Talk:Ramakrishna/Archive 2

message: this was me. I got logged out somehow.  --goethean ॐ  15:05, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  anony edits 

message: The categorization is defined as:
In traditional authority, the legitimacy of the authority comes from tradition, in charismatic authority from the personality and leadership qualities of the individual (charisma), and in legal (or rational-legal) authority from powers that are bureaucratically and legally attached to certain positions. A classic example of these three types may be found in religion: priests (traditional), Jesus (charismatic), and the Roman Catholic Church (legal-rational). 
Ramakrishna Paramahmsa does not have a large following because of his traditional or legal authority. His followers are attracted by his personal qualities - he is a charismatic leader. I am reinserting category - if one person does not find him charismatic that does not merit removal. please discuss objections here.--Pranathi 23:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Charismatic leader 

message: The article needs copyediting and NPOV by means of attributing the material to one or more of the sections in "Biography" ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 19:33, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyedit and sources 

message: Article needs:
* NPOVing and attributions of assertions
* Sources
* Sources for quotations
≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 18:10, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleanup notice

message: why is "hindu renaissance" pointing to "bengal renaissance"? though they do overlap, they are not the same thing.--ppm 01:52, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  hindu renaissance 

message: It seems unfortunate that such an important article is so awfully written. Why does a biography need a elaborate explanation in the beginning why it should be considered authentic, instead of pointers to relevant sources? Not to mention the POV statements, which not only is not encyclopedic, but glosses over and hides the enormous social impact of Ramakrishna. The whole article is full of such exasperasting follies. --ppm 00:44, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I could not agree more with you, that is why the cleanup tags are there. Be bold and work on it to fix these very obvious problems. I can help a bit, time permitting. ≈ jossi fresco ≈ t • @ 02:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  some thoughts 

message: Thank you for your recent excellent additions/corrections to the article. Could you please add a list of the sources you are using to Ramakrishna#Sources? Thanks. ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 23:49, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent edits by [[User:Shmitra]] 

message: Why was the "initiation" section removed? ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 23:58, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits by Goethean 

message: can we have discussions before wholesale reversals? I hope we don't want to see an edit war here. --ppm 06:03, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I would also like to understand the reason for these wholesale reverts. Goethean, care to explain? ≈ jossi  ≈ t • @ 06:12, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  can we have discussions? 

message: It seems that some anon users have problem with the idea that Ramakrishna's contributions were multifaceted. Though there should be a substantial section descrining the religious perspectives (I started such a section), that is not all of what he was about and should be included in a encyclopedia.--ppm 06:12, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Many facets 

message: I deleted the sentence that incorrectly attributed the quote "He who as Rama, He who was Krishna. . ." to Swami Vivekananda. It was actually Sharatchandra Chakravarty who wrote that, quoting Vivekananda as saying Ramakrishna himself said it.  So not only is the sentence incorrect, but the quote itself is hearsay. --Smithfarm 19:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I deleted a sentence from the intro 

message: There is still a draft article at here and another here.  Can someone confirm that that drafts are now redundant and can be deleted - it is very confusing having both in existence. Kcordina  Talk  14:49, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I did a comparision of the 2 drafts, thru vim, and i found that both the articles are 99% same. i feel this one can be deleted. I need so time to  merge the other one with the main article, after which even this draft can be deleted. --vineeth 17:16, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Draft article 

message: I have deleted the repetitive sentence regarding J.kripal's book from the comtemporary influence paragraph.Bharatveer 08:17, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: oops...my mistake. Thanks. — goethean ॐ 15:21, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  repetition 

message: This edit needs to be reverted. It is against Wikipedia guidelines to introduce a book in the words of its most vulgar critic. Move Sil's words further down in the page. — goethean ॐ 02:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The editorial by Narasingha Sil, a notable scholar, in a Calcutta paper is central to the controversy around the book, and therefore notable. There is no Wikipedia policy about introducing books with only testimonials and awards. ~ priyanath talk 02:39, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  In fact, Sil started it with his article in the Statesman.  The journal reviews followed, the RISA community defending one of its own.  Otherwise, the book was headed for well-deserved mediocrity. rudra (talk) 12:19, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: FYI --- I don't know (and don't care to know) exactly what your beef is with academia (/Western academics/religious scholars/rationality in general), but the constant sniping and editorializing is off topic and frankly a waste of everyone's time. Your comments will be read more closely and taken more seriously if they are on topic. — goethean ॐ 15:52, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  FYI, I have no "beef" with "western academics" or "rationality in general".  As for "religious scholars", there are the scholarly and there are those who play them on TV.  That distinction, in fact, was the real controversy. rudra (talk) 04:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you expect Wikipedia to enshrine your impression that American scholars of South Asian religion are frauds? — goethean ॐ 15:56, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There are many notable American scholars of South Asian religion who are not frauds—in fact some are quoted in this article. Kripal's extremely dodgy scholarship and use of psychoanalysis (arguably fraudulent, since he has no training) have been called out by the most notable of those scholars. ~ priyanath talk 19:21, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  See this for some spot-on commentary.  The problem seems endemic, but it's especially acute in South Asian "religious studies".  Hiding the RISA-L archives (after the Courtright affair) was the result of a rare and remarkable moment of introspection for the narcissists preponderating that list. rudra (talk) 04:38, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: So you don't like Freudian hermeneutics. Just as importantly, I don't like chocolate ice cream. — goethean ॐ 16:19, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverting by Priyanath 

message: The POV templates can be removed as far as I'm concerned. — goethean ॐ 15:46, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm traveling and won't be able to look or comment until late Monday. ~ priyanath talk 02:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Templates 

message: I believe Sil's 1998 book has a discussion of the sources, including secondary material in works not focused on Ramakrishna.  The primary biographical works, based on direct acquaintance, are four: first, Ramchandra Dutta's jivanavṛttānta, part of which was published even before RK's death (in 1885).  Translations exist, but none that could be considered reliable, AFAIK.  The second and third are intertwined: Mahendranath Gupta's 5 volumes of kathāmṛta taking many years to be published, and in the meantime, Swami Saradananda's "official" (from the POV of the RK Mission) biography, the lilāprasanga.  Multiple translations exist for both. (There is a story that Saradananda was commissioned by Vivekananda because the latter considered Ramchandra's work "rot".)  The fourth is Akshay Kumar Sen's śrīśrīrāmkṛṣṇa punthi, often discounted as it was written in verse with obvious hagiographical intent. rudra (talk) 18:18, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  (Note: chronologically, Sen's punthi is the second, published in various parts during the 1890s.) rudra (talk) 21:02, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Have you read Kripal's account of how the kathamrta was written, in which M was running out of material and so he ended up putting the secret talk in volumes 4 and 5? — goethean ॐ 19:31, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  The appendix (p.329-336)?  I'm not sure that's what Kripal says.  I read him to be saying that the secret talks are in the later volumes because M was reluctant to reveal them (i.e. deliberately passed over them while gathering material from his diaries for the early volumes).  The argument that the secret talks are in the later volumes because M had run out of material doesn't strike me as cogent, because had he been reluctant, he could simply have not written those volumes at all. rudra (talk) 20:57, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I re-read the appendix, and I mis-remembered it in my comment above. Kripal says that M's "audacity" in what he revealed was progressively increasing in the later volumes. Kripal says on 332 that M was running out of material, but that only explains the shorter length of volume 5 and of the scenes in v. 5. — goethean ॐ 14:29, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

text: see here. What was Saradananda's real name? — goethean ॐ 22:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Saradananda's real name was Sarat Chandra Chakravarty. "Alasinga" I believe is Alasinga Perumal, one of Vivekananda's "householder" (i.e. lay person) friends in Madras. rudra (talk) 15:15, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

text: The question is whether "My Master" is a source of accurate information on Ramakrishna. Sil says 'no'. If you have an opinion on this matter from a reliable source, please add it to the article. — goethean ॐ 22:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources 

message: For completeness, my (unscholarly, unverifiable, unreliable, etc) take on these translations. (See also Tyagananda's notes 55 and 141.) The verbal construction "nā kar'le thākte pārtām nā", involving a double negation and two infinitive forms, is by no means simple.  In terms of verbal roots, kar="do", thak="stay" and par="be able".  So na kar'le="without doing" in the sense of "without having to do" and thakte partam na="couldn't have stayed".  The issue, thus, is why RK literally "couldn't have stayed without doing [whatever]".  In Kripal's book (p.161), Kripal provides his own initial take on the context by scare-quoting "forced".  In other words, in the original Bengali passage (about the rituals arranged by the Bhairavi), there is an implication that RK was a reluctant participant, only that Kripal doesn't believe it which is why he uses "forced" in quotes, to suggest that RK really wasn't reluctant.  But what if he was?  Then the translated passage means that he had to do whatever in order to remain (and perhaps learn more from the Bhairavi).  There is an enormous amount of interpretive uncertainty that has been lost. rudra (talk) 03:07, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, to be fair, Hatcher's rendering of this as "couldn't resist", generally agreeing with Kripal, isn't outlandish, in that they're reading RK's statement as an emphatic affirmation (which, in theory, would be a matter of tone in the delivery, as double negations of this type can be used to that effect idiomatically, i.e. a form of litotes).  However, there is a subtlety.  For the affirmative tone, it would have been idiomatically more correct for RK to have said "nā kare thākte pārtām nā" (literally "couldn't have stayed without doing" in the sense of "without having done").  The difference between na kar'le and na kare is the degree of volition connoted. I would suggest presenting both verbal phrases (the actual and the alternative) to Bengalis you know. rudra (talk) 03:32, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Final note, on sei avasthay.  Hatcher translates this as "In that condition", which is not wrong, but arguably inaccurate.  Better is "in that situation", i.e "under those circumstances". The difference has to do with whether "avastha" refers principally to RK's internal/personal state (which is how Hatcher and Kripal take it) or to the context (having to learn those rituals from the Bhairavi). rudra (talk) 04:17, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation of Hatcher text 

message: Did you see this link? I had posted it earlier above as well. A complete translation of Kathamrita, in original format (that is, volume by volume, not chronologically) that claims to be "word for word". US$60. Devadaru (talk) 03:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I saw it. Four of the five reviewers are swamis. The swamis have proven themselves to be perfectly disinformative on the subject of SRK. Thanks, but since one exists, I'd rather spend my money on a scholarly version. — goethean ॐ 04:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

text: By the way, there is some Western scholarship coming in relation to Ramakrishna that has nothing to do with any kind of perceived "ambiguous sexuality", like Jeffrey Long's—see this blog, or Amazon.com Devadaru (talk) 03:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Whether SRK's sexuality was ambiguous is not in question. Every single scholar — McLean, Larson, Radice, Roy, Urban, Hawley, Hatcher, Kakar, Sarkar, Sil, Kripal — agree that there was something odd about SRK's sexuality. And Bhattacharyya and Tyagnananda conveniently decline to comment on the subject. You can believe whatever you want, but until new reliable sources to the contrary are brought forth, the question is closed. — goethean ॐ 04:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  "Something odd" actually applies to practically everything about him.  He could have been clinically insane -- from childhood in fact.  rudra (talk) 04:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kathamrita translation, forthcoming scholarship 

message: Too much in the last section. Please cut down on it, particularly the bits published by Sulekha. --Relata refero (disp.) 20:25, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the Roland material is only tangentially related to Ramakrishna and should be cut back. But none of it is referenced to Sulekha. — goethean ॐ 20:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right, it's a conference paper that was subsequently posted on Sulekha and reprinted in their little guide to egg-throwing. Interesting: Concerning my own personal experience, after encountering the writings of Swami Vivekananda at nineteen, I spent the next three and a half years in the early 1950s immersed in Indian philosophy, with Antioch College work periods at centers and ashrams of the Ramakrishna Order; at a Press run by Theosophists who published the weekly, Manas; and at a mountain retreat of Meher Baba, a Sufi, in the Ojai Valley. While on campus, I studied with an Indian professor, M. N. Chatterjee, who was a practicing Vedantist. I would think that's pretty relevant. Sigh. --Relata refero (disp.) 21:08, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Where did you find that? I found it. — goethean ॐ 21:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Roland 

message: Per Relata refero's suggestion above, does Invading the Sacred qualify as a reliable source? Has it been reviewed in a noteworthy publication? If so, Amazon doesn't seem to know about it. Amazon quotes several reviews but not the publications in which they were published. Four of our footnotes (68, 69, 77, 80) are derived from this source. — goethean ॐ 01:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Antonio de Nicolas is definitely notable, and religion is his field. Three of the footnotes are to Roland, who is also notable.  The other one is to Somnath Bhattacharyya.  His professional qualifications aren't in doubt, but he has had no impact as an academic. (The real problem, though, is that his Infinity Foundation essay isn't really reproduced in the book; instead it's a very close textual commentary on that essay -- more a paraphrase, actually -- by Yvette Rosser, which winds up quoting about 90% of the essay anyway.  That's iffy. But all this is more relevant to Kali's Child.)  Does any of this matter?  I don't know.  The book was published in India, and reviewed in some Indian newspapers.  Publicity in the West has been zero, as is normal for anything from India not suitable for genteel left-liberal literary tastes in the West.  Considering its contents, the RS establishment will give it a wide berth (much too emic for their etic sensibilities), so no reviews are likely to be seen in the usual round of journals either.   So, if someone wants to wikilawyer the issue, the book could be "unreliabled" away, I think.  I predict that outcome if the issue were posted to WP:RS/N (just one "Hindutva!" smear will be enough to sink it.) rudra (talk) 03:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If it was reviewed in Indian newspapers, it ashould be ok. I still wonder why Amazon doesn't quote these reviews, however. Maybe they weren't enthusiastic enough. — goethean ॐ 14:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever seen a review from an Indian newspaper on Amazon.  Though that would be odd: Times of India, Indian Express, The Hindu and perhaps some others aren't unknown. rudra (talk) 15:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It's even stranger when you consider that its not Amazon which is doing the research. Presumably, publishers give Amazon the blurbs along with the book specs. Maybe Amazon doesn't accept blurbs from foreign newspapers because they are afraid that publishers could just make stuff up, and Amazon can't check them. — goethean ॐ 15:42, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Looks like Rupa Press dropped the ball, then.  Meanwhile, the book has a website with a "News and Media" page. rudra (talk) 16:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''Invading the Sacred'' as source 

message: Does anyone have any idea if the ellipses in this letter are in the original, or if text has been removed? — goethean ॐ 14:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops, it's those blasted framesets again, nasty critters.  If you can untangle the real URL, that would be good, but it could be easier just to give the relevant navigation. rudra (talk) 16:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Volume 5 -> Epistles - First Series -> XXII Alasinga — goethean ॐ 17:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Browsing through a few letters, I think the ellipses correspond to removed text. rudra (talk) 16:54, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, the work of those industrious swamis again, with their "nobility of character, dedication to truth and honesty, and other fine character traits." And this in the so-called Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Can they publish anything without butchering it? — goethean ॐ 17:10, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vivekananda's letters 

message: I strongly disagree with the statement regarding the ambiguous sexuality of Sriramakrishna Paramhansadev. People 
who are trying to ruin His world wide acceptance as the pioneer of harmonious blending of all religions, the God of universal love, for them I would like to say Father forgive them they not know what they are saying. May God enlighten these people !! who doubts on the sexuality of universal love becuase in one word Sriramakrishna is love personified.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.189.188.35 (talk) 03:09, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see Wikipedia:Key policies and guidelines. — goethean ॐ 16:39, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  New section