Philosophical debates and the VMS list

[Guest guest]

krishNa bhaktas,

Recently there was some debate about having philosophical

discussions on the VMS list. I agree with the statements made supporting

the philosophical discussions and I want to elaborate on it a little

bit.

 

The main objective of the VMS list is to bring together people

interested in the mAdhva philosophy and religious discusions. The list

supports a large group of people with diverse interests. So, there are

people with interests in philosophical discussions and those who do

prefer discussions on bhakti and religious practices. In Dvaita, there

is a harmonious mixture of both kinds of people as evidenced by the

vyAsa kUTa and dAsa kUTa movements. Goals of the VMS list is to support

both kinds of discussions and postings. If people are concerned about

the volume of the mail that is being received, they can use the DELETE

button as has been suggested or they can switch to digest mode where

they receive one message per day.(You can do this by simply sending an

empty E-mail to -digest ).

 

I also feel that there are lot of things to be learned by comparative

study of other philosophies. One will know many things about our

tradition, by focussing on the differences and how certain philosophical

problems have been solved in one tradition vs. the other. My suggestion

to the participants is to summarize the discussions at the end of a

discussion thread so that people who have are not following the threads

very diligently can benefit by reading a overall summary of the

discussions. I know this is asking for a short cut!, but some of us

(including me) do need it some times.

 

While philosophical discussions are important, we should also have

postings on stotras, dAsa sahitya and religious practices to have a

balanced mixture of all the things that are important in our religion

and philosophy. In that respect, it was wonderful to have a superb

exposition of sri vijayadAsara kavacha by Sri Sriprasad and other

volunteers that ended today. I want to thank them for their efforts,

devotion and service to the community. We need to have more

translations and transliterations into English of the stotras that we

use for every day pArAyana. I request volunteers to take this up as a

service to the community. Our plan is to archive the well done series in

the web site for future reference.

 

Finally, regarding the type of moderation on the list, we prefer to

have self regulation by the participants. There has been a deliberate

attempt to have a very light style of moderation. It is up to every one

of us to respect the objectives of the list and the spiritual tone of

the discussions and to keep it that way.

 

Hare srinivasa,

Regards,

Vasudeva Murthy

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Vasu Murthy

 

vmurthy

 

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