freefall wrote:Getting a grant does not mean anything -- positive or negative.
As long as you claim that you are not a religious but cultural organization and have sympathizers in the higher echelons of bureaucracy, you are in the game. BK wins on both.
I am not sure where all this "Values Education" started. If it is purely a BK thing or if it started in the outside world. But it appears all over the world now, the BKs are involved and now they have learned how to use it to make money and land. This is new to me.
Now, I know the BKWSU well enough to say quite confidently that they don't do just anything because it is "good". They do it because it is promoting the BKWSU and Raja Yoga. There is a limit to how many people will swallow the Raja Yoga sales pitch and so they hide under different names and titles. "Values Education" is a big one right now. But can we honestly say that what they are doing is anything but Raja Yoga service and promoting Raja Yoga?
Now to ask for, and receive grants, to do "Godly service" and initiate individuals into Raja Yoga under cover raises ethical questions in my mind. From the Brahmin point of view it is not right ... am I not correct to say? I thought it was against Shrimat to ask for money for Raja Yoga. And is it not also moving Brahmin resources away from doing what Brahmins are meant to be doing, e.g. Yoga and initiating Yoga, to something else?
From a lokik point of view, to be doing one thing when sponsors think you are doing something else, is unethical. To have told the sponsors they are doing "values education" when really they are doing Raja Yoga service is not right. And, there can be no doubt in my mind what the BKWSU is doing. Although, I also accept from a lokik point of view, this is all very subtle. It would also appear that there has been a turning point in Gyan where more and more they are offering and charging for "products and services", i.e. that it has become business. This would appear to me to be moving away from the simplicity of what God is.
I am not saying teaching morality is bad, it is just another area where the BKWSU is a hundreds shades of grey to suit themselves. Funny that it is "values" education and not "ethics" education. And, as Arjun says, how can an organization teach "values" if at the same time they are beating people up?