[Advaita-l] Fw: ADMIN: Reaffirming this list's focus

[Satish Arigela]

shri Vidyasankar sent me this email. I believe this is meant for the list. Since 
the contents are not anything personal I am taking the liberty of forwarding 
this to the group. Please see below to understand what precisely shrI 
Vidyasankar means to criticise/reaffirm.



----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
To: satisharigela at yahoo.com
Sent: Tue, February 1, 2011 8:14:29 PM
Subject: RE: [Advaita-l] ADMIN: Reaffirming this list's focus


> 
> Your statement IMO does not make much sense. Or probably I did not understand 
> completely what you say.
> 

Let me explicate a bit. Here is a statistical break-up of the discussions on 
this list in
Jan 2011, for subjects which attracted more than three posts. Out of a total of 
149
posts, we have
 
a. 41 - Food related threads
b. 24 - Tantrik acts
c. 12 - Discussion on donating to Veda Pathashalas
d. 7 - World Muslim Population
e. 6 - Discussion on Nirukta
f. 6 - Text based discussion of ISvara and jIva
f. 6 - Discussion on list's focus
g. 5 - Discussion on the word krishnasakhA
h. 5 - Discussion on nyAsa
i. 4 - Footnote citation
j. 4 - Member leaving the list
 
It is even more interesting to see what threads get 3 or less posts. These are 
about
IsAvAsyopanishat, kaThopanishat, guruvandana, new Sankara temple at Sringeri,
book publication by Prof. Krishnamurthy, Sanskrit book fair in Bangalore, 
upcoming
Vedanta vidvadghoshthi in Holenarsipur and mAyA as described in pancadaSI and
vedAnta paribhAshA. Pray, why is it that any one of these topics is so 
uninteresting
that no one among our 300+ members wishes to contribute to these? This situation
has been pretty much the same for the last few months now.

I hope my point about focus is clear just from the numbers above. If you follow 
the
actual contents of the discussion threads, the situation becomes worse. The 
questions
raised and answers given are, more often than not, airing of uncritical thought 
and
personal opinion. When it comes to food, there is no genuine discussion on what 
the
gItA or its bhAshya actually say about gunA and food. When it comes to tantra, 
there
is no deep discussion of prapancasAra or triSatI bhAshya or saundaryalaharI. 
Instead,
there is a lot of mostly loose speculation about onions, garlic, meat, 
vegetables and
milk, and idle talk about what kind of sexual relationships are allowed or 
prohibited,
mixed up with a total lack of critical thinking about ancient practices like 
niyoga. Is
this the best possible utilization of this forum?
 
I am not saying that one or the other topic should not ever be brought up in 
this list.
I am just requesting everybody to think about what draws their attention now and
reflect a little on where their attention should be, when it comes to advaita. 
This is,
after all, not a general Hinduism discussion list; this is a list for discussing 
advaita
vedAnta. I, for one, would like the content and tenor of the discussions here to 
rise
above the mundane.
 
Regards,
Vidyasankar