Posted by Hansadutta das on July 22, 2010 – Sri Ramanujacarya chose 74 disciples to act as gurus after his death, one for each major holy place. Did he create ‘zonal acaryas?’ And if so, how did they avoid the corruption we have come to associate with such an idea?
Sri Ramanujacarya (1017-1137)
Sri Ramanujacarya (1017-1137) created 74 simhasana-dhipatis or ‘throne-holders,’ to give initiation after his death, he created what we in ISKCON would term ‘zonal acaryas.’ He chose 74 of his disciples to give diksha, each of them affiliated to one of the many temples spread far and wide throughout a large tract of India.Those temples were not created by Sri Ramanujacarya but were ancient places made famous by his disciplic predecessors, the Alwars, who sung about the Deities within them in their four-thousand hymn Divya Prabandham. In many cases Ramanujacarya restored or regularised the worship of those Deities and safeguarded their worship in perpetuity by establishing systems of succession.
Skip down through the article and find what Kripamoya has to say about Prabhupada’s appointment of the eleven:
While many of us now reserve our undiluted scorn for the period of our ISKCON history known as the ‘zonal acarya days’ it seems that a notion of geographical dispersion for localised initiation was favoured by Sri Ramanujacarya, one of the greatest Vaishnava acaryas of all time.
And it may be that our own sampradaya acarya, Srila Prabhupada, did actually intend, in his last days, to choose eleven gurus for the giving of initiation, one in each continent. It was a logical idea with considerable history of success and a thousand years of history behind it.
Being a guru for a particular geographical ‘zone’ is not an inherently bad idea and does not inevitably produce corruption. What produced the corruption within ISKCON was the same confusion as took place within the Catholic Church; the confusion of spiritual power and temporal power.
When the position of spiritual leadership becomes mistaken for temporal ownership of a human following and material resources then all men become tempted and some do not survive that temptation.
Our ISKCON ‘zonal acarya days’ also produced the phenomenon of such men, duped by their apparent ‘ownership’ of adoring followers, wealth and buildings, forcing initiations upon those who really didn’t want it.
Such spiritual abuse produced widespread disgust. Yet I believe it wasn’t exactly the system that produced the bad results, merely, as is very common, the bad people within the good system.
This is probably as close an admission as Kripamoya can allow himself to make that where the whole “zonal acharya” business went wrong was not with the zonal representation, but with the presumptuous attitudes, “Now I am Guru, these are my disciples.”
We do not become Gurus, we are forever becoming the servant of The Guru. We are not meant to use Prabhupada for attracting disciples for our own aggrandisement, we are meant for using everything of ourselves to attract people to become disciples of Srila Prabhupada.
We are meant to worship Srila Prabhupada, and demonstrate to new devotees how to worship Srila Prabhupada, in that way everyone can become a servant of the Guru, Srila Prabhupada.
Related: More Vaishnava Acharyas Accept Ritvik – Ramanuja tradition
I am wondering where this information about Ramanujacarya came from. I can’t find it in my Caitanya Caritamrta (though it might be there and my feeble mind doesn’t recollect). If however, this information is fully true, is it fair to make the leap that equates Ramanujacarya’s system to the “zonal acarya” system? (he created what we in ISKCON would term ‘zonal acaryas.’) Isn’t this the logical fallacy of altering the argument?
Personally, I think the neo-ISKCONians are a little “zoned out” anyway.