Bhaktivedanta Archives: Disorganized, Inefficient and 10 years behind the Technology

[Madhudvisa dasa]

Dear Prabhus

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

As followers of Srila Prabhupada we associate with him through his vani, or his recorded instructions. That is because his vapu, or physical form is no longer present before us.

However any sincere follower of Srila Prabhuapda can detect that Srila Prabhupada is still with us. He is living with us in his books and other recorded vani like the audio and video recordings.

I have always been horrified by the lack of realization of this and therefore the lack of respect for and interest in Srila Prabhuapda's recorded vani shown by the leaders and general devotees in ISKCON. I think this almost complete disinterest in Prabhuapda's vani in ISKCON is a remnant of ISKCON's "zonal acharya" days. In those days the "zonal acharyas" would preach that it was a big offence to directly approach Srila Prabhupada. They said that you had to surrender to, hear from and serve them instead. So as I can practically testify because I was there, living in at least 80 different ISKCON temples in these years, they would give absolute hell to anyone who was seriously interested in Srila Prabhupada.

This mood continues in todays ISKCON. Some devotees even preach it still. They say that it is useless to hear from Prabhupada because he is not a "living guru". I personally sat in a class given by Prahladananda Swami at the Ratha-yatra festival time in the Brooklyn temple in maybe 1991? and he quite openly said in the class that it was useless to hear from Srila Prabhupada tapes because for any spiritual benefit you have to hear from a "living guru..." An no one questioned him on this. I was stunned and couldn't say anything... Even today his disciples still have the same idea. I met one of them last year in Vrindavan and he confirmed that his guru maharaja had taught him that it was useless to hear from Srila Prabhupada because he is not a living guru...

So this poison is very strong in ISKCON and it has destroyed practically everything. Can you imagine what happens to a distributor of Prabhupada's books after he hears this philosophy? He understands from his guru maharaj that he can not understand these books written by Prabhuapda but that he has to understand them through his guru maharaja. Jayadvaita Swami is even changing the books so they say this!!

So obviously the confused disciple comes to some crisis when he realizes "guru maharaja says I can't understand Prabhupada's books, I have to hear from him instead of reading Prabhupada's books, so why am I distributing them?" "If I can't understand Prabhupada's books then these people on the street surely can't understand them..." So obviously, as the result of the preaching of his guru maharaha that he needs to hear form a 'living guru', he gives up distributing Prabhupada's books and goes back to maya...

You may think I am exaggerating but I am not. Things are so bad in ISKCON that no one can believe it if you explain it. Who could believe that any spritiual organization could run a school system where in most of the schools practically every boy was sexually abused by the gurus and their followers? But it happend in ISKCON. And they get away with it for so long because no one could believe such "saints" could be doing such terrible things.

Bhaktivedanta Archives was actually formed to save the Prabhupada vani from being destroyed by these demoniac gurus and the demoniac BBT. And they have actually saved so much Prabhupada vani which would have otherwise been destroyed, either purposefully or simply by neglect, by demons in ISKCON.

So personally I am very, very, very grateful to Parama-Rupa Prabhu, Ekanatha Prabhu and Ranjit Prabhu who have made it their life's work to preserve and distribute the vani of Srila Prabhupada. They have many great achievements. They produced and released the Prabhupada folio in the early 90s, against the orders of the GBC, and that has created a revolution in the ability of devotees to access the teachings of Srila Prabhupada. Then they printed all of Srila Prabhuapdas teachings including letters, lectures and conversations in book form. And Parama-Rupa Prabhu created the Bhaktivedanta Tape Ministry and systematically presented about 1300 recordings of Srila Prabhupada.

So without the service of these devotees where would we be? So we are all eternally grateful to them and beg for their mercy and beg for the dust of their lotus feet. They had the intelligence to actually do something to save the Prabhupada vani at a point in time when in ISKCON practically no one was interested in Prabhuapda vani. They were only interested in the vani of their "guru maharajas" who almost all later on turned out to be big demons in the dress of gurus....

But all this said the treatment that the Prabhupada Vani gets in the Bhaktivedanta Archives is far from satisfactory. The archives devotees are also in ISKCON and are also contaminated by the ISKCON poison that minimizes the importance of Srila Prabhupada's vani. I am sure they are wondering why we are so anxious to hear the 700+ more recordings of Prabhupada that they have not released because we already have abot 1300 recordings to listen to.

Actually the plan of the archives was not to preserve the Bhaktivedanta Tape Ministry at all. They were simply going to let that disappear and replace it with their CD ministry which would have been when it was completed a few hundred CDs only. Only a small percentage of what we already had on the cassette tapes. And they purchased some new [in the late 80's, early 90's] digital editing equipment and for the first time they could easily change the Prabhupada audio without anyone noticing. So they went crazy with this.

The idea was to produce CDs that were clear and easy for the listener to understand. So they were heavily editing Prabhuapda's classes. They removed anything that they considered a distraction. So if Prabhupada ever said anything that did not seem to be on the topic they were editing it out. Like if there was a baby crying and Prabhupada asked for the baby to be taken out they would edit out the baby crying an Prabhupada asking for the baby to be taken out. If Prabhupada repeated something often they would take out the repeated words that Prabhupada spoke. If Prabhupada paused for emphasis they would edit out the pause. If Prabhupada spoke to anyone on the side they would edit it out. Even if they considered Prabhupada was digressing from the main point they would edit him out.  Often Prabhupada is speaking on one point then he "digresses," he comes to a point and mentions something and then starts to explain that thing and when that explaination is finished he goes back and continues speaking on the original point.  So in some cases the archives were editing out what they considered to be Prabhupada's digressions. Sometime they would take words or whole sentences from other recordings and insert them into places where they thought Prabhupada should have said them... It is quite common on these tapes to be reading through on the transcript and being 3/4 of the way through and on the CD Prabhupada finishes the class and says "Thank you very much, chant Hare Krishna!" But in the transcript of the original tape Prabhupada continues powerfully preaching. And it is amazing what nectar they deleted....

When I complained to them about this they said, "Prabhu, these CDs are not for archival purposes, they are for preaching..."

Anyhow, I have digressed, the plan of Bhaktivedanta Archives was to just let the Prabhupada cassette ministry recordings disappear and replace them with a few hundred heavily edited CDs...

That is when we realized there was a need to save the Prabhupada cassette ministry and since then, the early 90's, we have produced three Prabhupada MP3 sets. Both the current archives MP3 set and the previous archives MP3 set are produced by us. The second set was based on work by some devotees who I do not know who for the first time released actual programs. In the first set we released we had for each tape "Side A" and "Side B." But this devotee put each class in a separate file as it is in the current Prabhuapda MP3 set. Unfortunately the original tapes he was working from were not good. So many were cut off. There were so many other problems with this set also.  

I am explaining this because the archives seem to have been thinking that 1300 recordings of Srila Prabhupada was already more than enough to release and they were planning to reduce the available Prabhupada recordings down to a few hundred "high quality" CDs...

This illustrates how the ISKCON poison works. They so much de-emphasise the importance of hearing from a pure devotee that devotees are thinking: "What's the point of having all these Prabhuapda recordings. After all you have to hear from a 'living guru...'"

In every aspect of the Bhaktivedanta Archives operations this neglect and lack of care and respect is painfully present. They have something like 17,000 or more images of Srila Prabhupada. But they have only made about 80 of them available to the devotees! I had a very practical experience of this when we were typsetting the Krishna Books Inc. "Chant and Be Happy" booklet. This is exactly the same booklet that Prabhupada's disciples printed for distributing at the peace rallies in the 60's, but they printed it in black and white, we wanted to print it in color. So I went to the archives at Prabhupada Village to get the images for that booklet. I asked Ranjit if I could have an image of Prabhupada smiling and he promptly said that Prabhuada did not smile much, we hardly have any images of Prabhuapda smiling! Of course I had seen the thumbnail scans and knew that there are so many photos in the archives collection of Prabhupada smiling brilliantly. But the archives representative was adamant. "Prabhuapda didn't smile much..." He said the only good photos of Prabhupada are the 80 we have already released. Why don't you pick from one of those photos? I told him that the devotees have seen those 80 photos of Prabhupada millions of times. I want some photos that have not been released. His reply. "They're all bad Prabhu. We have already released the [80] good ones..."

So I asked if I could have a look through the Prabhupada image galleries he had on the computer in front of him. "No. Prabhu. We can't let anyone see them!" As if I had made a great offense even daring to ask to see an unpublished photo of Srila Prabhupada!

In the end, out of frustration, I started going through some old Back to Godhead magazines he had there and started picking photos out of the BTG's and telling him, "I want this one..." And he got them all for me. Mind you out of all the pictures we used in that "On Chanting Hare Krishna" booklet only two of them had been scanned by the Bhaktivedanta Archives. For the other images Ranjit had to go downstairs and get the original films out of their files and scan them for me. From this we can understand that the archives have so many images they have never scanned and simply exist in the basement of their house at Prabhupada Village. So if something happens there these images of Prabhupada will be gone forever.

And what has happened to a lot of these transparencies and negitaves while they have been in the care of Bhaktivedanta archives is horrendous. You can not believe it. If devotees want I can post some typical examples. So many of the negatives are so badly scratched that to get anything presentable you have to work on it for days in Photoshop and still it leaves a lot to be desired. And throughout the whole collection the films and transparencies have developed these horrible black dots and marks all over them. It looks like mold to me but I have not seen the actual transparencies affected by this, I have only seen the scans.

While reediting the ITV Acharya Series programs we requested all the still images used in the introduction sequences from these shows so we could remake them at better quality. Obviously when these shows were originally produced in the 80's the images were perfectly clear. They must have been, there was no Photoshop then. But the scans of the same images we received from the archives were terrible. Covered in heavy scratches and this horrible black spotted mold or whatever it is. We could fix it up enough for the DVDs in photoshop but for high resolution prints these Prabhupada photos are ruined. And the archives have no copies of the transparencies or negatives. Even though it is easy to duplicate these without any significant loss of quality they never did. Instead they used the original negatives every time they wanted to reproduce a print.  In the olden days every time you make a print you have to put the negative into the enlarger. So I guess with all this moving the negatives in and out of the enlarger the only original negatives for most of the "classic" Prabhupada photos are almost destroyed. And there is no copy.

What has happened with the Prabhupada images at the archives is repeated for whatever other recorded vani they have.

An example of how little they value the original recordings of Prabhupada is back in the 90s when they were distributing their Prabhupada Library, which was a complete set of the Prabhupada Tape Ministry tapes plus alll the archives books plus a copy of the then new MS-DOS Vedabase, as a promotion they were giving every customer, "A free original reel of tape containing a Prabhupada class." They were actually giving away the original reel-to-reel tapes that Prabhupada had personally recorded... As a sales gimmick... This was one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen in ISKCON. They have absolutely no idea of the importance and value of the Prabhupada recordings they have.

And now Ekanatha Prabhu is telling us that they are busy trying to capture the original analog tapes digitally. Which means they have not done it yet... They made a big noise and collected a lot of money in the early 90s for transferring the Prabhupada tapes to DAT digital tape. But obviously they did not transfer them all. Why would they? At that time their plan was to let the cassette tape ministry with its 1300 recordings fade away and replace it with a few hundred CDs. So in their minds there was obviously no need to transfer all these tapes to digital...

Quite honestly this same poison effected me also. I produced the first Prabhupada MP3 set in the early 90s at the fervent request of Mahesh Raja who practically locked me in his house in Manchester until I had finished transferring his complete Prabhupada tape collection to the Real Audio format [at that time MP3 was just new and not established as the standard format for compressed audio].

I clearly remember a conversation that I had with Mahesh Prabhu. We were saying this is nectar but who will want the full set of Prabhupada recordings when we finish it? Basically we were counting the people up who we thought would be interested to get the "Complete Prabhupada MP3 Library" for their computer. We came up with five or six people and that was it. But I was very surprised and happy when we started advertising and selling it on the internet in the mid 90s. I couldn't make enough of them. The demand from the devotees was amazing. Then I gave it to Madhavananda Prabhu in New York and he was producing as fast as he could and could not supply the demand and he gave it to Brahmananda and Garagamni in Vrindavan and they started manufacturing it as fast as they could. We distributed thousands of sets in six or eight months...

And all this time the archives were criticizing us. They did not want Prabhuapda distributed like this because they wanted to sell cassette tapes! But having their heads down and doing their archival work I guess they did not nottice that by the mid 90s people did not have cassette tape players anymore... But they were adamant. "No MP3s. Cassette tapes..." This is but one of many, many examples showing how the archives are generally at least ten years behind when it comes to technology and generally they have no idea how to use the current technology. The exception to this was the DOS-Vedabase. that was really cutting edge technology at the time they released it.

Eventually the archives surrounded to the reality that people don't have cassette tape players any more and they started advertising their own "Prabhupada MP3 Library." I was so happy. I thought, "Wonderful, they have done something at last!" I knew they had the original tapes and I knew they could get a much better result then me. I had to work off the cassette tapes they were distributing which were often very bad quality. There were so many problems in their production of cassette tapes but that is another story. So I was thinking that this is wonderful, now we will have a really nice quality MP3 set produced by the Bhaktivedanta Archives from their master tapes... So I ordered one of their sets. And it turned out to be simply a pirate copy of our set. They had done absolutely nothing at all except copy our set...

But I was unhappy with the quality of this set and eventually convinced Ekanatha to let us have access to the Cassette Tape Ministry master tapes and with the help of Nara Narayana Prabhu and his family and friends in Los Angeles we produce the what is the current Bhaktivedanta Archves Prabhupada MP3 Library.

At that time I tried very, very hard to get access to all the original recordings, the Prabhupada recordings we are still trying to get access to now, but Ekanatha flatly refused. At that time I really had to force him by writing many letters and making a big fuss otherwise he would have never given me even access to the Cassette Tape Ministry Master tapes... So from my expeience it seems that the only way the archives will release any unreleased Prabhupada vani is you have to make such a big fuss so everyone needs to push Ekanatha very hard on this point of releasing the unreleased Prabhupada audio and he may then realize the importance of it and it may actually dawn on him that Prabhupada's followers have the right to hear the recordings that Prabhupada made, clearly with the intention that his followers would listen to them.

Why did Prabhuapda record these tapes? So Ekanatha could lock them up in the archives and deny all of the followers of Prabhupada access to them while the tapes rot? Do you think Prabhupada would be please with you for this Ekanatha Prabhu??? And you are upsetting the devotees. And we are not supposed to upset the devotees. You know, Krishna is pleased when you please His devotees. So you can please so many devotees by releasing the unreleased Prabhupada vani. And by their blessings you will surely go back home back to Godhead. So why not do it, release all the Prabhupada vani you have locke up there and please Srila Prabhupada, please the devotees, and go back home back to Godhead. It is a great opportunity...

Anyhow I could write a big book about the archives and how they are not properly archiving the vani of Srila Prabhupada but I think you get the idea. Whatever they do it is with the same apparent ignorance of the importance and value of the recorded Prabhupada Vani they have in their possession.

There are so many examples. In the early 90s the BBT spent a lot of money to get all the Prabhupada 16mm & 8mm films transferred to broadcast quality digital video tape [digibeta tapes]. There was only ever one NTSC copy of the digital tapes made and that was put in the care of Bhaktivedantra Archives. Another non-digital copy was made and put in the care of Nrsimhananda Prabhu at ITV there was also one PAL copy that went to Europe. About ten years later Yadubara Prabhu approached Bhaktivedanta Archives to get the digital video tapes so he could use them for producing his chronological collection of Prabhupada videos which has now become "Following Srila Prabhupada." Of the approximately 40 video tapes Bhaktivedanta Archives had lost two of them... Fortunately Nrsimhananda Prabhu had not lost his copies so we were able to supply Yadubara Prabhu with copies of these tapes. Yet another example of the archives not taking care of the Prabhupada vani in their possession and certainly not realizing the value of it.

Anyhow what needs to be done now is for the archives to make very good digital transfers of all the Prabhupada audio tapes they have in their possession that they have not yet digitized and convert all these files to the flac format and publish the files and the digital signatures for these recordings with some naming system that only really needs to identify the original tape. That will establish the standard originals and then we need to work together cooperatively from these original tapes and produce the new complete Prabhupada MP3 library. And this can be done using today's technology, not the ten-year old technology the Archives are using. Today these things are done online using a collaborative model and a website to coordinate everything. To make this possible all the Prabhupada Vani needs to be released on this website and devotees can work on it by downloading files, fixing them and then uploading them, then the transcribers can download the fixed files and transcribe them and upload their transcriptions... This is the current technology...

This project is very dear to my heart.  I gave five years of my life to ITV to work on a similar project to save and distribute all the video and film recordings of Srila Prabhupada and that resulted in the very successful Prabhupada DVD set which does contain all the known film and video recordings of Srila Prabhupada. So as far as the film and video everything is presented and preserved in a nice way by the Prabhupada DVD set and now also Yadubara Prabhu's "Following Srila Prabhuapda." So the visual record of Srila Prabhupada has been saved and preserved. But we have not saved the audio or the still images... A large percentage of the images of Srila Prabhupada and the audio recordings of Srila Prabhupada are in grave danger of being lost forever if we can not somehow encourage Ekanatha Prabhu to do something about this.

I am prepared to give as much time as needed to Bhaktivedanta Archves to help with this project to preserve and publish all the audio recordings of Srila Prabhupada. I can help with the website to coordinate the project and I can help with the computer work to restore the poor quality files and when this is done I am happy to help Ekanatha Prabhu with the transcription work also. In this way when it is about preserving and distributing the vani of Srila Prabhupada I am happy to be the humble servant of anyone who is actually interested in doing this...

If any of these invaluable recordings of Srila Prabhupada are lost the loss is incalculable. There is so much value in even one word from Srila Prabhupada. The disaster of loosing even one tape is unimaginable. Bhaktivedanta Archives need to discover the value of the Prabhuapda vani they are holding on to and comprehend the great disaster they will be responsible for if any of this material is not preserved and distributed to the devotees. 

Anyhow forgive me writing so much. I could write much more but who would read it?

I am simply humbly praying that Ekanatha will accept the help we are offering and together we can save and distribute this great treasure of unreleased audio from His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada!

All glories to Srila Prabhupada who continues to live in his recorded vani.

Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!

Your servant

Madhudvisa dasa

[Pratyatosa Dasa (ACBSP)]

Dear Madhudvisa Prabhu, Hare Krishna! Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

Very nice heartfelt letter (http://harekrsna.com/sun/editorials/02-10/editorials5736.htm), but what's done is done. The big question now is, where do we go from here?

I agree with what you said, except for three things:

1. The Bhaktivedanta Tape Ministry was actually started as "ISKCON'S first cassette subscription service" at the Brooklyn temple on Henry Street in 1971. As far as I can remember, it was my original idea, dictated directly by Supersoul, and I'm the one who put the idea into action. In 1972, I moved the tape subscription service to ISKCON Los Angeles. Supersoul then dictated that I give it the name, the "Bhaktivedanta Tape Ministry," and to restrict the subscription service to only lectures and conversations by Srila Prabhupada. I implemented this change in Los Angeles in early 1973. I also computerized the BTM subscription service accounting and cassette tape label printing at that time using ISKCON's first computer, which was owned by ISKCON's Spiritual Sky incense manufacturing business. Where did you get the idea that "Parama-Rupa Prabhu created the Bhaktivedanta Tape Ministry?"

2. I remember being very disappointed that you had transferred Srila Prabhupada's tape library to Real Audio format instead to the MP3 format. It was clear to me at that time that MP3 was the way to go. Why didn't you consult with me? At that time, I was available by email every day, just as I am now. This mistake demonstrates that you have a tendency to do things "on impulse" without properly researching the alternatives.

3. You said that the recordings that have not yet been released should be digitized and the files converted to the FLAC format. Why do it in 2 steps? Why not digitize them to the FLAC format in the first place? Why just the unreleased tapes? Why not ALL of the tapes?

In any case, the original analog tapes should be digitized directly to a high quality, lossless format in such a way the even an expert cannot tell the difference between the original recording and the copy when doing an "AB test" on the highest quality playback equipment.

If, for some reason, these original digitized files have to in an uncompressed lossless format such as WAV, then they should be converted to FLAC before they are distributed on the Internet, because FLAC files are much more compact.

It is very important that this be done, not only for the unreleased tapes, but for ALL of Srila Prabhupada's tapes. There should be copies of the original FLAC files in the personal libraries of devotees all over the world so that they have the best possible chance of surviving for the next 10,000 years. Theorectically, digital copies are eternal, because each copy is identical to the original, but there must be many copies as widely distributed as possible.

As far as removing the background noise goes, all editing should be done in the lossless domain. The very last step should be to convert to the files MP3, which is not lossless. However, the noise reduced lossless versions should also be saved, because further noise reduction might be possible as we get better at it and as the technology improves. In any case, the most important thing is to preserve the original digitized copies at all cost. Like I've been saying over and over again for the past couple of years, this can be easily accomplished at very little cost by making them available as free downloads on the Internet.

Your servant, Pratyatosa Dasa

[Madhudvisa dasa]

Dear Pratyatosa Prabhu

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!!

I agree 100% with everything you have said in this letter Prabhu. And I thank you very much for clearing up this history of the Bhaktivedanta Tape Ministry.

I did not know you at the time we made the first Prabhupada Real Audio set. It was early 90's. Everything was very new. CD burners had just come out.

Prabhu the reason I did the first set in Real Audio was there was a realtime system available to record straight to Real Audio files but if I would have made the first set in MP3 I would have had to capture in wav files and convert the wav files into MP3 and those days we had very small hard drives and very slow computers.

I think this project took about 2 months to make the Real Audio set but making it on MP3 would have taken a lot longer. I was using 3 computers and working on it 18+ hours a day. Once Mahesh Prabhu understood the possibilities he was pushing me to get it out to the devotees as soon as possible!

It was a grand success Prabhu. The quality was quite nice, considering, and thousands of those Real Audio sets were distributed and it started a revolution of hearing from Srila Prabhupada...

I agree completely with the process you have outlined and in the future I will consult with you before doing anything digitally with the Prabhuapda vani.

I agree 100% that all the tapes should be released by the archives in the loss less flac format with the digital signitures mentioned by your brother published so we have a standard and guaranteed bona fide set of unprocessed digital copies of the original tapes...

Your point is well taken that in the future the noise reduction technology may be better so we need to keep the original unprocessed files as well as the processed files.

ALL GLORIES TO YOUR SERVICE PRABHU!

Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!

Your servant

Madhudvisa dasa

www.KrishnaStore.com

[mark]

Ironic isn't it, that the people with the proper mindset and solutions
are NOT in a position of power or influence over the matter. Not due
to their own inadequacies or disqualification, but due to the lack of
receptivity of those who have taken the reigns of power in an
unauthorized way.

It would be nice that the advances and advices of Pratyatosa and
Madhudvisa might chisel away at the stony hearts of the Archivists.
Hopefully such a respectful, educated, and dispassionate approach will
be enough to do it.

Not holding my breath. Already contemplating Plan B. How to transfer
the balance of power, in reality, to those like Madhudvisa dasa and
Pratyatosa dasa. At which point, the genuine service might proceed
and the preaching to the faithless (who have already been preached to
and REJECTED the vani), can wane into oblivion, as it saps our energy.

Hare Krsna

> > digitized and the files converted to the FLAC<http://flac.sourceforge.net/>format. Why do it in 2 steps? Why not digitize them to the FLAC format in

> ...
>
> read more »

[John Hanton]

Who will read it?
I read it. Thank you so much for all this invaluable service prabhu.
ys
Jitarati das
 

---

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:21:18 +0530
Subject: Bhaktivedanta Archives: Disorganized, Inefficient and 10 years behind the Technology
From: madhu...@gmail.com
To: praty...@gmail.com
CC: eka...@gmail.com; hanto...@hotmail.com; ramakris...@gmail.com; istag...@googlegroups.com; Vaisnav...@yahoogroups.com; 108sanat...@gmail.com; sanatana...@gmail.com; dare...@yahoo.com; s...@harekrsna.com

[Pratyatosa Dasa (ACBSP)]

Dear Bhakta Mark Prabhu, Hare Krishna! Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

Thank you very much for your valuable input.

I have full faith that Lord Sri Krishna has a plan, and you may be a very important part of that plan. We simply have to be conscious of which way the wind blows, and act accordingly.

Your servant, Pratyatosa Dasa

[mark]

Please accept my obeisances as well, Pratyatosa dasa. All glories to
Srila Prabhupada.

Glad you find my input of value. I am not a very fixed up Vaisnava
and am usually feeling a mix of desperation and frustration in my
longing for a functioning community. And great exasperation at how
misunderstood Daiva varnasrama dharma is among so called Brahmanas,
who simply can't comprehend the proper role of the Ksatriya in a
Brahminical culture, though Prabhupada was quite instructive on the
issue.

So, full of bluster, piss, and vinegar, I am spitting nails hoping to
reclaim some ground, or at least go out swinging. Just being able to
speak on behalf of Srila Prabhupada's movement before giving up this
meatsack is probably the limit of my importance if any.

A favorable breeze is due, lets hope we catch it and it fills the
sails of the Prabhupadanuga reform crew.

ys

B.Mark

On Feb 15, 8:22 pm, "Pratyatosa Dasa (ACBSP)" <pratyat...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Bhakta Mark Prabhu, Hare Krishna! Please accept my humble obeisances.
> All glories to Srila Prabhupada!
>
> Thank you very much for your valuable input.
>
> I have full faith that Lord Sri Krishna has a plan, and you may be a very
> important part of that plan. We simply have to be conscious of which way the
> wind blows, and act accordingly.
>
> Your servant, Pratyatosa Dasa
>