Talk:Adi Da

Untitled

Welcome to the Adi Da Talk page. Please add new content under old content. Please start new sections at the bottom of the page. Please use colon to indent added discussion. Thank you!

Any real evidence of abuse?

Claims have been made about abuse of followers concerning a number of spiritual leaders, including Adi Da in this article in section Public controversies. Is there any definitive and reliable evidence for or against such claims for Adi Da? Such claims about currently living spiritual teachers should be taken seriously, but should only be acted on if such evidence exists, since anyone with any sort of peeve can make a fraudulent public claim of abuse. Therefore, the existence of such reliable references in the case of Adi Da could be helpful in researching claims about currently living spiritual teachers. David Spector (talk) 16:18, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Judging by the references and footnotes in the article, most of which refer to a few court cases from 1985 that went nowhere, the answer to your question is no. There is no real evidence of abuse anywhere else either as far as I can tell. Harold the Sheep (talk) 06:08, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

We don't evaluate the cases. We report the sources - which in this case are all highly reliable, secondary and tertiary, and thoroughly vetted. The article accurately reflects the nature of the accusations, the results of the lawsuits, the defenses of the accused, etc. Some devotees are back and actively trying to hagiograph the page again, I see. It has been stable for years, after being heavily reviewed and debated, with admins stamping it a "good" page, which hardly ever happens. Leave it alone.Bearmountainxoxo (talk) 19:01, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

The OP asked whether there was any definitive or reliable evidence of abuse and the answer to that is clearly 'no there isn't'. There are reports in newspapers from the time about civil cases that were dismissed or dropped, and then forgotten about. There has been nothing about these cases since.

Of course we don’t evaluate the cases. In this case, there’s nothing much to evaluate anyway. Who would care enough to evaluate them?

Re "Leave it alone", I'm personally not that interested in changing it, although it is badly written, undue, and so obviously an attempt to insinuate something or other. I tend to think that discerning readers can judge these things for themselves. Harold the Sheep (talk) 06:05, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Disputed adjective

BD2412 this edit summary

No, per Wikipedia:Use plain English, we do not use words that readers can "just look up"; this is a general purpose encyclopdia, not a philosophy dissertation for a PhD committee, and the purpose, as the policy states, "is not to impress its readers with your learning or vocabulary"

is just silly. We frequently use words that some readers are going to have to look up. Virtually every full article will have words of that kind; there are numerous other examples of it in this article. Yes, some readers won't be familiar with the word 'dionysiac', but that doesn't mean it is only used in philosophy dissertations for PhD committees, or that anyone who uses it must be trying to impress readers with their learning. I'm sure that happens sometimes, just as it sometimes happens that editors try to impress with the clever sarcasm of their edit summaries, but in this case the word 'dionysiac' was carefully chosen as an adjective to summarize the general flavour of these occasions, as they are described in numerous primary and secondary accounts of the Garbage and the Goddess period. If you read those accounts, "celebratory" on its own is insufficient: the two words most certainly do not mean the same thing. 'Celebratory' is rather vanilla and fails to convey the wild, ecstatic and unrestrained quality of these occasions, which is certainly one of their most notable characteristics. Harold the Sheep (talk) 05:44, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Then just say ""wild and ecstatic". Your own edit summary contesting the removal says that the word means "'wild and ecstatic' according to Wiktionary", so a reader looking it up is only going to get from looking it up that it means "wild and ecstatic". BD2412 T 12:03, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

If you think "wild and ecstatic" is better than "dionysiac" then put that in. Don't just reduce it to "celebratory" with a snarky edit summary, and then fail to address concerns about its inadequacy. As should be clear, I personally think that 'dionysiac' is ok – it's not as obscure and frightening a word as you seem to think it is and reads slightly better in the context of the sentence than "wild and ecstatic". But I guess either, or even neither, is ok. I'll leave it in your brusque and masterly hands, but I feel that 'celebratory' on its own—even though these were indeed celebratory occasions—doesn't quite do justice to the descriptions in any of the primary or secondary sources. Harold the Sheep (talk) 04:02, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

The clause that follows, "an overturning of previous restrictions and conventional behaviours that was often accompanied by spontaneous displays of 'spiritual power'", also makes it clear that "celebratory" here means more than just a celebration. BD2412 T 13:35, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes well thanks for stating the obvious, but it doesn't address the aspect we have been talking about.

"activities of a "celebratory" wild and ecstatic nature" seems a bit clumsy to me. Harold the Sheep (talk) 00:31, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

The wording doesn't seem "clumsy" to me, but even if it was it would be better than being "dionysiac." --RTotzke (talk) 05:49, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

"Dionysiac wording" – that's an interesting concept. And why do you think clumsy wording is better than dionysiac wording? Dionysiac wording sounds more interesting to me, but I guess it's a matter of taste. I can see from the wording of your comment that you have a preference for clumsiness. Do you have anything substantial to contribute? Harold the Sheep (talk) 07:17, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Close paraphrasing in 7th stage realization section

BD2412 can you tell me what is going on with this section? The wording of every paragraph seems to be almost the same as the wording in the source. Even calling it close paraphrasing is a bit of a stretch, it's more like plagiarism and copyright violation. Virtually the whole section appears to be lifted, almost word for word, from parts of Appendices A and B in the 2004 edition of The Knee Of Listening.

Here is one example.

The original text reads:

In the Way of Adidam, the "Perfect Practice" encompasses both the vertical process (otherwise characteristically associated with the fifth stage of life) and the horizontal process (otherwise characteristically associated with the sixth stage of life). Thus, in the Way of Adidam, there is no "preference" exercised in favor of either the "Upward" process or the "Inward" process—either the realization of the Divine as Light Itself or the realization of the Divine as Consciousness Itself... This unique and unprecedented orientation to the developmental processes of the fifth and the sixth stages of life is made possible by the full reception of Avatar Adi Da's gift of Divine Spiritual Transmission... In the "Perfect Practice", one is no longer practicing from the point of view of the body-mind and its faculties. Now, devotional turning to Him (or Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga) takes the form of simply "choosing" to stand in His Position (rather than the ego-position)—inspecting and feeling beyond the root-tendency to contract and presume the self-identity called "I". (p. 735–36 The Knee Of Listening)

The article text reads:

In the Way of Adidam, the "Perfect Practice" encompasses both the vertical process, associated with the fifth stage of life, and the horizontal process, associated with the sixth stage of life. Thus, Adi Da maintains, in the Way of Adidam, there is no "preference" exercised in favor of either the "Upward" process or the "Inward" process—either the realization of the Divine as Light Itself or the realization of the Divine as Consciousness Itself. According to Adi Da, this unique and unprecedented orientation to the developmental processes of the fifth and the sixth stages of life is made possible by the full reception of his gift of Divine Spiritual Transmission. In the "Perfect Practice", one is no longer practicing from the point of view of the body-mind and its faculties. Now, devotional turning to Him takes the form of simply "choosing" to stand in his position and feeling beyond the root-tendency to contract and presume the self-identity called "I".

Every paragraph is like that. Is there some explanation? I feel like I must be missing something, because I cannot understand how you could not know that this is something we shouldn't be doing. Harold the Sheep (talk) 05:44, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Please go ahead and reword or remove any portions that concern you. This was not intentional, but perhaps a mix-up between passages intended to be summarized and those already done. BD2412 T 13:21, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

It doesn't concern me personally, but it might if I was the copyright holder; and it isn't really portions of it, it's pretty much the whole thing. From a wikipedia point of view it is concerning because it violates the terms of use and is potential copyright violation. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but it seems remarkably negligent considering the content was inserted some months ago and you have edited the article many times since then. Are there other parts of the article where you have gotten mixed up in this way? I did come across a few incidences of close paraphrasing in earlier parts of the article (for example here) but I certainly haven't checked all the references. I don't have much time right now, but I will get back to it later. Harold the Sheep (talk) 03:20, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Having been an intellectual property attorney for nearly 20 years, I can assure you that copyright claims take into consideration the percentage of the entire work represented by a purported infringement, which is minimal with respect to the 800+page work. There is no absence of attribution, since everything is cited, and since Wikipedia falls under the protections of 17 U.S.C. §§ 512 et seq. of the DMCA, any deficiency to this end can be cured by rewording, so please do check the text against the references. BD2412 T 03:25, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I think I'll leave the rewording to you, I intend to step back from this article. It's reassuring (though, in the circumstances, somewhat surprizing) to hear that you're an expert in this field of law. However I was speaking more from a commonsense and basic academic good practice point-of-view than a strictly legal one. Of course it's good to know that "17 U.S.C. §§ 512 et seq. of the DMCA" helps us out (although it's not a word I'm familiar with - I had to look it up in the dictionary), but I'm a simple soul and when an author/publisher says "No part of this book may be copied or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher" I take it as meaning they don't want people doing that on a site like Wikipedia, 17 U.S.C. §§ 512 et seq. of the DMCA notwithstanding.

I notice you removed some of the offending material and rewrote a small part, but there is still quite a lot there. It would be a good idea to check the rest of the article as well in case you've inadvertently done something similar. I certainly noticed it a number of times when I was editing but, as I said, I haven't checked every reference. I would suggest to you that just copying chunks of text into an article and then maybe getting round to summarizing it later is not a good way of working and I sincerely hope, considering the number of articles you edit, that it is not your usual approach. Harold the Sheep (talk) 20:27, 8 December 2022 (UTC)