already detailed why my Astronomy 101 professor at University of Denver did not think astrology (Western astrology and not jyotish) could be considered legitimate. Statistical correlations (between planetary orbits and price swings in markets) do not equate to cause and effect. I think I have made that quite clear. Otherwise, there could be some magical 'crystal ball' that allows one a view of future events. The data are there, and I can supply them to anyone who is a skeptic. Then again, that has nothing to do with horoscopes of individual people, that some charlatan who probably does not even know the basic principles of casting those via jyotish, uses to dupe them. On that, I am with you bhai.

I think the so-called 'prophecies' of Nostradamus are pretty much total nonsense, yet people tend to put a lot of stock in those. I have pointed out the illusion of so-called 'free will', which has been proven false in the laboratory with people in fMRI scans. Oh yeah, what is that other prophecy promulgated within IGM? Something about 10,000 years of a new Golden Age.

At any rate, this is just my clarification as opposed to trying to be contentious on any of these subjects.

[meeno8]

And with respect to those mentioned correlations, any attempt to explain them with some theory would be inherently problematic. To attribute it to some mysterious force upon market auctions by the grahas is inherently problematic in more than one respect.

[meeno8]

Re: Palmistry, which is reading the 'chart in the hand' (another part of jyotish) rather than doing numerous mathematical calculations and drawing up the jyotish-chakra (horoscope on paper).

Back in the 1980s I was having a discussion about astrology and palmistry with my late mother, who received her Masters in Learning Disabilities from Northwestern University and was a coordinator for the early child testing center for the school district. She told me how in the old Polish neighborhood in Chicago where she grew up the ladies that read palms were very highly respected. But, what is more significant is something else she told me, which is how people with a type of severe mental retardation are missing a line from their palms, and that was based on observations over decades of such people. I immediately knew which line that is: The head line, which along with the heart line and the life line is one of the 3 most prominent lines on the palm.

Correlation or cause and effect? Probably just correlation in this case. I mean, what would the cause and what the effect, if not? Is there any 'rational' explanation for it? Does that really matter?

[meeno8]

Maybe you would say that we need to investigate this more thoroughly and get a more comprehensive dataset to really confirm the correlation with the head line in the palm. And, you would not necessarily be wrong in arguing that. After all, it was always thought that there were only white swans until black swans were finally discovered in Australia.

[meeno8]

Without delving into the subject of cognitive dissonance here, let's explore rational vis a vis irrational in terms of one's thoughts, since the subject has now been broached. I think neurologists might have a lot to say about how we perceive our own 'rationality' with respect to objective rationality and its underlying reality. A magician does his card trick and the audience is mystified. Not because they really think he made the card disappear in one place and reappear in another place. They just don't know how the trick is done, or they could just do it themselves.

I could write a few more paragraphs, but need to attend to some tasks. Food for thought for the time being though.

[meeno8]

Quantum mechanics would appear to be more irrational than rational, but voilà!

[meeno8]

I have never actually advocated that jyotish is a science like physics or chemistry or geology. I think even biology and medicine might be questionable 'sciences' given how much we really do not know about what how much we still do not know in those fields. The frontiers are pushed in them each decade and year at an ever accelerating pace. Anti-oxidants were all the rage for many years, and then the validity of those was overturned 20 years ago, yet they are still a multi-billion dollar industry every year with people buying into the 'snake oil' products.

I prefer not to have people representing me and my positions and views on topics, thank you very much.

[meeno8]

I do not want to belabor the point, but I do have a few more remarks on jyotish. First of all, there was an article published in Discover Magazine back in the 1990s (the publication competes directly with Scientific American) that was about a French astronomer that had done some substantial research, and he found some statistical correlations between people's occupations and their rising signs. I believe he just wanted to look into astrology in general to see where it might lead him. I do not know if other researchers conducted their own independent research that either supported his conclusions or contradicted them.

Now, I found this to be quite striking in my own research, which I began in 1984. I was looking at charts of futures markets and comparing them to the transits of the 12 rashis (signs of the zodiac) by the nava-graha (9 planets of jyotish). And low and behold the price of gold futures contracts had skyrocketed when Shani (Saturn) was transiting the signs ruled by Mercury (Budha), which are Gemini (Ashwin) and Virgo (Kanya). That was several years prior to 1984, because Shani's orbit is about 30 years to get through all 12 rashis. I would have to wait for the next time around to see if it would happen again, which was many years in the future at that point. Well, sure enough it did happen again. I profited from a couple gold coins I had stored away in the vault at the bank, which I had bought and then sold when the price of gold shot up. I was just wishing I had a lot of money in a futures margin account to load up on contracts, which unfortunately I did not. But, that was also perhaps fraught with some risk, since my statistical sampling was only 2 transits of signs ruled by Mercury within 1 orbit of Saturn, due mainly do the fact that the gold futures contract is not that old, and historical price data on the metal going back decades or centuries is not all that readily available. I guess I should say my confidence level has gone up now with double the statistical sampling to use as a reference for predictions.

What does any of this prove about any cause and effect involved? I can't say, but anyone can take a look at the correlation I found with Saturn transits and gold futures prices, and then it will be quite clear to them as well that the transits coincide with the dramatic rise in prices.

[meeno8]

A total skeptic would probably consider all religious rituals and practices complete superstitions. I suppose in our case it is where we are going to draw the line. If someone is not willing to chant the maha-mantra and experience the effects, then they are just sitting on the sidelines. Their attitude might be those people running down the street with their drums and hand cymbals are no different from those people sitting in the pews in the churches, all with their blind faith in their gods that are the figments of their own imaginations.