Talk:Satsvarupa dasa Goswami/Archive 2

Affair Inclusion Conclusion

I think the result of the hullabaloo about the Personal Difficulties section is good. Short, gets to the point, not too glossy, not too detailed, references consultation with others (GBC), shows some SDG humbleness and acknowledgment ("thoughtful, forgiving spirit" request) and then moves on. Changing "the" to "this" makes the "Over the years many" line make more sense.

I decided to edit my comments about SDG on this talk page out of respect for SDG, and PRIOR to reading Wikidas's admonitions to do so. I almost didn't after reading what he said just out of spite. His unreasonable protectionism fomented this discussion.

But my respect for SDG goes beyond the spiting urge, so I did. People can read the history page if they like. (I said nothing unfounded by the way. Over the top and hurtful doesn't mean unfounded.) 75.117.52.108 (talk) 19:27, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Disabmiguation of the Advanced age and Old age

75.117.52.108 suggested a considerable difference to the above. Currently Advanced age redirects to Old age article. According to the definition Advanced_age#Definition and SDG being over 65 and because people in the 65-and-over age group are often called senior citizens - there is a need of clarification. According to the definition of Advanced_age#Definition he can be both senior citizen and in advanced age. You comment on Advanced age appears to be POV comment.[2] She is therefore suggested to use disambiguation process for the above or to accept that there is no difference and SDG is in the advanced age. Wikidās ॐ 21:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, whatever. I don't want to OCD this minutia point. The fact is that this page is suffering from excessive wordiness and awkwardness. This "advanced age" phrasing is a crude attempt to curry sympathy from the audience. There's no point to it. 68 isn't really an advanced age, and it doesn't matter how we shuffle the definitions. 75.91.83.82 (talk) 01:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

75.91.83.82 user, are you the same person as 75.117.52.108? Why are you answering his Advanced age dillema? Wikidās ॐ 07:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Note from the subject book:Satsvarupa, Dasa Goswami (1980-82, 2002). Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta Vol 1-2. BBT. pp. vol.1 1133 pages vol.2 1191 pages. ISBN (2 volume edition 2002) 0892133570. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Check date values in: |date= (help):

Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta: «And he did not have to flatter anyone, support anyone, or manage anyone's life. His mind and intelligence were free and dwelt constantly on his service to his spiritual master. He saw his present circumstances as a preparation for a greater task before him. Despite his advanced age, he felt that he had barely begun his work. Yet he felt confident. He had his vision of a world association of devotees. It was not an idle dream, although he was not certain how it would all come about. But he knew his duty. For the present he would go on describing his vision, the vision of his predecessor spiritual masters, in articles and books. But as soon as possible he should go to the West. Westerners, he had concluded, were not satisfied with a materially comfortable life devoid of spiritual understanding; more than his fellow Indians, they would be open to the message of the Absolute Truth. He knew he should go. And he would go-if Kṛṣṇa desired.

Abhay lived frugally in Vṛndāvana, keeping exact account of every expenditure and every receipt. He carefully kept a ledger, just as if he were running a substantial business, even though his purchases were only a little milk, a few vegetables, charcoal for cooking, bus rides, and his major expenditure, postage. --- Abhay composed a Bengali poem, "Vṛndāvana-bhajana." Its opening stanzas were especially self-reflective and personal.

I am sitting alone in Vṛndāvana-dhāma.

In this mood I am getting many realizations.

I have my wife, sons, daughters, grandsons, everything,

But I have no money, so they are a fruitless glory.

Kṛṣṇa has shown me the naked form of material nature;

By His strength it has all become tasteless to me today.

Yasyāham anugṛhṇāmi hariṣye tad-dhanaṁ śanaiḥ:

"I gradually take away all the wealth of those upon whom I am merciful."

How was I able to understand this mercy of the all-merciful?»

Śrīla Prabhupāda is here in the ADVANCED AGE of 61– his supporters, friends and family left him broke.

Śrīla Prabhupāda-līlāmṛta another reference:

«Prabhupāda's most ambitious literary undertaking, the completion of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, was to be no less than sixty volumes. He had begun in India in 1959, and all along he had been aware that he was attempting a gigantic task at an advanced age. Now Kṛṣṇa was giving him opportunities both for writing Vedic literatures and for travelling, and he was working at an amazing pace.»

Prabhupāda is here in ADVANCED AGE of 63 starting to write his Bhaktivedanta Purports – I guess in India it was an advanced age, but not in Florida. HTH Wikidās ॐ 10:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

This underscores my point. The Lilamrta is geared towards the insider, the disciple. They deliberately chose to make it accessible to the general public, but it's fundamentally not encyclopedic in tone. There's a fair amount of puffery. More to the issue of the use of "advanced age" in this context: SDG hasn't set out to convert the world to vaisnavism, or to translate a large body of essential literature into English, nor to point a worldwide movement of disciples in the right direction. Starting a huge undertaking at the age of 68 makes the age more notable. Going to live in New Jersey (or where ever) in somebody's spare room, and showing up at a rathe yatra every once in a while, isn't notable for a 68 year old. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.213.163.8 (talk) 12:45, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Sampradaya Huh?

-"Chaitanya Vaisnava sampradaya is also called sampradaya of the book." Seriously, this doesn't make sense on more than one level.

I assume this is an ESL problem. Do you mean "... is called *the* Sampradaya of the Book"? Then the sentence itself will make sense. In fact, I'm going to add that as a start. The next problem is that we don't know what Chaitanya Vaisnava Sampradaya has to do with anything. Are you trying to say that he's in the Chaitanya Vaisnava Sampradaya, that it also means Sampradaya of the Book, and since he writes books, he's well situated in that sampradaya? Then another problem: Who says that it's the sampradaya of the book? And lastly, is all that verbiage worth the minor point that it makes? 75.91.83.82 (talk) 01:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

• I accept your edit[3]: The Chaitanya Vaisnava Sampradaya is also called the 'Sampradaya of the Book'. This wording makes it better - as an introduction to the contributions by SDG in the field of book publishing, which is his main role in the sampradaya or in service to Prabhupada and his Bhaktivedanta Book Trust whichever you take. Wikidās ॐ 07:52, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

• If you have any experience in the field of publishing you can propose a different introduction on this talk page if you want. Wikidās ॐ 08:03, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Minor edits

I would consider adding an article a minor edit. Other such edits that do not need to be discussed on the talk page are:

• Spelling corrections
• Simple formatting (e.g., capitalisation, punctuation, or properly adding italics to sanskrit words like sampradāya)
• Formatting that doesn't change the meaning of the page (e.g. adding horizontal lines, splitting one paragraph into two—where this is not contentious)
• Obvious factual errors (e.g., changing 2013 to 2003, where the event in question clearly took place in the past)
• Fixing layout errors
• Adding and correcting wiki links
• Removing vandalism and graffiti

Wikidās ॐ 10:34, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the many lines of instruction. It is so helpful to redundantly explain these points. Maybe you can mention them all again several more times. My point was that the line made little sense and I had to guess what was trying to be said. 75.90.59.188 (talk) 11:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

General rules for writing biographies of living persons

• Please make yourself familiar in the knowledge of the Wikipedia policy on biographies of living persons and all policies appertaining, particularly verifiability, neutrality and avoiding original research. Wikidās ॐ written at 09:10, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Article formatting

I cleaned up the article formatting a bit (diff) but it still needs more work. The main ideas is to follow the wikipedia manual of style and to be consistent. Some recommended improvements:

• Don't displace the TOC and disable the editing of sections. This is a disservice to readers and other editors.
• Is the "Dasa" in the subjects name spelled with a capital or a small D ? Use consistently.
• The article currently uses three different citations styles: (1) the <ref> </ref> tags, (2) the {{ref}}-{{note}} method, and (3) weblinks within the text. Please pick one method and stick with it.
• The stubby sections-subsections in the article should be combined into free-flowing texts;
• In the selected bibliography section, we don't need to mention the author's name repeatedly, since it is clear the we are talking of books written by the article's subject; also the ISBN's should be removed since they differ from edition to edition and that detail is not important here.

Let me know if you have any questions. Regards. Abecedare (talk) 19:32, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

TOC is to be placed as to provide ease of consistent reading.Sections editing may be disabled if needed.

In the Library of Congress "Dasa" "Das" and "dasa" is used. That needs to be noted but it also needs to be consisten and used consistently.

(1) the tags link to Footnotes,

(2) the ^[4]-[[#ref_{{{1}}}|^]] method refers to References,

(3) weblinks are used in the text and should be converted to the footnote type.

We can probably agree that the stubby sections-subsections in the article should be combined into free-flowing texts;

In the selected bibliography section the formating of WP:CITE used. ISBN is a good feature, as its a part of the WP:CITE standard template. Eventually all references should be in this format.

Position of the TL should be above the infobox.

Please do not edit until the consensus is reached on this talk page. Wikidās ॐ 20:13, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately you are wrong about the formatting issues. See WP:LAYOUT and WP:CITE for wikipedia guidelines. If you wish to diverge from the guidelines, the onus is upon you to present the reasons and develop consensus for idiosyncratic formatting. Please do read the guidelines I linked to, since that will prvenet a unnecessary lengthy discussion or edit-warring. Abecedare (talk) 20:22, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Also note that the subject's bibliography is distinct from references, and WP:CITE is not the correct guideline for the purpose. See for example the featured article, William Shakespeare. Hope that helps. Abecedare (talk) 20:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello Abecedare, Hard to understand which formating issues you refer to as we refer both to the same WP:CITE for wikipedia guidelines. We will also need to look at the navigation box creation if article will grow any bigger. Also your example of article, William Shakespeare does not seem to be quite appropriate, an appropriate example will be a good BLP in one of the Projects that article belong, ie Project Hinduism, in those cases ISBN will be expected, even its a minor issue and we can look at it. We all regard to you, why threat an edit war? Wikidās ॐ at 07:23, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I apologize if my comment appeared to be a threat to edit war, as that certainly was not my intention! I think it may be most productive to deal with one issue at a time, starting with (say) the citation styles. Abecedare (talk) 07:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Citation style

Wikidas, you said that you are using <ref> </ref> tags for Footnotes, and {{ref}}-{{note}} method for references. Can you please clarify what you mean by the two terms (footnotes vs references) ? That way we can be sure we are using the same terminology and don't end up talking past each other. Regards. Abecedare (talk) 07:47, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Abecedare. I would clearly distingush the two:

1. First is a footnote (or bootnote)<ref> - using this XML tag - note of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document. The note comments on and may OR MAY NOT cite a reference to a verifiable source. In our case the footnote is flagged by a superscript number following that portion of the text the note is in reference to.
2. The list of references will be made from references is a previously published written work within academic publishing which has been used as a source for claims referred to which are used in the text. Linked using {{ref}}/{{note}} for multiple use of the same reference. Unlike footnotes in our case references contain complete bibliographic information so the interested reader can find them in a library, that will follow exactly WP:CITE format and include ISBN.

Some merge it into Notes and references, but its clearly better to separate as is the case in the Project Hinduism example article - Adi_Shankara and others. Wikidās ॐ writeen on 09:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean something like on the Hinduism page ? Abecedare (talk) 09:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I also given example of bio not LP, but also to comply with WP:BLP references will be supporting all claims that may be considered controversial and thus must be of a high standard with ISBNs etc, not just googles, blogs or authors own website. For example claims that he was selected by Prabhupada to be a guru in ISKCON etc. Wikidās ॐ 10:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I see and completely agree. I myself am a big supporter of the format used in the articles you cite, and had helped format the references in Hinduism in 2006/07. Note though that we do not need to use the ref-note templates (which are deprecated) for the purpose, but the {{Harvnb}} and ref-tags instead.

I have to sign off soon, but will help you format the references as in Hinduism article, in a day or so. Glad to see that we are making progress through discussion. Abecedare (talk) 10:25, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I will have a look at it and you can then review and revert on this page please. Regards --Wikidās ॐ 10:46, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikidas, I have converted one reference to the preferred style in this edit. We can slowly convert all the cited references to match that. Let me know if you have any questions regarding the formatting or use of the templates. Regards. Abecedare (talk) 22:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

And, here is another example. Note that I also corrected the title and year of publication, based upon the WorldCat listing for the ISBN. Abecedare (talk) 23:10, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest using this Ref template: "{{ref harv}} example {{ref harv|finalexample.com|Smith 2000|b}}(b)" it does not use numbers. It can actually display Superscript abbreviations with a year. The whole idea was to avoid using the numbers and move towards an alternative. let me know what you think?Wikidās ॐ 20:12, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Why would we want to avoid using numerical superscripts ? That is the standard in an overwhelming number, if not all, of well-developed wikipedia articles. Abecedare (talk) 20:20, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I know what you mean. But if you have a two parallel numbering system both numerical, both superscripted, it makes it confusing. References of the style of the article Thomas_Pynchon can be inline in bracket and fit very well with another system (for footnotes <ref>/ style. Wikidās ॐ 22:00, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

The idea is not to have two parallel numbering systems, but to convert all references to use the harvard and <ref> tags. I converted two references as an illustration, and others need to be converted eventually. The Harvard referencing system allows for both inline and superscripted references as required.

Note that the the {{ref_harv}} system is obsolete dating back to the days before the improved <ref> tags were introduces; it is used only in 10 out of over 2 million wikipedia articles and only because those articles were written years back. See WP:FN3 for a longer discussion on why such methods were discarded. Abecedare (talk) 22:23, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Retaining ISBN

Abecedare. Please see example of Sri_Aurobindo for bibliography using the above. Its an appropriate example. --Wikidāsॐ 09:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

That is not a very well written article so may not be the best example to cite. Usually we should set our standards by the highest quality articles on wikipedia, which are called featured article and it is a good idea to browse through some of them.

That said, I don't think including/excluding the ISBN's from the bibliography is a big deal for the moment. My main concern is that the extraneous information, like the repetition of the author name, ISBN, pages etc make it more difficult to read through the titles themselves to see what the subject has written about. Ideally I would like to retain only the title and year of first publication in the list, but if you think ISBNs should also be retained, that is ok with me. Does that make sense ? Abecedare (talk) 10:06, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I propose that I will look at bibliography arranged by year considering the above comments and then create a separate page for the Complete Bibliography on a separate page \List of works by Satsvarupa dasa Goswami. it will show ISBNs and Publishers links, the first list will be just the Titles and years with the number of pages. Wikidās ॐ 10:44, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I will have a look at it and you can then review and revert on this page please. Regards --Wikidās ॐ 10:46, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

If you wish, you can follow the example of the Hilary Putnam article and continue to use the cite template in the bibliography, but remove the author name (since that is obvious). Abecedare (talk) 10:51, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I actually suggest BLP featured article Bruno Maddox as an example unlike Hilary Putnam it is using the template. Wikidās ॐ 12:52, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Good job on formatting the bibliography. Some further suggestions of improvements:

• Sort the bibliography by the year of first publication.
• Fill in the fields like publisher, ISBN, year of publication etc where they are missing

Abecedare (talk) 22:46, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Library of Congress references

I propose to add Library of Congress references for ease of finding the books to the current biblo. --Wikidās ॐ 09:49, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand. Do you mean links to the LOC catalog listing ? Abecedare (talk) 10:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Correct Abecadare, LOC catalog listing. Wikidās ॐ 10:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

That may not be needed, since one can click on the ISBN number and go to a comprehensive list of resources for accessing the book (including the LOC catalog). Abecedare (talk) 22:44, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Good examples of BLP

Im looking for good examples of poets but falling under BLP. The only first class rate article for a poet I found is William Butler Yeats. But he is not living... Wikidās ॐ 10:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Possible candidates for examples are David_Helvarg Thomas Pynchon William_Monahan Ann Bannon . Still looking for poets... Wikidās ॐ 12:44, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Another good shot is Seamus Heaney as it seems. Wikidās ॐ 13:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed references for the life of the author

MMS

[In 1989, the Governing Body Commission of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness requested Satsvarūpa dāsa Goswami to complete the Mukunda-mālā-stotra. One of Śrīla Prabhupāda's earliest disciples, Satsvarūpa Goswami had distinguished himself over the years as one of his most learned and literary followers. He had served as editor of Back to Godhead magazine—the Society's monthly journal—for most of the twenty-three years it had been published in the West, and had written many books already, most notably a six-volume biography of Śrīla Prabhupāda. Satsvarūpa Goswami accepted the assignment and enlisted the help of Gopīparāṇadhana dāsa, the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust's Sanskrit editor, to translate the remaining forty-seven verses. Then he carefully prepared the purports, often quoting from Śrīla Prabhupāda's Bhagavad-gītā, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and other works. The result is a book that we trust will be informative and enlivening to devotees, scholars, and laymen alike.] —The Publishers Mukunda Mala Stotra – Introduction

Hopkins review of Readings in VL

Dr. Thomas Hopkins of... Prabhupāda: Yes. He saw me several times. Rāmeśvara: Franklin and Marshall. He wrote, "I am impressed by Satsvarūpa dāsa Goswami's presentation. His initial chapter is one of the best statements available on the importance of the guru in transmitting spiritual knowledge." They have already taken hundreds of orders for this book, and it will be... It's being printed right now. It's at the printer right now. Prabhupāda: These two books are very important. (chuckles) Everything improved. (leafing pages)

Early reference in the letter to Brahmananda

Calcutta 11 November, 1967 67-11-11 Brahmananda, The quotation as you have given from my letter of Oct. 11, just stands. I do not want crowd of Kirtananandas but I want a single soul like Brahmananda, Mukunda, Rayarama, and Satsvarupa. The same example is always applicable that one moon is sufficient for the night as not thousands of stars.

Without being empowered by Krishna, nobody can preach Krishna Consciousness. It is not academic qualification or financial strength which helps in these matters, but it is sincerity of purpose which helps us always. Therefore, I wish that you will remain in charge of New York, let Satsvarupa be in charge of Boston, Let Mukunda be in charge of San Francisco, let Janardana be in charge of Montreal. Let Nandarani and Dayananda be in charge of Los Angeles. And let Subala das be in charge of Santa Fe. In this way you will follow my example as I did in the beginning at 26 2nd Ave.

Meeting Srila Prabhupada

Śrīla Prabhupāda had a process for taking people out of material consciousness and making them servants of Kṛṣṇa. I am one on whom his process worked. By evoking his life and activities, I would like to describe how I came to him in the summer of 1966. I was born in a second-generation American family. My father was born of Italian immigrant parents, my mother of an Irish immigrant family—both Roman Catholic. My father was a fireman for the New York City Fire Department, and he went to war during World War II when he served in the U.S. Navy and worked his way up to become a Lieutenant Commander. During the war years, my mother raised my older sister and me in a crowded neighborhood in the borough of Queens. Sometimes my uncle took me to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play at Ebbets Field, and I became a great Dodger fan. I also read a lot of comic books and played marbles in the city gutters. After the war, my father managed to get a mortgage to build a small Cape Cod house on Staten Island. In 1948, when I was eight years old, our family moved to our own house. Staten Island was more countrified, and we could pick blackberries and run in the woods. I became a Cub Scout, and my mother leniently signed her name in my Cub book to certify that I could jump, build a fire, swim, and draw the flags of forty nations. My mother was pious. She went to church regularly and she wanted the rest of our family to be good Catholics always, although my father didn’t go to Mass or think much of the priests. She kept a statue that she worshipped of Jesus in the form of “the little King,” an image in which he appears as a young boy dressed in a crown and robes. My mother used to tell me that even if you commit sin, God will forgive you if you repent; God is merciful. I had a well-known picture, a scene showing Jesus Christ preaching to elder men at the temple. I was most attracted to this Biblical story. Here, too, Jesus was young; his mother and father had been traveling, and he had become lost. His parents found him at the temple preaching religious truths to ancient-looking scribes. I was a young boy, and in this picture Jesus was a young boy—but he was glorious. I received this picture for good attendance at church, and Sunday school teachers had put stars on it. Just as a young boy who has a crush on a girl sometimes writes, “I love you” on a book or on a card, on the back of that picture I wrote, “I love Jesus.” Then underneath it, as children sometimes do, I wrote “true.” I went to public high school. In those days there wasn’t much promiscuity or drug abuse. We fooled around a lot in class, but there was no violence against the teachers. I wasted my high school years, but somehow managed to enroll in Brooklyn College.

During high school my father controlled me. He wanted me to enroll in the U.S. Naval Officers’ Training School. I hated the military, however, and my friends turned me against U.S. foreign policy. When I was seventeen, though, my father got me to enlist in the Naval Reserve.

As soon as I went to college I underwent an intellectual revolution. Any religious sentiments I had gained from my mother were driven away by my college professors, who were dyed-in-the-wool Marxist intellectuals, Americans from the 1930s. They taught me their intellectual and atheistic views, and knocked aside my religious worship, saying it was sentimental. One of them said theology could never satisfactorily explain why evil was present in the world. I was attracted to their philosophy because my parents were not intellectual and had never aroused my intellectual capacity. But my professors opened up a whole new world for me. I became eager to study philosophy and literature. I came to see for myself that the church was hypocritical: in the foyer of our church the priests regularly raffled bottles of liquor (they called them “baskets of joy”). I became dissatisfied with the Catholic Church because it could not provide answers to my questions. I went to church one last time to see a young priest who was supposed to be exciting for young people. In confession I told the priest, “Actually I don’t believe in this confession I’m supposed to make.” The priest was behind the black curtain. He said, “Oh, why don’t you come and see me?” I agreed. Later in his room he said, “So what are you thinking? What is your philosophy?” “Well,” I said, “how come there is so much evil in the world?” And I mentioned the Korean war and racism in America. “Oh,” he said, “you have a lot of love in you, I can see.” He was impressed by what I had said. Then I asked him some questions, but he couldn’t answer them. I was disappointed, and after that abandoned my religious sentiments. I thought God and the Bible were myths.

My college professors encouraged me to develop my writing abilities, which they thought were special. At eleven I started writing satirical stories, imitating things I had read. I had written humorous stories inspired by children’s books like Booth Tarkington’s book for boys, Penrod and Sam. In my high school years, I had always done well in English. When I was seventeen, I had started seriously keeping a diary in which I’d written heartfelt expressions of my confusion and my search for the truth. A conflict had begun during that time between my parents and me. I had been aspiring for higher things in life; their plans had limited me. I had expressed my feelings about this conflict in my journal. I wrote in thick notebooks. Writing was a way for me to think, to meditate, and to express thoughts. My thoughts would become solid when I put them down on paper.

During my college years I read many books on my own and became influenced by the works of many novelists, books like Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. During my last two years at Brooklyn College I joined the literary magazine, Landscapes, and published my stories and poetry. For several semesters I won prizes for my writing. I would spend whole summers writing short stories and novels. With my college friends, who were almost all Jewish, I discovered the Lower East Side. Then abruptly, I had to end my New York City involvement with professors, college literary friends, and the Lower East Side and enter the Navy.

It was January 1962. Just like anyone in New York who joined the Navy, I was taken to the barracks in Brooklyn, where I stayed for a couple of weeks, waiting anxiously to see where I was going to be sent. Then my orders came. I was to sail aboard a ship called the U.S.S. Saratoga, a super-carrier. The ship left from its home port, Mayport, Florida, which is near Jacksonville, and crossed the Atlantic to visit Mediterranean ports in Spain, Italy, and France. We used to visit Cannes regularly, and France, Naples, and Italy. In Spain we visited Barcelona. Then we went further—to Greece, Cyprus, Beirut, and Istanbul. During the rest of the time I spent aboard, the ship traveled to ports in the U.S. Sometimes we spent twenty days at a time at sea. When I first came aboard, they decided to put me in the gunnery department, but I told them I had journalistic abilities. I had heard there was a Public Information Office on board, so they agreed to place me in that department. My writing became occupational. I started a newspaper using articles from the UPI, which we got over the ship’s wire receiver. We also published a magazine in which I printed articles and reviews of intellectual books, most of which were over the heads of most sailors. I tried to continue the same kind of writing I had done when I had been in college with my literary friends. I wasn’t like a low-class brute sailor. I never used obscene language, and I hated to hear others using it. This may have been partly because I was associating, through literature, with sensitive individuals—authors and poets. Being in the Navy was like being in prison, and I simply counted the time I had before my discharge. I regularly got letters from my intellectual and literary friends in New York City. They had moved to the Lower East Side and taken up a life of creative freedom. I was just waiting to get away from the sailors and difficult naval life so I could join them. Although I hated the Navy, it was somehow good for me. It toughened me up and made me more democratic. I saw that even the rough sailors were human beings—I wasn’t so special. I felt matured having associated with all kinds of people. Having endured my Naval service, I felt I could endure other difficult situations. Still I hated my two years in the Navy. It was not a series of romantic Mediterranean cruises. Like other “short-timers” (those who weren’t career sailors), I simply counted how much time I had to serve in the Navy. It was a dull ordeal, but it whetted my appetite for going to the Lower East Side, where I thought I could lead a free, romantic life. A few months after the death of President Kennedy, I was honorably discharged, and without visiting my parents on Staten Island, I went directly to the Lower East Side. By then, the Lower East Side was, in my mind and in the minds of my friends, the most mystical place in the world. Just out of the Navy and free from my parents and school, I took to my new freedom with a vengeance. The neighborhood was Puerto Rican and Ukrainian, a slum, but people like me were living there—young writers, poets, painters—and everyone was experimenting. The neighborhood was a symbol of freedom and revolt from stupid, middle-class values. But everything was becoming corrupt. I was quickly losing my innocence. With my friends I continued my mystical search for the truth, but without any real direction. Those were naive days, when young people took LSD in search of spiritual truths. Following an accident, I had to stay in bed for six weeks in leg casts. I had written to the Vedanta Society for some of their paperback books, and I began reading books on Eastern philosophy: The Way of the Tao, Sayings of Confucius, Bhagavad-gītā, and some of the Upaniṣads. One day, my mother came to my room and said, “You don’t really believe in these things, do you?” But I did like the Bhagavad-gītā and the Upaniṣads. I was attracted to some of the stories and aphorisms about the oneness of Brahman and the ātmā, the self beyond the body.

For six months after I came to the Lower East Side, I lived on the money I had saved from working in the Navy. Then I took a job as a case worker for the Department of Welfare. Social work is not a money-making business; it’s humanitarian work, and I was attracted to the opportunity to help people. In my job, I had to visit welfare recipients or recent applicants and see if they were eligible for welfare, witness their troubles, and listen to their sad stories. As their friend, I had to help them get money and to reform their lives. And there was always the bureaucratic paper work. At the same time, I continued my literary career. I wasn’t interested in commercial writing or news reporting. I wanted to be an artist. For me, writing was a way to understand the truth. One of my writer friends said to me, “Well, you know, you have to write commercially. You can’t be idealistic.” But I used to always write about the creative process itself. I tried to explore the wonder of inspiration: how is it that somebody wants to write? Where does it come from, this creative drive and the ability and desire to express one’s self in words? What is the meaning of life? In a crude sense I was looking for spiritual life through writing, and I was attracted to writers who, even if not religious, wrote for higher purposes. I liked Kafka, for instance. Although people think of him as agnostic, he practiced his writing as a religion. God was not revealed to him, but neither was he interested in material success. He tried to express truth through writing. I tried to follow the writers interested in spiritual things such as the ultimate human predicament, and read books by Dostoevsky and other authors who wrote on these topics. In the crudest sense it was a spiritual quest. I identified these people as spiritually motivated compared to the materialistic workers or even priests, who weren’t as honest as these truth-seeking authors. Yet despite my struggles to find the truth through writing, my health was deteriorating, and I was unhappy with everything. I had come to believe in Van Gogh’s statement, “Misery is eternal.” What more could you expect in an absurd universe? I felt lost, but so did great philosophers, painters, and musical composers. I certainly didn’t think some guru was suddenly going to appear and save me. I was too cynical. Yet I was regularly reading versions of the Bhagavad-gītā and the Upaniṣads. Ironically, one week before the gift shop at 26 Second Avenue changed into Śrīla Prabhupāda’s temple, I was standing in that very doorway with a Bhagavad-gītā in my back pocket, waiting to meet a friend. Somehow we had chosen 26 Second Avenue as a meeting place. At that time, I had no idea what was about to happen.

It was July 1966. I often traveled on foot down Second Avenue between my office and where I lived. On Second Avenue, at the corner of Houston Street, was a little store, one of those nostalgia gift shops. Over the door was a painted sign, “Matchless Gifts.” In the store were matchboxes with pictures from the 1940’s Hollywood movies. One day while walking, I noticed that the gift shop was now empty. The “Matchless Gifts” sign was there, but the place was completely empty. There was a small piece of paper in the window announcing evening classes on the Bhagavad-gītā, by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. There was also a painting displayed in the window of holy persons dancing with their arms upraised. I was attracted because I had been reading the Bhagavad-gītā. - From With Śrīla Prabhupāda in the Early Days, 1966-1969: A Memoir Wikidās ॐ 21:30, 2 April 2008 (UTC) 19:08, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

An interesting passage

from authors website - a reminiscence from his childhood:

I never provoked any fights. I was a short, skinny kid. But somehow once my father sent boxing gloves home from the Pacific, and so I had these two pairs of boxing gloves. The other kids said I should engage in a boxing match with someone in the neighborhood. I went along with it and put on the boxing gloves and a pair of bathing shorts and a bathrobe. Another boy my size was picked to go outside by his house, and we would have a boxing fight of a number of rounds. I came out of our house and was cheered by some of the children, and we went over to the other boy’s house, and they cheered and waited for him to come out. It was really quite a bit of acting. We were acting like a big-event fight was to take place. I must have been in complete illusion, acting as if I was a fighter. I was mostly enamored by the color of the gloves and the fact that my father had sent them all the way from the Pacific, wanting me to put them on and fight. And lo and behold, the other boy did not come out of his house. I was declared winner and no one else came, so I ran home as the champion. I went back into the house and with great relief put the gloves away. Wikidās ॐ

Early years

Following it to be included:

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Satsvarupa dasa Goswami was born the eldest of two children to a Roman Catholic parents in New York, Staten Island. He was educated initially in public high school nearby and then managed to enroll in Brooklyn College, where, as he recalls, he underwent an intellectual revolution puting in question his Catholic values.

As soon as I went to college I underwent an intellectual revolution. Any religious sentiments I had gained from my mother were driven away by my college professors, who were dyed-in-the-wool Marxist intellectuals, Americans from the 1930s. They taught me their intellectual and atheistic views, and knocked aside my religious worship, saying it was sentimental. One of them said theology could never satisfactorily explain why evil was present in the world. I was attracted to their philosophy because my parents were not intellectual and had never aroused my intellectual capacity. But my professors opened up a whole new world for me. I became eager to study philosophy and literature. I came to see for myself that the church was hypocritical: in the foyer of our church the priests regularly raffled bottles of liquor (they called them “baskets of joy”). I became dissatisfied with the Catholic Church because it could not provide answers to my questions.

In January 1962 he joined the Navy, where he served for two years on board U.S.S. Saratoga, a super-carrier. Author writes in his introduction to With Śrīla Prabhupāda in the Early Days, 1966-1969: "A few months after the death of President Kennedy, I was honorably discharged, and without visiting my parents on Staten Island, I went directly to the Lower East Side. By then, the Lower East Side was, in my mind and in the minds of my friends, the most mystical place in the world." "I certainly didn’t think some guru was suddenly going to appear and save me. I was too cynical. Yet I was regularly reading versions of the Bhagavad-gītā and the Upaniṣads. Ironically, one week before the gift shop at 26 Second Avenue changed into Śrīla Prabhupāda’s temple, I was standing in that very doorway with a Bhagavad-gītā in my back pocket, waiting to meet a friend. Somehow we had chosen 26 Second Avenue as a meeting place. At that time, I had no idea what was about to happen."

In July 1966 he met and accepted spiritual instruction from A.C.Bhaktivedanta who registered ISKCON a month later. It in September 1966 he was ordained and shortly became one of the leading figures of the expanding Gaudiya Vaishnava movement.

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(Wikidās ॐ 12:15, 5 April 2008 (UTC))

Srila Prabhupada Nectar=

I have removed following references:

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• Satsvarupa, dasa Goswami (1985), Srila Prabhupada Nectar, Vol 3, Philadelphia: GN Press, Inc, ISBN 0-911233-24-5
• Satsvarupa, dasa Goswami (1985), Srila Prabhupada Nectar, Vol 4, Philadelphia: GN Press, Inc, ISBN 0-911233-29-6
• Satsvarupa, dasa Goswami (1987), Srila Prabhupada Nectar, Vol 5, Philadelphia: GN Press, Inc, ISBN 0-911233-22-9

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They can appear later in complete biblo.

Regards Wikidās ॐ 17:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

The article has 59 references (besides ISBN numbers of the Biblio. Thus To do, priority 4 applies. Wikidās ॐ 19:44, 5 April 2008 (UTC) ---

More on the sampradaya thing

So...

I know I'm stupid, but I really don't get: "This quality of the tradition is also confirmed by Srivatsa Goswami who also underlines that genuine intellectuals are often suppressed, but should follow the path of the Six Goswamis". What is this supposed to mean?

The whole Literary Contribution section was clumsy, and I think I improved it some, but I still don't understand it. Srivatsa says that intellectuals are suppressed but should follow the Goswamis? What's the point we're trying to make? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.91.98.56 (talk) 02:06, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Wiki Codes Jumbo?

I'm not a big Wiki dasa, but it seems that the style of editing this page is very clumsy. I mean the Wiki markup.

Most every page I edit is much simpler and whatever it is that people are doing different on this page makes it very hard to edit. There's an ocean of markup crap in the page rendering almost impossible to read and edit. Why is this page like that?

I though that was one of the points of a wiki is to avoid all the complicated coding. 75.91.98.56 (talk) 02:12, 23 June 2008 (UTC)