Disqus - Latest Comments for vseloved

Re: The King Is Naked! and Sunīti was not vengeful, Dr. Mathematician

vseloved — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 18:21:49 -0000

I agree with you, but this comment is not explicitly worded as a list. To have no doubts that the phrase is an enumeration of several equally important items it should look something like this:
- She couldn't become his guru for the following reasons: she was his mother, she was a woman.
- There were several reasons why she couldn't become his guru: being his mother and being a woman.
Surely, Srila Prabhupada has his own unique style of expressing thoughts, but he also uses such forms. For example, here:
"The Lord’s desire to appear was born from two reasons: the Lord wanted to taste the sweet essence of the mellows of love of God, and He wanted to propagate devotional service in the world on the platform of spontaneous attraction." (https://vedabase.io/en/libr...

Re: The King Is Naked! and Sunīti was not vengeful, Dr. Mathematician

vseloved — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 06:12:32 -0000

Your examples are clear and they have a right to exist. Yet they are just one of the possible interpretations. In the same situation with a bhakta who asks for recommendation, the president might as well say: "I will not give you recommendation because you don't chant 16 rounds daily, ans also there are some concerns regarding how strict you follow the vaishnava etiquette". Based on our knowledge of ISKCON rules, we can understand that the first requirement is mandatory while the second one may be more of a wish, although it's also a serious concern. Yet, if it was the only issue, the president would have had a very hard time denying the recommendation.
So, to reiterate wht I have already wrote previously, we are trying to second-guess Srila Prabhupada. From my point of view, we can't make any definite conclusion based on this statement alone (and, I believe, that's also the point of the paper that has originally triggered this discusssion). We need to juxtapose it with other relevant statements. For your interpretation to be undisputed you need to find some other statements where Srila Prabhupada mentions that women can't be gurus under any circumstances. Yet, there is the other already mentioned quote: "Actually one who has attained the perfection, she can become guru." And it contradicts your hypothesis.

Re: The King Is Naked! and Sunīti was not vengeful, Dr. Mathematician

vseloved — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 05:54:05 -0000

There are also non-sastric requirements for approving male diksa-gurus in ISKCON. For example, a candidate must have been an initiated disciple for at least ten years, must not have had a fall-down within five years, and so on. Surely, these apply to the female candidates as well, but the point is that ISKCON as an institution has a different (or rather, additional) set of requirements for the gurus serving within it than the ones listed in the sastra. And the main reason for that, from my point of view, is that the sastric standard is for each individual to base their own resonable judjement upon (and you correctly point out that if we don't study and follow those instructions we may be easily cheated). Yet, the ISKCON requirements are of a different nature: they are intended to be followed on the level of an organization and not an individual. I.e. they should be suitable for applying more or less objectively and collectively, while, from an individual's point of view, a much higher degree of subjectivity is acceptable. Moreover, as HG Ravindra Swarupa prabhu has pointed out in his seminar on the history of ISKCON, a wordlwide spiritual institution is a novel idea conceived by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta and implemented by Srila Prabhupada. So there are no manuals or templates in the sastra on how such institutions should be run and what rules and regulations are appropriate to them. That is why ISKCON (by the authorization of Srila Prabhupada) has its own laws, and one of them concerns the topic of initiating gurus. However, neither does it substitute the sastric rules, nor can it always appropriate the statements that are intended for indvidual consumption to the level of the whole organization. For example, we can't expect that the assesment that someone is or is not a pure devotee is performed by a committee.

Re: The King Is Naked! and Sunīti was not vengeful, Dr. Mathematician

vseloved — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 05:11:56 -0000

Yes, this is how people usually phrase something: the most important things first. And the use of the word "also" hints towards that. Although, that is my interpretation based on my experience: we are now trying to second-guess Srila Prabhupada, and I can see how an opposite case can be justified. However, what remains undisputes is that, in the only written sattement where Srila Prabhupada addresses this issue, he didn't use womenhood as a sufficient factor. In other words, if he could say that her being a woman completely disqualifies her from playing the role of a diksa-guru why bring up the other factor?

Re: The King Is Naked! and Sunīti was not vengeful, Dr. Mathematician

vseloved — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 14:16:43 -0000

Thanks, that's a good point. Yet, I find the original statement even less supporting of the anti-fdg position: the main disqualification being in family relationship with Dhruva, his mother. Secondary consideration: being a woman.

Re: The King Is Naked! and Sunīti was not vengeful, Dr. Mathematician

vseloved — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 05:31:36 -0000

Writing a whole scientific paper to analyze the logic of this Prabhupada's statement may be an overkill and also cloud the basic point, indeed. But the presented counterargument also strays away from the main point. Which is: we have to ask ourselves the question why did Prabhupada say "being a woman, and specifically his mother". Why adding the mother specialization? What other reason for that could be other than that "being a woman" is insuffcient to completely rule out the possibility of her becoming a diksa-guru? Yes, usually, it's a disqualification but not always. And which cases are an exception? They are brought to light in this very article: when a person is a pure devotee (like Suniti was), the bodily circumstances become secondary. And that perfectly agrees with the other famous Prabhupada's statement on the topic: "But, not so many. Actually one who has attained the perfection, she can become guru." Indeed, there are not so many pure devotees on the planet, at any time. But, likewise, we can't state that there are none, or, specifically, that there are no woman pure devotees. Even more, that there are no woman pure devotees in ISKCON. As we know, being on a lower level of conciousness doesn't permit one to unequivocally assess the level of those who are more advanced.
So, yes, it is common for men who haven't yet become pure devotees to assume the role of diksa-gurus (after all, someone has to play this role). While it is not recommended for non-pure devotee women. At the same time, it is definitely possible for those women who have reached the level of a pure devotee. Thus, if ISKCON were to completely rule out the possibility of authorizing women to become diksa-gurus it would not agree with the siddhanta.

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: "Programming Algorithms" Book Freely Available

vseloved — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 03:38:15 -0000

The book is planned for release by Apress in January. I'll post additionally when it happens

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Announcing CL-AGRAPH

vseloved — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 03:31:09 -0000

No progress yet. Sorry, have a lot of stuff in the pipeline before I can get to it. Regarding resources: if I knew any I wouldn't have to think of writing this post :)

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Why RDF* Is a Mess... and How to Fix It

vseloved — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 03:37:00 -0000

This post is primarily intended for those who are aware of the topic. It's not CS 101 here, sorry.

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Why RDF* Is a Mess... and How to Fix It

vseloved — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 02:16:09 -0000

Well, this acrononym seems to be pretty unambiguous. At least, when I do a google search for RDF the whole first page is only about the Resource Description Framework.

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: "Programming Algorithms" Book Freely Available

vseloved — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 08:04:15 -0000

Surely, I cannot revoke the license on the copies that were already obtained. And they can be reshared under the terms of the license. However, on my own, I can stop making the book available on my web properties and promoting it. That's the only thing I did. If you already got the book from some source or will get it from someone who has already downloaded it, there's no problem with that; and also there's no problem if you'll be sharing it with others.

Re: Reseña: Lisp Hackers - til-hectorip

vseloved — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 11:13:33 -0000

Gracias por la reseña tanto reflexiva y detallada!

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: "Programming Algorithms" Book Freely Available

vseloved — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 16:30:18 -0000

Unfortunately, the book isn't currently available due to restrictions imposed by the contract with Apress to publish the next version. More on this here: http://lisp-univ-etc.blogsp... Sorry.

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Announcing CL-AGRAPH

vseloved — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 16:28:44 -0000

The main limitation is the 5 million triples limit (https://franz.com/agraph/su... ). I'm not aware of any other restrictions.
As for 5 million triples, from my experience, it's more than enough for the majority of nonenterprise-scale projects. Like, if you'd like to build a website that's backed by a triple-store instead of an SQL db (why would you want to do that I'd try to address in the next post). Or any other hobby/experiments...

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Programming Algorithms 2nd Edition

vseloved — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 07:46:56 -0000

Yep, already retired.
Regarding memory barriers, I thought of them but, for some reason, decided not to include. Anyway, the description in the chapter doesn't aim at providing an exhaustive description but rather at the principal understanding of those concepts.

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Programming Algorithms 2nd Edition

vseloved — Sat, 18 Jul 2020 00:45:33 -0000

I guess, yes, it should remain in your library and be accessible to you. But it's better to ask Leanpub to be sure.

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Eval Spotted in the Wild

vseloved — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 11:51:04 -0000

Thanks for sharing this example. In general, I haven't changed my opinion that EVAL is something that shouldn't be used in user-level code. It definitely shouldn't be overused or considered "normal" code. However, remembering that it exists and occasionally resorting to it in special cases I consider beneficial :)

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: "Programming Algorithms" Book

vseloved — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 00:44:27 -0000

Here it is, enjoy ;)
http://lisp-univ-etc.blogsp...

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: "Programming Algorithms" Book

vseloved — Sat, 14 Mar 2020 12:04:53 -0000

The PDF should be published this month after the lat chapter is published on the blog (it is nearing completion).

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Programming Algorithms: A Crash Course in Lisp

vseloved — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 00:43:48 -0000

I've changed the wording to "is returned as the value of the whole sequence"

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Programming Algorithms: Strings

vseloved — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 12:28:37 -0000

makes sense, thanks

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Programming Algorithms: A Crash Course in Lisp

vseloved — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 04:31:58 -0000

Thanks for the comment. I think, as a first approximation, this is the most accessible explanation. I doubt that people who will continue using Lisp will base all their knowledge just on this short intro. So, once they will really start working with special variables seriously, they will have enough other sources of information (like books) at their disposal

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Programmatically Drawing Simple Graphviz Graphs

vseloved — Mon, 28 Oct 2019 04:02:47 -0000

yep, thanks

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Lisp Hackers: Vladimir Sedach

vseloved — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 08:36:36 -0000

by the way, there are -> and ->> operators in RUTILS so you don't have t invent another language (or syntax) to use such kind of stuff

Re: Lisp, the Universe and Everything: Programming Algorithms: Key-Values

vseloved — Sat, 31 Aug 2019 02:31:19 -0000

Thanks for sharing these insights!