Some issues (fwd)

[Ravi Mayavaram]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 13:11:09 -0400
From: Rama Balasubramanian <rama at ctd.comsat.com>
To: msr at tamu.edu, rama at ctd.comsat.com
Subject: Re: Some issues


Ravisankar wrote:

> 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

I fail to see why you brought this up. I unsubscribed that time
because I felt so. I did not expect you to ask me to join back and
when you did I felt kind of embarrassed to say no. If you expected me
to be silent, it was your mistake.

> 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.

How would that matter anyway? This is a good way of earning brownie
points by showing that you are democratic I presume. Namely, ask
everyone their opinions and then do whatever one pleases. This was
used very effectively by Tilak in those days.

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

I normally don't like saying things like this. However, much name
calling has been going on behind my back and I feel that I need to
respond. It will also show the double standards adopted by your kind
self and the other doyens of politeness in this list.

Take the sanyasa thread which went on sometime back. Gummuluru Murthy
very kindly remarked in one of his posts that he had signed out of
that thread because (quoting from memory) "some people were using this
as an opportunity for ego gratification". Now, it was obvious that he
was either referring to me or Giri. Not only that, he was posting
under the direct command of Lalita Devi herself! I presume I was
posting under the command of Beelzebub. This was obviously a vile
personal insult and name calling and I chose not to bring it
up. Where were you at that time? Obviously you and others are more
comfortable with the idea of indirect personal attacks.

What happened here? Suppose we are discussing some aspect of the
special theory of relativity and I say Einstein said such and such. If
someone responds with a ridiculous remark like "even Einstien can be
wrong", the fit answer is "Could you kindly shut up, we are trying to
have a serious discussion here?". Similarly when a jnani like
brahmayogin  makes a statement and many other including the likes of
Ramana Maharshi support that statement one should think
carefully and answer instead of giving some ridiculous remarks. That
is my opinion. It is not the first time egodust has done this. Look
up the archives. My remarks were about this kind of postings from
egodust only and nothing personal at all if you look at it
(unlike GMurthy's).

Since you posted this message to the advaita list also you are bound
by common courtesy to forward this to the list so that everyone can
know my opinions on this. Too bad I can't join the list. I'll miss
good posts by Anand, Vidya, Giri, Kartik to name a few. But on the
flip side, I need not sort through nonsense from Rajneeshites and
people claiming to be oracles, to name but a few!

A final request. Whether you post this to the list or not, I am not
interested in hearing any more explanations from you on this particular
topic. Opinions on other subjects and topics are of course most
welcome.

Ramakrishnan.