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Saturday, September 29, 2012

Re: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE



Water is not nirakar as God is.

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 8:14 AM, Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com> wrote:
 


Who is saying God is water and living-beings are sugar? Water is just an example of a formless entity. What are you talking about? Who can give scientific argument about God?  I gave logical argument, and you should know the difference.

Jiten Roy
--- On Sat, 9/29/12, subimal chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: subimal chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Saturday, September 29, 2012, 7:34 PM

 
A living being is not sugar and God is not water. Nothing can be more imperfect than the analogy you are drawing. By using this analogy you are simply sidetracking my question: "----can we really claim that the former position is scientifically more tenable than the latter?"
Science for atheists cannot be different from that of the theists. 

From: Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2012 5:49 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE
 
Is he a knowledgeable believer who believes that after death a person merges with God?
 
As per Hinduism, a soul is liberated only when it is able to merge with God. If you believe in formless God, then you should know that - only a formless entity can merge with another formless entity. A living being can attain formlessness only after death, not before.  For example, without being soluble in water nothing can merge with water. This is a very simple logic. If someone attains this knowledge, he/she would be considered a knowledgeable believer. Again, this is not valid for atheists.
Jiten Roy
--- On Sat, 9/29/12, Subimal Chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Subimal Chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Saturday, September 29, 2012, 8:35 AM

 
Interesting phrases: knowledgeable versus ignorant believers. Is he a knowledgeable believer who believes that after death a person merges with God? What about those believers who believe that after death people go either to heaven or hell depending on what were his actions in this world? I agree that the former group is intellectually superior to the latter group, but can we really claim that the former position is scientifically more tenable than the latter? 
Sent from my iPhone
On Sep 28, 2012, at 6:20 PM, Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

Only when someone wants to think beyond formless God can make sense out of this logic. The existence of someone does not die as they die. In fact, deceased individual becomes formless entity, and merges with God thereafter. Although an individual attains formless state, its presence is always felt by its loved ones. Communication with God is something like this also, in which people communicate with an invisible entity.
 
Formless entity can assume any imaginary form. That's how the idea of numerous images of God came into being. Hinduism gives liberty to everyone to define his/her own image of the God; that includes not defining any image at all also.
 
When I said that - the idea of formless God is universally accepted, I meant - among the knowledgeable believers, not the ignorant ones. Non-believers have no reason to think about God. 
 
Jiten Roy
 
--- On Thu, 9/27/12, Subimal Chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Subimal Chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012, 11:40 PM

 
That God exists is itself a refutable hypothesis. Hypotheses about different forms of God are based on a hypothesis that is still up in the air. Given these facts, the phrase "universally accepted" does not make any sense.  Sent from my iPhone
On Sep 27, 2012, at 9:58 PM, Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com> wrote:
 
It is universally acknowledged that God has no image; it's a formless entity. However, being formless also means it can take any form in which it is present. For example, liquid has no form of its own. As a result, it can take any form in which it is put in. The question is how far you want to advance your thought, and there is no victory line for those who do not want to go beyond formless God.
Jiten Roy

--- On Thu, 9/27/12, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com>
Subject: [mukto-mona] FW: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE
To:
Date: Thursday, September 27, 2012, 7:01 PM

 
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:04:08 +0100 Subject: FIGHTING OVER GOD'S IMAGE---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Hasan Essa <hasniessa@yahoo.com>
Op-Ed Contributors

Fighting Over God's Image

Mark Pernice
By EDWARD J. BLUM and PAUL HARVEY
Published: September 26, 2012
THE murders of four Americans over an amateurish online video about Muhammad, like the attempted murder of a Danish cartoonist who in 2005 had depicted the prophet with a bomb in his turban, have left many Americans confused, angry and fearful about the rage that some Muslims feel about visual representations of their sacred figures.

Related in Opinion

 
For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.
The confusion stems, in part, from the ubiquity of sacred images in American culture. God, Jesus, Moses, Buddha and other holy figures are displayed in movies, cartoons and churches and on living room walls. We place them on T-shirts and bumper stickers — and even tattoo them on our skin.
 
But Americans have had their own history of conflict, some of it deadly, over displays of the sacred. The path toward civil debate over such representation is neither short nor easy.
 
The United States was settled, in part, by radical Protestant iconoclasts from Britain who considered the creation and use of sacred imagery to be a violation of the Second Commandment against graven images. The anti-Catholic colonists at Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay refused to put images of Jesus in their churches and meetinghouses. They scratched out crosses in books. In the early 1740s, English officials even marched on an Indian community in western Connecticut, where they cross-examined Moravian missionaries who reportedly had a book with "the picture of our Saviour in it."
 
The colonists feared Catholic infiltration from British-controlled Canada. Shortly after the Boston Tea Party, a Connecticut pastor warned that if the British succeeded, the colonists would have their Bibles taken from them and be compelled to "pray to the Virgin Mary, worship images, believe the doctrine of Purgatory, and the Pope's infallibility."
 
It was not only Protestants who opposed sacred imagery. In the Southwest, Pueblo Indians who waged war against Spanish colonizers not only burned and dismembered some crucifixes, but even defecated on them.
 
In the early Republic, many Americans avoided depicting Jesus or God in any form. The painter Washington Alliston spoke for many artists of the 1810s when he said, "I think his character too holy and sacred to be attempted by the pencil." A visiting Russian diplomat, Pavel Svinin, was amazed at the prevalence of a different image: George Washington's. "Every American considers it his sacred duty to have a likeness of Washington in his home," he wrote, "just as we have images of God's saints."
 
Only in the late 19th century did images of God and Jesus become commonplace in churches, Sunday school books, Bibles and homes. There were many forces at work: steam printing presses; new canals and railroads; and, not least, the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Catholics who brought with them an array of crucifixes, Madonnas and busts of saints. Protestants began producing their own images — often, to appeal to children — and gradually became more comfortable with holy images. In the 20th century, the United States began exporting such images, most notably Warner Sallman's 1941 "Head of Christ," which is one of the most reproduced images in world history.
But there was also resistance. When Hollywood first started portraying Jesus in films, one fundamentalist Christian fumed, "The picturing of the life and sufferings of our Savior by these institutions falls nothing short of blasphemy." Vernon E. Jordan Jr., an African-American who was later president of the National Urban League and an adviser to President Bill Clinton, recalled that white audience members gasped when he played Jesus as an undergraduate at DePauw University in Indiana in the 1950s.
 
In fact, race has been a constant source of conflict over American depictions of Jesus. In Philadelphia in the 1930s, the black street preacher F. S. Cherry stormed into African-American churches and pointed at paintings or prints of white Christs, shouting, as one observer recounted, "Who in the hell is this? Nobody knows! They say it is Jesus. That's a damned lie!"
 
During the civil rights era, black-power advocates and liberation theologians excoriated white images of the sacred. A 1967 "Declaration of Black Churchmen" demanded "the removal of all images which suggest that God is white." As racial violence enveloped Detroit that year, African-American residents painted the white faces of Catholic icons black.
 
More recently, there have been uproars over the Nigerian-British painter Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary" and the New York artist and photographer Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ." Mr. Serrano's image of Jesus on the crucifix, submerged in the artist's own urine, roused a crusade against the National Endowment for the Arts in the late 1980s. Mr. Ofili's painting of a dark-skinned Madonna with photographs of vaginas surrounding her enraged Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. The mayor, who mistakenly claimed that elephant dung was smeared on the image when it in fact was used at the base to hold the painting up, tried to ban it from being displayed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, in 1999. (One upset Christian smeared white paint over it.)
 
Images of the sacred haven't caused mass violence in the United States, but they have




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Re: [mukto-mona] ‘A Man among men...’ -- Swami Vivekananda



I have never said that his memory of financial distress during a period of his life helped him become Vivekananda. As a matter fact he had a natural tendency towards religion. He used to sing in greater Tagore family's Brahma congregation. I simply said that his memory might have influence on how he interpreted Vedanta to include serving the weakest sections of the Indian society. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 29, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:

 

"when he passed his B.A examination, he was in acute financial distress."

Who would not have that distress in the Indian subcontinent? That is what made the young Dutta to a Vivekananda! He had the fire in his belly and Ramakrishna only catalyzed the reaction. He would not have died from starvation! And, that version of the story I do not buy. People can write plenty of stuff about him but we would not get any real scoop of his crisis what he really faced at that time. That could have only come from the man himself.
-SD



 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS

From: subimal chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com>
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: "bangladesh-progressives@googlegroups.com" <bangladesh-progressives@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2012 12:11 AM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
I have in my collection a book titled "Chintanayak Vivekananda". It is a compilation of articles on Vivekananda by distinguished scholars like R.C. Majumdar, Suniniti Chatterjee, Gandhi, Nehru, Zakir Hossain, and others. The writers have shed light on various aspects of Viveknanda's life and works. Obviously Vivekananda was a not a little man. He has been praised by Tolstoy, Romain Rolland, Rabindranath, Aurobinda, and many other great people. He was a multifaceted genius. I have read his prose that one may confuse with Rabindranath's prose used in "Chhinnapatra". Any way, let me come to the point. The book I have referred to has mentioned that when he passed his B.A examination, he was in acute financial distress. His family also was going through some sort of trouble. In order to overcome economic crisis he went to Kali mandir to pray. He was at that time 21. Ramkrishna assured him that he would help him overcome the crisis. He got a job in an attorny's office. He also started translating books. Probably he never forgot the economic crisis he went through. That is one of the reasons why his religion and philosophy mainly centered around the poor and the weaker sections of the society. Rabindranath said to Romain Rolland: If you want to know India, know Vivekananda. Every thing in him is positive, nothing is negative. I would not be surprised if Rabindranath was influenced by him in writing poems that emphasised on serving the poor as a substitute for serving God (God lives among the poor and those who have lost every thing).    

From: Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com>
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: "bangladesh-progressives@googlegroups.com" <bangladesh-progressives@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 7:04 AM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Why not talk about how Vivekananda faced starvation right after his graduation from Calcutta University? Is that your own fantasy or you read that in somebody's fictional work?  Answer the question or get lost, you pos!
-SD

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 10:07 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Read any standard biography on Vivekananda, and stop posting internet materials like a Muslim fundamentalist does in this forum.  Such writings are worth no more than toilet papers.  No saint sues his mother for a share in paternal property, as Vivekananda did.  But many follow his example of getting laid with female devotee.

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 
It sounds pretty odd to me that an newly graduated young man from an aristocratic family faced starvation because he could not find a suitable employment? Who has been feeding you with such information?
-SD


 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 1:33 AM

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
"All doors were open to him when he graduated from Calcutta University."

 - Not really, he tried to find an employment, and didn't find any.  Starvation and other deprivation was a common experience to him.  He visited Dakshineswar to have a free meal.  Ultimately, he found out, no business is as good as the one with religion.  He wasn't much of a saint.  His relation with Sister Nivedita had been questioned during his lifetime by the monks of his own congregation.  Besides, he used to brag about relishing non-traditional food forbidden among his coreligionists.  Though there is no scope of avatar, according to the Veda, he declared Ramakrishna as the best of them.

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:
Rishi Bankim, however, irrelevant here, was not much more than another overblown icon.


On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
           Thanks for the mention of this important book.  I have not read the book, but I have heard Narasingha Shil present a pre-publication paper at the Bengal Studies Conference (held that year at SUNY) on Vivekananda which convincingly exploded all the myths surrounding this con-man god-man.  Narasingha is a great iconoclast, intelligent and funny, and a terrific 'adda-baj'. We became friends, and at another BS Conference he presented another hit at another Bengali icon -- Rishi Bankim.  I later told him that, unlike Vivekananda, Bankim did not consciously or dishonestly create his own Rishi image. His Rishi-ization and even the hinduization of Bande Mataram were done by communal politics long after his death. Narasingha accepted my explanations, and later, when he read my own completed article criticizing Gauri Vishwanathan book with evidences cited from Bankim, he praised it profusely in an e-mail,  and stopped criticizing Bankim.

               Farida Majid
        

To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
From: kamalctgu@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 07:45:37 +0600
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda


 
One should read "Vivekananda Reassessed" - Narasingha P. Shil [Susquehenna University Press] to have a better understanding of him.


On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Sudhir-Architect <ar_sudhirkumar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

120 years on, Swami Vivekananda's fiery speech at the Parliament of Religions is still fresh in
memory.This month marks the 120th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda's participation in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago.

It is appropriate to celebrate this great event through the month for a simple reason. While it is generally well-known that young Vivekananda had to sleep on a sidewalk in Chicago before being discovered and given a place to stay, what


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Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
Call For Articles:

http://mukto-mona.com/wordpress/?p=68

http://mukto-mona.com/banga_blog/?p=585

****************************************************

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****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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Re: [mukto-mona] ‘A Man among men...’ -- Swami Vivekananda



I have mentioned the names of some of the authors. Also I have mentioned who made positive comments on him. Now it is up to you to decide if you want to agree with them or not. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 29, 2012, at 9:23 PM, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Distinguished scholars have in the past praised many without much of a reason.  See through your own eyes if you can, should a monk sue his mother for a share of paternal property?  Should one call himself  a monk without renouncing worldly assets?  A complete crackpot, like Ramakrishna (who had no knowledge of the scripture) has been made the best avatar by such persons.  Who, by the way, edited the book you possess.  Is it somebody of the Ramakrishna mission?  It may be interesting for you to know that about three decades ago, the cult applied to the Government of India to be treated as a minority religion in order to enjoy some financial benefits.  I am sure, even the founders of the cult would find it amusing.

On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 10:11 AM, subimal chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

I have in my collection a book titled "Chintanayak Vivekananda". It is a compilation of articles on Vivekananda by distinguished scholars like R.C. Majumdar, Suniniti Chatterjee, Gandhi, Nehru, Zakir Hossain, and others. The writers have shed light on various aspects of Viveknanda's life and works. Obviously Vivekananda was a not a little man. He has been praised by Tolstoy, Romain Rolland, Rabindranath, Aurobinda, and many other great people. He was a multifaceted genius. I have read his prose that one may confuse with Rabindranath's prose used in "Chhinnapatra". Any way, let me come to the point. The book I have referred to has mentioned that when he passed his B.A examination, he was in acute financial distress. His family also was going through some sort of trouble. In order to overcome economic crisis he went to Kali mandir to pray. He was at that time 21. Ramkrishna assured him that he would help him overcome the crisis. He got a job in an attorny's office. He also started translating books. Probably he never forgot the economic crisis he went through. That is one of the reasons why his religion and philosophy mainly centered around the poor and the weaker sections of the society. Rabindranath said to Romain Rolland: If you want to know India, know Vivekananda. Every thing in him is positive, nothing is negative. I would not be surprised if Rabindranath was influenced by him in writing poems that emphasised on serving the poor as a substitute for serving God (God lives among the poor and those who have lost every thing).    

From: Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com>Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 7:04 AM

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Why not talk about how Vivekananda faced starvation right after his graduation from Calcutta University? Is that your own fantasy or you read that in somebody's fictional work?  Answer the question or get lost, you pos!
-SD

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 10:07 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Read any standard biography on Vivekananda, and stop posting internet materials like a Muslim fundamentalist does in this forum.  Such writings are worth no more than toilet papers.  No saint sues his mother for a share in paternal property, as Vivekananda did.  But many follow his example of getting laid with female devotee.

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 
It sounds pretty odd to me that an newly graduated young man from an aristocratic family faced starvation because he could not find a suitable employment? Who has been feeding you with such information?
-SD


 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 1:33 AM

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
"All doors were open to him when he graduated from Calcutta University."

 - Not really, he tried to find an employment, and didn't find any.  Starvation and other deprivation was a common experience to him.  He visited Dakshineswar to have a free meal.  Ultimately, he found out, no business is as good as the one with religion.  He wasn't much of a saint.  His relation with Sister Nivedita had been questioned during his lifetime by the monks of his own congregation.  Besides, he used to brag about relishing non-traditional food forbidden among his coreligionists.  Though there is no scope of avatar, according to the Veda, he declared Ramakrishna as the best of them.

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:
Rishi Bankim, however, irrelevant here, was not much more than another overblown icon.


On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
           Thanks for the mention of this important book.  I have not read the book, but I have heard Narasingha Shil present a pre-publication paper at the Bengal Studies Conference (held that year at SUNY) on Vivekananda which convincingly exploded all the myths surrounding this con-man god-man.  Narasingha is a great iconoclast, intelligent and funny, and a terrific 'adda-baj'. We became friends, and at another BS Conference he presented another hit at another Bengali icon -- Rishi Bankim.  I later told him that, unlike Vivekananda, Bankim did not consciously or dishonestly create his own Rishi image. His Rishi-ization and even the hinduization of Bande Mataram were done by communal politics long after his death. Narasingha accepted my explanations, and later, when he read my own completed article criticizing Gauri Vishwanathan book with evidences cited from Bankim, he praised it profusely in an e-mail,  and stopped criticizing Bankim.

               Farida Majid
        

To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
From: kamalctgu@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 07:45:37 +0600
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda


 
One should read "Vivekananda Reassessed" - Narasingha P. Shil [Susquehenna University Press] to have a better understanding of him.


On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Sudhir-Architect <ar_sudhirkumar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

120 years on, Swami Vivekananda's fiery speech at the Parliament of Religions is still fresh in
memory.This month marks the 120th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda's participation in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago.

It is appropriate to celebrate this great event through the month for a simple reason. While it is generally well-known that young Vivekananda had to sleep on a sidewalk in Chicago before being discovered and given a place to stay, what is less known is that his first lecture there on September 11, 1893, catapulted him to such a great stature that the organisers had to invite him to address the gathering every day during that fortnight!

A participant of that conference said, "When the audience was bored with the tedious elo


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Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
Call For Articles:

http://mukto-mona.com/wordpress/?p=68

http://mukto-mona.com/banga_blog/?p=585

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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Re: [mukto-mona] ‘A Man among men...’ -- Swami Vivekananda



You have to see Vivekananda's life as a dynamic process. What he did at the age of 21(actually I do not know the real story) should not be treated as every thing what Vivekananda did. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 29, 2012, at 9:23 PM, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Distinguished scholars have in the past praised many without much of a reason.  See through your own eyes if you can, should a monk sue his mother for a share of paternal property?  Should one call himself  a monk without renouncing worldly assets?  A complete crackpot, like Ramakrishna (who had no knowledge of the scripture) has been made the best avatar by such persons.  Who, by the way, edited the book you possess.  Is it somebody of the Ramakrishna mission?  It may be interesting for you to know that about three decades ago, the cult applied to the Government of India to be treated as a minority religion in order to enjoy some financial benefits.  I am sure, even the founders of the cult would find it amusing.

On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 10:11 AM, subimal chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

I have in my collection a book titled "Chintanayak Vivekananda". It is a compilation of articles on Vivekananda by distinguished scholars like R.C. Majumdar, Suniniti Chatterjee, Gandhi, Nehru, Zakir Hossain, and others. The writers have shed light on various aspects of Viveknanda's life and works. Obviously Vivekananda was a not a little man. He has been praised by Tolstoy, Romain Rolland, Rabindranath, Aurobinda, and many other great people. He was a multifaceted genius. I have read his prose that one may confuse with Rabindranath's prose used in "Chhinnapatra". Any way, let me come to the point. The book I have referred to has mentioned that when he passed his B.A examination, he was in acute financial distress. His family also was going through some sort of trouble. In order to overcome economic crisis he went to Kali mandir to pray. He was at that time 21. Ramkrishna assured him that he would help him overcome the crisis. He got a job in an attorny's office. He also started translating books. Probably he never forgot the economic crisis he went through. That is one of the reasons why his religion and philosophy mainly centered around the poor and the weaker sections of the society. Rabindranath said to Romain Rolland: If you want to know India, know Vivekananda. Every thing in him is positive, nothing is negative. I would not be surprised if Rabindranath was influenced by him in writing poems that emphasised on serving the poor as a substitute for serving God (God lives among the poor and those who have lost every thing).    

From: Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com>Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 7:04 AM

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Why not talk about how Vivekananda faced starvation right after his graduation from Calcutta University? Is that your own fantasy or you read that in somebody's fictional work?  Answer the question or get lost, you pos!
-SD

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 10:07 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Read any standard biography on Vivekananda, and stop posting internet materials like a Muslim fundamentalist does in this forum.  Such writings are worth no more than toilet papers.  No saint sues his mother for a share in paternal property, as Vivekananda did.  But many follow his example of getting laid with female devotee.

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 
It sounds pretty odd to me that an newly graduated young man from an aristocratic family faced starvation because he could not find a suitable employment? Who has been feeding you with such information?
-SD


 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 1:33 AM

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
"All doors were open to him when he graduated from Calcutta University."

 - Not really, he tried to find an employment, and didn't find any.  Starvation and other deprivation was a common experience to him.  He visited Dakshineswar to have a free meal.  Ultimately, he found out, no business is as good as the one with religion.  He wasn't much of a saint.  His relation with Sister Nivedita had been questioned during his lifetime by the monks of his own congregation.  Besides, he used to brag about relishing non-traditional food forbidden among his coreligionists.  Though there is no scope of avatar, according to the Veda, he declared Ramakrishna as the best of them.

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:
Rishi Bankim, however, irrelevant here, was not much more than another overblown icon.


On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
           Thanks for the mention of this important book.  I have not read the book, but I have heard Narasingha Shil present a pre-publication paper at the Bengal Studies Conference (held that year at SUNY) on Vivekananda which convincingly exploded all the myths surrounding this con-man god-man.  Narasingha is a great iconoclast, intelligent and funny, and a terrific 'adda-baj'. We became friends, and at another BS Conference he presented another hit at another Bengali icon -- Rishi Bankim.  I later told him that, unlike Vivekananda, Bankim did not consciously or dishonestly create his own Rishi image. His Rishi-ization and even the hinduization of Bande Mataram were done by communal politics long after his death. Narasingha accepted my explanations, and later, when he read my own completed article criticizing Gauri Vishwanathan book with evidences cited from Bankim, he praised it profusely in an e-mail,  and stopped criticizing Bankim.

               Farida Majid
        

To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
From: kamalctgu@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 07:45:37 +0600
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda


 
One should read "Vivekananda Reassessed" - Narasingha P. Shil [Susquehenna University Press] to have a better understanding of him.


On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Sudhir-Architect <ar_sudhirkumar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

120 years on, Swami Vivekananda's fiery speech at the Parliament of Religions is still fresh in
memory.This month marks the 120th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda's participation in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago.

It is appropriate to celebrate this great event through the month for a simple reason. While it is generally well-known that young Vivekananda had to sleep on a sidewalk in Chicago before being discovered and given a place to stay, what is less known is that his first lecture there on September 11, 1893, catapulted him to such a great stature that the organisers had to invite him to address the gathering every day during that fortnight!

A participant of that conference said, "When the audience was bored with the tedious elo


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Re: [mukto-mona] ‘A Man among men...’ -- Swami Vivekananda



That the Christian missionaries used this as a trick does not invalidate the greatness of this great teaching. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 29, 2012, at 9:29 PM, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:

 

"serving the poor as serving the God"- It is essentially an attitude of the Christian missionary and by no means an invention by the Swami.  By such tricks, the Church conquered Africa.  The Africans lament, when they came with the Bible, we had the land, after a while the possession was reversed, i.e., they had the land and we had the bible.

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 4:24 AM, Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

…. serving the poor as a substitute for serving God (God lives among the poor and those who have lost every thing.

The phrase "serving the poor as serving the God" is the same as – help thy neighbors in need. All these mean help whoever needs helps, irrespective of rich and poor. Obviously, the poor surely need help, but – rich may need help also. If someone does not help a rich in need of help, he/she would commit bad karma.

God lives among the poor is incorrect interpretation, I believe. Rich and poor are all created by the same God. In fact – it is more logical to think that God lives/likes the rich much more than the poor; how else could they become rich. I believe someone coined the phrase 'God loves the poor' as a consolation for the poor. It's not a logical argument. Helping the peole in need is always a good karma, and God would undoubtedly be pleased whoever serves that duty.
 
Jiten Roy


--- On Sat, 9/29/12, subimal chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: subimal chakrabarty <subimal@yahoo.com>

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda
Date: Saturday, September 29, 2012, 12:11 AM


 
I have in my collection a book titled "Chintanayak Vivekananda". It is a compilation of articles on Vivekananda by distinguished scholars like R.C. Majumdar, Suniniti Chatterjee, Gandhi, Nehru, Zakir Hossain, and others. The writers have shed light on various aspects of Viveknanda's life and works. Obviously Vivekananda was a not a little man. He has been praised by Tolstoy, Romain Rolland, Rabindranath, Aurobinda, and many other great people. He was a multifaceted genius. I have read his prose that one may confuse with Rabindranath's prose used in "Chhinnapatra". Any way, let me come to the point. The book I have referred to has mentioned that when he passed his B.A examination, he was in acute financial distress. His family also was going through some sort of trouble. In order to overcome economic crisis he went to Kali mandir to pray. He was at that time 21. Ramkrishna assured him that he would help him overcome the crisis. He got a job in an attorny's office. He also started translating books. Probably he never forgot the economic crisis he went through. That is one of the reasons why his religion and philosophy mainly centered around the poor and the weaker sections of the society. Rabindranath said to Romain Rolland: If you want to know India, know Vivekananda. Every thing in him is positive, nothing is negative. I would not be surprised if Rabindranath was influenced by him in writing poems that emphasised on serving the poor as a substitute for serving God (God lives among the poor and those who have lost every thing).    

From: Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com>
To: "mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: "bangladesh-progressives@googlegroups.com" <bangladesh-progressives@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 7:04 AM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Why not talk about how Vivekananda faced starvation right after his graduation from Calcutta University? Is that your own fantasy or you read that in somebody's fictional work?  Answer the question or get lost, you pos!
-SD

 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 10:07 PM
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
Read any standard biography on Vivekananda, and stop posting internet materials like a Muslim fundamentalist does in this forum.  Such writings are worth no more than toilet papers.  No saint sues his mother for a share in paternal property, as Vivekananda did.  But many follow his example of getting laid with female devotee.

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 6:38 AM, Shah Deeldar <shahdeeldar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 
It sounds pretty odd to me that an newly graduated young man from an aristocratic family faced starvation because he could not find a suitable employment? Who has been feeding you with such information?
-SD


 
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." GBS
From: Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 1:33 AM

Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

 
"All doors were open to him when he graduated from Calcutta University."

 - Not really, he tried to find an employment, and didn't find any.  Starvation and other deprivation was a common experience to him.  He visited Dakshineswar to have a free meal.  Ultimately, he found out, no business is as good as the one with religion.  He wasn't much of a saint.  His relation with Sister Nivedita had been questioned during his lifetime by the monks of his own congregation.  Besides, he used to brag about relishing non-traditional food forbidden among his coreligionists.  Though there is no scope of avatar, according to the Veda, he declared Ramakrishna as the best of them.

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Kamal Das <kamalctgu@gmail.com> wrote:
Rishi Bankim, however, irrelevant here, was not much more than another overblown icon.


On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
           Thanks for the mention of this important book.  I have not read the book, but I have heard Narasingha Shil present a pre-publication paper at the Bengal Studies Conference (held that year at SUNY) on Vivekananda which convincingly exploded all the myths surrounding this con-man god-man.  Narasingha is a great iconoclast, intelligent and funny, and a terrific 'adda-baj'. We became friends, and at another BS Conference he presented another hit at another Bengali icon -- Rishi Bankim.  I later told him that, unlike Vivekananda, Bankim did not consciously or dishonestly create his own Rishi image. His Rishi-ization and even the hinduization of Bande Mataram were done by communal politics long after his death. Narasingha accepted my explanations, and later, when he read my own completed article criticizing Gauri Vishwanathan book with evidences cited from Bankim, he praised it profusely in an e-mail,  and stopped criticizing Bankim.

               Farida Majid
        

To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
From: kamalctgu@gmail.com
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 07:45:37 +0600
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] 'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda


 
One should read "Vivekananda Reassessed" - Narasingha P. Shil [Susquehenna University Press] to have a better understanding of him.


On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 5:42 AM, Sudhir-Architect <ar_sudhirkumar@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

'A Man among men...' -- Swami Vivekananda

120 years on, Swami Vivekananda's fiery speech at the Parliament of Religions is still fresh in
memory


__._,_.___


****************************************************
Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
Call For Articles:

http://mukto-mona.com/wordpress/?p=68

http://mukto-mona.com/banga_blog/?p=585

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190




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Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
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