Results from the Vanipedia Survey

View the original source (published on Dandavats.com on February 1, 2008) here: Results from the Vanipedia Survey

I want to thank everyone who participated in our survey. The vast majority of responses were from senior devotees with a variety of social natures. So I believe that the survey accurately represents a wide cross-section of Srila Prabhupada’s followers.

At this stage I have had only enough time to process the results for the third question, which was:

“According to you, which three subjects in Srila Prabhupada’s teachings should be comprehensively researched to help the overall improvement of the Krishna consciousness movement in executing Srila Prabhupada’s mission?”

Results of the Survey:

A total of 124 devotees offered 391 responses to question 3. I have grouped these responses into six natural categories. Two responses suggested researching everything from Srila Prabhupada’s teachings.

30% of the responses referred to philosophical issues

26% of the responses referred leadership issues

21% of the responses referred to social issues

10% of the responses referred to varnasrama

8% of the responses referred to preaching

5% of the responses referred to education

Note: Answers that specifically mentioned varnasrama were categorized as such. So actually out of the total responses received, an overall 31% referred to social issues.

Philosophical issues included these sub-categories:

31% Guru Tattva

11% Krsna Consciousness

9% Qualities

9% Holy names

8% Siddhanta

4% Sadhana

4% Krsna

4% Application

2% Association

2% Bhakti

2% the Future

2% Relationships

2% Studying

10% Miscellaneous

Leadership issues fell into these sub-categories:

32% Iskcon

18% Leadership

13% GBC

13% Management

8% Srila Prabhupada’s position

2% Institution

2% Justice

2% Temples

10% Miscellaneous

Social issues included these sub categories:

49% Relationships

11% Rural community living

6% Women

5% Economics

5% Qualities

4% Civilized behavior

4% Marriage

3% Interfaith

3% Vegetarianism

10% Miscellaneous

Varnasrama topics fell into these sub-categories:

60% Varnasrama

12% Sannyasa

8% Brahmanas

5% Application of

5% Cow protection

3% Grhastha

3% Devotees’ relationship to

2% Vanaprastha

2% Protection of Women

The following 10 sub-categories totaled 54% of all the responses:

11% Relationships

9% Guru Tattva

8% Iskcon

6% Varnasrama

5% Preaching

4% Leadership

3% GBC

3% Management

3% Qualities

2% Education

I leave it to the readers to reflect upon why the devotees considered these subjects important to research and better understand for the overall improvement of the Krishna consciousness movement.

We have found this exercise important in helping us create the framework for Vanipedia and are continuing to build the website. We are on schedule for a public release at Gaura Purnima. In the month of April we will be requesting anyone who could kindly volunteer time to help build the articles inside of the first section to be developed – Vaniquotes, which consists of articles containing exclusively Srila Prabhupada’s written and spoken words.

A brief introduction to Vanipedia

Srila Prabhupada was a prolific spiritual and social commentator who resourcefully drew from the vast and timeless wisdom of the Vedas. The shear volume of his comments sometimes makes it difficult for readers to grasp the proper conclusion.

Vaniquotes collects together Srila Prabhupada’s comments under naturally accruing themes, thus facilitating the reader in gaining a deeper access to the powerful messages that Srila Prabhupada is giving. Quotes are presented in scriptural order and by date. Each quote is also linked to Vanisource, (Prabhupada’s books, lectures, conversations and letters) thus keeping everything very much in context.

The reader can approach Vaniquotes via philosophical and social themes, the different personalities who present them, or from such interesting directions as Srila Prabhupada’s usage of the English, Sanskrit and Bengali languages. All pages will be extensively interlinked.

Vaniquotes will supply the resources to enable the further development of the Vanipedia website; other sections, such as Vanipedia articles, Vanibooks, and Vaniversity online courses will be created.

As Vaniquotes develops, Srila Prabhupada’s lectures and conversations will be compiled along with the audio version, offering a profound hearing experience for the reader and thereby keeping the individual quotes even more in context.

Our first goal is to complete 10,800 articles. To date we have 3,850 articles which are either completely finished, partially finished, or have only a name attributed to them.

Our ultimate aim is to have 100,000 completed articles.

The more articles we have in Vaniquotes, the richer the articles in Vanipedia will be, the more comprehensive the Vanibooks will be, and the more variegated and inclusive the Vaniversity online courses will be – all representative of the siddhanta of our disciplic succession.

There is no doubt that the Vanipedia website will prove to be an extremely valuable resource in assisting devotees to improve their services to Srila Prabhupada, by putting the entire body of his instructions at their fingertips.

Our motto is: “Before enlightenment, copy and paste; after enlightenment, copy and paste.”

Completing all the sections of Vanipedia will be achieved in either of the following ways; a few committed people taking a long period of time, or many committed people taking a much shorter period of time to accomplish this task.

My personal aspiration is that many of us can collaborate in offering this dynamic platform for Srila Prabhupada to continue training numerous assistants to help him give Krsna consciousness to the world.

Your servants at Vanipedia