Chakra.org on Planet ISKCON
Sita-pati das
it on Planet ISKCON.
Any thoughts from the assembled Vaisnavas?
ys,
sda
I'm using Drupal btw - nothing like what phani is doing, but it works
for me.
Nanda Sunu dasa
editorial policy (or lack of) makes them less of a "news" site and more
of a message board with occasional questionable content. It seems that
most of the stuff worth reading is on dandavats anyway.
Manorama
ys, mrd
Candidasa dasa
publishing questionable stuff, then what is the harm? There is a
certain historical queasiness about including them, I guess. However,
I'd think it would be no worse than some other semi-KC related stuff
that people post on their blogs (mine included). How about including
them and seeing if anyone complains about a questionable article and
only then excluding them.
y.s. CD
On 27 Apr 2007, at 06:51, Dwayne Kirkwood wrote:
>
> Hari
>
> My personal findings is that they have changed policy a lot. In the
> last 6
> months, I've only seen 1 questionable article. It was replied to by 3
> different people who felt a lot of compassion for the original
> writer, and
> that was it. I don't see any reason not to include Chakra, unless they
> revert to their old ways.
> ysd
Sita-pati das
"questionable". Rather than nod my head and go "uh huh, uh huh", I'm
going to have to ask: would you please explain what your definition of
"questionable" is?
ys,
sda
Ekendra das
"I'd think it would be no worse than some other semi-KC related
stuff
that people post on their blogs (mine included)."
Its one thing to have semi KC things or frivolous/interesting
commentary on our blogs so long as its obvious that we don't intend
anything other than that. The insidious issue with Chakra.org is that
they have a sordid history of posting articles that promote ideas
contrary to our philosophy.
For example, I like reading your reviews on gadgets. It saves me a lot
of hunting around the net as your angle on, for instance, mp3 player
specs are the same as mine. I post strange things like a giant croc
ripping the arm off a vet. What this has to do with KC is beyond me
( I did put a quote from SB with that article as an afterthought
though). But neither of us are trying to forge a new siddhanta by
sharing our curiosity and interests.
Chakra.org, on the other hand, HAVE frequently posted articles that
are philosophically deviant (notice I didn't use the word
'questionable'). Also they have refused to post articles that directly
and transparently quote Srila Prabhupada and the parampara. They also
have taken devotees articles and edited them so that the person
posting sounds like a raving fanatic against the eloquence of the
person presenting fallacious ideas. The editor(s) there are on a
mission to promote certain things that MANY senior devotees (including
our Guru Maharaja) have warned against. In fact Guru Maharaja directly
instructed me not to view that site.
So I strongly oppose including Chakra.org in anything that will lend
it credibility I feel it does not deserve. Maybe the last few months
have been tame (going by what Bhakta Dwayne has pointed out) but since
I know a bit of background about the history of the site and its
ownership I would NEVER promote the site in this lifetime.
ys, ekendra das
Gosh
Not because of content concerns but because ISKCON policy has been to
suppress dissent and they have inculcated devotees with the "shoot the
messenger " syndrome.
Gurukulis were abused and when they were stonewalled by ISKCON, Chakra
gave them a voice. Women were oppressed in ISKCON and Chakra gave them
a voice. Rittviks were suppressed and Chakra gave a forum for a open
(albeit too long and oh so boring) debate on the issue.
This created a backlash amongst strong segments of ISKCON management
and they decided to not post to Chakra. That gave the impression of it
being one sided. It wasn't a conscious decision on the part of Chakra
to exclude, it was a decision on the part of ISKCON to not participate
that gave the skewed impression.
You can agree or disagree with my above statements, but that Chakra is
personna nonn grata for much of institutional ISKCON and they have
waged a whispering campaign against it is undeniable.
If you add the feed, you will be guilty by association and it will
hurt your credibility.
Frankly, I frequently find articles on Chakra the content of which I
disagree, perhaps more so than others here. Some of them do disturb
the minds of the innocent, so ISKCON policy aside, I still wouldn't
take the feed. And I do read it every day.
It serves a purpose, but not the purpose of Planet ISKCON, IMHO.
Think of it this way. Dandavats or Chakra, the chorus will pick
Dnadavats, but the majority of devotees are not in the choir anymore
and then the choice becomes Chakra or Sampradaya Sun. In that
dichotomy, Chakra is the clear winner.
Ekendra das
the years through different changes of editors they've had onboard.
I'm glad there was/is a forum for the discussions mentioned in Madhav
Gosh Prabhu's comment. Too bad it had to be there though. For a site
that advertises itself as a forum for free thinking, open minded and
inclusive discussion they exercise a pretty heavy editorial policy for
anything that promotes ideas against their (her) personal agenda. I
have personal experience of this more than once. I also know devotees
who've had their articles edited and presented erroneously to promote
whatever directive they are aiming for on that site. Its just bad
journalism.
Whether or not Chakra tows the ISKCON party line isn't my criterion
for wanting them excluded from anything that lends them credibility.
Their editorial policy puts too much of a spin on things. Sadly, this
is even true with direct statements from Srila Prabhupada and direct
quotes from sastra. Because of this, I'm spending time here
discouraging the site's promotion as I feel that its not a healthy
forum for even older devotees what to speak of more impressionable
bhaktas.
And hey, I don't want to have to scroll through the articles on
planetiskcon.net. I read nearly everything posted there at the moment
and its my most frequented site. I think I must be personally
responsible for a big red dot on the <a href="http://clustrmaps.com/
counter/maps.php?url=http://www.iskconnews.net">ClustrMap</a>.
ys, ekendra das
ananta-vrindavan
pha...@gmail.com
it (invisibly) into namahatta.org, but got fried because it would
produce duplicates of articles, and some posts where completely out of
sync. when i looked at the feed now it looked ok, but it's not as
reliable as a feed that's produced by the site itself.
apart from that, IMO chakra is still within the spectrum i consider
vaisnava sites. it's a mixture of news-site and notice-board and would
probably benefit from a clearer categorization of it's content.
according to what i have seen, they have a very open editorial policy.
devotees here stated the opposite, saying that chakra's editors
distorted their articles; if that's true, that's not a good thing, but i
would like to hear madhusudani radha's view of the concrete cases as
well before i accept it at face value that their policy is to distort
things in general.
many things are published on chakra that i don't agree with, and i'm
sure many things the editors don't agree with either. that's a sign for
an open policy - which wouldn't be acceptible for namahatta.org, the
cong. dev. ministry's official site, but should be ok for a site that
declares itself ISKCON friendly, but not bound by it's policies &
management.
i would also include what's his name, friend of sita-pati's, from the
'right corner' (at one time it was called ISKCON cultural journal), and
you already have the 'sankirtan diary', where one brahmacary talks
pretty silly stuff that's politically tinted and questionable from a
vaisnava point of view.
you have to draw a line somewhere, but for me that starts with the
sampradaya sun and includes ritvic- and other 100% offensive rubbhish,
not chakra.
ys phani.
Ekendra das
you already have the 'sankirtan diary', where one brahmacary talks
pretty silly stuff that's politically tinted and questionable from a
vaisnava point of view. "
Personally I'd drop that feed too. It seems that the posts keep coming
up towards the top of planetiskcon.net over and over again. Must be
some tech error. I had a read of one or two of them and .... well ...
its not anything I'm interested in. The articles don't really weigh in
alongside the rest of the content.
Krishna-kirti's feed would be nice though. Is he blogging again?
ys, ekendra das
pha...@gmail.com
> Personally I'd drop that feed too. It seems that the posts keep coming
> up towards the top of planetiskcon.net over and over again. Must be
> some tech error. I had a read of one or two of them and .... well ...
> its not anything I'm interested in. The articles don't really weigh in
> alongside the rest of the content.
i wouldn't drop it, no matter if i personally like it or not. i think
it's a good idea to include the whole spectrum of vaisnava opinion,
including all shades of political leaning, as long as it's within
acceptable limits. as you said, we're all falling short in some way or
another, and it's nice to see who & what is being published. where
exactly to draw the line is a difficult question, but i would try to
keep it as inclusive as possible.
> Krishna-kirti's feed would be nice though. Is he blogging again?
not as far as i know. in my original reply i wanted to write "if he was
still around," but that got dropped during editing somehow.
ys phani.
pha...@gmail.com
content now (apart from the vaisnava calendar), including a RSS 2 feed?
URL: http://www.iskcongbc.info/node/feed
ys phani.
phani
thinking ("Welcome on site about ISKCON GBC. Website was not
officially launched and it is not official website of ISKCON GBC.")
IP-lookup:
Admin ID:GODA-225880753
Admin Name:Petr Vacha
Admin Organization:
Admin Street1:Uzka 13
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:Podebrady
Admin State/Province:Stredni Cechy
Admin Postal Code:29001
Admin Country:CZ
Admin Phone:+420.00420626401
anybody knows anything about this guy or this site?
ys phani.
Sita-pati das
> Ekendra das wrote:
>
>
>> Personally I'd drop that feed too. It seems that the posts keep coming
>> up towards the top of planetiskcon.net over and over again. Must be
>> some tech error. I had a read of one or two of them and .... well ...
>> its not anything I'm interested in. The articles don't really weigh in
>> alongside the rest of the content.
>>
>
> i wouldn't drop it, no matter if i personally like it or not. i think
> it's a good idea to include the whole spectrum of vaisnava opinion,
> including all shades of political leaning, as long as it's within
> acceptable limits. as you said, we're all falling short in some way or
> another, and it's nice to see who & what is being published. where
> exactly to draw the line is a difficult question, but i would try to
> keep it as inclusive as possible.
>
Definitely agree with that. I disagree with a lot of what he writes as
well, but I can see that if he can keep it up he has a lot of potential
as he deepens his understanding.
> > Krishna-kirti's feed would be nice though. Is he blogging again?
>
> not as far as i know. in my original reply i wanted to write "if he was
> still around," but that got dropped during editing somehow.
>
Now that would rock. I'm also missing it. I'll write him and see what
he's up to.
ys,
sda
Gosh
bubbling to the top, let me suggest an alternative.
Planet ISKCON sorts its posts based on the time stamp of the
originating blog. If someone birthed a manifesto and and wanted it to
get wide exposure, it would be simple enough to daily edit the time
stamp on his blog and voila! the post pops to the top again.
It is a well established conservative tradition to manipulate the
media.
Hate mongering in the guise of fundamentalism doesn't make an
attractive presentation. I remember Krishna Kirti from the GHQ days
and can't imagine he has changed enough to make his perspective
palatable.
I will repeat the point about Chakra -- acceptability of content is
not the overriding consideration. Reaction from official ISKCON may
surprise you if you add it and you may find Planet ISKCON also
boycotted. You might consider talking to ISKCON authorites before
adding it to avoid some unpleasantness.
Better to not add it than to add it and then feel pressured to take it
off. You will lose your aura of independence if you are seen as bowing
to pressure.
pha...@gmail.com
> While it may be technical difficulties that keeps Corey's rants
> bubbling to the top, let me suggest an alternative.
>
> Planet ISKCON sorts its posts based on the time stamp of the
> originating blog. If someone birthed a manifesto and and wanted it to
> get wide exposure, it would be simple enough to daily edit the time
> stamp on his blog and voila! the post pops to the top again.
>
> It is a well established conservative tradition to manipulate the
> media.
possible, but not necessarily the case. sometimes, when doing
maintenance or reorganization at namahatta.org, i deleted a bunch of
articles and later posted them again. that had the same effect, that our
posts got repeated over and over; at one point i asked sitapati to
remove our feed, since i felt embarrassed that our articles were filling
up most of iskconnews.net.
it's easy to find out: just note down the end of the links that point to
the articles at his web site. if it's the same ID-no. (or whatever his
web site uses) when the article pops to the top or gets repeated, he
just changed the date, probably intentionally. if it's a new ID-no (or
some other minor difference in the link), he re-posted the article for
some reason.
(i don't open planetiskcon.com much since my (MS-) system is somewhat
unstable at present (buggy version of XP, i suspect) and i'm mainly
using beta-versions of my browsers. so the whole thing tends to crash
("blue screen of death") when there's a lot of video-, flash-, and other
media content. would have changed back to linux long ago, but can't
find a driver for my dial-up modem ...)
>
> Hate mongering in the guise of fundamentalism doesn't make an
> attractive presentation. I remember Krishna Kirti from the GHQ days
> and can't imagine he has changed enough to make his perspective
> palatable.
well, i rather enjoyed his articles after that time. there's a lot i
don't agree with, but he writes and researches very well and his idea of
going back to the original teachings to solve today's problems is great.
IMO he doesn't apply that consequently enough, i.e., assigning a lot of
blame to women who aren't up to the vedic standard, forgetting that it's
the men's job to teach them, among other points ...
>
> I will repeat the point about Chakra -- acceptability of content is
> not the overriding consideration. Reaction from official ISKCON may
> surprise you if you add it and you may find Planet ISKCON also
> boycotted. You might consider talking to ISKCON authorites before
> adding it to avoid some unpleasantness.
that might be a good idea, but i do think that acceptability of content
should be a main factor.
>
> Better to not add it than to add it and then feel pressured to take it
> off. You will lose your aura of independence if you are seen as bowing
> to pressure.
and what about your independence if you cave in to the pressure even
before it's being applied?
ys phani.
Gosh
before it's being applied?
Good question.
It is more about making nice. Better to work out any potential
difficulties in advance and short stroke the flame wars, IMHO.
Believe me, I have no problem banging heads with the powers that be,
but I do pick my battles and prefer negotiation to confrontation.
Flame wars are simply sense gratification IMHO and rarely accomplish
anything productive.
If I cross at a green light and don't at a red light, am I caving to
pressure or being prudent?
Personally, I wouldn't pick a fight with ISKCON over it. Flawed as it
may be, it is still my guru's institution and I feel some tatters of
loyalty to it despite whatever whatever, and I don't envy ISKCON
managers the frequnet awkward and complex situations they find
themselves in.
]
Test the waters and if it is going to make waves, why do it it in
public? No need to disturb the minds of the innocent. It is out of
respect for ISKCON I would ask in private. The ultimate outcome will
be the same and a lot of bad feelings could be avoided.
Although I disagree with ISKCON's decision to boycott Chakra I can
understand it. I think better than boycotting Chakra was starting
Dandavats -- just the timing was off by a few years.
Instead of butting heads with the crows at Sampradaya Sun over New
Vrindaban and the egregrious misrepresentations made their, I started
the Brijabasi Spirit. Same principle.
Of course, times change and the boycott started in 2002 may not be
much of an issue anymore and there would be no objection. I'd be
surprised though.
On the other hand, a good public controversy drives up readership :-)
Dandavats rolled out with the whole Dhanurdhara thing. Of course, once
they got their numbers up, they choked it off. I have no way of
knowing if they did that delibretely.
One possible onsequence of being confrontational is Dandavats could
drop Planet Iskcon from their "river" due to the inclusion of Chakra
headers and I know the BS gets a lot of referrals from that.
Since it would impact Dandavats also, they might be someone to inquiry
from as to their feelings on the matter. They would be seen as
promoting Chakra. That would be the place to start.
FYI, I was on the editorial staff of Chakra for about 2 years after
Umapati bailed from 2002 to 2004. There were about 6 staffers that
discussed inclusion or rejection. I consistently found myself
advocating for ISKCON against pressure and feel that I did an
effective job of keeping Narayana Maharajah out of those pages and
closed out access to the rittviks. Narayana's people got into VNN and
killed that.
There was a great deal of diversity amongst the editors, and much of
the rumors and accusations about motivation and editorial slanting are
baseless. ISKCON boycotting it made it appear one sided,
unfortunately. And if you want to see a representation of articles
that were rejected, see Sampradaya Sun.
Of course, I can't speak to what has happened since then.
My health deteriorated and I got tired of butting heads with one
particular guy in general so I quit. I do have a standing offer to
rejoin any time I want, but once I saw Sita Pati's vision with the
blogs, I realized Chakra was a dinosaur and instead started my own
blog in 2005.
Bear in mind, Chakra is submission driven, and with a victims advocacy
stance, so it will have occasional articles that are disturbing.
pha...@gmail.com
or putting up the barricades in order to include chakra's feed. i was /
am under the impression that the campaign against chakra had cooled down
to some extent, with dandavat's success and chakra's mellowing over
time. i only hear a few devotees, and fewer still from the VIP-ranks,
rant against chakra anymore.
far as i understand the discussion here was if or not it would be
desirable to include chakra. if there really should be stiff opposition
from the establishment, i wouldn't advocate to make that an issue at all
- just forget it, for now, and try again some time later.
also a good idea to ask dandavats for their opinion. but i wouldn't
necessarily drop it because there are some devotees who are allergic to
the name. (the only one that bothers me is HH devamrta maharaja; i don't
know him personally, but what i've read from & about him makes me think
his opinion is worth respecting. i'm wondering when he told ekendra to
not read chakra?)
ys phani.
Sita-pati das
> While it may be technical difficulties that keeps Corey's rants
> bubbling to the top, let me suggest an alternative.
>
>
to "Bhakta Corey", because that seemed more transparent. However, the
way that those posts keep coming up at the top is inappropriate. Whether
it's intentional or not is unknown and not really important.
> Hate mongering in the guise of fundamentalism doesn't make an
> attractive presentation. I remember Krishna Kirti from the GHQ days
> and can't imagine he has changed enough to make his perspective
> palatable.
>
plans to start writing again. He told me that he has offended many
devotees with his writing and that he's not sure when he'll be blogging
again. So I think everyone is growing and learning. I was toying with
the idea of doing a blog with him - "Sita-pati and Krishna-kirti: The
Left-Right Combo" ;-)
> I will repeat the point about Chakra -- acceptability of content is
> not the overriding consideration. Reaction from official ISKCON may
> surprise you if you add it and you may find Planet ISKCON also
> boycotted.
Boycotted? What will people do, black-list the IP of the RSS feed
aggregator? It's not possible to dry up the content of PI the same way
it was done with Chakra. Nobody submits anything to PI, other than
exposing a general RSS feed.
People might stop reading it, but I don't think that the readership is
really "institutional". There are about 300 visitors to the site each
day, plus RSS readers, plus 80 people receiving it daily via email.
Side point: my realization is that there is no impersonal "ISKCON
institution", only people acting impersonally. The institution didn't
send any kids to the gurukula, and the institution didn't abuse any
kids. People did those things, and they did it because they renounced
personal accountability in the name of "the institution", which didn't
exist to protect the children or take responsibility for what happened,
and still doesn't exist. It's a figment of the mind.
One thing about the Chakra articles, and what lead me to the whole
Planet ISKCON concept, was the anonymity of the posts. I believe that
freedom of speech must be balanced by accountability. You have to have
the courage of your convictions. Cowards throwing stones from behind
hedges is not my idea of courage.
At the same time I can respect that people have been abused and
suppressed, and for some this is their only voice. I'm cool with that,
but I believe we need to transcend the patterns of the past and people
need to speak their truth openly and respectfully, and allow others to
speak theirs.
Sita-pati das
> I was toying with
> the idea of doing a blog with him - "Sita-pati and Krishna-kirti: The
> Left-Right Combo" ;-)
>
controversy. The compelling content. It would be like in school when
everyone starts the chant: "Fight! Fight!"
We could choose topics, and then conduct a dialog around them with a
professional collegial tone, agreeing to differ. I think it would draw a
lot of comments. Maybe then we could get others involved on each side.
The idea would be to explore differences in perspective, and look for
the higher harmony.
Opinions?
ys
sda
Ekendra das
hoorah! Here's my chance! :)
> > "Sita-pati and Krishna-kirti: The Left-Right Combo" ;-)
As interesting as it would read, it might be a bit frivolous. Maybe
the blog could have to have a clearly defined and oft-revisited
purpose a bit more specific than your formative thought. (Granted that
this is more than likely a quickly conceived idea):
"> The idea would be to explore differences in perspective, and look
for
> the higher harmony."
"Agree to disagree" discussions always let me down a bit. I always
hope for the TKO or, even better, the white flag where one participant
surrenders their concepts the higher idea (if available).
Having said that, I'd still probably read every article. :)
ys, ekendra das
phani
lists chakra under ISKCON web sites, second after dandavats, on their
links-page. seems the days of boycotting chakra are over.
(the more i'm looking into news.iskcon.com, the better i like it. my
previous, unfriendly judgement in a different thred was probably too
harsh.)
ys phani.