Please visit my new blog at www.atmayogi.com when you get a chance. I’ll leave this site up with all its resources. I can’t maintain two blogs effectively, so I will be concentrating my energy on atmayogi.com and merging into it my livejournal blog (jwulf.livejournal.com).

Initially the resources on atmayogi will be quite small, but they will grow with time. I will try to keep the main page light so that it loads fast.

Some, but not all, posts from atmayogi.com will feed into ISKCON News.Net and some, but not all, will feed into Fedora People.

Thank you for your support.

My server was hacked two weeks ago by a Saudi Arabian hacker sympathetic to the plight of the Lebanese people. At first my reaction was one of dread at the work ahead of me to rebuild the server, but after reading the page again and again I began to wonder…

While I’ve been offline over the past two weeks I’ve been studying Islam and reading the Koran, and I’ve decided to convert. Hacking someone’s site is so the best way to convince them of your point of view. In the tradition of Aussies who convert to Islam I’ve selected “Jihad” as my Islamic name, so I’ll known as “Jihad Josh”…..

But seriously, the real reason that I’m no longer going to be maintaining this blog is that Krishna-kirti has stopped maintaining his, and since I was only ever a plant of the liberal left to counter-act his presentation, the razon d’etre of this site has disappeared…

But really, seriously, the real reason that I am no longer going to be maintaining this site is that I have finished this chapter of my life.

Time for the next one…

It’s 28 minutes long, and is a mix from Vraj’s record collection. Neither of us can remember all of the artists who got mixed up in there. The first track (Gaya Goura Madhu Sware) is a devotee from South America. The “Hari Haraye Namah Krishna” track is a nationally acclaimed musician from Venezuela. There is a track from Sridhama das in NZ in there, and the last track is from DJ Vraj’s last album “Anti-materia”.

I’m not sure where the others come from. If you can identify a track, then please leave a comment.

Here it is:

DJ Vraj Mix Janmastami 2006 MP3 (40MB 28:49)
DJ Vraj Mix Janmastami 2006 OGG (31MB 28:49)

A note on the difference between ogg and mp3:

You should use ogg if at all able to. Ogg is a free format - mp3 is a patent encumbered format. Iriver and IAudio media players play ogg format files. Ipod players do not play this format (you are forced to use mp3). A practical consequence of mp3’s patent encumbrance is that any devotees who wish to sell their music online using mp3 must pay a royalty to the patent holder. There is no such charge for the ogg format, which is also technically superior to mp3.

You can check out Vraj’s album Rise and Shine (released a few years ago now) on Amazon.

A recent article in Time magazine discussed the same subject:

Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, eat their vegetables, learn big words and know which fork to use.

Here in Australia where we are now, and in many parts of the world, devotees talk about an “Ekadasi Feast” to break fast at midnight.

When we arrived in Peru devotees there had never heard of such an idea. They customarily broke fast with the “full bloque“, as they put it (those guys can put away grains…). The first year we were there a GBC man circulated an email instructing that the feast should be Ekadasi prasadam.

In the interest of historical accuracy:

As I understand it, the concept of the “Ekadasi feast” comes from a garbled transmission of Srila Prabhupada’s instructions on how to observe the day.

These instructions are in his letters (you can find them in Siksamrita and the Vedabase), and also in the biographical works of early disciples (it was in Lilamrita or Hare Krishna Explosion or somewhere similar that I read about this).

The idea is that Janmastami is a day when fasting is observed, and that the fast should be broken at midnight with some light prasadam ala Ekadasi, which means some fruit or nuts. Feasting is then observed on the next day, the day of Nandotsava, Nanda Maharaja’s festival for the birth of his son Krishna.

Having a feast at midnight after a day fasting is of questionable sanity from a health perspective, and a little hard to find enjoyable, which is really what feasting is all about. How you break a fast is an important part of the fast from both the material (you can up to kill yourself by breaking a dry fast with too much water) and spiritual perspective (refer to the histories of King Rantideva and Maharaja Ambarisa for examples).

On the first Janmastami (it may have been a Gaura Purnima - the detail may differ, but the principle remainss the same) the devotees where all waiting eagerly in the temple room to break fast. Swamiji (as they knew Srila Prabhupada) prepared so many wonderful preparations for the Sunday Feast each week, so they couldn’t even begin to imagine what incredible banquet of delights this day would bring.

Srila Prabhupada descended the stairs at the appointed hour bearing… a plate with cut up pieces of apple, which he distributed to the devotees.

The instruction from Srila Prabhupada that I read in a letter where this matter was discussed was essentially:

Break fast at midnight with something like Ekadasi prasadam (when you are just supposed to take a few non-grain / bean things like fruits and nuts to keep your body going and the mind nominally pacified). Feasting is observed the day following.

I remember Hanuman prabhu talking about a book he was writing about how to observe Ekadasi according to the actual instructions that were given by Srila Prabhupada. He said to me:

In twenty years, the speculations will have increased ten fold. Right now, even though Ekadasi is supposed to be about fasting there is a special Ekadasi cookbook in the kitchen filled with the most opulent preparations imaginable. It’s like the goal is to avoid austerity.

If it continues this way, in the future on Ekadasi devotees will be chanting “Ekadasi Ekadasi” on their beads, and if you say the word: “Grains”, they’ll pull out a gun and shoot you.

Hanuman has a great sense of humour. The part about not saying “grains” refers to another “tradition” (where did it come from?) of not singing Bhaktivinode Thakura’s song Prasada-sevaya on Ekadasi because “it contains the word ‘anna‘, which means grains”.

According to some, you can’t sing that devotional song on Ekadasi because it contains a word that can be translated as “grains”, but you can of course say “grains grains grains” as you explain why you can’t sing the song.

Up to now I have never encountered an appeal to sadhu, guru, or sastra in support of this tradition, just an appeal to tradition and an obviously twisted and faulty logic. I’d be interested to know what kernel of truth gave birth to that conception - I certainly haven’t been able to find out from any of its proponents so far.

Krishna addresses this pramana, “tradition”, in his Govardhan-lila, and Srila Jiva Goswami discusses its shortcomings in his work on epistemology (how to get valid knowledge) Tattva Sandarbha.

Local audiences, this isn’t a personal dig at anyone, so please don’t take it like that, it’s just me commenting on my journey. International audiences, well, you don’t really care do you? I’m just some guy in a remote country who’s mildly interesting enough to read his site, and hardly threatening to you…

Call me a pedant if you will… and yes, I will be eating whatever is there at midnight, according to what my body needs / can sustain, including the obligatory cashews and caramel. At midnight. After a day of fasting. Now that’s what I call austerity…

I’m not going to do a dry fast and do that though. A year or two ago I did a dry fast and then ate something at 1 am (it’s never midnight) and wiped myself out for a good couple of days. Not advisable. This year I am going to drink water during the day, take some fruits if needed to sustain my energy in the afternoon, and take a small amount of prasadam at midnight in the association of devotees.

With the rigors involved in a public program of the scope that we are doing this year there is small room for error (like losing control of the fire element in the body) so I am prepared to sacrifice whatever benefit there may be in doing a full fast in order to be able to execute that service with full attention. Another year, or another life, when I have no responsibilities on the day I can do a full fast and simply chant from start to finish.

The other thing that we have to balance with the fasting is the impact on our ongoing service. Thursday is another day, and Friday yet another. Atma Yoga is closed one day and we have an obligation to the public that must be fulfilled.

We’re “flying the flag” with a Sunday Feast on steroids at the Graceville State School Hall, 23 Acacia Rd, Chelmer, from 3 pm until late.

The place has a great PA and lighting system and a modular stage made out of nine or ten units like the one we have at the Sunday Feast.

It’s the perfect facility for preaching and we will have one like it someday soon. It is currently used by a church on Sundays - they paid for the lighting system to be put in. I’ll have some photos after the event to show you.

Individual actions aggregate into larger social and economic manifestations.

Most people, unfortunately, are only concerned with themselves and the immediate short term effects of their actions on themselves. However, there is always an intelligent sector of society which is capable of more long range thinking.

The bottom line:

• You should not use Internet Explorer 7 because if do you will be contributing to an economic monopoly which is designed to maximize profits for a particular corporation, and because of this narrow focus has the effect of stifling innovation.
• You should not use Internet Explorer 7 because if you do you will be contributing to locking yourself into vendor dependence with a vendor who has shown that when the economic incentive is removed, they will not address security or usability issues.
• You should not use Internet Explorer 7 because it is a strategic tool that is used to foster dependence and eliminate “competition” (from Microsoft’s perspective, which equals “choice” from your perspective).

Here is some history for you:

Netscape Navigator, based on NCSA Mosiac, was the first “commercial” web browser. When I first got on the Internet in 1994 it was in pre v 1.0 beta, and it was being given away freely. At that time there was no TCP/IP stack in Windows and it was necessary to use a third party one such as Trumpet Winsock.

In 1995, as Netscape Navigator gained traction widely as the standard in web browsers, Bill Gates got the epiphany that the Internet was the future, and refocused Microsoft on catching up. Internet Explorer 1.0, released in 1995, was built on licensed Mosiac technology.

Internet Explorer was then developed through six version iterations up to 2001. If you read the official Microsoft IE history page you get the idea that here was a great web browser that was being built and developed to serve the public (the customers). The reality is that the web browser was being built and developed to eliminate Netscape Navigator. Once Microsoft achieved that aim, through first giving their browser away, then bundling it, then building it into the operating system, along with licensing agreements with PC vendors that have been judged anti-competitive in US and European courts, Microsoft stopped developing Internet Explorer.

Five years. No new version.

Until Firefox came along and gave people choice, gave them new innovations in web browsing. Prior to the rise of Firefox there were other options, such as Opera or Mozilla (which is what Netscape Navigator became when they open sourced the code, and what Firefox is based on). However, since none of these represented a threat to Microsoft’s market share, they did nothing.

Once Firefox started grabbing 10% of the market share, however, Microsoft sat up and dusted off IE.

Their idea is to give you some shiny things and get you to take the red pill and go back to sleep. Once they kill Firefox, it will be business as usual. Microsoft is focused on maximizing profit. That means not doing unnecessary work to increase value to you when they don’t have to.

Using Internet Explorer 7 means helping to kill off the competition, and returning to a position of dependence and servitude on a corporation that exists to take your money and give you as little as possible in return. It’s called “maximizing shareholder value”.

You can read more in Wikipedia’s entry on the History of Internet Explorer

Check out the new photo gallery.

THE Devil has been unfairly and wilfully maligned and deserves a reassessment, according to a new study.

Finally the big man gets some understanding.

This new reading of the Christian material is closer to the philosophical understanding of the Gaudiya Vaisnavas and Hindus (as in philosophical / religious traditions originating in India) in general.

It also resolves several problematic questions about free will, predestination, and agency - specifically with regard to Satan’s free will, role, and responsibility for his actions.

Most Christians believe that Satan was an angel named Lucifer who rebelled against God at the beginning of Creation. After being thrown out of Heaven, he tempted Adam and Eve into sin, and since then has strived to win souls for his kingdom of Hell.

But Professor Kelly argues that none of this is in the Bible, and that it represents conclusions drawn by the early church fathers and read back into the Bible.

Professor Kelly argues from Luke iv that Satan is a minister of God in charge of the world.

“He’s a government heavy, whose main job is to test human beings and to accuse them of their misdeeds, but he is cynical and overzealous in performing his duties,” the professor says. “We can think of an unscrupulous and feared official investigator or prosecutor, like J.Edgar Hoover or senator Joseph McCarthy.”

source

Here is something that arrived in my inbox this morning. Good advice:

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy.

- Wayne Dwyer

All glories to the lotus feet of Sri Nityananda-Rama.

Our resident photographer, Sukanthi Radha, left for London last night after a year as part of the family here in Brisbane.

Just before she left I showed her how to use F-Spot, the photo management software that she has installed on her laptop as part of the Fedora Linux operating system.

Using F-Spot I’ve been organizing the more than 7000 photos that Sukanthi has taken across NZ, Australia and England in the last three or four years. As a demo I’ve created (using tags and the one click “Export” feature of F-Spot) a gallery that shows the evolution of the platform at the Sunday Feast over the time that Sukanthi was taking photos at the Sunday Feast.

Click on “Prev” to travel forward through time (I couldn’t figure out how to reverse the order). Many thanks to all the people who have “taken to the stage” and lead kirtans, bhajans, and spoken at the Sunday Feast over the past year.

And many thanks to my dear godsister Sukanthi Radha devi dasi for your participation and contribution here over the past year. You’ve made a big difference and we will miss you. I think of it as a leave of absence more than a parting of the ways. It makes it easier.

Many planks and sticks, unable to stay together, are carried away by the force of a river’s waves. Similarly, although we are intimately related with friends and family members, we are unable to stay together because of our varied past deeds and the waves of time.

- Srimad Bhagavatam 10.5.25

The Evolution of the Sunday Feast: Start Here

Whatever you do every day - that is what you will become.

On Friday night on the bus home from Atma Yoga I got chatting with a guy who told me he had not been back to the Sunday Feast since I last saw him there because his digestion was “cactus” (Australian for b0rked). When I enquired what was wrong and how it had happened, he explained that it was “tantric misadventure” and then gave me a bone-chilling account that mirrored some of the ones I had read on yogadangers.com about Kundalini awakening gone wrong.

He told me that he had done tantric practices (he didn’t say if they were of the left or right-hand path) “without even believing that they’d do anything”. Next thing he knew, it was like someone was holding a blowtorch to his meridians, one after another for 30 minutes each, like clockwork, every time he ate. All his hair fell out. His energetic system is now completely disturbed.

Two things arise from this:

First of all, yoga practice is not a joke. Most people are not going to experience a partial or complete Kundalini awakening, but some people, due to past activities or whatever predisposition, are susceptible to it. Without the complete practice of yoga, a complete framework that gives you a context to experience and interpret the psycho-physical changes that will take place, Kundalini awakening will be a very disturbing and dangerous event.

Simply doing a few postures, some breathing, and a bit of meditation without the complete orientation and lifestyle that go with yoga practice, while statistically speaking safe, does leave a person open to the possibility of misfortune. Again, most people are going to be perfectly safe, but there are some people who are predisposed to Kundalini awakening. Definitely yoga practices which are designed to awaken the Kundalini should not be taught indiscriminately. Do you know what to do to help someone whose Kundalini energy partially awakens?

If not, don’t play around with it.

One more time for clarity. Most people are going to be fine. Most people will never experience the things described on yogadangers.com. There are 76 case studies on one site - for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people around the world who practice yoga in one form or another. At the same time you mitigate the risk by practicing yoga holistically and doing things gradually and under guidance, and by not teaching or practicing Kundalini practices unless you know what you are doing and are ready to take full responsibility for the possible outcomes.

Kundalini awakening is a sideshow on the road of yoga practice, however. And when yoga is practiced properly, you might not even notice it happen.

The second thing comes from reading a number of Christian experts commenting on yoga on that site.

I’m a Christian, and I’ve taken the time to research deeply yoga and the philosophy behind it. Unfortunately many Christians commenting on yoga mistakenly identify yoga philosophy with the philosophy of Sankaracharya, not that most of them would know that, or even know who Sankaracarya is.

Sripada Sankaracarya was a 9th century AD philosopher who preached kevaladvaita philosophy - the idea that the soul (atma) and God (param-atma or Brahman) are identical and non-different.

According to the kevaladvaita philosophy of Sankaracarya, the apparent difference between ourselves and each other, and ourselves and God, is due to illusion only, and when this illusion is overcome by yoga practice, then we again realize our oneness with God and merge into that non-dual existence.

This makes a nice strawman to tilt at. It’s a strawman because Sankaracarya’s philosophy originated in the 9th century AD as a response to the philosophy of Gautama Buddha, who said basically the same thing, but substituting “the void” for “God”. Buddhist philosophy is technically atheism as it denies the existence of a persistent soul or God. At liberation the living entity merges into the void, like a candle going out. Sankaracarya’s philosophy is point for point equal to Buddhism except that he says that there is a soul, but it merges into the Supreme at liberation, like a drop of water returning to the ocean.

Buddha preached around 500 BC. Sankaracarya preached around 800 AD.

Yoga practice, on the other hand, predates both of them by thousands of years. Figurines found in excavations in Mohendro-daro depict yogis practicing asanas. The civilisation of Mohendro-daro is over 4000 years old.

Sankaracarya’s philosophical sleight of hand was useful in that it was used to reestablish the traditional authority of the Vedas, and drive Buddhism out of India to where it survived in China. The philosophical basis that was used for argument was secondary however, to the social egalitarianism that had given Buddhism its foothold in caste-conscious India, and that Sankaracarya co-opted when he asserted that birth was not the only criteria for social standing.

The reason that Buddhism had found such favor with the mass of people in India was the repressive caste system based on birth. Buddha threw this out, and with the bath water the baby of God, the soul, and the scriptures that describe both. Sankaracarya made adjustments to the doctrines surrounding the caste system, asserting that birth does not limit one to a particular social standing, then reintroduced the scriptures describing God and the soul, using a layer of philosophical interpretation that he wrote in his commentaries on these scriptures to make them appear more Buddhist-like in their conclusions.

This social egalitarianism, which was also a hallmark of a later reformer, Sri Krishna Caitanya, has been the basis of religious reformations and revolutionary philosophical movements throughout Indian history.

Due to his triumph over the Buddhist school, and his reestablishing traditional Indian cultural norms and scriptural canon on a basis of greater social egalitarianism, Sripada Sankaracarya and his philosophical conclusions have enjoyed wide spread support, and continue to do so today.

Later commentators, such as Ramanujacarya and Madhvacarya, further reformed the tradition and explained the theistic conclusions of the scriptures that Sankaracarya had reintroduced, continuing with his conclusions on social organization and explaining that his kevaladvaita commentary had actually been a ruse to make the scriptural canon more acceptable to a people who had been accustomed to the conclusions of Buddhism for over one thousand years.

Sankaracarya’s doctrine of saguna and nirguna brahman, on which he bases his monistic interpretation, are not found anywhere in the scriptural canon, but are in fact constructs that he describes in his commentary Sariraka-bhasya. Most Christians and the majority of followers of the “Hindu” religion generally do not know these facts about Sankaracarya and his place in the history of religion and philosophy in India.

Many Christians who have commented on yoga have cited as evidence the expert testimony of “followers of Hinduism” who have confirmed that yoga is part of their “Hindu religion” and that the philosophy of Sankaracarya is in fact what “Hinduism” is all about.

Unfortuately, letting Sankaracarya speak for “Hinduism” is about as valid as letting Sam Kekovich speak for “Australianism”. I’ve got a lot of time for both of them, and I’m sure that you could find some Australians as expert witnesses who would quote Keka chapter and verse, but Australia is a big place with a lot of people in it, and so is Hindustan (India).

Sankaracarya’s philosophy is not what yoga is about. It’s not what “Hinduism” is about. “Hinduism” is an invention of the British. “Australianism” is the invention of the marketing company behind Keka’s ads. How long until we have dedicated followers of that?

The real purpose of yoga is described by Lord Kapiladeva in Srimad Bhagavatam. The purpose of the asanas is to clarify the body and make it a suitable vehicle for spiritual practice. A healthy body and mind make for a powerful instrument for spiritual practice and service. The ultimate goal of yoga is union between atma and param-atma, the soul and the Supreme.

One commentator, identifying yoga with Sankaracarya’s philosophy, cited as further proof of the kevaladvaita (monistic) goal of yoga the fact that yoga means “union” (it gives us the English yoke). Unfortunately for that argument word religion means the same thing - the latin ligare means “to bind”. When you yoke, or join or bind, two things together, they become one in a sense, but they also retain their individual identity, and so it is with yoga and religion. Simultaneous oneness and difference - understanding yourself as a part of the whole in an intimate personal relationship.

Lord Kapila, the Personality of Godhead, who is the highest authority on yoga, here explains the yoga system known as ashtanga-yoga, which comprises eight different practices, namely yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi. By all these stages of practice one must realize Lord Vishnu, who is the target of all yoga. There are so-called yoga practices in which one concentrates the mind on voidness or on the impersonal, but this is not approved by the authorized yoga system as explained by Kapiladeva. Even Patanjali explains that the target of all yoga is Vishnu. Ashtanga-yoga is therefore part of Vaishnava practice because its ultimate goal is realization of Vishnu.

Where did that come from?

Core Power Yoga was started by former-IT executive Trevor Trice. He was obviously on the dark side (some would say he still is) - the full functionality of the website is only available to users of Windows using Internet Explorer.

I feel dirty for even having said that…

In the same way, leadership can also be demonstrated in a number of contexts, whether as the head of an organization, or as the unassuming Everyman (or Woman) who may not have an official title but who still wields tremendous influence through relationships.

For Boomers, this means being open to more fluid systemic models. “Emergents tend to emphasize organic process over linear organization, and relational networks or webs over hierarchies,” Irving notes. And Bruce Butterfield, CEO of the Forbes Group, agrees. “Leadership ladders have to give way to leadership bridges.” In ministry, this is currently reflected in the greater use of “strengths-based” job descriptions (à la Marcus Buckingham) rather than static hierarchical roles, and the preference for ministry coaching instead of consulting.

Looking for Leaders

Today in history:

2004

We’d been in Australia for about six months.

Let the blogging begin

This blog is launched with the identity “The Virtual Pen of Sita-pati das” and the mission statement: “What I’m doing - What I’m thinking”

Welcome to my new blog. I will keep this blog up to date with information about what I am doing, for those who are interested in that, and also what I am thinking, for those who are interested in that.

Searching for a Home

We were looking for a new house. We found one a few days later and Acyuta Bhava moved in with us.

Photo of Prahlad

A photo of Prahlad on the lawn outside our first place of residence in Brisbane, on the corner near the temple. Prahlad is now four.

Passed my Exam

I’d recently started work at Red Hat and gained my Red Hat Certified Technician qualification. Two years to the day later, I started in a new position in Red Hat, in Engineering Content Services as a writer, with a Red Hat Certified Engineer cert under my belt.

2005

New Design at the Virtual Pen

I changed the design of the Virtual Pen to something similar to the one we have now, albeit with a different name.

ISKCON News.Net

The mission of ISKCON News.Net is to generate forward momentum in fulfilling Srila Prabhupadas objectives for ISKCON through information sharing. The vision is “more nectar than you can drink”. I’m happy with the way that it has evolved since its inception.

Ph.D. shortcourse in Leadership

A reader contributed article on leadership.

2006

Currently executing on The Plan