Letters to the editor

Hare Krsna!

AGTSP! Paoho.

After a 45-minute conversation with Srivasa Pandita Das from ISKCON Silicon Valley educational projects, last evening, we want to share our current views on Sastri education in ISKCON.

Of course, these are our views as one of the several blind men trying to understand the elephant. Please contribute your understanding from your point of view.

A lot of the impetus of the conversation was the SB class that we had just finished with ISKCON Boise, Idaho yesterday moring. For us it was a colossal effort involving Temple President, Ananta-rupa Das, Radhika-raman Das and many others.

It was one of the nicest experiences in our life and confirmed our idea that ISKCON Temple means a community of devotees organized around daily, morning study of Srimad Bhagavatam.

Of course, this can mean members who can physically attend the programs in the Temple Building, but with Srivasa Ji we were very much discussing (some times with great zeal and alacrity) that this can also mean Grhasthas studying the texts in their own homes in the morning and then discussing together on a weekly basis what they have studied.

From our perspective, hearing opinions of many others also, Sastric studies in the Western hemisphere, is in a very dangerous, little reliability, situation. There can be local programs promoted by local gurus that are very nice, but we feel that without a global educational network coordinating these and offering these programs to others we will always be lacking in essential features to make a healthy ISKCON educational aspect.

We need local gurus and global integration.

Our first product aim in Anjana Suta Academy, Sastric studies, is learning how to associate with teachers, fellow students and our students. Then we are concerned with didactic methods, calendars, and finally learning facts.

We feel that we are lacking in the extreme with proper association between the ISKCON Administrators and Brahmans which are the two pillars of happiness for the community in general.

This is our view and of course 60% of the problem is our fault, 20% others faults and 20% God's arrangement.

So, we propose to go ahead trying to integrate Temple President's et al with ISKCON Ministry of Education. We will go ahead with niscayena and put our heart into it but we depend 60% on your mercy.

Of course, we are certainly continuing with our own responsibility of regular, daily, SB study and how that is developing systematically you can see at our web-site, www.Jayarama.US, through our News.

Since our last report we have sought to gain insights from our committee of distinguished members on what topics and questions to ask about ART AND THE SACRED for their interviews in India and Australia on their journey from September to November.

Looking for a conceptual consensus among our members (which is art and which is sacred are controversial issues) we can say briefly that Art is an activity entirely linked to the spirit, the emotions and the conscience and the Sacred is what brings us back to our original existence, which connects us with the transcendent, with the spiritual. On this basis these are the contributions:

HÉCTOR BÉJAR / THEME: THE IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT IN ART AND THE SACRED
Questions: 1. In what way do you believe that works of art regardless of their EXPLICIT purpose can express a sacred message. 2. Who are the most representative authors for you who express EXPLICITLY a transcendent, artistic and sacred message in the plastic arts, literature, theater, cinema,  etc.

WALTER LEÓN / THEME: LINK AND EVOLUTION BETWEEN ART AND SACRED
Questions: 1.- What is the link between art and the sacred, 2.- How has the thinking of art and the sacred EVOLVED. 3. Art and the sacred is a response to the yearnings of being, or is a hope for a better world, or both.

WALTER OJEDA / THEME: INTEGRATION AND CONNECTION BETWEEN NEUROSCIENCES, ART AND SACRED
Questions: 1.- The  mandalas  can be a means of INTEGRATION between art and the sacred and 2.- What are the CONNECTIONS between neurosciences, art and the sacred. 3 .- on what basis is the artistic experience and the experience of the Sacred.

Abhiram Thakur  das / THEME: THE NATURE AND ESSENCE OF ART AND THE SACRED
Questions: 1.- It is the CREATION of the universe an artistic and sacred act. 2. Art and the sacred are ESSENTIALLY experiential experiences, what is the role of consciousness in this experience. 3. - What is the relationship between soul, art and sacred.

We also talked extensively with Ambarisa  prabhu from Argentina and agreed that this documentary has, mainly, three ingredients: 1.- your interviews with personalities from the academic and cultural community. 2. - The event to be held in Lima-Peru and 3.- THE PROGRESS OF A PEREGRINE, that is, the journey or the journey of his sankirtana loyal and determined to Srila Prabhupada, one of whose characteristics is to connect the intellectuals with the books of Srila Prabhupada.

For the following report we hope to have the contributions of Ramón Mujica, Miguel Polo and Gandharva, we also have an interview with the Director of the National Library,
to see the calendar and sponsorship.

That's all for now. Hare Krishna GURUDEVA, his useless servant, Abhiram Thakur das.

URGENTE: 2do informe EL ARTE Y LO SAGRADO

Hare Krishna Gurudeva, por favor acepte mis humildes reverencias

¡Todas las Glorias a Srila Prabhupada!!

¡Todas las Glorias a Hanumatpresaka Swami!!

Desde nuestro último informe hemos tratado de obtener las perspectivas de nuestro comité de miembros distinguidos acerca de que temas y que preguntas hacer sobre EL ARTE Y LO SAGRADO para sus entrevistas en la India y Australia, en su viaje de setiembre a noviembre.

Buscando un consenso conceptual entre nuestros miembros (que es arte y que es sagrado son temas controversiales) podemos decir brevemente que el Arte es una actividad enteramente ligada al espíritu, a las emociones y a la conciencia y lo Sagrado es aquello que nos lleva nuevamente a nuestra existencia original, lo que nos conecta con lo trascendente, con lo espiritual. Sobre esta base estos son los aportes:

HÉCTOR BÉJAR / TEMA: LO IMPLICITO Y LO EXPLICITO EN EL ARTE Y LO SAGRADO

Preguntas: 1.- De qué manera cree usted que las obras de arte independientemente de su propósito EXPLICITO pueden expresar un mensaje sagrado. 2.- Quienes son, para usted, los autores más representativos que expresan de manera EXPLÍCITA un mensaje trascendente, artístico y sagrado en las plásticas, la literatura, el teatro, el cine, etc.

WALTER LEÓN / TEMA: VINCULO Y EVOLUCIÓN ENTRE EL ARTE Y LO SAGRADO

Preguntas: 1.- Cual es el VÍNCULO entre el arte y lo sagrado, 2.- Cómo ha EVOLUCIONADO el pensamiento del arte y lo sagrado. 3.- El arte y lo sagrado es una respuesta a los anhelos del ser, o es una esperanza para lograr un mundo mejor, o ambas.

WALTER OJEDA / TEMA: INTEGRACIÓN Y CONEXIÓN ENTRE LAS NEUROCIENCIAS, EL ARTE Y LO SAGRADO

Preguntas: 1.- Pueden las mándalas ser un medio de INTEGRACIÓN entre el arte y lo sagrado y 2.- Cuales son las CONEXIONES entre las neurociencias, el arte y lo sagrado. 3.- sobre qué bases se da la experiencia artística y la experiencia de lo Sagrado.

Abhiram Thakur das / TEMA: LA NATURALEZA Y LA ESENCIA DEL ARTE Y LO SAGRADO

Preguntas: 1.- Es la CREACIÓN del universo un acto artístico y sagrado. 2.- El arte y lo sagrado son experiencias ESENCIALMENTE vivenciales, cual es el papel de la conciencia en esta experiencia. 3.- Cual es la relación que existe entre alma, arte y sagrado.

También dialogamos ampliamente con prabhu Ambarisa de Argentina y coincidíamos en que este documental tiene, principalmente, tres ingredientes: 1.- las entrevistas de usted con personalidades de la comunidad académica y cultural. 2.- El evento a realizarse en Lima-Perú y 3.- EL PROGRESO DE UN PEREGRINO, es decir, el viaje o el camino recorrido de su sankirtana leal y determinado a Srila Prabhupada, una de cuyas características es conectar a los intelectuales con los libros de Srila Prabhupada.

Para el siguiente informe esperamos tener los aportes de Ramón Mujica, Miguel Polo y Gandharva, también tenemos una entrevista con el Director de la Biblioteca Nacional para ver el calendario 2018 y su auspicio.

HpS - ASA --- Hare Krsna!   AGTSP.

1. Most of the translations are good. Some mistakes. Yours is not so good.

2. From these we would take:
   a) HISTORY: Has the relationship of art and the sacred improved, evolved, to the present time? How have the relationship between art and the sacred been at different times and in different cultrures. Can we see things that historically and culturally that make for a healthy relationship between Art and the Sacred.

   c) What is "Sacred".? What is "Art"?

   d) Is some art sacred in itself and other leading us to the sacred?

   e) Who are some of the artists whose work is most sacred for you?

   f) What is your relationship with Art and the Sacred?

Eso es todo por ahora, Hare Krishna GURUDEVA, su inútil sirviente, Abhiram Thakur das.

Hari Bolo!

We just finished revising the Art and the Sacred, Packing our Luggage, PPTX. It is at www.jayarama.us/archives/art-sacred/luggage.pptx  with contributions of Oscar, Dr. Kalyan, Dr. Dolores Chavez et al.

Last turn to contribute (in this Set?)!

From: mayesvara w-roberts <[email protected]>
To: Hanumatpresaka Swami <[email protected]> 
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2017 12:09 PM
Subject: Responding to your email...

Haribolo Hanumatpresaka Swami   !
Please accept my respects.  All Glories to Sri Guru & Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu! 
I just recently found this email which you sent to an old email address and was honored that you attempted to contact me.
___________________________
Subject: HpSwami
Date: 2016-08-28 16:49
From: HpS-HHR <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>

Hare Krsna, Mayesvara Das,
AgtSP. Paoho. Is this your address? We read your articles years ago and
felt that they expressed our own opinions so well that we didn't have to
write our own comments on many issues.
Been trying to find you recently and just got this address.
Hanumatpresaka Swami
www.JayaRama.Us

I am not sure what you reason for writing me was but I believe you are the individual that my friend Bahushara said was advising we do more graphic presentations about Krishna Consciousness because people just are too lazy to read.   I have begun doing that with highly illustrated charts and graphs which you can see if you visit my website Jagannatha.com and search on "charts"
 

I am also just finishing a 50 page rebuttal to new resurgence of the poison conspiracy.  I don't know what your position is on this controversy... but I have never given it ANY credibility and I got tired of staying silent about it.

I look forward to hearing from you if you care to respond.

I hope this meets you in good health and ongoing memories of The Supreme Personality of Godhead!
Thank You!

mayesvara dasa ACBSP
AKA:  William Roberts MBA/MIS, CCP 

Director: American Vedic Association 
  Destroy the Darkness of Ignorance With the Torchlight of Knowledge. - Bg 10.11
Proprietor: Jagannatha Enterprises
  Distributing the Smile of Your Dear-Most Friend
  One Who Knows Me Will Become Wise & His Endeavors will know Perfection. -Bg 15.20
    Check out a unique line of devotional products at:  jagannatha.com
687 West Villanova Road

Ojai, California 93023
(805) 640-0405    mdjagdasa @ gmail.com 

_______________________________
Hare Krsna, Prabhu,
AGTSP!!   Paoho...     At last. It is so nice to hear from you.   On "9/11".   Again we used to read your articles on certain topics and you expressed our mode of evidence, perspective so precisely that we did not feel it necessary to write more.

Were you in Richmond, California with the Navy for some time?

We looked at your web page. We may have an entire market you can open up from Peru.

In brief, our bio-data, we were born on Guam, 1948, grew up in California and the Southwest. Graduated 1st place in Psychology from UC in 1970 (with minor studies in biology and electrical engineering), got full fellowships to UCLA and Nothwestern for the PhD but decided that this was all suspicious, so when our mentor at NW, President of 'American Psychological Association', Donald Campbell, agreed, saying that if we "had anything between our legs" we would strike out and investigate what was coming to us from the Orient through the Vietnam war etc, we did.

Worked with the Second City, improvisation theater troupe, in Chicago.

Black belt in Okinawan Karate.

Bengali monk in A. C. Bhaktivedanta's ISKCON, 1974 (Treasurer (President) Pujari, pot-washer, Berkeley Temple).

Sannyasi, 1984 (B. S. Damodara Swami our Sannyasa Guru and joined the BI).

ISKCON diksa-guru, 1994.

Formed NIOS (North American Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies) in Tennessee, 2004, organizing programs with National Museum of India, National Library of Peru, Chile and many more on 'Psychology and the Sacred', 'Light of the Bhagavata', 'Jung and Prabhupada', 'Arjuna & Hamlet' etc.

We are member of the Executive Committee of the Ministry of Education which is STRUGGLING to exist but a first class necessity for ISKCON.

We went through the Mother's Parties program in Berkeley and Zonal Acharya era with Hansadutta Prabhu.

We just (?) finished an intense di, alog in our Blog with one Rtvik, Poisoning Conspiracy, BBT Purist adherent. Mostly we are based on what we heard from Prabhupada's lips, "I will never die, I will live forever in my books". So we don't take these things as very central to our service. We have living connection to Srila Prabhupada, are engaged in his Sankirtan movement by daily orders and the other things fit into line behind that.

Where are you archiving your essays on such things as "The Final Order" etc. We would love to involve you in our NIOS, ASA, work.

<img alt="*:) happy" data-id="c89feb3f-49ed-a8d9-a67b-df824def8338" src="https://s.yimg.com/ok/u/assets/img/emoticons/emo1.gif" title="*:) happy" /> Obviously we have been hoping to meet you for a long time.

What is your condensed bio-data?  Webster's Dictionary, Thumb-nail Biographys at the end includes Marquis de Sade = French soldier and pervert.

Mayesvara Das  = ????

Our esoteric institution is the Anjana Suta Academy (ASA), established about 1986. Our web-page is at www.JayaRama.US.

Very much hoping to hear from you on these topics and how we can serve you.

Hanumatpresaka Swami
NIOS - ASA

Resending email to Srinivasacarya Prabhu about categorization as you may found it interesting or have some comment for it:

Hare Krishna Dear Srinivasacarya Prabhu,

OK, I thought I would be able to add categories on my own if you enable permissions. It seems you need pre-defined categories that I could then associate a topic to.

Yes. As suggesting paragraph into categorization can be done by any user we need to have good category tree already created. Otherwise users will create duplicate categories or categories which doesn't give sense.

That categorization will be usable for all, possible to use as filter in search. And once proposed categorization of paragraph/s is accepted by moderator it will be applied in all languages. So person who speaks only Telugu will be able to categorize in Telugu, but it will automatically categories same text in English, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, even in language we don't have yet (as when we will add new content we connect it)

I have plan to add feature which will enable you to do your personal categorization (personal folders) where you will have full freedom to create any categories you want. Although that would be available only for users who did some service for project (e.g. importing books, categorization, moderators) and donors.

I can discuss with Maharaj and come up with some categories but for now if you need some sample categories below are some that I use in my own indexing:

1.       Varṇāśrama-dharma
    a.       Strī-dharma
    b.       Rāja-dharma
    c.       Pati-dharma

2.       Guru-tattva
    a.       Qualities of a guru
    b.       Qualities of a disciple

3.       Philosophical classification
    a.       Epistemology
    b.       Ontology
    c.       Cosmology
    d.       Praxeology

4.       Sāṅkhya
5.       Aṣṭāṅga
6.       Glory of Bhagavatam
7.       Glory of Holy name

Most probably I will add now (in close future) only 2. Guru-tattva (a, b), 6. Glory of SB and 7. Glory of Holy name. As those should be clear for 95% users and most likely should be somewhere in final category tree. Although in final category tree they may not be in top/root level, but as children of top level or some other category..

I realize that creating of category tree will be tremendous task. It may need we create some group of devotees who will plan the tree and slowly transform it into 'final' version. And most probably it will be practical to make 2 trees, One for simple devotees and another one for scholars. Some of categories from both three could be considered as aliases. So for example: paragraph in category Varnasrama :: Raja-dharma would be mirrored in something like Leadership :: Quality of the leader.

And I am aware of my inability of correct word expression of my thoughts and ideas, so most times it is hard or impossible for people to understand what I want to say. But I would try my best to clarify or answer if you have any questions.

Brief summary of categorization:

- categorization of texts is accessible for anybody (possible to use for narrowing down search results)
- any user (except those who has very bad reject rate from moderators) can suggest paragraph into any category from category tree
- any suggestions from any language, will be automatically applied in all languages (as we have connected paragraphs through languages)

ASA - This requires that the Catetegory Label be translated into the othe languages. Also a challenge. 
- any suggestions will be moderated to assure quality
- users cannot create categories, they can only tag category to the text (there will be way to suggest categories, but will be careful process as we don't want to end with 100,000 categories like other project with categories like 'Eggplant', 'Hitler', 'Therefore', etc.. which are not in fact suppose to be categories, but are more like search terms what user write in search page)
- category tree will have ideally as few top-level items as possible (with common sense children, grand-children, ... e.g. subcategory 'quality of guru' you would search under 'guru-tattva', thus easy for people to find wanted category)
- categories will have ability to have defined synonyms (user could search 'arca vigraha', it will suggest him category 'Deity Worship')
- while suggesting categories user will see also his last few recently used categories (so it is faster to select those categories without need of going down through whole tree)

[I think think topic may be interesting for Guru Maharaja, I may copy this email into blog].

HpS - ASA - Yes, very much interesting to us. We are German. We want everything to fit into a Category. Seems like what you are generating is an Index. Our current index of BBT books is in our Archives as asa-ndx.docx.  We have worked on the Index Topics, Categories, for some time and there are some there that might interest you.

I would definitely include Varna-ashrama-dharma (VAD) as one Topic and then the natural Sub-Topics become: Brahman-dharma, Ksatriya-dharma, Vaisya-dharma, Sudra-dharma, Brahmacari-dharma, Grhastha-dharma, Vana-prastha-dharma, Sannyasa-dharma and Stri-dharma.

It is a big area and would require a team, no? BBT books already have indexes for the paper volumes.

Seems you need a Vedabase.io Index Committee. 

ND: I downloaded the file, updated it with your 3 new articles, updated the names and uploaded it. Please, can you check it. I left the old file 170810 there in case I messed something up.

Another thing... Did you and devotee from MOE thought to publish/share the Journal online? Websites like Dandavats, https://news.iskcon.org, GBC website are possible good places.

HpS - Thank you very much. Would you like to become a Member of the Executive Committee of the Ministry of Education?

ND: I would like although I am not sure I fit in there . What is the job description?

HpS - Have to like teaching and learning the Srimad Bhagavatam et al.