kaisersose

Dude - get real. Where did I say that man is a carnivore or that Germans ate nothing but meat? It would be nice of you can stick to what I wrote, without adding your own spin on it. Regardless of what one eats, old age will bring disease. The individual who eats lean meat is likely to be healthier than someone who eats fatty vegetarian food. This is not clear either. If the HK claim that they cannot wait to get back to godhead is real, then why this passion for living long lives? You are denying yourselves most of the fun available on this planet anyway - as part of your religious rules. Not that it matters, but I am a vegetarian, in case you are thinking I am out to convert people to my point of view. My point is, shed your holier-than-thou attitude. Your arrogance in believing you know better than the other guy only impacts yourself. Cheers

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In other words, you are clueless about the fundamental objective of the Vedas as seen by different schools. Not surprising at all, as Hare Krishnas receive absolutely no exposure to the Vedic corpus. Mimamsa - Vedas prescribe frutiive actions only Vedanta/Advaita - Vedas are a mix of frutive action injunctions and Jnana/Bhakti which leads to liberation. The Mumukshu ought to focus on the latter. Vedanta/Tattvavada - The sole purpose of the Vedas is to promulgate Hari supremacy and Bhakti. Nothing else. HKS - No clear position. Just a motley of varied and confused views, made up as they go along. Hard to take your perspective on logic or anthing else seriously, as by your own admission, you do not know Vedas 101. Cheers

And if there was a perfect world, where people never picked up disease, never died in accidents or were never murdered, never suffered any pain in life, then wouldn’t thing be much better? There is a difference between fantasy and reality. Your creator God along with the singing birds and flowing brooks, also created the concept of disease and carnivores – deal with it. It is nature’s order that one form of life lives off another. It does not make make any sense to say that thousands of species can follow nature and only man should not. Unsubstantiated opinions do not mean anything. One can say the exact reverse of what you have said. Like I said, since the beginning of life on the planet, one form of life has lived off another. After all this time, picking up the diet of the Indian sub-continent and attempting to impose it on the entire world for sentimental reasons, is nothing short of silly. Historically, among all the countires in the world, the vegetarian diet is only found in some sections of the Indian population and the average life expectancy of India is far from impressive. The meat eating, beer guzzling German has a life expectancy of 81 year, while the desi who eats curds rice has an average life expectancy of 67 or lesser. Does not make a very strong case to take the Indian diet global, don’t you think? Again, all these are unsubstantiated opinions. One say the exact opposite of it – if we are simply going to pass off opinions as facts. These cattle exist in this planet today, because ranches brought them into this world for food. Or else they would not exist at all. The medications you use are the result of mass lab rat murder. You will not refuse medications because it was experimented on rats. The veggie food you harvest kills bugs, slugs, etc. But you will not starve to save their lives. This cry for global vegetarianism is really nothing more than a holier-than thou attitude that creates this desire to convert others to one’s own way of thinking. We are silent on whatever impacts us – but we raise a hue and cry every time else, until the other party will agree with our way of thinking. What about the possibility that Krishna is sending these souls down as cows so they can quickly evolve spiritually, instead of wasting time living as some other forms of life? Cheers

It is just leaf, flower, water & fruit...no grain. And Krishna does not say that was his diet. That is just people letting their imaginations run wild. If Krishna - or anyone else - was on a diet of leaves, flowers and water, they would suffer from chronic anemia and would be unable to get out of bed. The verse does not mention rice, bread, yoghurt, carrot halwa and unripe mangoes. What is gonna happen to people who have been eating these items? Stop reading your own wishes into the Gita and be honest. That verse has nothing to do with diet and no commentator worth his salt, has ever interpreted it that way. Cheers

More spiel as usual from Chandu, the Hare Krishna. Madhva wrote about eternal hell for people who do not accept the supremacy of Hari (that includes most Hindus) back in the 13th century AD. By your unsubstantiated and absurd definitions, Madhva was a neo-Hindu. Actually the Gurus of today are more liberal due to their requirement of global currency. They take grand positions of Jesus = Vaiahnava, all foreign Gods are Krishna, etc. But according to you, these 20th century Gurus are original Hindus and the 700 year old Madhva is a neo Hindu! This is what happens, when people who know nothing, pull definitions out of their hats - a common tendency among Chandu and his affiliates. On the bright side, no one is fooled here by their nonsensical approach of making things up as they go along. Cheers

Chillies and Potato are not on the banned list because they came to India much much later than carrots and radish. These books on prohibitions were written before the potato arrived in India and the authors did not know about the potato. Note that the Indian diet has changed a lot in the last 200 years after the import of chillies and potatoes. It is hard to imagine Indian cooking today without these key ingredients. Cheers

None of course. The line between religion and local culture is often blurred, resulting in this confusion. Does Krishna give special preference to people who follow a desi diet, just because he lived in India? Or does Jesus favor those who eat a middle eastern diet? Diet is not a factor at all. It is simply the local cultural trend that has been added to religion. One Hare Krishna said on this forum that Krishna recommends vegetarianism in the Gita. When asked for evidence, his reasoning was the the leaf, flower, water verse is about vegetarianism! People will see what they want to see. Cheers

You know it is 2009 now and these books were written a long ago. Just like we dress differently from people of those times, wear our hair differently, eat differently and live a completely different lifestyle, it is also natural to not want to replicate the role of women from a bygone era. A better question would be, what are the qualities one can look for in a spouse, in our times? "Serving the husband" is not relevant to our times, when women can and do have their own careers, match upto men in all areas and are no longer playing second fiddle. The master-slave model has given way to a peer model. Some people (bigots?) may argue in favor of the older model, but we would obviously be better off analyzing the current model than wasting time brooding over an obsolete model. Cheers

That theory holds good only if you accept all the Puranas as fully authentic compositions of Vyasa. No Vedanta school has held such an opinion in 1300 years. Other than the Veda, Sutras and the Gita, every other authority is secondary and do not hold "infallible" status. It is circular logic that the Bhagavatam is superior because such a claim is made by itself. Now, you are free to disagree with this, but this is the way things are. Cheers

Tattvavada is a Vedanta doctrine. It is not required for Vedanta based doctrines to agree with Puranas in toto. Puranas are valid only when they align with bigger authorities. If not, they are not authoritative. This is different from the Gaudiya position that the entire Bhagavatam is an authority and the highest authority. Obviously this conflicts with the approach of Vedanta schools like Advaita, Dvaita and Vishishtadvaita and therefore there is not much point in discussion when there is no common ground. Cheers

Can you define "Blind Faith" and "Faith"? A lot depends on your understanding of these two. Cheers

This reminds me of their unqiue knowledge of the circumstances around the composition of the Bhaja Govindam. Apparently, Shankara was on his death-bed when he suddenly had a change of heart. Out of this change of heart, he chided his followers as fools and told them to worship Govinda (something he and his followers had never done before). But somehow magically, this is not known to any Advaitins. Only the Hare Krishnas know the real deal. Well, at least they are treading new ground. I have not seen them take this position before. Madhva assigned authorship to the Vedas and called these authors as Buffoons, in spite of his doctrine founded on the work of these buffoons! Incidentally, the Sarva darshana Sangraha was authored by Madhava aka Vidyaranya, an Advaitin. Due to the similar name, it is easy to confuse him with Madhvacharya aka Ananda Thirtha. For those who cannot read simple english, this does not mean Vidyaranya wrote that the Vedas were authored by buffoons, either. This also makes me curious about the original sanskrit which translates to Buffoon. The most well known Charvaka literature is the Brihaspati sutras which are now lost, but supposedly authored in the BCs. I find it hard to believe there were buffoons in India during that period. Cheers

? Did you read it closely? The Charvakas criticized the Ashwamedha, which was recorded by Madhva in his work. It does not say, he criticized the Yajna. Cheers

Elementary science refresher, Light requires time to travel. The distance between the sun and the earth is long enough for light to take a significant time to reach earth. 8.3 minutes, actually. Your matchstick/room example is a bad one. The distance between the sun and the earth was speculated for a long time, until it was accurately determined during the 14th century AD. Cheers

Where did you read that? I am not aware of him criticizing any material from any Veda. Rather, the common position among all Vedanta schools (yes, the poisonous Mayavadins too), is animal sacrifice is not necessary nor aplicable in Kali-Yuga. Accordingly, they pushed to replace live animals with flour animals. This is fully different from criticizing Yajnas that happened before Kali-yuga. Cheers

To give ths discussion another slant, Shaivas have their own sources which say Vishnu, etc are alternate names for Shiva. Then references to both Rudra and Vishnu in the Veda are consistent with their position of a Supreme Shiva/Ishwara. Shrikanta wrote a commentary on the sutras showing its purport to be Shaiva in nature. Many Yajur Vedins worship Shiva as the supreme, drawing from Rudram, etc,, of the Yajur. Rig-Vedin Brahmaanas are usually Vaishnava. However, Shaivas in general, have their own sources and do not rely on the Veda for their core beliefs. Cheers

Which would include all the Acharyas of the Shankara sampradaya since 1300 years. You really have no way of declaring they were any lesser. And please spare me the GV version of Advaita. I really need a break from those posts for a while. Has nothing to do with the topic. Cheers

In other words, the guarantee does not exist anymore. Direct disciples of Prabhupada fell down, as everyone knows, and thus it can be concluded that there are no guarantees, except in our own minds. Cheers

Idol worship has been around since IVC - academically the indigenous population in that region before the Vedic culture. Plenty of Shiva idols and mother goddess idols have been uncovered in these sites. That is what I was referring to. Janamejaya, Parikshit, the Kuru clan, Vishwamitra, Vashista, Krishna the son of Devaki - all these names appear in in the Vedas. It is not really clear, what came first. The Mahabharata itself says it was a short text at first and then gradually evolved into its present size. Cheers

This line from Hindustani's tripod page caught my eye. Shape of Earth is like an Oblate Spheroid. (Rig Veda XXX. IV. V). I wonder where the author found that verse, as the Rig-Veda does not have (XXX = 30) books! Cheers

Guaranteed? By whom? Do you know of some other sect or cult, where they do not offer guarantees? If not, then what makes your guarantee any different from the dozens of other guarantees? Cheers

Questions have to end with question marks. Not sometimes, but everytime. Yes, this is none of my business, but I highly recommend you pay attention to your writing skills. If your line of work requires you to write in english, then your time would be better spent in improving your punctuations and grammar, than here. Good Luck

Not by Vedic Brahmanas. However, there were non-vedic people during that time in India who worshipped anthromorphic Gods like Shiva, Mother Goddess, etc. Bhakti and idolatory is a big part of Advaita - contrary to what competitors claim. There is hardly any Advaitin who have given up Bhakti. Cheers

Just because Christians and Muslims have been taught that polytheism and idol worship are bad, does not necessarily make them bad. Who cares for their views on other religions? Hindus would be better of, if they gave up their eagerness to align with monotheism, just because it is the "politically right" position to take with westerners. Cheers