There is a nice story from the Sri Sampradaya where Ramanuja Acarya grew tired of hearing his celibate brahmacari and sannyasa students squabble over little things like who accidentally put on someone else's cloth, who had another person's lota, etc ...

They would also constantly deride Ramanuja's householder disciples as being materially bewildered and lacking in renunciation.

Sri Ramanuja had a very devoted householder student who lived a simple married life. The only material wealth he possessed were two costly bangles around his wife's wrists as per south Indian tradition.

Sri Ramanuja instructed that one of his brahmacari disciples should sneak into their home while they were unaware and take whatever they could find of value.

One brahmacari eagerly volunteered and then began to stake out the home waiting for an opportunity to, according to his vision, reclaim some material possessions from Maya and use it in the service of the Lord.

The husband left the home and soon the wife laid down to take rest. The brahmacari then carefully crept into the home but couldn't find anything of value. He tiptoed into the room where the wife was lying on her side and caught sight of the gold bangles around her thin wrists. Her body was quite frail due to an austere diet.

She seemed deeply asleep so he carefully slipped the bangle from one wrist off of her hand. Her other wrist was going to be more difficult to take from because she was partly lying on it. If he were to try to slip that bangle off it would most likely wake her.

Just then she stirred in her sleep and rolled over, exposing the other bangle. Despite that now the bangle was accessible, the brahmacari was already jumping out of the open window in fear that she had awoken and would catch him in the act of stealing.

He ran back to the ashram where Sri Ramanuja was waiting.

"Well", Ramanuja inquired, "Did you bring me anything from this householder?"

"Guruji, all I could find of any value was this bangle."

"I see, and where is the other one?"

"Your Divine Grace, I couldn't bring that one to you because she woke up and I had to flee."

Then Sri Ramanuja called all of his renunciate disciples to an assembly. He also sent someone to bring this householder couple.

When everyone had arrived he asked the couple to come forward.

In front of the assembly he asked, "Why are you only wearing one bangle, dear mother? Please speak clearly so all can hear."

She obediently cleared her throat and, while modestly looking at the ground, explained in a clear voice: "Your Grace, I am wearing only one bangle today because one of your brahmacari students was so desperate for money that he crept into my home while I was trying to rest. I felt pity on him that he must not be getting enough food to eat or enough cloth to keep him warm so I let him take my bangle while I pretended to sleep. When I rolled over to let him take the other bangle he fled out of fear and thus I couldn't fulfill my duty as a householder and support the young student. Please forgive us, Maharaja."

The entire assembly of saintly renunciates sat quietly aghast at the deeply selfless admission of this woman.

Sri Ramanuja filled the silence with one statement, "That is renunciation."

Then he returned to his quarters.

This photo amazes me. Factually, this is a very caring initiative where the workers at ISKCON's Mayapur center can bring their children for an education for which they may not otherwise get the opportunity. But the sign is a shocker. The look of the building and the sign combined make for really bad PR. I couldn't believe it when I saw it.

"It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable."

- ARMY BRIG. GEN. H. R. McMASTER, on the growing use of PowerPoint presentations among military commanders. (From the article ''We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint" - New York Times 27/4/10)

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I'm 38 years old and am still attending school. But it isn't as if I got a late start in life; I just don't seem to be able to keep a deep interest in anything long enough to call it a 'career'. Some people say I'm a professional student. I can live with that as a job title and it's only by circumstance that I'm able to maintain such a lifestyle despite being married with three children. Most men my age have already established themselves in some sort of niche. I'm digressing here, but you obviously don't have anything better to do than read this so why not let me waffle on a bit? Waffling can be a surprisingly good way to give and receive information. I'll go deeper into that later.

The reason I'm presenting this aspect of my life here isn't because I'm working on a draft for my autobiography. I respect trees and even LEDs enough not to bother them to be used as a medium to tell my story. I'm just trying to qualify myself to make the following criticism of a social and educational trend that I hope dies out soon.

What I'm talking about is the global obsession with PowerPoint slides. Yes, I'm aware how they can be used to good effect and supportive of important points that need to be made. They provide an outlet for the visually creative presenter as well as an 'inlet' for visual learners.

But here's the downside. Far too many times have I seen individuals use the PowerPoint medium in ways that, indeed, present 'the facts' but fail to convey the context of those facts. Bulleted lists seem to lend themselves to a summarized brevity that I interpret as presumptuous. Few people, it seems, know how to let the content drive the medium. More often they end up with a reversed presentation where the medium drives the content.

"True eloquence is the truth spoken concisely." said the great 16th century poet Krishna Das Kaviraja. Being concise and being presumptuous, I feel, are two different things altogether.

For example, the quotation at the beginning of this post asserts that we cannot reduce the nuance of interpersonal conflict down to a set of bullet points. In fact, whenever we are dealing with people, the entire medium is usually inappropriate.

I've learned that when I've had problems with another individual there are often complexities that take time, patience and prayer to resolve. No quick fix bullet point slide show does the trick. (if it was only that easy)

After nearly a decade of tertiary education (and one year of teaching high school) I've realized that the best learning takes place through a healthy relationship. It doesn't matter how slick the teacher is with multimedia as much as how genuine their concern is for the student's well-being.

For instance, my five year old son doesn't learn how to speak, read and interact with others via a set of memorized 'points'. His education at this level is achieved mostly by osmosis. Does that change as we grow older? I doubt it.

There is a lot of learning that takes place by just 'hanging out' with someone and waffling on about whatever comes to mind. Tangential conversations reveal the heart of a person. This helps to contextualize and personalize the message. By engaging in light discussion we can learn about the presenter's:

- interests
- concerns
- aspirations
- vulnerabilities
- miscellaneous other things

Just see how dorky that looks? It's misleading to even present such a subject in a way that presumes that you can summarize everything there is to know into a slide the size of your screen resolution.

In the last five years I've especially noticed that getting off-topic is practically considered taboo for a presenter. Personally, I love it even if just for the respite it provides from the barrage of bullet points being fired into the audience.

I also love it when the projector doesn't work properly. Funny how that seems to happen all the time. (No I don't sabotage - I just don't offer to help get things up and running.)

So next time you are tasked to give a presentation please consider these ideas. Sorry, but you'll have to read things over if you want an obvious summary. True I'm lazy, but I don't want to contribute to your intellectual laziness by assuming the role of expert and trying to wrap everything up into a nice tidy take away container. Waffle on, get off topic occasionally and you might find that your audience is far more interested in what you have to say. You might find it more interesting yourself.

Stick around for Srila Gour Govinda Swami's purport which starts 4 minutes into Part 1. Although the experience may not be comfortable for us given our cultural conditionings, see how long you can put yourself into the shoes of the person being chastised. Do you feel like arguing back? Standing up and walking out of the room? Starting a website to criticize him? Or are you genuine enough in your estimation of yourself to appreciate the loving effort made to alleviate the suffering?

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."

- Peter Drucker

Your body may be ugly as sin, but if you smile you look attractive.

Your body may be a perfect 10, but if you don't smile you look unattractive.

Perhaps this isn't so profound of a realization, but it's something I've been thinking of lately.

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

I'm not sure who wrote this but I like it.

"Be willing to publicly acknowledge when you are wrong. Those selling an ideology likewise have great difficulty admitting to being wrong, as this undercuts the rhetoric and image that is being sold. You get small points for admitting to being wrong on trivial matters and big points for admitting to being wrong on substantive points. You lose big points for failing to admit being wrong on something trivial."

 

Let's face it; sectarianism is dumb.

It provides many people these days a seemingly reasonable alibi to avoid acknowledging any concept of a Supreme Being in their lives. In recent years there have been a few bestseller books positing the idea that many of the ills of society can be attributed to not just religious sectarianism, but religion in and of itself. These authors explain theistic contemplation as an undesirable remnant of our evolutionary progress from primordial goo to an Anglo-saxon academic.

For those who accept that there is a God, sectarianism is a hindrance towards developing a relationship with Him. The mentality that "God only loves us" or "We are the only one's who know God" is difficult for any serious devotee of any tradition to maintain - simply because it's not true.

Nonetheless, it seems as if when we human beings turn towards divinity and ponder upon the absolute we can get pretty contentious with one another. Indeed, some of the most horrific acts in recorded history have been perpetrated by those who claim divine authority.

So I try to avoid a sectarian outlook, or any mentality that God favors me over anyone else. In my experience, members of ISKCON readily accomodate such liberal aspirations. In the communities I've participated in, anyone who carries such an exclusive perspective on themselves has a difficult time earning the respect of their peers. After all, who appreciates someone who looks down on everyone around them? Many times I've heard devotees say, "If we meditate on the good of others, we take on those good qualities. If we meditate on the bad in others we take on those bad qualities." Such is the power of association.

Still, the truth must be understood. If we observe something that is clearly insidious, making such discrimination is desirable. We may also need to communicate such observations to family and friends that we have a responsibility towards in order to edify or, at least, protect them.

So criticism isn't always wrong, neither is it always right. We must learn how to discriminate in such a way that helps us to avoid the undesirable and, at the same time, avoid making offense which is also undesirable.

How do we know when our 'discrimination' has turned into 'fault-finding'? I think this is a matter of personal introspection. We have to try to see our motivation.

Do we honestly wish the best for the person we are criticising? If not then we should be very cautious that we aren't guilty of even worse maliciousness than we are trying to condemn. 

Are we completely certain that our observations are correct? Wrongly accusing a person of something for which they are innocent is a grave error with huge karmic consequences.

Are we over-confident in our ability to read others' motivations?  This is a bad habit that we can smugly slip into. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to accurately interpret the multi-dimensional realm of what motivates people to do either good or bad deeds.We mortals just don't have the ability to conclusively determine such areas of subtlety. Best to be humble.

These same questions can also be asked collectively. Does our religious group honestly wish the best for those we are condemning or are we content that they will just 'suffer in hell for all eternity'? I should point out that I've not encountered any ISKCON member who thinks this way. Growing up in the 'Bible-belt' of the USA, however, this was standard fare. Two different denominations would have church services across the street from each other and both would think that the others were doomed to hell for not accepting the particular tenets of their tradition.

Thus far I've discussed, as far as I'm able, the type of fault-finding that ordinary upright people contend with. I'm just sharing my personal thoughts based on my own experience and struggles, I don't claim any supernatural ability to understand this subject matter. I hope nobody takes anything I've written as conclusive truth.

Just recently I was shown an example of fault-finding that seems to take the art to a whole new level. Apparently if you are truly dedicated to criticising someone, once you've exhausted the areas where you honestly feel there are shortcomings, you can then just make up new faults and start criticising those. 

See for yourself: Watch video here.