Letters to the editor

Dear Hanumath Presaka Swami, please accept my humbles reverences, all Glories to Srila Prabupada and his sincere followers! 

How is it going? I hope you are well in all aspects. It has been a month since you were in Madrid giving a lecture about Jung at the University and I am writing to keep in touch.

The director of the Institute of Religion Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid told me the day of your lecture about the possibility of formalizing relations with NIOS by signing a collaboration agreement between Institutes. In the next few days I will continue talking with him to know the details, I will keep you informed.

HpS - AGTSP! Very nice to hear from you??? PhD??? Japa??? We have had Convenios with San Marcos University in Peru. What about Universidad Valencia where Yadu Swami is working? The project could be Education and the Sacred. We heard that the current minister of education in Chile wants to include religion in the curriculum again so people can become peaceful but the political parties so that they do not want it because religion makes people stupid. Jagat guru das commented that before when it was a state religion, catholicism that seemed to be true. They were only teacher catholic dogma and the priests were abusing the children, but what we could do is cooperate with Complutense to design a curriculum that we consider religion from a scientific perspective, rational, empiricism .... what is matter, what is atma, what is paramatma, which would include different relgious representatives ini the curriculum design. It could included an overview of different religions and relgion in contrast to other philosophies of nature such as science.

I would also like to contact the Superior School of Dramatic Arts for when you visit us again in Spain.

HpS - Yes, that is one of our strongest areas even within academic perspective. Let us stay in touch on that. We will do the same in Peru next week. Maybe we could have an international collaboration on the history of drama theory India, Greece, London and Madrid.

Hamlet, Arjuna and Sancho Panzo!

On a personal level I am singing 16 rounds a day for a month,

HpS - My God. Satan is weeping in frustration!!

I am reading the BG and NOD and my intention is to begin to follow the 4 regulatory principles strictly to be able to ask you to iniciate me in singing the Holy Names.

HpS - Different people have different attractions. Some for political power, some to dominate the opposite sex, some intoxication!!!! "If you want to get free from intoxication, take the austerity to cook nice lunch for Krsna", Tom Brown

I want to move to an apartment to live alone to be able to prepare and offer food to Krsna and follow my Sadana without family disturbances, what do you advise me?

HpS - You seem to be one step ahead of us. Try it for two months?

I want to thank you for your patience and time.

Please accept my humble obeisances.

Hare Krsna !!

HpS - Thank you for reading the Kapi Dhvaja. It goes again tomorrow.

Nov 1, 2019

GauranHare Krsna, Gauranga et al,

AGTSP paoho.

We are still alive. After Noida we raced through Madrid with very strong program in the department of philosophy at Complutence University in Madrid.

Then here in Peru we have barely been able to breath with the Education and the sacred symposium. Now we are finishing everything to pack and fly all night to Argentina.

Already we are planning 2020 with Harvard University, University of London, San Marcos (the oldest university in the Western world), BRC et al.

The heart of this is learning the SB, no?

In the next few days we hope to get the time to put everything more in order for the next step.

I propose that our groups of Bh Vai students in San Jose and Houston et al study your sixth canto study materials on line. Are they on line? Then offer suggestions for the evaluation questions. Then I propose they go back and do the same for the 1st and 2nd Cantos.

This will be a little work for them but it seems to us, are we wrong, that they need this little more austerity to be up to the standard established by our first batch in North America.

O.K??

Other topic. Have you had any more contact with the people who are proposing to automate the Vidyapitha studies?  Did you get our last suggestions about a basic global evaluation including personally evaluated lectures and online automated examinations?a darshana, Bali m., Srivasa, Hari-lila Das,

Esteemed Radhika-ramana Das, Srinatha Krsna Das,

Hare Krsna.

AGTSP.  Paoho. It is 5.17PM here in Santiago. Spring is coming and the days are long and even hot. We ate too much at breakfast and too much yogurt and fruit just now. Yogurt gives us headaches at night and even now we have it. Sunset is about 7.30PM.

Yogurt at night we hear destroys your brains.

We are half way organized.

We just finished our edit (ediot) of Dr. Gupta's edit of the TPP for Text One.  Hope it is O.K. Several more edits done (before we reject the entire project?).

Lord Acton had a 60,000 book personal reference library, but he never wrote too much. Critics say he know too much and could not synthesize it properly and didn't want to write mediocre stuff, so he never wrote too much.

Yet just one phrase of his has made him immortal.

"Power tend to corrupt and absolute power (tends) to corrupt absolutely."  Then not cited much but it goes on like, "and almost a powerful men have been bad men."

NOTE - Prahlada nrsmha Das has got the NOI up at vedabase.io in Spanish!!

At your service.

Hare Krsna, Ladies and Gentlmen,

AGTSP

Paoho. We just posted our NOI Evaluation Question Bank, Phase One, to the ASA Archives. Any comments?

http://www.jayarama.us/archives/tpp-noi-evalu191031.docx

Suggestions for the Ministry of Education, Board of Examiners.

AgtSP  Paoho. After the Noida meetings we were intransit in Spain with very strong program at the university of Madrid's "Center for the Science of Religion" with Yadu Maharaja, then 12-hours in the airplane from Madrid to Lima. Here has been this symposium on "Education and the Sacred". Radhika-ramana Das came and brought his whole family, President of the oldest university in the Western hemisphere, San Marcos, United Nations Committee members etc.

Very good opportunity and great necessity for showing our educational heritage and actual application.

In the middle of all this chaos we have been constantly chewing the basic strategy for the BOEX that we were getting while in NOIDA etc.  Of course we have been discussing it again and again with Prof. Radhika, Montessori, Waldorf, Jesuit.

From this perspective it seems that a good way to go ahead with the Bh Vai etc would be to develop an automated, online, multiple choice, evaluation system for each Canto. Of course the computer can adjust the test interms of the applicants answers and language, nation etc. With good multiple choice questions we could really get some good evaluation of the applicants.

Then, for each Canto there we could offer a series of essay questions with details of what the answers should include and of course readers could be collecting their notes as they go.

These then would be examined by qualified Examiners. A basic standard could be that the applicants come to a center such as Houston once a year etc. and then they are given like 3 out of the 15 essay questions to present orally during one hour before the Examiner(s) and hopefully a broader audience. The Examiners can ask relevant questions, all videotaped and the evaluation done.

So, what we are proposing as an immediate goal is an automated online evaluation system along with essays and notes that the student would present orally with questions from qualified Examiners.

= = = = = = = 

The Boex would need to qualify the Examiners. Of course, a lot of the Teacher Qualifications would apply. Might even make it a requirement that Bh. Vedanta students have to examine and evaluate a certain number of Bh. Vai candidates as a requirement for their Bh. Ved. diploma.

= = = = = =

Simple qualifications for taking the examination, again like th California Bar examination. As we discussed maybe three letters of recommendation from ISKCON authorities et al. Of course, developing a good questionaire for the Recomenders to answer. A good relationship with them. Candidate not sanctioned by the Office of Child Protection. Notification by the BOEX of all those who are applying to take the Examination a few months before the exam with special letter to the Temples, Yatra, wherein they are claiming to be associated.

= = = = = =

Of course, this would just be something that we could roll out within a practical time frame and it would be know that we want help to develop a broader system.

= = = == =

We feel that developing teachers and teaching centers should be seen as a related job. Not exactly under the authority of the BOEX. Of course, many BOEX members could, would be involved in this institution also. What we would suggest is that the evaluation system be always available to the teachers, schools, and be fluid relation with them. Many teachers might naturally be evaluators. This seems to fall in line a lot with what we were discussing in NOIDA that many people may be able to teach the Bhagavata, so encourage that, and facing a practical system of evaluation would give them sufficient institutional requirements to standardize their work.

What the BOEX could implement immediately would be that in the online evaluation there could be a question did you study, graduate from one of the following Sastric Studies institutes and they could select one from the list of the ones registered from us and then we could publish the success rate in passing the exam of the different institutes.

Eg. Vihe 85% success passing first time, MI 87%, Vidyapitha, 91%, ISKCON Timbuktoo 61%.

Did you pass the California Bar Examination?

Yes first time.

Did you study with an institution?

Yes.

Was it a university, did you get a Doctor of Jurisprudence Diploma?

No, it was more specialized with focus on the diploma.

Oh (Pooh! Pooh!).

I graduated with Doctor of Juris. from Stanford, Bolt Hall at U. C. Berkeley! (Puff! Puff!)

Oh, you must have got a lot good professional contacts!

Yes.

O.K. These are our thoughts now.

We could go through the Cantos pretty well and get good esay questions and multiple choice questions. One essay might be, "Give us 25-new questions".

Suggestions for the Ministry of Education, Board of Examiners.

AgtSP  Paoho. After the Noida meetings we were intransit in Spain with very strong program at the university of Madrid's "Center for the Science of Religion" with Yadu Maharaja, then 12-hours in the airplane from Madrid to Lima. Here has been this symposium on "Education and the Sacred". Radhika-ramana Das came and brought his whole family, President of the oldest university in the Western hemisphere, San Marcos, United Nations Committee members etc.

Very good opportunity and great necessity for showing our educational heritage and actual application.

In the middle of all this chaos we have been constantly chewing the basic strategy for the BOEX that we were getting while in NOIDA etc.  Of course we have been discussing it again and again with Prof. Radhika, Montessori, Waldorf, Jesuit.

From this perspective it seems that a good way to go ahead with the Bh Vai etc would be to develop an automated, online, multiple choice, evaluation system for each Canto. Of course the computer can adjust the test interms of the applicants answers and language, nation etc. With good multiple choice questions we could really get some good evaluation of the applicants.

Then, for each Canto there we could offer a series of essay questions with details of what the answers should include and of course readers could be collecting their notes as they go.

These then would be examined by qualified Examiners. A basic standard could be that the applicants come to a center such as Houston once a year etc. and then they are given like 3 out of the 15 essay questions to present orally during one hour before the Examiner(s) and hopefully a broader audience. The Examiners can ask relevant questions, all videotaped and the evaluation done.

So, what we are proposing as an immediate goal is an automated online evaluation system along with essays and notes that the student would present orally with questions from qualified Examiners.

= = = = = = = 

The Boex would need to qualify the Examiners. Of course, a lot of the Teacher Qualifications would apply. Might even make it a requirement that Bh. Vedanta students have to examine and evaluate a certain number of Bh. Vai candidates as a requirement for their Bh. Ved. diploma.

= = = = = =

Simple qualifications for taking the examination, again like th California Bar examination. As we discussed maybe three letters of recommendation from ISKCON authorities et al. Of course, developing a good questionaire for the Recomenders to answer. A good relationship with them. Candidate not sanctioned by the Office of Child Protection. Notification by the BOEX of all those who are applying to take the Examination a few months before the exam with special letter to the Temples, Yatra, wherein they are claiming to be associated.

= = = = = =

Of course, this would just be something that we could roll out within a practical time frame and it would be know that we want help to develop a broader system.

= = = == =

We feel that developing teachers and teaching centers should be seen as a related job. Not exactly under the authority of the BOEX. Of course, many BOEX members could, would be involved in this institution also. What we would suggest is that the evaluation system be always available to the teachers, schools, and be fluid relation with them. Many teachers might naturally be evaluators. This seems to fall in line a lot with what we were discussing in NOIDA that many people may be able to teach the Bhagavata, so encourage that, and facing a practical system of evaluation would give them sufficient institutional requirements to standardize their work.

What the BOEX could implement immediately would be that in the online evaluation there could be a question did you study, graduate from one of the following Sastric Studies institutes and they could select one from the list of the ones registered from us and then we could publish the success rate in passing the exam of the different institutes.

Eg. Vihe 85% success passing first time, MI 87%, Vidyapitha, 91%, ISKCON Timbuktoo 61%.

Did you pass the California Bar Examination?

Yes first time.

Did you study with an institution?

Yes.

Was it a university, did you get a Doctor of Jurisprudence Diploma?

No, it was more specialized with focus on the diploma.

Oh (Pooh! Pooh!).

I graduated with Doctor of Juris. from Stanford, Bolt Hall at U. C. Berkeley! (Puff! Puff!)

Oh, you must have got a lot good professional contacts!

Yes.

O.K. These are our thoughts now.

We could go through the Cantos pretty well and get good esay questions and multiple choice questions. One essay might be, "Give us 25-new questions".