Site announcements

I just added free tagging to my posts. This will enable me to link posts more easily. So, for example, you can now view the posts arising from the 24 May 2009 H.H. Prabhavishnu Swami bhajan session all in one place, easily.

If you view any post on it's own page (by clicking it's title if you are reading it on the main www.atmayogi.com page or on Planet ISKCON) you can see a list of categories, including free tags, at the bottom of the post. Click on any of these to retrieve all the posts in that category / tag, for further related reading.

I'm going to the data center with Tirtharaj tonight to try upgrading the Planet ISKCON / Atmayogi.com server.

So it will go down for some time. Hopefully not for too long.

Please note: I have pulled two feeds on Planet ISKCON that reproduced Caitanya das' letter. One was Krishna-kirti's, the other was D.A.S.I.

Caitanya das emailed that letter to me and requested me to publish it on my blog. I thought about it, and thought to myself: "What does it mean to leave ISKCON?"

Does it mean that you stop paying your annual dues?
Does it mean that you burn your membership card?
Does it mean that you stop taking prasadam at ISKCON temples?
Refuse to chant with ISKCON devotees?

I thought about for some time it, and realized:

To leave ISKCON means to leave Planet ISKCON.

So that letter is not going to be on Planet ISKCON. It's a political statement, more than anything else. Grabbing everyone's attention and dictating the tone and topic of conversation is exactly what he is trying to achieve with that letter.

You can't have it both ways. If you are in ISKCON and contributing somehow, then you have the opportunity to have a voice on Planet ISKCON. If, however, you choose to make a public show of "leaving ISKCON", then obviously you, and your message, don't want to be on Planet ISKCON, and don't belong there.

People who have left ISKCON, for a variety of reasons, are not on Planet ISKCON. Some of them I read, some of them I don't, but none of them are on there.

If everyone on Planet ISKCON now goes on and publishes the letter, what am I going to do? I don't know, but I'd prefer the conversation to be about whether or not the letter belongs on there, rather than going into the content of it.

Feel free to let me know what you think.

Oh dear...

A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff
Senior US soldiers investigated over missing Iraq reconstruction billions

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme.

Full story on the website of the UK's Independent.

My comment: Absolutely criminal.

Join the Planet ISKCON group on Facebook. It's a chance to connect with the authors and the other readers of Planet ISKCON. Even if you're not the blog writing type you can share links and ideas, opinions and reactions, and maybe see them picked up and run with as a blog post.

If you have a mobile phone with a browser and want to read Planet ISKCON, check out the new Planet ISKCON Mobile edition.

I've put a proposal on Rentacoder.com to have a mobile version of the Atma Yoga website created.

Now my question, dear lazyweb, is this: should I get it done in WML or XHTML?

In response to a request from Phani I have included Krishna-kirti prabhu's blog feed on Planet ISKCON.

For some time I've struggled with what to do about including his feed. I personally read it regularly via RSS. Krishna-kirti and I have dialogs in different venues, including on his blog, via email, and on ISKCON Constitution.com. At the same time it doesn't exactly fit the policy that I set for Planet ISKCON, about a mix of what you are doing and what you are thinking.

However, I am not a dictator and Planet ISKCON is not simply "my site". Community is an organic thing, and rules are there as guidelines to promote civilized behavior, which we hope becomes innate and makes the rules redundant. Ultimately it's about the people, not the rules. And in spiritual life, it's all about who you know.

Q: Does Krishna-kirti joining Planet ISKCON in this way represent some kind of "liberalization" of the policy, or an example of the infiltration of democracy into ISKCON?

Brahmacaris are celibate students who officially represent the monastic order in ISKCON. They are not independent but are under an ISKCON authority who is responsible for their behaviour, and to whom they are accountable.

As such, ISKCON brahmacaris who wish their blog feed to be included on Planet ISKCON must approach their temple authority who should provide a letter covering the following:

a) The brahmacari has permission to write a blog
b) The authority has read the blog
c) The authority approves the content
d) The authority would like the content syndicated to Planet ISKCON

Any concerns that may arise about the content of the blog can then be directed to this authority, who sponsors the brahmacari and accepts accountability for their behaviour.

Existing blog feeds from ISKCON brahmacaris as of April 2008 are exempted from this policy, although if you are a brahmacari you might want to check with your authority.

How cool is this? Antony Brennan wrote an article on KC blogs in the recent Back to Godhead magazine, and Planet ISKCON got a mention.

To find previous articles that have appeared on Planet ISKCON use a search like this in google:

africa site:planetiskcon.com

To forward specific articles you should subscribe to the email version, which allows you to do that. Enter your email address in the box on the right hand side of the page that says: "Email Updates"