blogs

Live from his hideout deep behind the former Bamboo Curtain, David Jorm riffs on life in China and the re-introduction of varnasrama social organisation in a modern context.

David Jorm on China and Varnasrama (ogg, 5 MB)

I culled this post from Krishna Consciousness & Ecological Awareness. I added the blog feed to Planet ISKCON, but this post is worth pulling out of the history, given the recent discussion on this issue.

The following is an excerpt from a lecture given by HH Hrdayananda das Goswami in Gainesville, Florida on August 30, 2008. To listen to the entire lecture, please click here.

Bhaktin Kelly: Does Krsna willing accept milk from cows that were raised inhumanely and will eventually be slaughted?

HH Hridayananda das Goswami: A sincere devotee could have two positions. You could just say, I am going to set a proper example and not patronize that cruel industry and not buy milk products- which is one position, which is obviously valid. And then another position, someone could say, is that by offering the milk, the cows benefit by the offering to the deity and you are actually saving cows. You could say that in practical terms, not ideological, the amount of milk that is being purchased and offered to the deities has absolutely zero impact on the dairy industry and, therefore, it does not change the economic dynamics of it. So it doesn’t save cows but it saves souls by engaging them in Krishna’s service.

What I see in the Bhagavatam is that within Vedic culture there was a diversity of views. People have different opinions on these things and a certain frame of consciousness. Some are inspired to save cows by offering their milk to the deity.

Now let’s say the devotee is not making a serious offering, not really connecting with the deity, just “I like milk.” Then I think to participate in this horrifically cruel industry just because you like milk is something which is much harder to justify. It is just one of those- “I’m hungry, I really want to eat, I have to offer it.” But if someone is seriously deity-conscious, their nature is really to worship Krsna, and their consciousness is to save the soul in the cow’s body, then I think, whether or not I would do that, is a position that should be respected.

Although, I do not think that devotees are required to do that. If I was managing a temple with deities, I would not say you have to offer milk. I think it is a matter of consciousness of the individual.

How to play darbuka in kirtan from Sitapati das on Vimeo.

By popular demand, a video demonstrating darbuka beats to accompany the Bengali mrdanga beats used in ISKCON kirtans.

I'm going to NZ in 10 days. My research tells me that it is theoretically possible to gain 1 kg of muscle mass per week, at peak tuning. That's my goal for the next week. I'm working with the mantra: "Strength, Flexibility, Balance". I want to increase my overall system strength, but also increase my flexibility at the same time, in a balanced fashion.

My current program is the combination of my research into cancer and nutrition last year, my ongoing research into nutrition and yoga, and some new research on performance tuning of the human body.

I'll give you a run down of the program I'm using. The competitive advantage is not in secret knowledge, but in application. I welcome any advice that readers might be able to offer to help me tune the program more precisely

This a shot I took this morning of my daily load of supplements, with a tray of wheatgrass for juicing in the background. Liquids and loose powders are not included.

What we have in this shot are the following:

• 6 x Yoga Body Natural "Flexamine" (www.yogabodynaturals.com). This contains MSM (methylsulfonylmethane), Triple Green Blend (organic spirulina, organic chlorella & barley grass juice extract), Ultra-Sorb Vitamin C (ascorbic acid buffered with calcium ascorbate), Trace Mineral Uptake Enhancers. 3 vege caps twice a day on an empty stomach with 500 ml water to alkalize, detox, and promote flexibility.
• 4 x pH-Corrected Creatine (Kre-Alkalyn). 2 caps twice a day with lots of water to promote enhanced muscle recharging. [wikipedia article]
• 3 x Body Quick "Cognamine" (www.getbodyquick.com). One of the primary active ingredients in this is Acetylcholine [wikipedia article]. A neurotransmitter, it opens ligand gated sodium channels in the cell membrane of skeletal muscle fibers. 3 caps (non-veg, so I remove the content) with 250 ml of water 30 minutes before a yoga class to get my game on!
• 2 x Multi B Vitamins - B1 - B12 to relieve stress, increase energy, and promote system recharging. I use this even when I'm not in training. Just for the high level of activity and engagement of my lifestyle, these B vitamins are invaluable. They really work. When I take them I can handle a lot more mental and emotional load. Blackmore's Executive Stress Complex is a good one.
• 1 x Kelp tablet - this is to replace iodine lost in Bikram and hot yoga classes.

Here's how my daily program stacks up at the moment:

3.30 am - 3 x Yoga Body Naturals Flexamine and 500 ml of water
4.00 am - 2 x Kre-Alkalyn Creatine + Blackstrap molasses (high GI carb to promote Creatine uptake + sodium, magnesium, and iron to replace electrolytes lost in hot yoga)
4.30 am - Mangal-arati - play mrdanga and dance until I'm sweating
5.10 am - 500ml cale and broccoli juice, 3 x Body Quick Cognamine
5.30 am - 2 hours hot yoga (www.bikramyogabrisbane.com.au)
8.00 am - Breakfast - balanced carbs and protein - muesli + whey protein isolate / maca [wikipedia article] (I found out about maca when we lived in Peru), B Vitamin complex, Kelp tablet, 2 tablespoons Flaxseed Oil with Quark (Omega-3 for regenerating myelin sheathing in the brain, quark to promote omega-3 uptake - this is part of the Budwig cancer protocol)
8.30 am - Ride bicycle to work
11.00 am - Percy's Powder (anti-cancer and electrolyte replacement)
1.00 pm Lunch (Param cooks it and brings it when she teaches the lunchtime class at Atma) - rice and dhal, B Vitamin
6.00 pm - 3 x Yoga Body Naturals Flexamine and 500 ml of water
6.30 pm - Fusion hot yoga class (www.fusionhotyoga.com.au) - these guys recently opened in Norman Park

I chant my rounds before Mangal-arati, and in periodic breaks during my working day.

I can do things like this for fixed periods with specific goals, like a 30 or 60 day challenge, or a ramp up to a showdown. I've given up feeling guilty about not being in the mode of goodness - play to your strengths.

At the moment my body is tuned more like a carnivore's body than a vegetarian one. Raja guna in the house! I can understand now more intimately how Pariksit Maharaja was implicated in the circumstances that lead up to his death. When your body is tuned like this and you don't get sufficient water or fuel for the digestive fire, yes, people die. I carry a couple of protein bars during the day, to avoid ripping limbs or heads from bodies.

In the latest fall out from the ISO (International Standards Organization) ratification of Microsoft's controversial OOXML (Open Office eXtensible Markup Language) standard, Norway's local standard body has imploded.

Standards Norway, the organization that manages technical standards for the Scandinavian country, took a serious blow last week when key members resigned in protest over procedural irregularities in the approval process for Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format. The 23-person technical committee has lost 13 of its members.

- Norwegian standards body implodes over OOXML controversy

The International ISO organisation is made up of national member organisations, as well as corporate members. IBM, a major corporate member, has threatened to withdraw from ISO over this issue, and several other nations are tottering on the edge.

India, Brazil, and South Africa are attempting to appeal ISO's fast-track approval of Microsoft's controversial Office Open XML (OOXML) format. The organizations representing those countries in ISO complain of process irregularities, lack of inclusiveness during meetings and debates, and insufficient time to address all of the issues and concerns raised by participants during the review process.

- OOXML revolt brewing? Three countries appeal ISO approval, May 31

Why is this such a big deal? As more and more of mankind's communication and commerce takes place digitally, whoever controls the medium controls everything. This is why open standards and open source software are so important.

Of course it's always possible that the apocalypse will occur and we'll go back to the Bronze Age, in which case we don't have to worry about any of this, do we?

On the other hand, if history continues to develop as it has for the past two thousand years, digital freedom is as useful as political and religious freedom have been, and things like universal literacy and labour-protection laws. It may not be the ultimate reality or the most important thing in life, but it's certainly nice to have.

The other thing I note from this is that procedural irregularities lead to organisational distintegration. Managers of all types take note.

It was part three of "The 3 Things You Need to Find Your Freedom". This week we were talking about "the process".

I started by reading "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke. I got my supporting visuals from Flickr.com, and marked on the story script where the slide changes were.

Then I compared this to a Muslim saying that when there is no tongue on Earth that utters the name of Allah, the world will end.

Then I talked about the 99 Names of Allah in the Qu'ran, and read some of them out from the list on wikipedia.

Then I talked about the Tetragrammaton of the Jewish scripture, mentioning the loss of knowledge of its pronunciation due to the Babylonian exile and a subsequent language change.

Then I discussed personal and impersonal names (titles), and primary and secondary names.

Then I showed some different pictures of Krishna with His different relationships and talked about those names.

Then I told the story of Lord Caitanya and Prakasananda Sarasvati (there seem to be at least two differing versions, possibly three, in the Caitanya-caritamrita). This involved some explanation of the social and philosophical evolution and differences between Buddhism, Sankara's Vedanta, and finally Caitanya Vaisnavism.

The power of God's name, and the process of glorifying it is not an edge belief / practice - it is a mainstream part of all major religions of the world. Lord Caitanya's movement, however, has really taken it to the next level.

Then I wrapped up by introducing some modern followers of Lord Caitanya and proponents of chanting the Holy Name: Bhaktivinode Thakura, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, and Srila Prabhupada.

I finished by playing the 5 minute track from the Krishna Conscious Happening LP (at least that's where I think it's from). It's the one where Srila Prabhupada explains the chanting and says that it is "not an artificial imposition on the mind".

Narrowing the focus and ramping up the pressure.

Finally we got a projector installed at Atma. I can't believe it took me so long to do it. It's actually verging on criminal negligence on my part. I first started using a digital projector to present Krishna Consciousness in 1998. Ten years later, we finally install one.

Dominic, the stage manager of Indradyumna Swami's Polish festival tour, came and put it in.

It took Dominic 30 minutes to do it. If I tried to do it, it would take three hours, and would probably end up broken. I'm not being "humble" - five minutes after Dominic left I tried to adjust the ceiling panel, dropped it, and smashed it.

Ceiling mounting bracket: $99 from Harvey Norman.

10m VGA cable (with gold-plated connectors!) - routed through the ceiling and falling behind a curtain. $44 from Jay Car.

Here's the projector in action. It's not as dark as the camera makes it look in the room. It's not a case of turning the lights off and having people stare at a screen. The lights are on, I talk with the people there and the projector provides supporting visual elements, which I cue with my cellphone.

I was amazed that how the technology is "just works (tm)" for me at the moment. I just plugged my eeePC with Ubuntu on it into the projector and PA, fired up my cellphone with amora on it, and away we went.

The technology should be transparent. It should make the message arrive more clearly and more powerfully, not get in the way of the delivery. Having a projector sitting in the middle of the room with a beam of light cutting the room in half and dividing the audience is ridiculous.

With the projector now in the ceiling I can spend less time setting up each week, and focus more time, attention, and energy into the message.

Here's a video:

s$%# in the post title = "self", btw ;-)

Tri-yuga and I are engaged in a fierce competition. When he visited me a month ago we were discussing health, the internet, online businesses, and a number of other things. At the time I was doing a 30-day challenge at Bikram, and Tri-yuga joined me for the nine days he was here. One thing that came up was the number of websites that show you how to get "six-pack abs". After some discussion we came up with a challenge - who could get the most "ripped" by the time I come over to New Zealand to visit my family and attend the Vyasa puja festival of our spiritual master (mid-October)?

I'm into modelling successful people. I spend time studying them and extracting their patterns and practices. For leadership I model John Maxwell. For yoga I model Bikram. For bass playing I model Larry Graham. It's all about following the mahajanas - it's a universally applicable principle, not a religious doctrine.

Now for getting ripped, who else would I model other than Conan the Barbarian? I mean, if you're going to do it, go all the way.

So I've been studying "Conan the Destroyer" (a mate at work had it - he didn't have "Conan the Barbarian").

I'm modelling my program on the movie, so now I start my day "the Conan way". The movie begins with Conan praying to his God, Crom, at a shrine. Quickly he gets into a fight.

Grainy screenshot from 1984

So now I'm going to mangal-arati, to pray to my God before a shrine, then racing across town to a Bikram class for a workout. Tri-yuga, watch out - I'm comin' for ya!

Conan's deep devotion and faith in his personal God is a source of enhanced strength and increased physical performance. A recent study conducted at Oxford University has shown that religious belief can increase pain tolerance by up to 12% - that gives me the edge in the hot room.

Conan worships Crom, who is a demigod, according to the Vedic understanding. The demigod culture of the Aryans (similar to the Nordic, Roman and Greek pantheons) mixed with the Upanishadic culture of the forest-dwelling sages of India. The Upanishads present an understanding of the all-pervading Force, as presented in Star Wars.

The modern Vedic devotional tradition takes the best of the "Thor and Odin" pantheon of gods, mashes it up with the Force, and presents the uber-Gott, the personification, or personal source of the unmanifest, all-pervading energy: Krishna.

Actually, the supreme force has unlimited personal manifestations (ete camsa kala pumsah) - (s)he's a complex personality (including being the source of femininity). All contradictions are resolved in the Absolute Truth. But for some very esoteric reasons, which are explained by the sage Rupa Goswami in his book Bhaktirasamrita-sindhu, the Radha / Krishna aspect is the Supreme (krsnas tu bhagavan svayam).

So in addition to my google-fu - to get the inside scoop on supplements and workout plans - I have the secret weapon of living 15 minutes drive from the local shrine to the combined manifestation of Radha and Krishna - sri krishna caitanya radha krishna nahe anya...

Thanks for the inspiration Conan - you rock!

Postscript: That's a rocking presentation right there. You play the Conan segment, then you talk about the Oxford research, then about the demigods, throw in some Star Wars, including the segment from Episode Three where Obi-wan describes the force (or Yoda from Episode Four), and then describe Krishna and Radha on that basis, with the Bhagavatam verse, and then end with Lord Caitanya and the sankirtan movement, then - KIRTAN! I'll do it at Atma when I get back in November.

Interestingly enough, my morning realization at Bikram today is an interesting counterpoint to Devadeva Mirel's "Plain Truth".

There she presents the old adage: "Eat right, exercise, die anyway".

Of course that's true, but it's a truth devoid of subtlety. Once you realize this truth, you can still go further. Krishna consciousness is not fatalism or nihilism.

Spending money for your health, for example paying for Bikram classes, eating organic, or buying supplements, increases the performance of your body. This reduces health care costs and increases your potential earning power over time. In other words - you can get the money back.

On the other hand, saving money by skimping on your health decreases your bodily performance, which translates into higher health care costs and decreased earning power over time.

You can always get money back. You can never get back time and your body's performance over that time.

Invest in your health first, not last.

Postscript: You can observe that people who skimp on their health will spend all kinds of money to regain it when they lose it.