Addendum to Tripurari Swami's latest sanga - On Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati's teachings

This is a public addendum to note something that is sadly missing in Tripurari Swami's latest Sanga-newsletter discussing the Authenticity of Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati’s teaching, published at the A108.Net News Service (Article / News Desk) on September 16th, 2005.

The newsletter features six excerpts from three essays of mine, last revised over a year back. Perhaps they are from a very early draft, I could not locate some of the notes in the said essays, though it is unmistakably identical in the flow of the presentation. The criteria for picking the said excerpts is not clear, nor has the author of the said excerpts been anywhere identified. You may read the said essays in full at http://www.wisewisdoms.com/prabandhapancakam/ .

It would have also been appropriate to show the audience the context in which the said excerpts originally appear. As it stands, the newsletter presents simplistic rebuttals without an attempt to throughly review the said issues, concluding with a rather drastic remark:

QUOTE(Swami B.V. Tripurari)

These arguments basically say, "We thing your guru was not initiated." And they ignore all of the evidence to the contrary as well as spiritual common sense. They prove nothing other than the fact that the doubter doubts the source of his own faith in Krishna consciousness.

I was personally disappointed to see such an entry in Swami's otherwise fine series of newsletters. If it weren't published in his name, I would suspect whether it was written by him at all.

This is a one-off public note and is not meant to start a discussion on the topic. If someone wishes to open a dialogue on some of the said topics with me, you are free to contact me over the board's PM system or e-mail me at madhava [at] vrajajournal [dot] com. For the record, I do not feel particularly inclined for wading over these age-old issues, and especially not so with people who are on the defensive. Please do not contact me if you wish to debate the issue and take me to task. I'll send you a free "Gaudiya Math Victory Debater of the Year" diploma and you won't even have to bother wrangling the said issues with me. If someone is interested in a dialogue featuring dispassionate review of the material available on the issue at both sides of the fence and beyond, I will try to respond as time permits.

Thank you very much.

Ityalam -
Madhavananda Das

Addendum Correctum

In a recent exchange of letters, Swami B.V. Tripurari has brought to my attention the fact that the said "article", presented by the A108.Net news service, was but a piece of correspondence from over a year back between him and a devotee who had copied the questions from an early draft of an article of mine without ever crediting the source to begin with.

The editors of A108.Net news service then presented this old piece of correspondence as a recent entry in the Sanga-newsletter series, even going so far as to label it as "Special guest Sanga". This shows poor judgement on their behalf, and one would hope they would exercise better journalistic policy with their future publications. Had I known it was but a recycled piece of correspondence published without the knowledge of the author, it wouldn't have merited a public note to begin with.

Both I and Swami are in agreement over the fact that no objectionably verifiable conclusion on the matter is availble, given the current body of evidence at our disposal. The issue is therefore a rather exhausted one, and does not merit re-opening unless a whole new body of evidence is uncovered from historical accounts that are as of yet undiscovered or untranslated.