Chris "White Ball" Butler learned the guru business from Srila Prabhupada,
creator of International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Prabhupada was in a small sect of Krishna devotees which originated within
16th to 17th century Bengal, in India.
The older Indian religions originated in Indian societies which had no
concept of inherent dignity of the ordinary human person.
In India, identity comes from membership in a family, period.
To support your family, especially if you are an oldest son, made responsible for care of elderly parents, elderly relatives, marriage money for one's sisters, one is under terrible pressure. What you do to persons outside your family and caste is justified if what you do supports the family.
Suketu Mehta, in his book, Maximum City :Bombay Lost and Found, tells us
what is expected of young men in this culture - where your place in your family defines you. Mehta tells us how young men who are educated and who cannot
find remunerative jobs join mafia groups and murder for hire.
Prabhupada would have put his own family of origin first. Western converts would, for him, have remained melenccha. Barbarians.
This pattern which Professor Steven Dutch terms "thar" shows up again and again in poor areas of the world, especially where there has been social and cultural isolation.
There was no concept of the human individual. In Hinduism your identity came from both your family and your location in the caste/outcaste or tribal categories and which part of the subcontinent you were born in.
For example, persons born in Bihar, who speak with a Bihari accent are discriminated against when they move to large cities to find better jobs.
If Muslim, there was more sense of being a person standing before Allah, accountable for practicing the sharia and the pillars of Islam. However, even Muslims became
stratified into classes. One grinding source of annoyance was that Muslims from Arabia automatically enjoyed status denied to Muslims born in the conquered territories.
Pakistan, an Indo Muslim country is tormented by class divisions that are as
harsh as any caste system in India. If you are born into a kanjari (sex worker family), you are trapped in that for the rest of your life.
To learn more, get and read The Dancing Girls of Lahore.
And both Hinduisms and Buddhism taught that the sensory world was illusion and to be transcended if one was to be liberated.
By contrast, during the 4th to 5th centuries BCE, the Greeks, who regarded the sensory world as a gift of the gods, departure from that world through death to be regrettable, and that participation in human society the route to full human potential (if you were able to be a free male and not a slave or resident alien).
For contrast with India go read a few bits from Herodotus, a Greek who was led by curiosity to learn all he could of the cultures surrounding Greece.
Even where Herodotus' stories may not be factual, those stories teem with
the names of ordinary people. Herodotus will give us the name and locale of a man who crafted a gold cup or statue that was presented to a temple, or give the name of an ordinary man or woman who finds a way to trick a powerful foe and serve his or her community.
And in the Hebrew Scriptures, stories which are the source of proverbs and literary themes that undergird Anglo-American culture, those stories tell of human persons, their hopes, their loves, their crimes and follies and describes those
human beings as bargaining with God to save their people from destruction.
The Buddhist and Hindu scriptures gives miracles and god figures out of all proportion to human beings -- it is on a comic book scale.
In Exodus, the Israelites, liberated from Egypt, bitch about how boring the desert food is and want to return to the delicious fast food available to them during the slave days.
Prophets inform the wealthy and powerful that they owe something to the less fortunate.
You are reminded to remember the stranger, for once you were slaves.
In Hinduism there was nothing like this. Loyalty went only to your caste.
Closed Societies, Open Societies
[www.encyclopedia.com]
Open societies do not expect perfection and monitor for unintended consequences.
They are capable of self critique and self correction - though of course, vested interests grown wealthy upon a injurious social situation will hamper attempts at
self correction - such tobacco companies which make vast sums selling poison to human beings.
Cults inculcate that same closed society mentality today. We, the taxpayers of open societies, subsidize this vile situation.
Compare Krishna the chariot driver, telling Arjuna to kill his beloved teachers and relatives so as to fulfill his dharma duty. All he has are Disneyland special effects that stun and shock Arjuna's mature mind into submission. All that Arjuna has is verbal trickery and verbal bullying, no better than the worst demagogues who have dragged the human family into the mire.
Now, let us look at Athens, and hear what its citizens, male and female, listened
to at the theatre.
What a reminder to those of us who are citizens in a participatory democracy.
But, we have learned that we have an added responsibility.
Our earth is not inexhaustible and oceans are not inexhaustible and require our
loving care.
Here the human condition and civil society are regarded as wonders, privileges,
not as something inferior. Participatory democracy is regarded as an
achievement, not as something preferred by inferior ego ridden Westerners.
[mthoyibi.files.wordpress.com]
Antigone - The Chorus
"
Now, look at what Srila Prabhupada, had to say about democracy.
Prabhupada taught Chris Butler the guru business.
[www.google.com]
creator of International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Prabhupada was in a small sect of Krishna devotees which originated within
16th to 17th century Bengal, in India.
The older Indian religions originated in Indian societies which had no
concept of inherent dignity of the ordinary human person.
In India, identity comes from membership in a family, period.
To support your family, especially if you are an oldest son, made responsible for care of elderly parents, elderly relatives, marriage money for one's sisters, one is under terrible pressure. What you do to persons outside your family and caste is justified if what you do supports the family.
Suketu Mehta, in his book, Maximum City :Bombay Lost and Found, tells us
what is expected of young men in this culture - where your place in your family defines you. Mehta tells us how young men who are educated and who cannot
find remunerative jobs join mafia groups and murder for hire.
Prabhupada would have put his own family of origin first. Western converts would, for him, have remained melenccha. Barbarians.
This pattern which Professor Steven Dutch terms "thar" shows up again and again in poor areas of the world, especially where there has been social and cultural isolation.
There was no concept of the human individual. In Hinduism your identity came from both your family and your location in the caste/outcaste or tribal categories and which part of the subcontinent you were born in.
For example, persons born in Bihar, who speak with a Bihari accent are discriminated against when they move to large cities to find better jobs.
If Muslim, there was more sense of being a person standing before Allah, accountable for practicing the sharia and the pillars of Islam. However, even Muslims became
stratified into classes. One grinding source of annoyance was that Muslims from Arabia automatically enjoyed status denied to Muslims born in the conquered territories.
Pakistan, an Indo Muslim country is tormented by class divisions that are as
harsh as any caste system in India. If you are born into a kanjari (sex worker family), you are trapped in that for the rest of your life.
To learn more, get and read The Dancing Girls of Lahore.
And both Hinduisms and Buddhism taught that the sensory world was illusion and to be transcended if one was to be liberated.
By contrast, during the 4th to 5th centuries BCE, the Greeks, who regarded the sensory world as a gift of the gods, departure from that world through death to be regrettable, and that participation in human society the route to full human potential (if you were able to be a free male and not a slave or resident alien).
For contrast with India go read a few bits from Herodotus, a Greek who was led by curiosity to learn all he could of the cultures surrounding Greece.
Even where Herodotus' stories may not be factual, those stories teem with
the names of ordinary people. Herodotus will give us the name and locale of a man who crafted a gold cup or statue that was presented to a temple, or give the name of an ordinary man or woman who finds a way to trick a powerful foe and serve his or her community.
And in the Hebrew Scriptures, stories which are the source of proverbs and literary themes that undergird Anglo-American culture, those stories tell of human persons, their hopes, their loves, their crimes and follies and describes those
human beings as bargaining with God to save their people from destruction.
The Buddhist and Hindu scriptures gives miracles and god figures out of all proportion to human beings -- it is on a comic book scale.
In Exodus, the Israelites, liberated from Egypt, bitch about how boring the desert food is and want to return to the delicious fast food available to them during the slave days.
Prophets inform the wealthy and powerful that they owe something to the less fortunate.
You are reminded to remember the stranger, for once you were slaves.
In Hinduism there was nothing like this. Loyalty went only to your caste.
Closed Societies, Open Societies
[www.encyclopedia.com]
Open societies do not expect perfection and monitor for unintended consequences.
They are capable of self critique and self correction - though of course, vested interests grown wealthy upon a injurious social situation will hamper attempts at
self correction - such tobacco companies which make vast sums selling poison to human beings.
Cults inculcate that same closed society mentality today. We, the taxpayers of open societies, subsidize this vile situation.
Compare Krishna the chariot driver, telling Arjuna to kill his beloved teachers and relatives so as to fulfill his dharma duty. All he has are Disneyland special effects that stun and shock Arjuna's mature mind into submission. All that Arjuna has is verbal trickery and verbal bullying, no better than the worst demagogues who have dragged the human family into the mire.
Now, let us look at Athens, and hear what its citizens, male and female, listened
to at the theatre.
What a reminder to those of us who are citizens in a participatory democracy.
But, we have learned that we have an added responsibility.
Our earth is not inexhaustible and oceans are not inexhaustible and require our
loving care.
Here the human condition and civil society are regarded as wonders, privileges,
not as something inferior. Participatory democracy is regarded as an
achievement, not as something preferred by inferior ego ridden Westerners.
[mthoyibi.files.wordpress.com]
Antigone - The Chorus
"
Quote
CHORUS: [Strophe 1]
Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none
More wonderful than man; the stormgray sea
Yields to his prows, the huge crests bear him high;
Earth, holy and inexhaustible, is graven
With shining furrows where his plows have gone
Year after year, the timeless labor of stallions.
[Antistrope 1]
The lightboned birds and beasts that cling to cover, 285
The lithe fish lighting their reaches of dim water,
All are taken, tamed in the net of his mind;
The lion on the hill, the wild horse windy-maned,
Resign to him; and his blunt yoke has broken
The sultry shoulders of the mountain bull.
[Strophe 2]
Words also, ant thought as rapid as air, 290
He fashions to his good use; statecraft is his,
And his the skill that deflect the arrows of snow,
The spears of winter rain: from every wind
He has made himself secure––from all but one:
In the late wind of death he cannot stand.
[Antistrophe 2]
O clear intelligence, force beyond all measure! 295
O fate of man, working both good and evil!
When the laws are kept, how proudly his city stands!
When the laws are broken, what of his city then?
Never may the anarchic man find rest at my hearth,
Never be it said that my thoughts are his thoughts.
Now, look at what Srila Prabhupada, had to say about democracy.
Prabhupada taught Chris Butler the guru business.
[www.google.com]
Quote
[harekrishnarevolution.wordpress.com]
(Corboy: Prabhupada accumulated tax exempt wealth thanks to democracies. He n benefited from democracies which allowed him
entry visas, residence visas, protected him while there and granted him something that Prabhupada would not permit in an ideal 'Vedic' kingdom -- free speech
which dissents from the values of the society granting him not just safety but hospitality.)
What is the value of this democracy? All fools and rascals!Quote
By His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktived?nta Swami Prabhup?da
hiranyakasipu-prahlad
The king’s duty is, as representative of Krishna, to make every citizen Krishna conscious. Then he is doing nice duty. And because the monarchs did not do so – therefore now monarchy is abolished everywhere. So again the monarchs, where there is monarchy, little, at least show of monarchy, just like here in England there is, actually if the monarch becomes Krishna conscious, actually becomes representative of Krishna, then the whole face of the kingdom will change. That is required.
Our Krishna consciousness movement is for that purpose. We don’t very much like this so-called democracy. What is the value of this democracy? All fools and rascals! They vote for another fool and rascal, and he becomes prime minister, or this or that. Just like in so many cases. That is not good for the people. We are not for this so-called democracy because they are not trained. If the king is trained… That was the system of monarchy. Just like Yudhisthira Maharaja or Arjuna or anyone. All the kings. were called r?jarshi.
Raja, king means, he is not only king. He is a great rishi, saintly person, just like Maharaja Yudhisthira or Arjuna. They’re saintly persons. They are not ordinary, like this drunkard king, that “I have got so much money. Let me drink and let there be dancing of the prostitute.” Not like that. They were rishi. Although they were king, they were rishis. That kind of king wanted, r?jarshi.
Then people will be happy.
In Bengali there is a proverb, r?j?ra p?pe r?ja nasta grhin? doshe grhastha bhrashta (?). In grhastha life, in household life, if the wife if the wife is not good, then nobody will be happy in that home. Similarly, in a kingdom, if the king is impious, then everyone will suffer. This is the problem.
[London July 24, 1973 Bg. 1.31]