Posted June 12 2009: Dear Gauridas Pandit Prabhu, […] this exchange between yourself and your godbrother got me thinking. I have seen such meaningful attempts before by some in order to lovingly correct mistaken Godbrothers. Yours happened to be particularly articulate, pointed, and unmistakable.
Yet in each case, each case, each case, the result is the same.
I have met in person 3 people who I can consider godbrothers. 2 are old enough to be my father. One not far behind. I approached Srila Prabhupada and Iskcon under the tutelage of the 3rd, Jeff, who I met while taking hatha yoga class for a health ailment. I was a born again Christian and “knew” that God was an “unknown” but real person behind Paramatma who sat in the heart of my mind. Jeff and Srila Prabhupada helped me get to KNOW who that actually is. Jeff is resigned to his semi Sahajiya fringe life, and not inclined toward material management.
The other 2 are fighting from exile in the trenches. They have approached their godbrothers repeatedly, for DECADES, from every angle, been spit upon from every angle, and are exhausted.
I watch and observe all this.
I cannot argue with your sentiment for your Godbrothers. It is real.
What is apparent to me is that employing it will continue to bear no fruit unless married simultaneously with a missing ingredient.
Just put yourself in their shoes. They have an entire life scenario they have deluded themselves and conditioned themselves into. A Survival Support structure, avenues to express their creative energies, etc.
Suddenly we show up in the form of words on paper and shatter their misconceptions. Offering little else. A fraction of a second before the truth would ACTUALLY defeat their misconception, their survival defense mechanism erects a defensive wall. And for good reason. It is simple physics.
NONE of us have a viable option to offer them. Forget something stable and wonderful, we don’t have a pot to piss in so to speak. Not one Prabhupadanuga holds sway over a public temple, we all kiss ass somewhere if we are honest.
So, instead of spending our considerable creative mental talents discussing with those of like mind how to, as a group, overcome the seeming insurmountable obstacles of lack of finance, tremendous distance gaps, family ties, etc, that stand in the way of us banding together systematically as ONE group of Sankirtana devotees in ONE place where Srila Prabhupada’s instructions rule the day…
Maya plays on our sentiments and diverts our energy and attention to endeavors which cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, have the desired effect. As a matter of fact, it only pushes the recipients of our attempts further away from considering us in a positive light.
This is my observation, it has risen clear as the morning sun in my consciousness.
Maya has us by the short hairs.
It could easily be construed that I am at this moment guilty of the same misallocation of my resources by approaching you and others in this critical mood as your sentiments need a place of refuge, and your godbrothers need correction. What do I have to offer?
I have so little it is a pathetic shame. But this fact belies the desperate situation we all face because I see so clearly this problem. All I can offer as a solution is the suggestion that we head for whatever solid ground we can all stand on. And that is quite an etheric and gossamer thread of reality to be sure. But it is all we actually can stand on. And that is we each have a list of locations of others who understand Srila Prabhupada’s directives regarding DVD, the DOM, and Ritvik system. Email addys, Phone #s, and physical addresses.
We need to meet exclusively in an austere way right here. On the mental plane. And be honest with one another about our emotional and physical strengths and limitations. We need to reel in all of the strands of our emotional capital, our emotional energies that are thrown hither and tither into places by our misplaced sentiment. We need to discuss threadbare and come to a conclusion about how to create a place we can all resort to in love and trust and daily act as One Family.
Thinking First.
Feeling Next.
By thinking these things through clearly according to Srila Prabhupada’s instructions on how to come together and associate, and reclaiming our lost mispent emotions and feeling the truth of what is possible between us, Krsna will carry what we lack and our WILLS are then aligned with his.
So Srila Prabhupada’s mercy we WILL ourselves into close community. One way or the other.
And make no mistake about it. Even entering this process means each one of us will be faced with huge sacrifices. And we cannot sacrifice anything, just like the Bogus Iskcon Gurus cannot, unless there is something positive to replace it.
In the transition, when there is nothing tangible, there may seem great risk to whatever modicum of stability we have eeked out. But we must remember that that is only ours by Grace and is subject to dissolution at anytime if we rest on those laurels. Only with faith that there will be a more positive fruitful future, materially and spiritually, can anyone do as I suggest. And I fear many will not. But I am certain that what we each have now is tenuous at best and was only meant to get us to this point of identifying who is who. Now we sink or swim.
Your thoughts? Anyone?
Hare Krsna!
ys
Bhakta Mark
Dear Bhakta Mark prabhu, Thanks for your heartfelt letter on the current plight of the Prabhupadanugas. Yes you are right, “we do not have a pot to pee in” at least not so much in the West. We basically have something built up in India where they are making more centers and more devotees. Other than that, here in the West we have a few home programs and a sort of cyber-association program where devotees meet and discuss mainly on the net.
There are some devotees having home progams in places like NYC, LA, Seatle, Berkeley and other places, but this is pretty small scale home programs. So it is not a lot to show, agreed. At the same time, this was the problem the early Christians had. Many of their followers were “party people” and there is a letter to the Corinthians telling them to quit partying worse than the average people are doing. They had no centers at all, it was all sort of grass roots preaching in homes and on the street. That’s about where we are at. Yet big things can come from humble beginnings, so we need to have faith in that.
And lest we forget, Srila Prabhupada was living in a small scale situation most of the time of his life since he got little support for his preaching in India after 1936. SP told me personally that he preached for forty years in India with little result. So we are sometimes in a situation where we are not making much headway, but that is our karma and destiny as well, so we have to make the best of a bad bargain.
My sugggestion is to work with folks like Gadhadhara and Gauri Dasa, they have at least some influence here in Berkeley. Gadhadhara has a home program that is very nice and it is a place where we could try to bring people and cultivate them. Its certainly better than nothing. We might have to make the best of a bad bargain. In sum, there is a saying “it is what it is.”
Right now many of our devotees are battle shock fatigued, starting to come off their high fever from the cult meltdown. So there is a lot of mental trauma and “walking wounded” about. This will take time to resolve itself. There are even some leaders like Ramesvara who are perhaps starting to realize how badly his shennanigans ruined ISKCON, so that is good. There are many rank and file now starting to write protests as we see especially on Rocana’s site, so the masses too are waking up and getting more ambitious to do something progressive. They are waking up, albeit slow but sure.
One thing I am noticing is that over the years many devotees told me things like: “chant your rounds prabhu, look at your own heart prabhu, chant the right tunes prabhu, be nice to your (GBC) God brothers prabhu,” etc. Even Gaura Govinda swami advised me “we must tolerate and work with” the bogus gurus. And lest we forget all the other cheer leader’s slogans: “don’t criticize prabhu, you are a trouble maker prabhu, and sit down and shut up” and so on and so forth, because many of our God brothers simply have not recognized the scope of the problems in ISKCON and the severe nature of the attack upon Srila Prabhupada, ISKCON, his books, the devotees, the women and children and so on.
Now a lot of folks are waking up, goody, but it has taken a lot of time as it does when cults melt down. So now they are sort of walking around the bombed out city in disbelief that their home has been burnt to ashes. The walking wounded cannot help rebuild generally either, since they are burned out. Thus a lot of our brothers are experiencing: really big mental and / or bodily health problems, family problems, big financial problems, sometimes doubts about the whole Krishna idea, and so many other problems, they cannot rebuild their city that has been bombed to pieces. Nor can we expect them too either.
So our best bet is to find some few others in the grass roots process and build small programs and preach to a few people as much as we can do. And be happy we have that much even.
Another problem we see in the cult meltdown process is simply the ego factor deflating, a lot of our “big devotees” simply cannot come to grips with the fact that while they were “chanting their rounds, playing the right tunes, engaging in service to ISKCON” or whatever amazing yoga they thought were perfoming, meanwhile “the karmis” who eat salamis, hot dogs, hamburgers, crab’s feet etc. … in sum folks like Jane Wallace, the FBI, the Berkeley Police, and media folks like John Hubner and probably millions of other karmis, realized that ISKCON was a homosexual and pedophile worship cult, decades ahead of some of these “advanced souls.” Their egos cannot come to grips with the fact that these karmi wanted thousands of PADA types to evolve in ISKCON and clean this up way back in the 80s.
These devotees are having big ego troubles coming to grips with the fact that they let their cult run wild and they actually suppressed us, so it is like a person having battle shock syndrome. So these people in particular are really having a melt down at the present time, and they will not be useful either because their egos simply cannot grip the fact that they failed to see the forest through the trees, while us idiots and not so pure chanters at PADA were seeing the problems and addressing them all along. Now some of these folks are trying to say there never was any threats to me and — ok — this is called denial: battle fatigue delusions.
So once again we cannot expect much performance from these folks, it is just gradually dawning on them the extent of the devastation. So the grass roots is all we have, but it a lot better than nothing and it is growing in many ways as each grass roots person is preaching to a few others, and they will convert a few others, just like the early Christians did, so it is growing all the time but not on the amazing levels we saw in the 1960s.
So we have to be realistic and do the best with what we have. I am glad we have so many allies and supporters and we know they are converting others, so we are going to grow and we need to be hopeful and not so pessimistic. As for Berkeley, not so many people here like any of the big fat cats, their program is never going to fly much over here. Our program has way more potential than theirs. So find a few Prabhupadanugas wherever you can, and try to build some pots for us to pee in. Lets start somewhere, we have a lot to offer and we should be glad we have at least the right thing to give others, so whatever we build it has a good foundation, whereas our nemeses are crumbling daily. Thats my two cents. Thanks pd
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Shrila Prabhupada!!!
I just wanted to say the commentary I believe Pada just made was correct. In other words we really should be encouraged about the small Prabhupadanuga get togethers there are, because they will grow just by preservering in that way. Prabhupada what ever temple he visited, even if though it seemed not much progress was being made as far as attracting many people, was famous in saying this is the best place for preaching and he insisted on our seeing it as our duty to remain where Prabhupada placed us especially but also Krishna is always controling the whole scenerio. And even if the devotee does not understand why Krishna sens him somewhere, like Prabhupada is famous for saying when he arrived in New York, my dear Lord Krishna, I don’t know why you sent me here where the population is so overcome by the modes of passion and ignorance, but You must have some good reason, and so based on his full faith on the holy name of Krishna and the orders of his spiritual master, he simply surrendered all by himself with practically no money and had to endure unbelievable set back also backs, but because of his staunch faith in the holy name ofd Krishna and his guru’s request really at their very first meeting, he endured heat attack, stealing of his books by some crazy he was staying with, and really he told one disciple you wouldn’t even to bare to hear the difficulties I have endured when asked to relate these things.
So, all I am saying is really for our own glorification really in the ultimate end, Lord Krishna sets it up for his devotees inparticular to take on more austeritties and difficulties than any common man could, and if we are really devotee at heart we just embrace these adversities as very great mercy feeling we deserve much more difficulty and this sets us up as bonafide candidates for entering the kingdom of God, Prabhupada said. When I said our own glorification I meant we will be glorified by devotees really and Lord Krishna Himself worships his pure devotee more than even Himself, He considers His really surrendered devotee more worshipable than himself, not that we are intersted in hearing glorication of ourselves, a devotee by nature hates to hear praise of himself, he is so humble.
So, even our last writer went through so much to see finally so many more and more sympathisers to the actual situation that took place are poping up and supporting the cause of restablishing really Prabhupada as our only bonafide acharya and even coming together cooperatively on this principle. All devotees really undergo unbelievable difficulties and tribulations in this world in preaching this mission, Prabhupada actually said this was evidence of our great potency if we are meeting with great adversity from the demons, other wise we must be practically dead in our spirital life if no one feels threatened by us.
It was Prabhupada alone really that could attract so many together to cooperate with him when he was phisically present, but he went through unbelievable trials also to get to that point, and it was Bhaktivinoda Thakura that practically stoped all the sahajiism that was going on for years in india in Lord Chaitanya’s name after some time after Lord Chaitanya advented Himself attracting millions to his party.
So it is indded really a very rare and empowered devotee by Shri Chaitanya mahaprabhu that can bring so many together to be strict followers also and not many sahajiyas like so called empowered gurus tend to do. So, most of us really neop[hytes really in comparison to Prabhupada can not hope to imitate him, but in our hearts we should have a extremely intense longing to bring many Prabhupadanugas together to cooperate to spread Prabhupada’s mission, because Prabhupada said we would if we actually loved him. But what is this love for Prabhupada, it really is the same as love For Krishna, absolutely and is most rarely attained. So, we really need to be realistic and practical with ourselves, Prabbhupada also preached this, and this also takes humility we may not have to accept our position and not over endeavor and just fall down all the more because we are not really doing our duty.
Like Lord Krishna also said it is very dangerous to try to perform some one elses duty. Prabhupada also very much wanted to establish a Varnasrama community for this reason, especially when he saw so many of his disciples were falling down simply showing their disqualification for that.
Most of us really are qualified simply to try to assist Shrila Prabhupada in his mission especially by humbly just trying to be of service to his servants that are capable of keeping their vows for instance and have some program going on that devotees can come together and very blissfully partisipate in like for instance Damaghosa prabhu in Seattle Washington has a very impressive temple in Sedro Whooly Washington with several acres of beauitiful garden that he lives mostly off of in the self sufficient way Prabhupada really wanted us to live indepenedent of having to depend on non devotees for anything. So, this is obviously a very impressive example Damaghosa prabhu is setting and devotees even from the Alachua Florida community preach he has the sweetest gatherings there, and the alachua florida community by the way has the most devotees there from the ritvic and other points of views still cooperating together for their community.
So, ofcouse in India we have the most impreesive example of what takes place when devotees are cooperating together for Shrila Prabhpada, so impressive infact that even president Obama glorified their food distributrion program is something all the other countries should imitate, but we know this only would be possible if we are strict followers of Shrila Prabhupada cooperating together this is where all Shri Chaitya’s empowering blessings will spontaniously flow to.
But obviously these Bangalore devotees had extremely piouse births unlike most of us here in america, who had most degraded biths, but we just have to make the best use of a bad bargain and most importantly give all respect tpo those who can keep their vows to Prabhupada and have some place we can go and associate!!!!
ypour fallen servant,
Anubhavananda dasa
The article and the two comments are interesting and they beg the question as to what has changed or to what degree have things changed from 2009 until now 14 years later in 2023.
Do the prabhupadanugas in 2023 have managed to built a few pots to pee in?
Have enough of the “big devotees” come to grips with the fact that while they were “chanting their rounds, playing the right tunes, engaging in service to ISKCON” or whatever amazing yoga they thought were perfoming, that nothing or something has improved/changed anything?
Are we now, 2023, sinking or swimming? With this question I mean the points made in the above article and comments, not the present day Kaliyuga situation as this was unimaginable than.
Your thoughts, anyone?