Jagat

I had an exchange with a devotee on Facebook. He called on me to confess in more vivid detail and with greater honesty, etc., about my activities in the Gurukula. He hinted that my sins were likely much worse than those meager details I had given in my confessions. He hinted that beneath my facade of gray beard and sophistry I was a seething cauldron of wickedness. I got a bit scratchy with him, a bit annoyed that I cannot be done with these events, and having undergone some public humiliation on account of them, and so on, culpability that I have accepted and have spent my life trying to understand, things that happened over forty years ago. I have been watching a lot of right wing stuff of late, starting with Jordan Peterson, and the self-righteous social-justice warrior type virtue-signaling some kind of moral superiority because he can hold these things over your head and just ignore everything else, often the things that are more important. However, after learning that he was ...

As I mentioned recently , I have been in contact with a new Facebook page that is attempting to reunite cyberspacially all of Srila Prabhupada's some 4500 initiated disciples. As of this writing, some 560 people have joined, for the most part the "less important" folk rather than the ones running ISKCON these days. It is turning out pretty much as I expected, a lot of nostalgia, reminders that we are coming closer to death and many of us have already left these bodies. There is also a bit of stirring up of old controversies. Today, one devotee posted the following Prabhupada letter: I am in due receipt of your letter dated September 3, 1975 with the enclosed statement about Van Maharaja. So I have now issued orders that all my disciples should avoid all of my godbrothers. They should not have any dealings with them nor even correspondence, nor should they give them any of my books or should they purchase any of their books, neither should you visit any of their temple...

Andrew Brown's blog on the Guardian is about the difference in the Anglican and Roman Catholic Church. He makes interesting points about the vision of women in the two Christian denominations. After discussing Henry VIII, who had several of his wives beheaded (since divorce was not allowed) for not bearing him a son. The following paragraph puts the matter succinctly: The point, for the heads of global religions, is that you cannot have a sexual morality which fits both sides of the demographic divide. Either sex is primarily about children or it is primarily about love. The Anglican communion has ripped itself to bits about this; although it accepted contraception early and without much fuss, and came to terms with divorce when it became obvious that this was the only way to keep women members, the implication of sex being primarily an expression of love ends up with gay people being able to love each other sexually, and the traditionalists won't stand for that while the chu...