Bhakti Vikas Swami / Book Changes Issue / VIDEO

 

Original Verse:

Chapter 2: Contents of the Gita Summarized

TEXT 20

na jayate mriyate va kadacin
nayam bhutva bhavita va na bhuyah
ajo nityah sasvato 'yam purano
na hanyate hanyamane sarire

SYNONYMS

na—never; jayate—takes birth; mriyate—never dies; va—either; kadacit—at any time (past, present or future); na—never; ayam—this; bhutva—came into being; bhavita—will come to be; va—or; na—not; bhuyah—or has come to be; ajah—unborn; nityah—eternal; sasvatah—permanent; ayam—this; puranah—the oldest; na—never; hanyate—is killed; hanyamane—being killed; sarire—by the body.

TRANSLATION

For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.

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Bhakti Vikas swami does not explain that Srila Prabhupada did go over these transcripts with Hayagriva, and he approved of the work done by Hayagriva. And he approved of the final book and had it mass distributed, and that book made many devotees, including us. 

But! As soon as "the changed books" started to be distributed, the numbers of books being distributed dropped to a minor trickle, and so did the numbers of devotees being made. The changed books were a giant flop right out of the gate. 

This is all verified easily. The changed books if anything have had devastating consequences for ISKCON. Devotees left in droves and droves -- as soon as these books came out. Even Jayatirtha said -- everyone is leaving by "voting with their feet" to reject the GBC and their policies (like changed books).

BVKS also says that these translations were originally mixed by those given by Dr. Radha Krishnan and not all of these translations came from Srila Prabhupada. Wow! Srila Prabhupada had already made his own transcripts, he did not need anyone to plagarize others. 

This makes it seem like Srila Prabhupada wanted to make a hybrid of his writings with a version he always condemned. Why would BVKS even mention these things, other than, to discredit the writings of Srila Prabhupada? Srila Prabhupada's works are plagarized versions of Dr. Radha Krishnan's? Who would even try to make such an argument? Who would even mention such foolishness?

BVKS also says that the translation above "does not match the sanskrit." Now he is a better expert in sanskrit than Srila Prabhupada. I don't see any problem with the above translation. Moreover Srila Prabhupada uses this Gita for numerous classes, so he approved of this version. Moreover Srila Prabhupada says, print everything the original way, do not make changes.

And if we look at the current Vedabase version we have this changed version:

For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.

This sounds like a word salad hatchet job. I see no need to re-word this verse in the above manner. If anything, it obscures the simple meaning given in the original with a lot of excess bloat and blabber. And if we multiply this by thousands of others changes, we see the whole book has been hatchet jobbed up. So BVKS is right, this is a complex issue because, he just won't come out and say the simple thing, what Srila Prabhupada ALREADY approves must not be changed subsequently.   

Of course BVKS is already famous here and in the court of Yamaraja as a huge supporter of his "worship of illicit sex with men, women and children as God's successors guru parampara." More recently, sex with cats was added to his parampara. 

So as soon as the BVKS program sees a nice homosexual pedophile, who is having sex with boys in his motorhome, and who is orchestrating the murders of dissenters, and who is causing ISKCON to be sued for $400,000,000, then the BVKS program falls of their chairs and they think they have seen the next messiah of the jagat appear, and they must make a samadhi for that deviant. Now this same group is going to tell us, they want to modify the books of the acharya? ys pd

angel108b@yahoo.com   

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"The instruction was given that you cannot make any changes in the spiritual master's book." "What about the incorrect grammar?" Prabhupada's reply, " You cannot change one comma , not even a comma, not even a punctuation mark, that is the etiquette." 

So that was just another one of those super heavy instructions that the etiquette in dealing with a great acarya's books is that whatever he has done it's eternal and it can never be changed. And I believe that all of this was part of Prabhupada's training us. He wanted to train people who would be entrusted with his books. And who would in turn train the next generation of BBT men, managers and production managers in this fanatical, literally fanatical transcendental phobia about changes. Prabhupada went out of his way to train us. 

Some of the instructions were so extreme that one might say they are exaggerated. But they' re not exaggerated . This is exactly what Prabhupada wanted ." "Do not change one comma."

. . . . . . . . . Text from Ramesvara Das 1979 interviews. . . . . . . . .

RE: Srila Prabhupada's first visit to New Vrindaban dhama 1969