This Forum Is Not Madhava - Disclaimer - spelled out

I would like to emphatically declare the following:

1) The Gaudiya Discussions -forum is not Madhava.
2) The Gaudiya Discussions -forum is not Madhava's own forum.
3) The views expressed in the Gaudiya Discussions -forum do not represent Madhava unless they are presented by Madhava, or otherwise explicitly thus stamped.

I am posting this in the ISKCON & Gaudiya Matha sub-section since some fellow folks from ISKCON & Gaudiya Matha seem to have been disturbed by some posts in this particular area, which all in all forms but a fragment of the ongoing discussions, and has been created out of the public's demands rather than out of the moderators' burning desire to inspire related discussions.

I would like to quote from our Statement of Purpose & Board Rules, available from a link at the header of each and every page of the forums:


I would really hope that this was clear for everyone. The fact that I am a regular contributor and one of the moderators at Gaudiya Discussions does not mean that I agree with all views presented here. This is not Soviet Union or North Korea, we are not one party with one voice. There are people here from various walks of life, with varying opinions and interests. I do not go out of my way to censure opinions I disagree with, nor do the other moderators. We have laid down some ground rules we try to enforce to keep the discussions civil and productive. In addition, we do some screening to weed out fraudulent registrations, and have began the full membership program with wishes to further improve the overall quality of discussions.

Beyond that this is not "my site" or "the moderators' site". It is the site of everyone who participates on the site, and each post represents the views of the poster alone. Yes, I am the person who originally started the site in cooperation with some other Vaishnavas, and I still take care of most of the technical administration and system maintenance. The costs incurred in hosting the site have been sponsored by various participants, so I am not even the one paying the bills any longer. Hence, even if I wanted, I would not be in a morally rightful position for pulling the plug or despotically censuring content, even though that would be technically possible.

The fact that I have been fairly instrumental in bringing about Gaudiya Discussions does not make everything occuring on the site as representative of my views any more than the events and views expressed in the United States represent Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.

I would thus plead that everyone please read, understand and assimilate this, so as to not mistakenly connect or attribute anything other than my own expressed views to me.

I would also like to add that if people find some of the content which is explicitly noted as mine somehow unusually controversial, that they should please contact me -- either in private or in the relevant thread -- to verify that they have properly understood what I have said, or intended to say. We do not need to watch another of those famous hermeneutic circular dances around the mutterings of Madhava. I like to think that I am the person who has best understood what I have said or intended to say.

Unfortunately there are some people from some organizations which represent North Korea of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Those will never understand what means to not think as one collective. They will blindly remain faithful to their party until the ship sinks lower than Titanic did. After this ship sinks, nobody will be able to go to that depth to search for remnants, or to save the crew, because ship will be dissolved instantly.

Those 24 party people are not coming from all walks of life. They use different airplanes from different air companies. So they don't exercise so much like people from all walks of life, therefore they get easily depressed, because of how many airplanes they have to change. Heavy preaching duties.....

Well, in all fairness, there are some people in all organizations representing the North Korea of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. There are even stand-alone Kim Jong-Ils roaming outside any organizations. There is a small Kim Jong living inside all of us, lurking in the shadows of the oval office of the heart.



I wouldn't say all blind followers are bound to sink with the ship. Some may be lucky, and their ship may float just fine. Of course it's a risky business traveling with your eyes closed nevertheless.

In this vein, I would like to note, although this is off topic -- if this topic ever was a topic to begin with -- that moving out of the box doesn't just mean moving from one box to another. For example, someone fresh out of ISKCON and in Narayan Maharaja's ranks may make a big fuss about how the ISKCON people are just sitting in their box and unable to see anywhere beyond, while the poor critic himself sits in the exact equivalent box next door.

Taking responsibility over our own lives and all the subsequent decisions is not only a matter of peeking out of the box of the assimilated yet unexamined patterns of thought, nor is it a matter of dropping outside the box and blaming it. It is a matter of heading for the bright side of the equation. It is to head for the land where the sunlight is plentiful and you needn't talk about shadows more than you do of the light.

On my way down to the ECG, I read a book in the bus called "The Meaning and End of Religion" by Wilfred Cantwell Smith. It's something of a classic, and a very learned work it is indeed.

I can't remember having read it before, but one of the ideas in this book is something that I may have gotten from it directly or indirectly. Smith contrasts the "ideal" with the "real" (or "reified") religion. I won't go through all the complex discussion of the word "religion" itself, but what it comes down to is that the word has a different meaning when we apply it to ourselves, or when we apply it to others.

For ourselves, religion is fundamentally the spiritual ideal to which we aspire--all the good things about spiritual perfection, the exemplars and saints, the gods and divine beings, the wonderful theological constructs and aesthetic traditions, our own faith and religious experience. Anything that is bad is to be marginalized because it does not partake of the essence of the faith and therefore to be forgiven if it accidentally appears.

Other's religions are however "reified" as objects of study and analysis. We have no investment in them, an thus they are bereft of meaning. As such, we can look at them analytically, observing the flaws of their practitioners, the pros and cons of their theologies, objectively appreciating some of their good perhaps, while at the same time being conscious of their bad. Indeed, as a purely human construct, evil is quite to be expected.

In one place, Smith says, "We are Platoniens about our own religion, Aristotelians about others'." Rather well said, I thought.

This is clearly what I would identify as a kanishtha viewpoint.

I started reading this thread from the last post and thought you were having heart problems.



You made a comment about kanisthas needing certainty--can you elaborate on that (somewhere)? I don't recall the rest of it: uttamas have certainty but don't need it? And the points on the revivalist triad were also very interesting. You don't have to work today do you?

The kanistha wants certainty at any price. This is because he really is NOT certain. But he does not really think that if he falls of the edge of a cliff, Krishna will catch him.

Of course, that last comment is figurative: A kanishtha is in fact MORE likely to jump off a cliff thinking that Krishna will catch him. Or blow himself up in a crowded market place to martyr himself for a religious/political cause. That is precisely because he has to PROVE to himself and others that he really believes, and he has to challenge his God to prove His truth to him.

The madhyama adhikari is intellectually driven, in the sense that he is more conscious of the real problems of faith and does not look to paper them over with scotch tape solutions. He therefore cultivates the kinds of association (whether out of ruchi or vichara) that nurture his faith, but he is also more aware of the transcendental objective in real terms. In other words, he is progressively more aware of the universal, mystical nature of bhakti, rather than seeing it in limited, "religious" terms.

The uttama adhikari's vision is completely different. For him there is no more intellectual exercise involved in his faith. Indeed, faith itself is barely a question any longer. Prema is uncertain by nature--kabhu mile, kabhu na mile, daivera ghatana. "Sometimes Krishna and I are together, sometimes we're not. It's out of my hands." But this is floating on top of a constant consciousness of Krishna that flows "like the Ganges to the sea."

Consciousness of Krishna is the mental universe in which he lives, almost like an animal without critical awareness. So suffering, pain, uncertainty, emotional turmoil, these are the waves on his ocean, but he takes no steps to counter them, except to look under the next rock or behind the next tree for Krishna.

I wish I didn't feel as though this was my work, too.

The kanistha wants his ista in a can ......
and properly labeled of course!

You seem to be hot tonight, Talasiga. That was very good.

This is very true, and I believe these three stages hold true for practictioners of other religions as well.