Some issues

[Ravi Mayavaram]

namaste | I bow to the divine in you ||

In the recent past some of the following issues were discussed on the
list and few members expressed their concern to me on private mail as
well.

1) What does Advaita-L stand for?

As the name implies Advaita-L is a list meant to discuss advaitam as
taught by shrii shankara and his successors. Discussions on related
topics are welcome. But the main emphasis is to discuss, learn and
understand advaitam as taught by shrii shankara.


2) Reverence/Irreverence issues

Few weeks back I sent a request asking members to avoid rude and
offensive postings[1]. In fact as a response to that mail,
Ramakrishnan Balasubramaniam signed out of the list. I requested him
personally to join back again as I thought his contributions are
important. He accepted my request and subscribed in again.  Last week
some of the members protested personally to me about the rude language
used by  Ramakrishnan Balasubramaniam. Since Ramakrishnan is no
longer in the list and has signed out, I did not bring up those
protests to the list. But if I receive a subscription request from
Ramakrishan I will request him to withdraw it. If you disagree with my
decision please let me know.


We can disagree with each other politely and without being
offensive. Even though it is a open and unmoderated list, using
"newsgroup style" language is not welcome.  Also, instead of making
sweeping statements which can confuse people like "Belief in
*anything* can result in a transformation"[2], if the postings are
made with rigor and responsibility, it will be nice.


Reverence is not only towards advaitam or shrii shankara alone, but
also towards each other.

I am sorry for not responding to these issues immediately due to some
project deadlines. I thank Vidyasankar Sundaresan , Ram Chandran and
few others who wrote nice articles on these issues.  I also thank
members who wrote to me personally expressing their views.


With love and respects,
Ravi

[1] http://listserv.tamu.edu/cgi/wa?A2=ind9707c&L=advaita-l&O=A&P=4421
[2]http://listserv.tamu.edu/cgi/wa?A2=ind9709b&L=advaita-l&O=A&P=498