I’ve sent this letter to news sites where the letter it replies to was published.

I have a very soft spot in my heart for my senior godsister Govinda Dasi. In 1968, right after I was initiated, she was serving as Srila Prabhupada’s cook, and for a couple of weeks in Boston I got to assist her. I will always fondly remember those days of being with her and Gaurasundara in serving Srila Prabhupada. She was (and is) such a nice example of a devoted disciple! But as for Govinda Dasi the historian, well. . .

A letter from her to Yashoda Dulal Prabhu, lately being circulated on the internet, gets several points wrong. But I’ll just mention two of them.

BBT press release

“Activities such as hearing, seeing, speaking, evacuating, etc., are actions of the senses meant for work.” Really? Wait a second—aren’t hearing and seeing what we do with our knowledge-gathering senses, not our working ones?

But the quotation comes right from Bhagavad-gita As It Is, from the purport to 5.9. So how could it be wrong?

It’s wrong because it’s the first edition and a typist left something out.

See for yourself in the annotated scans for chapter five, now online at www.BBTedit.com/changes.

BBT press release

“The changes” for chapter four of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is are now online at www.BBTedit.com/changes.

You’ll see:

• Several purports where missing text has been restored. In the purport to Text 6, restored to the book are more than forty words left out when a typist skipped from one instance of “causeless mercy” to the next.
• Spelling errors corrected, both for Sanskrit (texts 5, 11, and 12) and for English (text 10).
• In the word meanings for text 31, a word meaning left out by Srila Prabhupada and replaced by the editor with a meaning that was totally wrong. Fixed for the second edition.

Also:

• In text 12 you’ll see “hrt-anjana” (“heart ointment”?) properly restored to “hrta-jnana” (“deprived of knowledge”).
• In text 10 you’ll see how “negligence of spiritual life” wrongly came to be one of the “three stages of attachment to the material world.” And you’ll see for yourself whether Srila Prabhupada meant to say that the conception of void “underlies” frustration or arises from it.

Also included is the complete manuscript page for text 34.

Check it out.

For a bit more than the past year and a half, I have had the benefit of having Brijesh Vadhvania serving as my personal assistant. He rendered a host of services—in particular, expertly managing the practical details of my life. Now he has returned home to London, where he’ll be connected with Bhaktivedanta Manor. (At the moment, he’s busy helping with the setup for this year’s annual Krishna conscious program in Glastonbury.) I thank him for his devoted personal assistance and wish him all the best in his Krishna conscious life. We plan to stay in touch.

from my disciple Pradyumna Dasa in the UK

Dear Maharajas, Prabhus, and Matajis,

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

It’s starting this year: an annual Vyasa-puja book for Srila Prabhupada in which individual offerings from all of his disciples can be included. Though ISKCON’s official Vyasa-puja book began as just such a book, as the movement grew the book evolved in such a way that most of Srila Prabhupada’s disciples are no longer eligible to contribute.

For this new book, on the other hand, all of his disciples will be welcome to write their individual offerings.

Newly posted online for downloading is the most recent updated version of the BBT Style Sheet (February 2010).

It offers the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust’s latest standards on such matters as spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and word choice.

This is a routine update. The download is 360 KB.

You can always find the latest version of the style sheet (and the fonts for it) on the permanent page of BBT editorial resources.

BBT Press release

The “changes” for chapter three of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is are now online at www.BBTedit.com/changes.

Perhaps the most notable feature of this chapter is that the revisions to the purports are so few. As in the rest of the book, when revisions are warranted they are made, and otherwise the text is left unchanged. In this chapter fewer revisions are needed, so fewer are made.

Still, there are several revisions worth seeing.

You’ll see:

• Four places where a typist has skipped from one occurrence of a word to the next—for example, from “teach” to “teach”—leaving out the text in between. The second edition restores the missing text.

This happens twice in the purport to text 20 and once each in the purports to texts 30 and 37.

You’ll also see:

• What Srila Prabhupada actually said about duties that “complement one’s psychophysical condition.” (purport to text 35)

The changes for the Preface, the Introduction, and the previous chapters are already online. See them all at www.BBTedit.com/changes.

The “changes” for chapter three of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is will soon be online at www.BBTedit.com/changes.

I’ve disabled the feature that lets users post comments on this site.

Most of the comments submitted were really just personal notes to me, notes the rest of the world doesn’t need to see.

If you want to send me a note, you can contact me directly. (There’s a persistent link for this in the right-hand column.)

If you have something substantial to say that you really want to share on this site, send it to me. I can post it.

I can always change the policy. But let’s see how this works.

Every year I make my personal finances public. Attached is an accounting of my finances for 2009.

BBT press release

The “changes” for chapter two of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is are now online at www.BBTedit.com/changes.

BBT press release

The “changes” for chapter two of Bhagavad-Gita As It Is will soon be online at www.BBTedit.com/changes.

Concerning philanthropy and relief work, I recently came upon these words from Srila Prabhupada, which I pass on without comment.

BBT press release

Now you can see “the changes” for chapter one of Bhagavad-gita As It Is, at www.BBTedit.com/changes. You’ll see the revisions Jayadvaita Swami made to the purports, in the actual book where he made them. You’ll also see the revisions made to the word-for-word meanings. (The translations were done separately.)

BBT press release

The annotated scans for chapter one of Bhagavad-gita As It Is should be posted online at www.BBTedit.com within the next few days. The scans show Jayadvaita Swami’s personal copy of the first edition of the book, with the revisions made to the word-for-word meanings and the purports. (The translations were done separately.)