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EDITORIAL September 26, 1999 VNN4801 Comment on this story A Critical Look At Ravindra Svarupa's Vyasapuja Offering BY KUNDALI DAS EDITORIAL, Sep 26 (VNN) — Dear Prabhus, please accept my dandavat pranams. All glories to Sri Guru and Gouranga. Someone asked my god brother Kundali Prabhu, the author of the Our Mission Series, to critique the self-congratulatory Vyasapuja offering of Ravindra Svarupa. He wrote one, and shared it with a few people. Just as Ravindra's was a "hit" with the GBC, Kundali's deconstruction of it was also a hit with many non-GBC. I am sending it out for internet exposure so the larger devotee population can read both Ravindra's offering and Kundali's commentary and decide for themelves who makes more sense. I don' t think an opinion pole is necessary, but here they are for your examination. Satyam eva jayate. Your servant, Puru Das Adhikari First Ravindra's offering itself so this is not one-sided: "namah om visnu-padaya krsna-presthaya bhu-tale srimate bhaktivedanta svamin iti namine. namaste sarasvate deve gaura-vani-pracarine nirvesesa-sunyavadi pascatya-desa-tarine. Dearest Srila Prabhupada, Please accept my fallen obeisances at your lotus feet. You are my savior, and I know well the difficulty you underwent to save me: Guest (1): How many disciples do you now have, sir, in the U.S.? Prabhupada: You cannot expect many disciples, but still, there are two thousand. Because I have got so many conditions and the fact is so difficult to understand, Krsna consciousness. They have forgotten Krsna, they have forgotten God, and I am trying to make them Krsna conscious. It is a very difficult job. I have to shed my blood three tons before I make one convinced in Krsna consciousness. That is my experience. (Room Conversation -- April 18, 1972, Hong Kong) I saw personally how hard and how tirelessly you labored to create the unified preaching mission, "a worldwide organization under the name and style of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness" (SB 2.4.18, purport). Once in the mid-seventies, a devotee showed me something I was probably not supposed to see: your correspondence files for a few years, filled with all the letters you had received. We had all read the letters you had sent; few knew what you received. I was shocked by the volume of problems within our movement, by the maya bedeviling your followers, not excluding many leaders like temple presidents, sannyasis, and GBC. It seemed not a day went by without your mail delivering to you setbacks, perplexities, quarrels, and failures. The combination of the world's resistance and the movement's weaknesses seemed to present an overwhelmingly fatal obstacle. It was a disillusioning and discouraging few hours of reading for me. Then during a fretful night, I came to realize I had no right to be discouraged. For you, my leader and master, never showed yourself disheartened or discouraged. You had the quality of a great general who, in the thick of the mortal challenges and painful reverses of pitch battle, remains calm, clear-headed, and fixed single-mindedly upon victory. His very confidence inspires the troops and thereby carries the battle. I understood then more of your greatness. I realized that I had been foolishly idealistic about ISKCON; for years I had stupidly ignored or disregarded many anomalies that undercut our prevailing ideology that we in ISKCON alone were pure, holy, and could do no wrong. In truth, to great extent we had replaced righteousness with self-righteousness and sanctity with sanctimoniousness. You knew better; you knew with chilling clarity of vision all the shortcomings and failures of your followers and your institution. You corrected as much as possible and kept on advancing Lord Caitanya's mission with whatever flawed and imperfect instruments came to your hands. You never quit trying to distribute Lord Caitanya's mercy just because your means and instruments were defective. The fact is, that as fire is covered by smoke, even a transcendental endeavor must have faults. It will produce good and, inevitably, bad. What we need to know is: in the calculus of this endeavor the good will be eternal; the bad, temporary. Nowadays we encounter many disillusioned and discouraged devotees, who feel their idealism has been betrayed. Some indulge an intense nostalgia for the "good old days," for the golden past as opposed to the leaden present. Nostalgia, however, is a species of illusion, a yearning for a past that never existed. They fondly think there was a time when, simply because of your magical presence, everyone was Krishna conscious and enthusiastic and cooperative. I know better. This rosy picture does not acknowledge what you were actually dealing with from the very beginning, your ceaseless daily labor to hold the movement together and moving forward. Others, forced at last to acknowledge the truth when the nostalgia is dispelled, go from being idealists to cynics. It is an unfortunate tendency in human history that when we realize we have been engaged in something foolish, we rectify it by embracing the exact opposite thing, which is another foolishness. In this way, foolish idealists convert into foolish cynics, managing to bypass altogether actual wisdom. Certainly we may be tempted to become discouraged and disheartened. However, it is not allowed to us. It is another form of maya. Indeed, I have discovered that whenever we pass a blanket judgment on ISKCON--either in hope or in despair--we are inevitably reporting on ourselves. It seems that here the "I" in ISKCON indicates "I" the speaker. Whenever I find myself becoming disheartened about your mission, overwhelmed by the problems and difficulties, I have learned to recognize this state a warning sign of personal weakness, and I need to mend the fabric of my own spiritual life. When the remedial actions are done on myself, ISKCON at once looks brighter. Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, and you Srila Prabhupada: all have had a vision of a world-wide unified preaching movement, and each has pushed it toward further and further realization, and it is our job to continue. Many have given up on this effort. Some have formed their own enterprises to work separately. Still others spurn "the institution" to cultivate a "higher" practice. For myself, Srila Prabhupada, I confess to being not so bold or enterprising. I admit that I know of no higher practice than to follow your order. Prabhupada, I want only to be true to you and to your mission. Nothing more. Please grant me this request by your mercy. Hoping to be your everlasting servant," Ravindra Svarupa dasa And now Kundali Prabhu's analysis. Dear Maharaja, I have the offering in question. I'm amazed that this was a hit on the GBC conference. It makes me wonder if iskcon can ever come out of the fog. Of course as long as there is life, there is hope, but one has to wonder sometimes. . . Okay, at the risk of being called cynical, which is how realism always appears to those who are invested in surrealism, I'm going to open by saying that this is nothing but a veiled appeal to sentiment, which the average iskconite is not remotely equipped to see through. Perhaps Ravindra can't either. The most lethal form of swindle is the one in which the perpetrator really believes in the value of what he is peddling. We have all been trained to cherish iskcon and praise it and wax poetic about spreading KC, so anyone who strums this chord blinds us from looking at iskcon as it stands. And it assumes that in all the talk about spreading KC, that we in fact are Krsna conscious. We know what KC is intimately and can give it or take it away from whomsoever we choose. We are blinded to the most central order of Prabhupada, which is not join iskcon, but become Krsna conscious. We think that "spreading" leads to this result automatically and I am saying there is no evidence for this. Becoming KC is a deep and personal and individual matter. A personal experience, where as spreading KC is something we do together as a service to further cleanse our hearts. But spreading does not automatically means the cleansing is happening. there must be a particular quality to the enterprise of spreading, just as SP says there must be a particular quality to chanting the Hare Krsna Mantra. But this is neglected and talk of spreading goes on and on and on. Do we have it, so we can spread it, or are we just spreading the art of how to be institutionalized in the name of bhakti yoga and Prabhupada's mission? Before I go any further, I want to share with you a brilliant quote about cynicism and then proceed: Faith in life, in oneself, in others (and in iskcon) must be built on the hard rock of realism; that is to say, on the capacity to see evil where it is, to see swindle, destructiveness, and selfishness not only when they are obvious but in their many disguises and rationalizations. Indeed, faith, love, and hope must go together with such a passion for seeing reality in all its nakedness that the outsider would be prone to call the attitude "cynicism". And cynical it is, when we mean by it the refusal to be taken in by the sweet and plausible lies that cover almost everything that is said and believed (like the offering under discussion). But this kind of "cynicism" is not cynicism; it is uncompromisingly critical, a refusal to play the game in a system of deception (and self-deception). Meister Eckart expressed this briefly and succinctly when he said of the "simple one" (whom Jesus taught and who a vaisnava is supposed to embody): "He does not deceive, BUT HE ALSO IS NOT DECEIVED." There's more to this quote. Check it out: "Indeed, neither the Buddha, nor the Prophets, nor Jesus, (nor Lord Caitanya, nor the Six Gosvamis, nor any of our Acaryas) were "softies". On the contrary, they were hardheaded realists and most of them were persecuted and maligned not because they preached virtue, but because they spoke truth. They did not respect power, titles, or fame, and they knew that the emperors were naked; and they knew that power can kill the "truth-sayers." This quote is a brilliant observation and several key points are given here. The hardheaded realist is, again, your independent thinker, the person capable of stepping out of the social blinkers that society imposes on us and can see and speak from that position. I suggest you read it again slowly, to catch all the nuances of this insight. I find it dripping with Krsna consciousness, myself. Okay, now turning to the offering, here are my well considered remarks: Not to put too fine a point on it, I find the offering to be more self-glorification that glorification of Prabhupada. Here the author shamelessly fans himself in public and it is a "hit" on the GBC conference on COM. Amazing. Yet another ploy to divert us from problem-solving in the name of fulfilling Prabhupada's order to spread KC. It's a new take on Suhotra's pathetic Chairman's address in '96 which I have already deconstucted in Our Mission 2 and shown that it is nothing but another institutional pep talk very low on vitamins and iron, but brimming with helium, hot helium. Here too the store house of helium has been plundered and it's contents freely distributed with out any discrimination as to who is fit and who is unfit to receive it. Prabhupada's order is actually multifaceted, it is not just about holding an institution in place at all cost, and recruiting fresh members while the older ones go out the back door, except for those who could use iskcon as a vehicle for their own ease. An institution that pushes on but loses sight of the very reasons for which it was founded--to give good association as opposed to rubberstamped advancement--is not even Prabhupada's mission, is it? His order is really about creating a model social system. That is to say one in which there is deliberate focus on constantly improving the quality of life of those who live in it. Am I wrong or not? And this responsibility falls primarily on those who accept leadership in it, yes or no? But we ignore this. The author smugly ignores this, in favor spreading Krsna consciousness. And he invokes SP's letters to support all this. It is verbal slight of hand, but I doubt he sees it. He wants to pen an offering that gets wowed by all, the choir mostly, and sit back and be smug. "We are loyal, rah, rah, rah; and you are not, ha, ha, ha." Contrast that with how SP preached to his enfranchised godbrothers in his vyasapuja offerings in the fifties. Very instructive. And he is our role-model, our acarya, teacher by example. Thank god for that. I find the unspoken message to be one of self-righteousness where one of concern along the lines evinced by Prabhupada in his offerings would be far more fitting. I want to see an offering that says, "Prabhupada, we have finally realized that we lacked the soberiety to truly appreciate the scope of your mission and the numerous implications it involved. However, we are been made aware of our deficiencies just by the number of problems that come to our attention, by the outcry of those it impacted upon. By dispassionately applying ourselves, we hope to make iskcon more ideal and attractive so that all your sincere followers will be inspired and will again cooperate in unity. We acknowledge that just as you were sincere but could not find accommodation in your Guru maharaja's mission, there may be many who are not finding accommodation in our current arrangement. As your representatives, we do not want to make the same mistake that was foisted on you, because of illusions about having power over others, and making obliging those we cannot coerced to walk the plank." You see, this approach owns the responsibility for the state of the society. Ravindra's offering very cleverly blames the dissatisfied, the disenfranchised and so on, and pats himself and his cohorts on the back. Didn't you see that? Didn't all the other GBC's see that? Of course not, because critical thinking is not part of their demeanor. Critical thinking would not allow them to live in La-La land, you see, so instead they get sucked in by such sweet and plausible lies as a regular daily function. Of course, they insulate themselves from all this by believing, uncritically, that critical thinking is offensive, non-Vaisnava and other kinds of similar limp logic. How can these people teach anyone about the living experience of spiritual life? But if you point out they are naked, boy oboy oboy, you really stir up the cornered animal response. The truth-sayer, however, has no choice in the matter. Besides Ravindra has already labeled all critical thinkers "cynics" before leaving the gate, so how dare they really look beyond the surface of his words, eh? This is too much. Wisdom, Maharaja. We need huge infusions of wisdom. Intravenous bags of it, if not barrels of it. We can smugly blame the dissatisfied and so forth, but the simple fact is that people are dissatisfied for a reason, Maharaja. They leave for a reason. They rapsodize about the past, rightly or wrongly, for a reason. Just like Prabhupada did his own mission for a reason, others now do the same for a reason. We need to address this reason before we steep ourselves in smugness. Now, if prior to their leaving we sat and talked through with each such person, what were their issues and tried to address them, and then, failing that, if they left--especially if we tried sincerely to meet them in the middle, you know, that win/win formula that ALL the Steven Covey seminars talk about?--then we can say we could not work with this person. But where have we done this, with whom, and how genuinely? Give me one instance. Even my hearing in '96 was a pretence. A GBC has admitted this to me in person. It's always "We have all the chips so either you let us coerce you or you can get lost and we will not care because we are with Prabhupada?" But are they with Prabhupada? To be with Prabhupada is to have the character and integrity and concern for the plight of others that he displayed; it is not a matter of some rah rah rally around a banner. So, I'm saying, if we address the reasons why people flee the dysfunctional organization, rather than label and blame the disenchanted, and rather than be self-righteous about being the ones to stick it out in the formal organization, how the heck is that going to displease Prabhupada? How does that neglect his order? He said over and over, when godbrothers disagree they should sit and discuss. Problem is when people get titles, they stop being godbrothers, haven't you noticed? They give up the suffix and go nuts over the prefix. God's don't discuss, lest it reduce their status. They issue categorical imperatives. Why is it that we who are fed up with the mess being foisted on the world as "Prabhupada's mission" are the one's responsible for keeping the mission unified? I mean, really, how come the leaders are not responsible for that? How come if they are unified while others flee that is construed as keeping the mission unified? What kind of wet noodle logic is this? If they remain "unified" and everybody else splits, what is their big achievement? I've said it before and I'm saying it again, devotees don't exist for iskcon, iskcon exists for the devotees. Iskcon is about people. ISKCON, Maharaja, is about people. Prabhupada's order is that we become Krsna conscious and the natural result of that is to learn to value people. And when we value people, we will quit writing hollow offerings like this. Instead we will write about our concern for these people, and how we want to please Prabhupada by serving them, because we realized though his grace that to lead is to serve. We will openly pray for the softening of our hearts so we can genuinely care about those people and not just write offerings to impress those who already want to be impressed so badly that they can't tell what is bull doo-doo and what is substance. We will pray for the ability to really care about Prabhupada's family and for the patience, forebearance and skills to be able to work with them inter-dependently, as facilitators and not as Lords of the Manor. We will reason with people rather than lord it over them. So while I can recall the days when I too would be wooed by this drivel, I have learned to see through it as per the quote on cynicism above. What it really says is that "you unhappy and disaffected members of Prabhupada's family can take a hike, because we are loyal and you are not. Though we may routinely make politics, bully, manipulate, coerce, and deny you due process, and though we may never exhibit anything but external symptoms of Krsna consciousness, we are surrendered to spreading Krsna consciousness and you cynics and other types who don't fit into our agenda, well it's just too bad for the lot of you." This is the message I get, Maharaja. And this is my response: The meek shall inherit iskcon. It is just a matter of time. Who will follow Harikesa next, and after that, who else? When is iskcon leadership going to stop denying the pattern and accept responsibility for it? And to all this I have one simple question for the author. Spreading Krsna consciousness is great, but are you Krsna conscious? Beyond your membership in an organization, where is the evidence for it, for the change in heart? Why must we assume that your Krsna consciouness is already a given and all we gotta do is go out and smear it like peanut butter on a cracker? Where is the evidence in our history that this is a done deal? Can you authentically give something you don't have, or will you give a facsimilie? I ask this, because reading between the lines, all I see is a man with a hardened heart, who is so out of touch with himself that he does not have a clue about his own condition. He is singing the automatic and tired institutional song, but with new phrasing and everyone is oohing and aahing. It's an abomination Personally I would love for Ravindra to see my comments so he can fire of an ad hominem attack rather than process what I'm saying, reflect on it and see that he is not only snookering the innocent with his words, but he is snookered himself. The emperor actually believed he was fully dressed and the jaded citizens could not believe their eyes so they all said, "Very nice offering." Amazing. To chant and read Bhagavatam and yet fall for this, well, I don't know, it's like the eighth wonder of the world. Also, I'd like him to read my remarks bearing in mind that he is the wallah who wrote a paper in the eighties about how we failed to develop our Vaisnava relationships. Ain't it the truth. Brilliant observation, that was. And timeless, too. Now, I'll like to respond to some specific bits: >>>>Indeed, I have discovered that whenever we pass a blanket judgment on ISKCON--either in hope or in despair--we are inevitably reporting on ourselves. And it just maybe that when we make blanket statements about the estranged from iskcon, we are reporting about ourselves. >>>>>It seems that here the "I" in ISKCON indicates "I" the speaker. Whenever I find myself becoming disheartened about your mission, overwhelmed by the problems and difficulties, I have learned to recognize this state a warning sign of personal weakness, and I need to mend the fabric of my own spiritual life. And every thinking man knows that it is illusion to think that mending the fabric of our own spiritual life can be removed from the social context in which we exist. We need to address both the social and personal issues that impact on and rend the fabric of our lives. As as far as the social issues the leaders are suppose to be out in front addressing them. Far more practical than artfully turning the thing back on those already affected by the group's dysfunctional dynamics. >>>>When the remedial actions are done on myself, ISKCON at once looks brighter. Ha, ha. This would have been a good one to throw at Prabhupada when he was writing about the marketing mentality of his godbrothers for amassing followers and daksina. I guess it's a darn good think he failed his remedials so the GM didn't look brighter, huh, or there would have been no iskcon today. My God. All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't bother with a PHd, because if I would do stuff like this, I'd want my bleeding money back. Although this line of argument is an old iskcon staple to disempower people, nevertheless, when I chant and read the books and pray, which are standard remedial acts, what I find is that I become de-fogged, and then I see clearly what a mess iskcon is: and this gives me sleepless nights. Yes, my personal prospects may look brighter, but if I don't subscribe to "I got mine" thinking, the result of increased brightness is that it sheds lights on how whacked out is the dynamics of iskcon. The only remedial measure I can see that reduces that awareness is to close my eyes. But this is not recommended anywhere as a remedy. Vyasa says that the highest welfare work is to distinguish reality from illusion for the benefit of all. But this offering is really beneficial to none. >>>>Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, and you Srila Prabhupada: all have had a vision of a world-wide unified preaching movement, and each has pushed it toward further and further realization, and it is our job to continue. Yeah, yeah, nothing like invoking their names to blinker us. Again, here we are led to believe that spreading rather than becoming Krsna conscious is the essence of what these great souls were all about. They actually had the goods, though. Why do we overlook this. Why? Why? Why? True they were sometimes scantily clad, but they were not naked emperors. >>>Many have given up on this effort. Some have formed their own enterprises to work separately. Still others spurn "the institution" to cultivate a "higher" practice. Yes, because the institution is crazy-making and saving oneself is highly recommended by no less a person than Prabhupada himself. That is not as great a failing as staying in the institution and failing to reform one's character, but spreading something we believe is Krsna consciousness, when it is really just about increasing membership not the experience of KC. Sheesh, already. >>>For myself, Srila Prabhupada, I confess to being not so bold or enterprising. I admit that I know of no higher practice than to follow your order. Ah, this is the vulnerability phase of the message. We are supposed to be reeling at the humility and surrender and sincerity to follow Prabhupada's order, which, again, is not become Krsna conscious, but spread it. Great. His order was fiddle while Rome burns, but that don't matter, because those who are enfranchised can enjoy perks and speak noble rhetoric and be smug. Say, "Jai Prabhupada!" and be saved. >>>>Prabhupada, I want only to be true to you and to your mission. Then become defogged, become independently thoughful and teach it to others. Teach the highest welfare work, how to distinguish reality from illusion, how to work inter-dependently. Model integrity. Be outspoken agains the irrational dealings of your peers on the GBC. Learn the philosophy also. Distance yourself from might is right dealings. That is his mission. And teach it to iskcon. Rating this offering on a scale of ten. I give him a two for his excellent grammar and punctuation. Ys. Kundali dasa. ************************************ N.B. Anyone interested in Kundali Prabhus books can contact me at PuruDas@compuserve.com and I can forward any mail on to him as well. until the middle of October. Comment on this story  Contact VNN about this storySend this story to a friend
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