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Re: English Discourse by Shri U. Ve Velukudi Krishnan

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Pattangi • February 6, 2001 


srimatE rAmAnujAyA namaha:

Hello Subha:

We conducted a local poll in the Chicago area to get see
what we are lacking in terms of communicating/developing 
interest in the Next Generation (late teens/early Twenties ) and younger
audience.

The most obvious and doable requests were:

1. Communicate in Simple English. 
2. Start with the basics 
(Questions were basically on:
God, Soul, Purpose, Creation, Karma, Re-incarnation.
Are we Idol-Worshippers? Why the Dot on the forehead? 
Are we supposed to learn slokas/ Mantras? 
How will devotion help, how to practice and increase devotion?)

The bottom line Q: How is it all supposed to help me today?

I am sure a lot of people have the answers to all the above questions,
but there seems to be a shortage of people who could effectively 
communicate the essence to newcomers & generate interest.
It is very easy to talk/ address a group that is already in the Sri
Vaishnava camp,
but it is not an easy task to convincingly address & generate interest
among newcomers
to the sampradaya.

They also had very obvious comments: Keep the message simple & keep the
audience interested.

Sri Velukkudi swami has the ability to lucidly explain concepts
in Tamil & English. Based on the feedback from the younger audience
we had requested srI Swami to talk in English & start with basic tenets of
Sri Vaishnavism.

We had listeners from age 6 to 25 who mentioned they enjoyed it.
I would highly recommend Elders in the family to record the lectures
& play it again and explain to the youngsters (As we found out 
there were a lot of questions that still need to be addressed)
I would also recommend to provide the youngsters with a Log book/ Notebook
to write their thoughts/questions during the lecture, so they can discuss
this with the family later.)

Sri Velukkudi swami will continue on Basic Tenets of Sri Vaishnavism
in his next lecture in the last week of this month.

If you would like certain topics addressed & have some suggestions
for the message to reach out to a larger audience, please feel free to
send me mail at danp@uic.edu (Or send mail to vk_talk@egroups.com)

Look forward to hearing from you.

adiyEn rAmAnujA dAsan
Mukundan Pattangi

--- In bhakti-list@y..., Subha N  wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> By God's Grace I had the opportunity to listen to Shri
> Velukudi Krishnan swami's TeleUpanyasam last week. I
> want to thank Shri Krishnan swamigal and everybody who
> arranged this. It was very heart-warming and
> soul-stirring. We all look forward to more such
> discourses.

--------------------------------------------------------------
           - SrImate rAmAnujAya namaH -
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