Gen-Y’s opt-out vision, an editorial piece from Christian Science Monitor that talks about a growing disillusionment with the previous generation’s work ethic.

Park and Write - from the BBC, a piece about an intelligent, educated lady who lives in her car. It talks about the psychological and sociological factors that lead to homelessness. The support networks of family and community are becoming increasingly thin.

The Dying Art of Conversation - again from the BBC. This piece talks about talking, and about the death of conversation in common society, accompanied by its rebirth in the form of reading groups. Sounds like Sacred Pathways at Atma Yoga on Tuesdays.

Flock - the “social web browser” - is the latest cutting edge of web browsing technology. It’s an open source derivative of the Mozilla browser, just as Firefox is, but with a lot more bling bling. The great thing about open source is that you can take whatever anyone else has done, and build something more on top of that.

There would be no commentaries of the acaryas if the scriptures were copyrighted. I chose the Creative Commons Licence for my literary output for this reason. Not because what I write is on the same level as the scriptures or the acaryas’ commentaries, but because that’s the Vedic culture - information is Free.

I’m posting this from the right-click blogging interface included in Flock. It has more RSS integration, support for social bookmarks (you share them via del.icio.us, which also means you can read them on different machines that have Flock on them), and I’d imagine more under the hood that I am yet to discover. Zero day warez. You heard it here first.

And on the “you heard it here first” thread, I can see the Krishna Linux distro that I blogged about a year ago becoming a reality too - things are definitely moving in that direction - slowly but surely. It won’t be 2006, but it will happen.

Kirtan on the radio within 5 years as well, remember.

“They”–gay activists–”know if they make enough inroads into [schools], the same-sex-marriage battle will be moot.”

… last year’s big UCLA survey of college freshmen found that 57% favor same-sex marriage (only about 36% of all adults do). Even as adult activists bicker in court, young Americans–including many young conservatives–are becoming thoroughly, even nonchalantly, gay- positive.

From the October 10th issue of Time Magazine.

I previously presented my personal conclusion on preaching strategy in the post-Gay Marriage world here.

Echoing an analysis I made of how verbatim “gay bashing” preaching will be perceived, the article states:

Jennings believes a majority of GSA members are heterosexuals who find anti-gay rhetoric as offensive as racism. “We’re gonna win,” says Jennings, speaking expansively of the gay movement, “because of what’s happening in high schools right now … This is the generation that gets it.”

26 April 2005 - New Zealand

“As same-sex couples around the country today lodged their civil union applications their opponents appear to have accepted defeat.”

Full article on Stuff.

Time and tide wait for no man.

Srila Prabhupada wrote a series of letters to Hansadutta in the late 60’s detailing his vision for the “World Sankirtan Party”, a kirtan group consisting of two harmoniums, two mrdangas and six cartals, that would travel the world performing kirtan concerts in halls.

I feel that His Holiness BB Govinda Swami has captured this flag with his Silk Road Bhajan Group. There have been famous kirtaniyas, solo kirtan musicians, but up until now there have not really been full kirtan groups as Srila Prabhupada imagined for the World Sankirtan Party. BB Govinda is spear heading this. The Silk Road Bhajan Band also appear in my Google News Alert for Hare Krishna, playing in various locations around the world.

Kirtan groups are a different story from a successful kirtan musician. There are orders of magnitude of additional complexity and commitment involved in coordinating groups of people. It’s a great achievement, a shining example that it is possible, and a wonderful source of inspiration. This is the thin edge of the wedge. Let me reiterate my prediction that in 5 years time kirtan will be on the radio.

Here (64MB, 256Kbps, 34 min) is a recording of one of their kirtans.

Further to the earlier post “Yoga goes hip-hop as marketing takes hold“, we were laughing about this at yoga at The Loft tonight, when I suddenly remembered that I predicted this in 2001, just before we left for South America. I predicted the fusion of yoga and hip hop and coined the personality: “Snoop Downward Dog”.

So now let me make a call for the next five years. Here is what you will see:

1. In the near future, Yoga meets Break Dancing.

2. In five years time, kirtan will be on the radio.

You heard it here first.

I read about Yoga Works in the latest Yoga Journal. Many yoga studio owners have sold to them because it is very difficult to make a profit on a yoga school unless you make it a franchise.

NEW YORK: Yoga is going hip-hop as part of a rampant commercialisation of the ancient exercise in America, where it is being marketed to new inner city audiences at Starbucks-like chains.

Yoga, the 5000-year-old Indian discipline of exercise, diet and meditation, has exploded into a $US3 billion ($NZ4.26 billion) industry in the United States, with urban entertainment impresario Russell Simmons the newest figure to join in.

Simmons, the founder of Def Jam Records, released a video series on Wednesday titled, Yoga Live, with instructions set to 72 tracks of original hip-hop music - sounds that might have jarred the yogis of bygone days.

Simmons said he tried to distil the spiritual from the physical in his tapes. “We packaged it intentionally in a way for people to digest the physical practice,” he told Reuters. “It’s not meant to get them worried about religion or spirituality.”

In another commercial move into yoga, entrepreneurs Rob Wrubel and George Lichter who teamed up to lead online search tool Ask Jeeves, have launched Yoga Works, a chain of yoga studios that aims to grow from its current 14 sites to an average of 10 studios in the largest US cities.

Interest in yoga has exploded.

A Harris survey of a sampling of 4700 people across the country commissioned by Yoga Journal showed that 16.5 million people were practising yoga, or 7.5 per cent of US adults.

Other offshoots of the ancient art that have found popularity include yoga spinning and combining the practice with indoor cycling and heat training. There is also a new California hybrid called budokon, Japanese for “way of the spiritual warrior,” that mixes martial arts, yoga, meditation and optimal nutrition.

Some practitioners are concerned about the marketing of yoga.

“The commercial opportunities lead to less genuine forms of yoga,” said Swami Ramananda, 51, head of Integral Yoga Institute’s two New York City centres.

Ramananda said he worried about exercise fads co-opting yoga in a superficial way. “If someone’s intention is to make money, he is not offering yoga with students in mind,” he said.

Yoga Journal spokesperson Dayna Macy illustrated yoga’s striking rise in popularity by her magazine’s rapid growth in circulation - from 90,000 in 1998, to 170,000 in 2000, to a current 325,000.

“Yoga is a very powerful practice and survives because its teachings are very adaptable to the culture where it lands,” she said.

Many in the US yoga establishment agree.

Garrett Sarley, head of the Kripalu Centre for Yoga and Health in Lenox, Massachusetts, said, “The premise of Kripalu yoga embraces the idea that more is better. In the end all yogas lead to one great yoga.”

Now turf wars have sprung up over the right to copyright and trademark specific yoga programmes.

A legal battle in California is ongoing over whether Beverly Hills maestro Bikram Choudhury has ownership rights over his “Bikram Yoga” programme - a specific sequence of 26 postures and breathing exercises performed in a heated room.

Luke Cammack, 32, co-director of a Bikram Yoga studio in New York, said he tried various styles of yoga before settling on this.

“You have to be calm because it’s really intense,” said Cammack. “We don’t teach philosophy. There’s no chanting.”

STUFF : ODDSTUFF - STORY : New Zealand’s leading news and information website

As part of my regular environmental scan I came across this. It showed up in my Google alert for Hare Krishna. This is an excerpt from an interview with Patricia Dugan, a family practice lawyer in Philadelphia, USA. It is interesting because it demonstrates some of the currents of thinking at the moment. A preacher has to know their field of action. I have added my italics, and some comments at the end.

“There are a lot of gay priests. Is it significant? No,” Dugan said. “The same numbers that are proportional in the real world is what you’re going to get in the priesthood. This is not an issue of gay or straight. As a lawyer, there’s a rule: if you’re going to be a priest you’ve got to be celibate. Is it a good rule? I don’t think so. I think priests should be able to get into real relationships and I think before somebody gets ordained they should have to spend a year paying a mortgage.

“I think celibate means that you’re going to live a celibate existence in your life. Whether you’re bi, gay, straight, it doesn’t matter�the issue is celibacy, not inclination, in my book. I think as long as you have some good priests who are gay and celibate (we both mention 9/11 hero Father Michael Judge), I think you are not going to see a ban on gay priests.”

There are people in the Vatican who are gay, she says. “They didn’t get there because they are gay or because they are straight, they didn’t get there for any other reason but that they are good priests and part of the best and the brightest. They are there because they earned it. As long as those people are there, there will be no exclusion. You can’t exclude lay people� women� gays� I mean who’s left? Jesus didn’t exclude anybody.”

I think this is pretty typical of how people will see things. As I mentioned in an earlier piece, increasingly villification and discrimination against gays will be considered like discriminating against women or black people. Just not the done thing.

See the whole article here: The WeeklyPress@Philly1.Com