Which GV teachings do you find abusive, and why?

Personally, I don't think of GV teachings as abusive, but rather institutional rules of GV institutions that can be abusive depending on the group of people who feel left out (women, children, blacks, homosexuals, nymhpos, etc) Well the rules can be abusive to our ownself, or to others and that may or may not affect our mood, it is up to us about what is more important at the time.

But also, I don't like feeling victimized, so I rearranged in my head all the things that happened to me that I thought were abusive, and accepted that it was my choice at anytime to leave. I wasn't strong enough, so I suffered, whereas others are born stronger than me, so I am just going through my karma.


Well that right there can be considered a self abusive comment, but it is my belief anyway.

I am more into confronting people for ignoring my feelings in the past, without blaming them per say, but sharing the awareness that i was affected by them, and suggest they at least think about it. If they don't listen, then I pull their hair and pinch their nose until they apologize (only in my dreams )

In some sense, they all insult our intelligence.

How so? Doesn't the quote below appeal to your intelligence?

“The winter and summer seasons will come and go. In a similar way, due to one’s perception, happiness and distress will come and go. One should learn to tolerate them, without being disturbed.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-Gita 2.14)

I got this from a site which puts forth many Q & A's about Bhagavad Gita, so if anyone cares to pick out an answer that is disagreeable, then the site is here: http://gitamrta.org/bhagavad_gita_questions.html

I don't agree with many things in this philosophy, but I think a lot makes good sense.

That is a strange sentence, don't you think?

(Although it's a kind of common sentence for ex-devotees isn't it ...)

I, too, would like to understand what you mean by that.

I think that it only takes the institutions to make things bad or abusive, the teachings are all good.

An example, intelligence. dadāmi buddhi-yogaṃ taṃ: "I give the intelligence". We do not have our own intelligence? Then they say that the size of the soul is one ten-thousandth part of a tip of hair. Microscopic size. Perhaps too small to see with the naked eye, so fair enough. But Paramatma in the heart is a massive eight inches, which we cannot see? "Oh, you need spiritual vision to see", they will say. So our own eyes (which God created, by the way) are insufficient to see eight-inch Paramatma inside our own bodies, and we need to manipulate ourselves in such ways so we can see 'spiritually'. He somehow could not or did not create us in the first place with this spiritual vision.

They teach us things like this and we are supposed to accept it. Like I say, a massive insult to our intelligence.

But some would say that such phenomena is too subtle to understand, without some type of knowledge of some secret phenomena. I believe that some yogis can understand and see such things, and how can they explain to someone who has no eyes to see?

A child also thinks you are bullshitting when you explain him how the food becomes digested into shit. He also has not eyes to see, but will understand later, only if he studies.

Yes!

And do you know, we can see the soul now!

Well, not quite, but do you see how they say the soul is a ten-thousandth part of a tip of hair? These things were written at a time when there were no microscopes or anything to see tiny things. What is the size of an atom, by the way? The technical answer is that the diameter of an atom is somewhere between 0.1 and 0.5 nanometers. Meaningless, unless you know the measurement of nanometers. How can we compare this to a hair? Depending on who you ask, they say around 500,000 atoms in a straight line can easily hide behind the width of a human hair.

Did you know that we (humans) have now created powerful microscopes, that we can now see individual atoms? We can even play with them and move them around, individual atoms? If we can see individual atoms, and around 500,000 can easily fit behind the width of a human hair, then surely we could see the soul that is significantly bigger? "Oh sorry, didn't we mention that you need spiritual eyes to see the soul," they will say, "and even if we can see the much smaller atoms and not the much bigger soul, this is an inscrutable divine mystery! Haribol!"

But perhaps we do need spiritual eyes to see the soul, because Bhagavad-gita (2:25) says: avyakto 'yam acintyo 'yam; "The soul is invisible and inconceivable". Perhaps ePiTau can help here, but I clicked on the word avyaktah and saw many meanings and usages; invisible, unmanifest, difficult to be known, etc. Maybe we can employ that hermeneutic device to translate such things as having form, which has served us Gaudiyas very well in the past. You know, like those awful Māyāvādīs who went around rudely saying that God has no form, and we defeated them with elementary logic that such verses mean that when God has no material form, he certainly has a spiritual form. So maybe this applies to the soul too. This Bhagavad-Gita verse says it clearly; it is invisible and we cannot see it (with our material eyes).

Now just see what happens only four verses later (BG 2.29): āścarya-vat paśyati kaścid enam, "Some look on the soul as amazing" (SP translation). See paśyati. One minute the text says we cannot see, and the next minute it says people look at it. Such an insult to our intelligence, when all the while we can busy ourselves with tinier and more important things than the soul that we can actually see, and knowledge of which actually helps our lives...

For one, "intelligence" also means 'information' (e.g. CIA means 'Central Intelligence Agency'). God is saying there that He gives information to those who seek Him, so that they can come to Him. Like you would give instructions to where you live/work to someone who wanted to visit you.

Secondly, God is defined as being the Source of Everything, so according to this definition, our intellect comes from Him too (and our happiness, our misery, everything).

Okay, I hear you. But...we all know that the majority of religions out their use a variety of metaphors and parables to get their point across. This could be for many reasons. Either to guard to secrets against those who are inimical, or to explain difficult concepts to those who are less educated (in those days, common people did not have a good education), or to make it easier to remember complicated conecpts even by those who are intelligent.

So I am not making an excuse necessarily, but I guess I don't see my intelligent getting insulted by such statements. I see the spiritual science as a different category of knowledge and so I can't understand it by scientific means. But if science investigates, then some light is shed on what the meaning of the poetry contained in scripture is all about.

Further, I don't really see insulting someone's intelligence as abusive per say. Well it could be if someone did it on purpose, but normally religion is something that we come to and accept. Now there is the case of the gurukula or family raising their kids, but then the fault is with the institution or parents to force such vague spiritual knowledge on the children.

In the end, it is the guru's responsibility to explain all the weird statements found in the books. But besides these explanations, the whole body of the path, such as the practices, meditation and so forth, should bare some result. So for some reason, the abuse of GV teachings did not affect certain persons, right?

So if this is true, then how much can we fault the teachings and how much can we fault ourselves is an interesting question.

So one second the soul is inconceivable, and the next second the sould has been seen by someone is your point? So maybe the word look does not mean physcially looking. Maybe it means appearing. So to some the soul may "appear or seem to be amazing" because of its inconceivableness.

Is it possible that the translation was funky? I don't know Sanskrit so well, so I think before we find fault with a sloka, we should also check if their are other ways to interpret the sloka according to the original language. If we analyze precise meanings, then we can find some really...dirty abuseive language ( )

True.



In Buddhism, they have the Water-snake simile to make a point what happens when a person abuses the Dharma. Namely, if approached and grasped at the wrong end, the water-snake bites, and so it is with the Dharma. The fact that one needs it and seeks it does not change this, does not exonerate one.
People sometimes think "I need a religion! Surely because I need it, I am entitled to it, and there is absolutely nothing I could do wrong in this process, so no harm should befall me in my search for religion, no matter what I do" - but reality is, apparently, different.

On the other hand, you have the responsibility for how you spend your time. And if you choose to listen to people you disagree with, and you continue to listen to them anyway, then this says you are not really taking responsibility for how you spend your time ...

Yes well some people will try to use a religion to become holy, but we should use it to become humble and worship what is holy.

Who made these definitions?


Well that's not really fair, is it? Did I know they were talking bollocks when I first listened to them? No, it is only after I spent some time thinking about everything that I had been told and how inconsequential it was. The point is that I listened and analysed what they had to say, before deciding that it was nonsense. This was very refreshing, considering that thinking with your own brain is looked down upon in certain quarters.


Good point. Few realise the simplicity with which these tall tales can be dismissed. For example, when these scriptures (of a supposedly spiritual and infallible origin) make claims about things that take place in our universe, our reality, those are claims that - by definition - can be tested. When they are tested and found to be plain wrong, we can safely assume that those claims were incorrect. It makes you think that when their claims were so horribly wrong on some things, what else can they be horribly wrong about?

QUOTE (kalki @ May 19 2011, 10:58 AM)
So I am not making an excuse necessarily, but I guess I don't see my intelligent getting insulted by such statements. I see the spiritual science as a different category of knowledge and so I can't understand it by scientific means. But if science investigates, then some light is shed on what the meaning of the poetry contained in scripture is all about.


But that is not what I meant at all, I think. I didn't really mean that we should test the claims and assume if a few claims are wrong, then there are probably more things wrong. I meant that if we test a few poetic statements like the size of the soul, and it doesn't match up, then we can look for some other non-literal ways to approach the truth and understand these outrageous claims in a different light. In this way, we realize the real way to read the books which may not always be literal.

The creation of parables or the creation of metaphors are not always just to explain truths that can't be explained, so they are placed in confusing flowery language. For instance the exact measurement of the size of the soul, as was mentioned earlier, could not be measured in those days, because there were no microscopes, so it seems clear they used a description that would make people assume at the time that it was so subtle, that it cannot be measured. Now if we can measure things as such, then it becomes clear that such a statement was truly a metaphor. Is there anything wrong with this?

How many of us have children or know children. Isn't it easy to explain things to children in metaphor? Have you ever said, "I am so hungry I can eat a horse?" Well when someone grows up and sees it is not even legal to eat horses, should they sue you or hunt you down for saying such a thing?" So my point is, if a yogi can realize the soul, and he knows it cannot be explained, then he has to explain it in some way that will get you thinking about it.

But by the way, I don't believe in a soul. I think this is a horrible misconception of God-centered traditions. The soul is just the imputation of the mind upon the aggregates. It is a misconception is all it is. This is why such metaphors were created. You can't explain properly a phenomena which is mistaken anyway.

Are you thinking the unthinkable and trying to say..... that they might..... even be horribly wrong about the existence of GOD herself ?

Sure, they can easily be dismissed - but only if one readily presumes oneself to be superior, if one readily presumes that one's own values and standards are higher and more valid than theirs. Ie. when one effectively presumes oneself to be God ...

I'm not taking the theistic or GV side here. It's just that in order to preserve one's intellectual integrity, there are things one cannot do - such as dismissing this or that on the premis that one's current values and standards are the highest there is.

Given that the standard definitions of God are such that they contextualize everything, and thus also the very act of wondering about definitions of God, what you are suggesting above is tricky business ...

I wouldn't be getting bent out of shape over this one. One can interpret this as "some view the soul as amazing". Not in the sense of physical seeing, rather in the sense of thinking of.

You asked elsewhere which of the scriptural teachings I see as abusive.

The doctrine of hells would be one example. Or take the idealization of female subjugation by the doctrine of prakṛti and purusa (God as male, the individual soul as female, not because it has breasts but because it is dependent, subservient, no agency). Collective responsibility (those curses levelled by cranky yogis, which strike our descendants fourteen generations down). The caste system (how a whole kingdom can suffer because a sudra somewhere has dared to practice yoga).

But there is something broader behind all this, less related to the predominant cultural views of the time, or to Hinduism. It is authoritarianism. The notion that we do not know, cannot know the truth, that only a rare special person invested with authority by God himself, can tell us.

Tied to it is the notion that this life, this place, and the things we perceive with all of our powers here and now, are less important, in fact less real, than the afterlife, the afterworld, and the things we are told by the authority.

From this in turn flow such notions as selflessness, renunciation and total sacrifice as the criteria of human worth and ultimate success.

What exactly do you find abusive about that?


At least theoretically, there are only two options: Either someone in position of authority tells us "how things really are", or we need to have epistemic autonomy to know "how things really are."

Epistemic autonomy would be nice, and people from all walks of life have pursued it in one way or another, yet it is not clear how it could even just theoretically exist.

Your dichotomy assumes that we -- or at least someone -- can know "how things really are". (I know I myself said something similar above. Let me explain.) I believe that there is ultimately no way to know anything perfectly, objectively. We all have our own experiences and insights and these are valuable. They are true, meaning that they are approximations of the truth. Approximation is the closest we can ever get to it.

The epistemological problem with authoritarianism is twofold.

1. No one knows the whole truth. Therefore, no one can be an absolute authority.

2. By renouncing our own capacity -- no matter how limited -- for knowing the truth, and following what someone else tells us, we -- as individuals and as a collective -- are getting farther away from what can be known, not closer.

Apart from epistemological problems there are psychological and social ones. By devaluing what we feel, think and know, by devaluing the life we are living here and the place we are in now, in the name of some other posited spiritual identity, spiritual reward, spiritual world, we are alienating ourselves. By resigning our capacity for judgment we open ourselves up to abuse from the hands of unscrupulous people.

Actually, I remember a scripture saying that a devotee can even become omniscient, like God (but not omnipotent).



You would need to be omniscient to know that. What you are saying above denies itself.



But if you listen to the right person ... - you know the rest.



I realize this is the cunundrum we normally get into. I am not trying to argue with you. I am trying to come to peace about this matter for my own sake.

I think that the philosophical and practical problems many (ex-)devotees face is similar to the problems that emerge when one ends up in a marriage or long-term relationship with someone whom one doesn't really like and never was sure about from the beginning on. In such a relationship, all attempts to solve individual problems are bound to fail (such as where to go on vacations or what color to paint the living room), because the core problem (namely that these two people don't really want to be together) is still there. And once there are children involved, or joint mortgages and such, it is so much harder to see the core problem and to address it.

Similar with being a devotee who is "in way over his head". Imagine being a devotee, initiated for ten, fifteen years, with a devotee spouse, children who have Sanskrit names, having a visible position in the devotee community, being an active preacher, other people knowing you as "the one with the religious attire and bead bag", your whole life lived according to the norms of a devotee (at least externally) - and then you wake up one morning with the question "What on earth am I doing here? Do I really believe any of that?" - and then the question doesn't go away.
Doing damage control at that point is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Yes. Exactly. This is why I am so careful to say that this is what I believe, not what I know.

In a way, you could say that my own logical fallacy proves my point -- at least it does so to myself: ultimately we cannot know for sure that what we know is as we know it. It leaves us with an epistemological gamble: either there is someone out there who has the perfect truth, or there is none. My gamble is there is none. I tried the alternative first.

And even if there were someone out there with perfect knowledge, one thing the experience proved to myself was that there is still no way to escape the imperfections of my own judgment. Between me and the possible truth out there -- a possibly perfect guru and his perfect message -- there is always my own limited mind, choosing the guru and interpreting the message.


Thank you for saying this. I may be having a bit of a knee-jerk reaction sometimes.


Using the marriage metaphor, I could say that I married a person (religion) I was attracted to, and wanted to be with. The problem was that I hoped this person would change me so that we would fit together.

It was a mistake, just as marrying someone thinking we will be able to change him / her.

But it was a mistake worth making.

Exactly.

The Buddha's first sermon after he attained enlightenment was that he said to the first person he met on the road "I am the Rightfully Self-Awakened One!" and the man looked at him askew and went his way.

The story goes that the Buddha was dismayed from preaching after that incident, but some devas approached him and asked him to impart his knowledge so that other living beings could overcome suffering as well.
After that, the Buddha took a different course of preaching, not starting with declaring his authority, but simply by answering the questions that people posed to him.

Reflecting on this story, I think the real problem with authoritarianism is the expectation of total submission from people who are constitutionally not capable of recognizing authority.
Many people who are in position of authority put their listeners into such absurd double binds.
The Buddha characteristically didn't do that.



I had doubts and dislikes from the beginning on.
I felt trapped by the double binds, though. To me, the situation was basically: "I can't prove that this is not the right path, so I have to treat it as if it was."



In that case, all is well.

Why does it have to be based on a sense of superiority? I would have thought it might be based on acknowledging something as simple common sense. For example, no one really believes that the earth is held up by several mega-sized elephants, right? Yeah, they do, I know, but to dismiss that idea would be based on simple facts, not a superiority complex? Or is this something else we should remain technically agnostic about?


I agree with what you say, about parables and metaphors etc. Isn't it funny, though, that statements such as that always change in response to contradictory evidence? It's just something that I've observed here and there. Personally, I like to look at things in the long term. And by long term, I mean thousands of years. Or thereabouts. For thousands of years it seems alright for religionists to assert, I'm sure with all sincerity and genuineness, all manner of things quite seriously. The soul is a ten-thousandth part of a tip of hair. The creation was built in six days. The earth is the centre of the universe, and so on. And then whenever contrary evidence comes along, theologians scuttle to find ways to re-interpret the problem verses in a bid to stay relevant, frequently concocting allegorical or symbolic replacements for the literal meaning. Why do they do this? Why can't they just accept that they might be wrong, and move on to learn something totally new? This has always fascinated me.


This is interesting. Do you mind speaking more about this?

"Common sense" is a very relative notion, culturally specific. Something that may be "common sense" to an American might not be "common sense" to a European, and so on.



"Fact" is a theoretically extremely appealing, but practically extremely problematic concept.

Accepting and rejecting does happen on notions of something being superior to something else. We cannot choose something over another unless we think that the former is somehow superior over the other. This is inherent in the act of decision-making.

(I am not talking about "superiority complex".)



They don't necessarily change, they might just get clarified when the need arises.



"Literal" meaning is another one of those very problematic notions. Ask any linguist.

It appears that many people who engage in the "literal vs. metaphorical" debate seem to come into such debates with little awareness or acknowledgement of the context of the texts that are being discussed.



Epistemology is a complex and important topic.
I think it can hardly be held against people if they believe X as opposed to Y, or if they seem to "refuse to learn" or seem "overly willing to learn".



I'll use GV terminology to explain: The things we normally identify with, thinking "this is who I am", is the conglomerate consisting of false ego, intelligence, mind and the senses. The Buddhists say that these things are not the self. (Insofar they agree with GV.)
Some Buddhist traditions, notably Classical Theravada and Mahayana along with Vajrayana, however, believe that this conglomerate is all that a self could ever be, and that there is no other kind of self except this - illusory - self. Some minor traditions in Buddhism hold that the Buddha never said there was no true self, just that the aggregates (namely false ego, intelligence, mind and the senses - although in Buddhism, the conceptualization is somewhat different) are not the true self. There is some struggle among the Buddhists over this topic.

It should be noted that with the view that the self (or soul) is illusory or a mere epiphenomenon, there are unanswered questions such as "What is it that gets reborn?" and "Why try to make an end to suffering if there is no self that would persist from one incarnation to another?" and then further questions on responsibility and so on.

Is this from "Ashes and Snow", or at least from the same author?

It looks like a Gregory Colbert photograph. But I'm not certain.

I'd be greatly interested to read the published and peer-reviewed journal article/study that confirms that elephants hold up the earth. I guess I won't be bothered if it conflicts with common sense, because the idea of the earth consisting of three main layers - inner core, molten rock and outer crust - is only a Western-specific cultural notion that is verified by a geological science that doesn't find acceptance among a minority. And because I appear to have already decided that elephants don't hold up the earth, without having considered the evidence that they might, or do, it is clearly an overwhelming bias on my part that affects the way I think, and consequently I am prejudiced against the idea. To be honest I didn't know what I was thinking when I made this decision. Perhaps this new study will offer much-needed clarification on geological structures now that the need has arisen to verify the existence of these mighty elephants, and hopefully we can begin overturning the scientific paradigm with these evidently superior findings.

Sorry if the above lampooning is a bit much, but that was precisely the point I was making. There are certain things that need no discussion, or simply aren't subject to cultural relativism. We no longer live in the Middle Ages or some bygone era where certain things still need verification. We know quite a few things now, which is why we can safely say that elephants don't hold up the earth, the earth isn't the centre of the universe, the soul doesn't exist, and so on. Oh well, perhaps that last one (the soul) is still under discussion, the preliminary evidence already collected doesn't inspire confidence that further research will turn up anything of interest, but it is still probably an avenue worth pursuing to get something of a confirmation one way or another. However it's quite clear already that religious ideas of the soul aren't being confirmed by scientific evidence, so it is very likely that this will be another area in which certain religions will need to change tactics, i.e. find new, probably "metaphorical" explanations in order to continue disseminating their ideas. I only regret that I won't live long enough to see this happen and indulge in light schadenfreude.


My simple point was that literalism transforms into symbolism when it suits people. When one idea is shown to be wrong, the immediate reaction is almost always "Oh! Oh well, it must mean something else then." When we study the history of certain religions, we will see various instances of that happening. I've seen it happen in my own experience too. Everyone can see it happening now, thanks to Harold Camping.

And on another note, I realise that none of what I've discussed above are strictly "abusive" GV teachings. Maybe we can get onto those now?

I think those are great examples, especially hell. The hell chapters of SB are definitely traumatic. I read those descriptions when I was around 10 or 11, and that chapter terrified me so much that I could hardly breathe or move after reading.

I've always felt that Bhagavad-gita has a lot of nasty things in it, and surely 16:19 is one of the nastiest.

Some time ago I was exploring with Nitai the idea that the BG might have been written at a time when Greek influence in India was prominent, most likely the time when the Greeks invaded and ruled India, as I had spotted some parts of the Gita appeared to have Greek influence. It'd be nice to see if any studies on this have been done.

When I was 10 I would have thought that the SB was a bunch of silly stories. When I did read the stories at 20 I thought they were a bunch of silly stories. Chalk up one for the nurture team, or are we that different?

Then, why did you join ISKCON, if you thought it was all just silly stories?

I read the SB after I joined. I stayed because of friends.

Do you believe that naughty children who torment insects will go to a special planet where they will be tormented as though they were the insects that suffered at their own hands?

How long did you stay 'because of friends'?

I have never heard of this before; anyone I ever knew, in any of the Vaisnava institutions I've been involved with, were there because they had faith in Krishna Bhakti...

Are you saying that you accepted Prabhupada as your guru so you could continue to live near to your friends?

This is odd being interrogated as though I were a criminal. I am a musician. This attraction was more important than a bunch of silly stories.

Bhakti is not supposed to be awarded by virtue of books alone, my faithful friend!

No. I liked the man.

Not an 'interrogation' at all, don't take it like that; I am actually fascinated to find someone who thought that the Bhagavat was just a bunch of silly stories, yet took initiation from a man who had made it his life and soul to take those same silly stories to the four corners of the earth (no pun intended) and present them as conveying the Absolute Truth.

It's just a wee bit hard to believe that it actually happened as you are describing it...

And that's not to question your affection for Prabhupada.

Comparing lives is inherently problematic. I'd wager that there is much about my life that you would find unbelievable.

The man who I enjoyed seeing in the flesh was a very different man to the one who wrote all of those dreadful purports. At least, that's how I made sense of the whole thing.

What about that planet and those insects?

Still don't sound right to me, Homer...

But, as you say, what do I know about you...

One thing, though - I can see that you're quite taken with those insects.

Metaphor? Isn't that a euphemism for a story? Do you believe there is an insect torture retribution planet or not?

Why is what I think so important to you?

I am interested in discovering if you are a hypocrite. You seem to be incredulous that I could have been a Hare and not believe that the scripture is divine and yet you are hesitant to say whether you believe the SB to be factually correct.

When have I ever claimed that the Bhagavat is 'factually correct'.

You must be thinking of someone else.

OK, so you do not believe in an insect retribution torture planet where naughty insect torturers go. I agree with your appraisal.

What else don't you believe?

The issue here is the concept of, "In like a needle and out like a plough."

Translated to devoteespeak, that means tell them the god is dancing on their tongues bit first and tell them about the insect torturer planet after they have invested their lives in believing and it has become difficult to admit that the whole show is built on village stories.

Homer, I said nothing of 'insects' or their 'torturers'; you really are quite obsessed with these insects; did you harm lots of insects when you were a child?

Why are you being so evasive? We are discussing the veracity of the shastras, are we not?