namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

This web site is a vast storehouse of knowledge: devotional, spiritual, philosophical, or scientific—presented from the devotees' point of view. Not everything is as well organized or presented as one could wish, but you can find information on practically anything you might want to learn about.

Vedas and Vedic culture: what you won't learn in school

In school we can learn many things but unfortunately not the important, existential ones. These are elaborated on in Vedas, a sort of manuals how to use this world and how to live in it. Obviously, they should be available to everyone.

In itself the Veda-site is probably too vast to hand to many new devotees for guidance: "Here, look for the information you need." A whole section specializes on Newcomers to Vedic tradition, but for new ISKCON devotees it's approach is too general, focusing on Hinduism and the introduction of vedic ideas in the western world by mayavadis like Swami Vivekananda, etc.

Specific resources need to be extracted for particular purposes, and Bhakta Jan assured me (during the experiment with the /krishnachat web site) that he has no objection to re-publishing his site's content in this way.

From VEDA's Aboutppage:

"Whatever you have learned, you try to expand in English language."

(Hari Sauri Das, Transcendental Diary, Vol. I, p. 366 - Srila Prabhupada quotes his spiritual master, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura Maharaja)

The original idea of Vedic Encyclopedia, the first and main part of VEDA, came from my friend Varnadi in 1998, while we served together in NE-BBT headquarters. It was planned as a part of iskcon.org, the main ISKCON site, which he partially designed and maintained since 1994. Although Krsna had other plan, I still decided to follow up on it and collect any interesting material from sources like books, acaryas' commentaries, articles, dictionaries, encyclopedias, travel guides, discussion groups, correspondence, etc.

For main assistance I'm indebted to three of my friends: Vaishampayana - Java applets programming and teaching me html basics, Ekanath - sastric resources, acaryas' commentaries, Puranic tables for SB-persons applet, and Varnadi - general encouragement and resources for units-applet.

At the end of 1998, when the material was gathered, sorted and edited, including the Samsara ("Planetarium") section, family obligations forced me to return to CZ and stay there. The project remained on a back-burner but I never stopped looking for a way to put it online as a part of greater project. It did not work with ISKCON Czech Republic website neither with the website of ISKCON Communications Europe). Having all that material which no one could see was frustrating. It occurred to me that it will have to become a stand-alone project. "The most reliable way to have something done is to do it oneself."

However, I got in touch with bh. Jirka "babaji" who in a short time became pretty good webdesigner and in March 2001 the site was up due to his efforts and free hosting at his boss's server. From the fall 2001 we are hosted at our friend's server (thanks, Dharma).