Pariprashnena — Q&A Archive

In short, an apology-focused FAQ. Ive been planning to make one for our site. Imho, our wiki/resources would be the best for gathering these questions and responses. Ill upload there what I have.

Some popular questions:
why do i have to chant hare krishna?
what is the meaning of the chanting?
what is that thing on your forehead?
what do you think of jesus?
why is meat eating bad?
why do you eat vegetables if they also have souls?
why are cows so sacred?
why are you so strange? :)

who is prabhupada?
how do you get enough proteins if you dont eat meat?
are you hindu?
why are things going so badly in india if they have such knowledge as you say?
do you help the poor?
are you sectarian?

why celibacy if sex is something given to us by god?
what is the problem with coffe?

why is krishna blue?

Prabhus, you are welcome to put this material at pariprashena wiki
http://wiki.pariprashnena.com

(please do not confuse with the Preaching Strategies wiki at pariprashnena.com/pmwiki :)

Abhiram, these FAQ are answered on many sites but I guess Sitapati meant attacks on the Vedic/Vaishnava philosophy and practice of the dissident, anticult or fanatical type. E.g. Dalit sites have those.

This is sort of tangential to the topic at hand, but this article might be of some use: http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html

Its basically a list of common debate tactics. Its easier to keep a clear head when youre aware of whats going on.

it would be nice to compile popular answers to popular questions though

Yes, abhiram, great idea.

[quote][cite] VEDA:[/cite]Abhiram, these FAQ are answered on many sites but I guess Sitapati meant attacks on the Vedic/Vaishnava philosophy and practice of the dissident, anticult or fanatical type. E.g. Dalit sites have those.[/quote]

Sitapati Prabhu, why dont you come back into this thread and explain us what type of questions you were referring to. Personally I would benefit from something like abhiram suggested - compilation of best answers to popular questions, the type we always get asked. Because it is important to answer them in a way that will attract people and make them favourable to Vaishnava philosophy.

go ahead: http://wiki.pariprashnena.com/index.php?title=Popular_Questions

well, if someone can post links to the answers we can just match them right?

The impetus for this came from two things that happened to me while in South America.

The first was that I did a lot of television and radio appearances. With these you have to give a snappy answer that translates into a soundbite. 7 seconds is too long to make your case - so you have to have a mantra that encapsulates the siddhanta.

The second was that I attended the temple for a couple of years and answered the questions of all the school kids on their comparative religion projects. In the end I made up a photo book to answer their questions, which were remarkably similar. I showed them weddings, children, initiations, harinam, temples, farms, etc...

I thought, this would be a good resource for the people on my staff. I get one of these new devotees, give him this book, he reads it, then he can nicely answer all these questions, and I can do something else.

What sparked me back onto this today is that a godbrother was lamenting that at his job guys were discussing religion and then asked him what religion he was. There were three of them, and they were coming at him from all angles. He said to me: "Prabhu, you can refute any argument," (personally im more into explaining things, but I can refute too), "but I dont know what to say."

Hes not a brahmana, so he cant read through so many books to collate all the answers himself, easily.

So I wanted to make this book for him and devotees like him.

The Jehovahs Witnesses have a theological training process, its aimed at how to deal with knocking on doors and what happens next. Its a great idea to have some strategies around entering into discussions on religion, especially your own. I think the book is a great idea.

Have you got an outline of chapters or an anything like that.

but please make this a wiki!!!

As I was finishing my 16 rounds my mind was wandering to this topic.

I have bought krishnapedia.com and offered it to Vishnumurti Prabhu for his service at vanipedia.com.

I thought krishnapedia.com can be a nice segway or landing page for persons to learn about Krishna. I did not want to set it up and I just wanted to hand it over to him. He is working on vanipedia as his main focus, but he said he will develop krishnapedia.com next.

So in the mean time are you (Sitapati prabhu and other devotees who can write content) interested to put things up on krishnapedia.com. I know Mishra prabhu has kindly offered wiki.pariprashnena.com. But I think http://www.krishnapedia.com can IMMEDIATELY be used by people to get these answers.

If there is interest I can put it up with a wiki software of choice. I dont want to usurp Mishra prabhu or any other devotees but Vishnumurti prabhu and his team at BBT is interested to maintain a http://www.krishnapedia.com and I think we can give him a headstart with some content.

if you want to email me directly please do it at: amalagaura@gmail.com. We can move the discussion to the world sankirtan forum as well to discuss software choices (is mediawiki the default).

no "usurping", Prabhu, we did put the wiki as a service for devotees.
Any venue will be OK if something is done (?).
But to give someone a headstart, not knowing what is going to happen, I do not buy that.
"Working" for others doesnt work.
My humble advice:
Whoever has the idea, do it yourself, get help and help others that are already doing something worthy and deserve it.
Sorry to be so straightforward, but so far probably we are the only ones that put some substantial time on it, apart from talking."

but it would be nice to have one resource with JUST questions and answers and not all the typical stuff.

I tend to believe that one-theme-service sites do better. Nowadays there is no shortage of disk-space/bandwidth. And we are a click away anyway.

In the midtime I suggest to use the wiki,

http://wiki.pariprashnena.com/index.php?title=Popular_Questions

later on everything can be cut/pasted anywhere easily.

some formatting to start the ball rolling...

http://wiki.pariprashnena.com/index.php?title=Popular_Questions#why_is_meat_eating_bad.3F

im not too happy with some of the anwers provided, but how to discuss this? starting a different topic (question) for each item in this forum seems like creating too many questions here, making this forum confusing.

the discussion pages in the wiki arent too great, either, just plain, empty pages. its possible to use them, though.

but since were already using different types of wiki, i got another idea: did you ever try "tikiwiki"? i had it installed once, and like it a lot. it allows you to lock pages and comes with an in-built discussion forum. you can set the default to open a forum topic for each page created, per example. it also comes with a RSS module and mailing-list synchronization. i think its the wiki with the most options around. that makes it a little more tricky to set up and administer, but, IMO, it beats media- or pm-wiki.

Abhiram, Saryu and others interested: You can compile a basic ISKCON FAQ by using current FAQs. Just google keywords ISKCON & FAQ, copy results into a wiki, edit and expand them.

This whole idea is great. -> and as a wiki even better. Then at some point we could cull the answers and publish a very stylish printed version. (My kind of thing to put together.)

What would we call it?

"The Beginners Guide to Kung-fu Preaching"

nah. that sucks. but the idea is a start....

Why not call this: The dummies guide to kicking the teeth

Dummies guide to preaching

its a bit rude isnt it? But I like it

its probably copyright anyway or trademarked

What about .....

I dont know Ill try later

It doesnt even exist so dont bother about the name yet.

Yeah, its easier to _talk_ about doing something than to actually do it. Therefore there is so little input in our wiki so far.

I think that floating each question from the wiki to the forum is a good idea. Then we get everyones input, including whatever heavy duty quotes they can find from other preachers, then someone(s) (such as myself and others who want to do it) - collate and distill the answers and move them to the wiki.

Thats a good open source way to do it, and it will be good for those who want to learn how to preach to do the collation.

which wiki to what forum? he he, merry.go-rounding, feels nice the air in the face.

i got dibs on designing the print version if that ever happens.

I agree with Sitapati: "floating each question from the Wiki to the forum is a good idea. Then we get everyones input, including whatever heavy duty quotes they can find from others then collate and distill the answers and move them to the Wiki."

and the first question is ..... ? what?

ready its an oldie but a goodie: Why arent i GOD... like Krsna??
:-)
or put more aptly: why is it even grossly obvious that by using the oldest religious/scientific/social knowledge against the reciter/speaker/know-er???

Q:) Why arent i GOD... like Krsna??

A:) Krishna plays his flute in the middle of the night deep in the forest. A village of young beautiful ladies are stirred from their beds, franticly get dressed and run as fast as they can to rendezvous with Him.

You take a flute into the forest in the middle of the night, start playing it and see who comes running to visit you.

:)