Jagat

Humanity is engaged in a conversation between faith and faithlessness and there are many shades of gray between the two. Opposition is not the answer, but synthesis. This is one of the reasons I like Jordan Peterson. He is arguing in favor of Western civilization, by which he means the theistic Christian tradition. He argues from biology and psychology to show that the basic tenets of Christian religion are integral to the evolutionary process and reflect biological elements in our makeup that stretch back millions of years, way before humanity awakened. And that we should thank our lucky stars that in the modern west especially we get to play an eminently playable game. In other words, all facility is there to make your life meaningful. It is a complex argument with many strands, but the conclusion derives from the Western countries' material, technical and social success, which can be attributed to the way that their culture evolved as a result of the specific ideas that its...

This has been a very good year for the Jiva Tirtha Sanskrit course and things are progressing quite nicely, though in the usually bumbling way. This is the second year we have been doing this course at Jiva and it is still a work in progress. One student Stuart Trusty pushed to have the manual published in a small number after the first year was over. This year we have been able to build on that work and at the end of this year we should have a second edition. Even so, I think it will take one more year before it will finally be publishable, as what I have learned this year will need to be better assimilated to the overall method. By an interesting coincidence, one of my students this year is Vinode Vani Dasi. She was in Dallas in 1973, the first full year that the original ISKCON Gurukula was in operation. Like many things in ISKCON, the early days were the headiest, filled with the most enthusiasm. We had a rather good reminiscence about it in yesterday's class. The...