Running Away

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cult weirdos, dandavats.com, gurus, initiation, iskcon gurus, ritvik, sampradaya sun, zonal acharya

This is a reply to a comment from Seeker to the Sri Srila Prabhupada-asstaakaam post.

In Seeker’s comment he links to a few posts on ISKCON guru Trivikrama Swami’s blog, quotes from them, and comments. He points out the bizarre status accorded to Prabhupada in those links, and in the ISKCON community in general. One thing Seeker wrote was this:

Fact is stranger than fiction – any amount of sarcasm to point out flaws in the concept of guru as understood by ISKCON is overcome effortlessly by the comments of ISKCON gurus. Nothing is more hilarious than reality, it seems. Their articles make me wonder what kind of inner world that these gurus must be dwelling in – for example, in this link, an innocent devotee asks what should he do if he hears Srila Prabhupada’s statements being commented as wrong and the guru replies that he should protest and should even be willing to give up his life – scary.

When I was in ISKCON 30-35 years ago, when it came to how Prabhupada was represented, it was quite different than it is now. You wouldn’t hear people speak about Prabhupada having a special position above everyone else. Of course he was spoken of as being special and above all of us, but the attitude was that because we were all so new to bhakti-yoga that of course someone like Prabhupada was special and above us (what to speak of non-devotees). His specialness was taught as being a relative specialness, and, that all of us could attain his level of being eternally liberated, 100% self-realized, and in a direct one on one relationship with Krishna. Of course, Prabhupada was promoted in awe and reverence, but not because he was being taught as some special type of being, as a one of a kind person in all of history—it was because of his books, and how ISKCON began, along with it’s rapid growth, that Prabhupada was held in special awe and veneration. That ISKCON origin story was presented as a miraculous event, as if it was a superhuman feat. But, it was presented as Prabhupada’s empowerment by Krishna due to Prabhupada’s devotion to strictly obeying his guru’s “orders.”

Prabhupada was used as an example of what we could achieve if we also strictly followed our guru’s orders. Prabhupada wasn’t taught as being above any and all faults; you weren’t assailed as a blasphemous demon if you disagreed with anything Prabhupada taught. It was the general mood that it didn’t matter if Prabhupada made mistakes in things he said, he didn’t have to be seen as above making mistakes. It was drilled into our heads that the sole qualification of the spiritual master was in not changing the teachings. If the guru made some mistakes about any variety of other things, that wasn’t seen as diminishing him, and it wasn’t forbidden to disagree with those things. The importance of the parampara was stressed, the strict adherence to “not speculating” was stressed. The all-importance of handing down the unchanged teachings as the qualification for being a guru was taught as what differentiated ISKCON from all the “bogey yogis” who presented themselves with possessing mystic powers as their qualification to be gurus. It was stressed that Prabhupada wanted all of us to be gurus just like him.

And that was why ISKCON transformed so seamlessly and completely into the zonal acharya era after Prabhupada left. Of course many didn’t like it, but that had to do with their belief that those gurus weren’t yet advanced enough to be treated as if they had attained the highest level of God consciousness, as was the presumption about Prabhupada’s position. It wasn’t the idea of the new gurus being treated like Prabhupada that was a problem that was spoken about (at first). The idea or paradigm of their being treated as if they were intimately relating with God, and that they should be surrendered to wholeheartedly as highly qualified empowered leaders, wasn’t the problem. The idea wasn’t the problem, it was the guys filling that paradigm that many had a problem with.

Fugitive from a Chain Gang

Tags

bhakti, bhakti-yoga, diksha, guru, history, initiation, parampara, raganuga, sampradaya, self realization, shiksha

This first is a reply to a comment from Cacofonix, after that is a reply to a comment from Michael Schenk, both are comments to The Fall of the House of the Usher post.

He wrote:

just want to confirm if I fully understand what you are saying. Hence I am taking liberty of phrasing it in my own words.

Fact 1: Most sampradhaya have a diksha driven chain of links. However they portray only the prominent acharyas. It is not necessarily a complete historical record.The way we understand the “missing links” is by falling back to see if Siksha holds tight.

Fact 2: Baladeva Vidhyabhushana did two things to establish Gaudiya as a Sampradhaya. Wrote Vedanta Sutra commentary called Govindhha Bhasya. Traced the links of the “new sampradhya” to brahma-Madhva sampradhaya.

Going by these facts, what we are saying is that Lord Chaitanya’s (for those who don’t believe that he is a reincarnation of Krishna and for sake of preaching) teachings are not some new age philosophy. It is grounded in sastra and have this sampradhaya link.

Once that is established, then the emphasis is on Sikhsha and not diksha part.

Please let me know if I got it right.

a) Diksha is not an important part of Gaudiya Sampradhaya. Siksha is what is emphasized

b) The link to Madha sampradhaya is done to establish it as a bonafide.

Note: Not that we are lying or anything about it. It is just that once the link is establish in a “unifying” sense, then we diverge to bring out the “different” take or interpretation of Sastra as per the Lord’s teachings.

Note: None of this is important for self realization. This is more a ordering of reality and hence a scholarly question and borne out of curiosity.

Like I said in my previous post, Baladeva Vidyabhusana specifically wrote a commentary on the Vedanta-sutra in order to establish the Gaudiya sampradaya as a serious school of Vedanta. There is a famous story on how that happened, you can read that story here. I believe he created that parampara list for the same purpose, seeing as it was a concern at the time in order to keep royal and other patronage for Gaudiya acharyas and temples in the face of jealous criticism from competing sampradayas. The accuracy of that list has been disputed by people in other Gaudiya parivars and in other sampradayas, and it has been defended and expanded upon in detail by various Gaudiya Math gurus. Although they stress the importance of pancaratrika diksha (ritual initiation) as well.

The Fall of the House of the Usher

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prabhupada, sampradaya sun, raganuga, gurus, gbc, sex, illicit sex, prabhavisnu swami, prabhavishnu das, rocana das, sampradaya acharya

This is a response to a comment from Seeker to the Fiesta Forever post. In Seeker’s comment a link is given to an article on the Hare Krishna community’s main web outlet for revolt and angry diatribes against ISKCON’s leaders—and anything they see as against Prabhupada or his ideals—the Sampradaya Sun. The article was written by it’s owner and editor Rocana (Rochaan) Das.

The comment by Seeker goes into some valid complaints, and philosophical points being overlooked in the reaction to the current guru scandal going on in ISKCON with Prabhavishnu Swami. For those who don’t know: he was a major ISKCON guru and GBC (governing board) member who just resigned, writing a letter saying he’s going off to live with a lady in Thailand. This was after he had been seen a number of times with her, or other women in Thailand. For sannyasis, who are supposed to be celibate and single, that’s a big no-no in the more fervently conservative or fundamentalist Hindu society, where things like that can end with riots and violence against the guru and his followers. That’s generally due to their belief that the celibate monk has some special mystic power, and that their devotion to him is predicated upon his remaining celibate so he can confer upon them his mystic potency and favor from God. If he is found to be deceptive about his celibacy, they feel cheated about worshiping him and giving him money. In ISKCON it’s more personal, the disciples are expected to give their lives over to the guru, the guru is seen as the one whom you worship and serve, not because he’s able to confer mystic potency because he’s celibate, but because he’s “pure” in his devotion to Krishna. Your spiritual advancement is taught as being predicated upon your worship and servile devotion to him.

Take It Easy

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bhagavad gita, free will, narayana maharaja, prabhupada, self realization

This post is in reference to a comment I made to Raghu Mishra Dasa on the It Won’t Be Long post. He had posted a poem which seemed to me to be at least in part a quote from Prabhupada. So I did a search and I found that the bottom half of his poem was a quote from a purport to a Bhagavad Gita verse. I then responded to Raghu Mishra telling him that I thought his combining of the words from Prabhupada’s purport, out of context, and adding them to some other stream of thought, caused the point of Prabhupada’s words to be lost or misrepresented.

He responded, and included in what he said was this:

in a way you make a distinction between the means and the end result in your above reply and I respect your decision to do so however you must know I am a bit of a simpleton focusing on whatever one plus one is actually contributing to maintaining a sense of how it is the method of Krsna consciousness in discussion of course the method goes on regardless

I’m glad he brought this all up, it showcases a problem I see in Prabhupada’s books, and not just in the purports. As many of you know, Prabhupada’s purports (commentaries to each verse) were written by using the commentaries of previous gurus or acharyas in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, translating them into English and adding what he wanted from that, and then adding his own words. The problem, from my perspective, is that it’s common for Prabhupada’s English translation to lack in clarity when it’s about something deeply philosophical or ontological. If it’s about some history, or story about a sage or king, then those are easier to translate. But when it comes to other topics, often the result is something that goes over most people’s heads because the translations are too cryptic.

Sri Srila Prabhupada-asstaakaam

Tags

guru puja, new year, poem for jagat guru, prabhupada, prabhupadastakam

Happy New Year goys and goyls! I’ve been kinda busy over the new year (not hung over), so I’ve handed off the first post of the year to our Uzbekistani correspondent Azamat. He’s actually from Kazakhstan, but had to move after you know what with his sisters. His English isn’t perfect, but he works cheap and he’s devoted to Prabhupada. Isn’t that all that counts? You can see his post at my Hare Krishna News site, go to Sri Srila Prabhupada-asstaakaam Hope your year is full of fun and happiness.

Love and kisses, V