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| WORLD December 9, 1998 VNN2645 See Related VNN Stories Letter To Romapada Maharaj BY MADHU PANDIT DASA INDIA, Dec 9 (VNN) — Dear Maharaj, please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Thank you for your questions. I will only be too happy if you can share this letter with others. Please note that I have also answered in the end your question how our proposal differs from the TFO (The Final Order). Please use this version for circulation as many things are expanded and made more clear answers your questions. Please neglect the earlier version. Your servant Madhu Pandit dasa Dear Maharaj, Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Regarding guru issue, I will try to give you briefly our proposal. On May 28th Srila Prabhupada said he will name some "to act as officiating acaryas" for initiations in future when he is no longer with us when the GBC approached with this specific question. Why aren't we strictly following this? On May 28th when asked whether those initiated would ALSO be Srila Prabhupada's disciples he replied in affirmation. Later even when Srila Prabhupada is replying "they are his disciples", the "his" refers to Rtvik-acaryas. This is because the question by Tamal Krishna Maharaj is clearly about the "these rtvik acaryas, they are officiating, giving diksha.... whose disciples are they? " and not about regular gurus. Further he says be actually guru by his order or regular guru only "When I order". It is agreed by everyone that Srila Prabhupada never gave that order to any particular person(s) to become regular guru who accept their own disciples. We also may not conclude that the order is implicit in the tape or in the fact of his disappearance, since he also definitely spoke of "selecting" some of you twice in the appointment tape and the only selection Srila Prabhupada did make is naming eleven persons to act as rtvik on his behalf. The open issue is that what is the period of reference for that rtvik selection. This has to be concluded by taking into account the "officiating status" which Srila Prabhupada , is clearly referring to a time frame "particularly when you are no longer with us" and reinforced by his instructions to follow ONE Acharya. Srila Prabhupada: "...... or the Christians are following Christ, a great personality. Mahjano yena gatah sa panthah. You follow some Mahajanas, great personality.... You follow ONE ACHARYA, like Christians, they follow Christ, acarya. The Mohammedans, they follow acarya, Mohammed. That is good. You must follow some acarya... evam parampara-praptam."(Conv. Melbourne, May 20,1975) Also in a letter to Kirtanananda on 11th Feb 1967 Srila Prabhupada wrote "I wish that each and every Branch shall keep their independent identity and cooperate keeping the Acarya in the center. On this principle we can open any number of Branches all over the world. The Ramakrishna mission works on this principle and thus as organization they have done wonderfully." Our proposal is that the Sad guru or Acharya to whom everyone in ISKCON has to absolutely surrender is Srila Prabhupada and the others are officiating acarya who are official initiator spiritual masters. Srila Prabhupada does use this concept of official initiator in quite a few contexts to differentiate between the person who really rules the Krishna Conscious faith in a person and a person who formally initiates and does not necessarily stand in the parampara. Even such an elevated personality as Yadunandan Acarya, pure devotee is being referred to by Srila Prabhupada as the "official initiator spiritual master" of Raghunatha dasa Goswami. (CCMAdhya 16.217 Purport). Still Srila Prabhupada says "a direct disciple of Srila Rupa Goswami was Srila Raghunatha dasa Goswami( CC ADI 1 Intro). And in a letter to Dayananda Srila Prabhupada writes "Thakur Bhaktivinode was not official Spiritual Master of Gaura Kisora dasa Babaji Maharaja." The name-giving is an essential spiritual formality and is important but we do not find anywhere in SP's books that such a formality makes an officiating Acharya as a link in the disciplic succession with the absolute authority over such initiated disciple. Rather we will see that out of the 11 links mentioned in our disciplic succession from Lord Chaitanya, more than 8 are not by initiation but through transmission of divine knowledge. The word "officiating" is automatically restricting the authority of that individual and distinguishing him from the actual Acharya who in this case is Srila Prabhupada. One cannot be connected to Krsna without the transparent via media of the Acharya. By not appointing a successor acharya SP has abundantly made clear that he still remains the current link in the disciplic succession as the Founder Acharya. It is ironical and highly regrettable to note that the GBC and the gurus of ISKCON have displayed a serious lack of understanding of the "order of the guru" as explained by Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu in his paper Under my Order in 1985. He writes there" The fact remains , however, that institution of successor acaryas was created when an almost inconceivable degree of misunderstanding of the spiritual master 's order was established doctrine in ISKCON. The system of successor acaryas is indeed part and parcel of that misunderstanding". In I987 reforms, mainly the ownership of geographical areas were abolished by abolishing Zonal acarya system. Now what we need is abolishing the ownership of souls- i.e. abolishing absolute allegiance of disciples to their officiating acaryas. There should be only one owner of all souls in ISKCON and that is Srila Prabhupada. The goal of all members in ISKCON should be reach the spiritual world to join Srila Prabhupada's eternal party. We all will agree that there can be no better choice for the maximum benefit of the initiated, than to work towards facilitating Srila Prabhupada to rule their hearts. There is no better way to do this than make them feel that Srila Prabhupada is the direct Sad Guru or ACHARYA for everyone in this institution who will be the link to the parampara. There may be a lineage of official initiator gurus generation after generation. They may even be called official diksa gurus. But the real parampara is that of "Divya Jnana" as established by Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur where he left out the names of official initiators. Parampara always refers to transcendental knowledge transmission and not bodily links. This parampara of Mahabhagavatas are not limited to time and space. All the personalities in the parampara can act beyond the limitations of time and space. But it is natural for us to take Srila Prabhupada as the current link for his institution as long as it exists especially because he has clearly predicted the place of his books for next ten thousand years and he is the Founder- Acarya To sum up, practically speaking, one will have so many siksha gurus, and one official diksha guru, but if asked who is your GURU, the answer HAS TO be, for EVERYONE in ISKCON, my guru is Srila Prabhupada in the FULL transcendental sense. One may be further asked, "Oh how did you come in touch with ISKCON" and then one may reply "Oh so and so first preached to me, he is my siksha guru." Or, if asked, who were you initiated by, one may say, by so so-and-so, he is my diksha guru in the same sense as Yadunandana acarya being the official diksa guru of Raghunatha das Goswami.. But it should be MADE ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that for all initiated devotees in ISKCON, the direct and sole link to the parampara and thus one's eternal(sad) spiritual master is NONE OTHER THAN SRILA PRABHUPADA HIMSELF. In other words, the official diksha guru ranks in the same category as the other secondary siksha gurus, and Srila Prabhupada as the primary siksha guru, is ALSO THE PRIMARY GURU of everyone. We believe this is what it means to REALLY put Srila Prabhupada in the center of the movement. There is NO LACK of Sastric evidence for this, no lack of Srila Prabhupada's EXPLICIT instructions in this regard, nor is there any lack of PRACTICAL EVIDENCE for this in peoples' lives; nor is there any lack of practical evidence for the total concocted nature of the present system, in terms of all the deviations and fall downs and re-initiations and the most serious debates it has spawned. I know this is explosive for you to hear. But last two months many of the devotees here have been absorbing in researching this subject and are waiting for the GBC to explain why they do not want to strictly follow Srila Prabhupada's order on future initiation in our society. We clearly see there is a difference between a DESIRE and ORDER. What Srila Prabhupada speaks on May 28th is an order. And the innumerable quotes given in the GBC paper 'Prabhupada Order' are only his desires. We are not even hinging on the July 9th letter as the final order as the GBC is disputing its validity after Srila Prabhupada's disappearance. According to TFO , which base everything on the July 9th letter, the present initiators are to only priests. This is not exactly our stand. They are official initiator gurus. (By the way, after being 18 years in ISKCON I had never seen July 9th letter till April this year during the Delhi Temple inauguration. It was always propagated that 11 people were appointed as gurus by Srila Prabhupada and obviously that acted as a primary cause for faith in the Guru system. When I read the July 9th letter my foundation was uprooted. Simultaneously there was strain with H.H. Jayapataka Maharaj because he was hesitant on not conceding a direct relationship with Srila Prabhupada which changed our basic perception of Jayapataka Maharaj. No one here could swallow that. Srila Prabhupada was always most important for most of us here. I saw Jayapataka Maharaj only three years after I entered KC and nurtured a relationship with Srila Prabhupada. Of course now after three months of haggling he has written to me that " ...it seems natural that you have a direct relationship with Srila Prabhupada".) Our proposal on the guru issue is not to say anything about anybody's qualification or capacity to be a full fledged guru. Our conclusion is that even if our institution was brimming with Mahabhagavatas they are bound by Srila Prabhupada's order to" act" only as officiating acarya in the particular matter of initiation to keep Srila Prabhupada as the prominent spiritual force in the life of the initiated. We also do not agree with the idea of a curtailing the actions of a diksa guru who is a link in the parampara. If the diksha guru of the heart cannot be allowed to be seen absolutely by the disciple then he cannot act as a diksa guru linking us to the parampara. We feel this contradictory situation is arising because we do not want to "act as officiating acarya" as envisioned by Srila Prabhupada so as to keep himself the prominent spiritual influence among all devotees in his institution. Every person needs a guru to be looked upon in an undiminished absolute way as a disciple. I feel the direction in which the curtailed diksha guru reforms are going is dangerous, in the sense that it will practically make the society guruless because of all curtailments and at the same time not allowing the disciples to feel directly for Srila Prabhupada as their eternal sad guru. Sastrically diminishing the position of the diksha guru in disciplic succession is not valid. In Mayapur lecture on April 6th 1975 Srila Prabhupada says: " That acarya, Krishna says, you should consider such acarya as Myself .Acaryam mam..... karhicit, that ...you cannot consider Yes, he's acarya, but not as good as Krishna. No Na avamanyeta. Don't deride in that way. Then there will be fall down." We feel that by permitting everyone to feel directly for Srila Prabhupada as his disciple as he says in the May 28th conversation and the others acting as officiating gurus or formal diksha gurus the movement will grow without bounds as it did till 1977. Srila Prabhupada remains alive in his books, instructions, murtis, tapes, and his other followers. We experimented with Zonal Acarya system, then with multiple Acarya successor system, now next experiment is diminished diksha guru. None of these systems are derivable from May 28th conversation. The GBC has not explained any of these guru systems based on what Srila Prabhupada said on that day. Why not take direct meanings of everything Srila Prabhupada said on May 28th tape and try out the system of Officiating Acaryas? In the later part of May 28th conversation Srila Prabhupada clearly said " One can become guru if he understands gurus order" The paradigm shift is so tough that those who hold the position based on obvious meaning of officiating acarya are called heretics. Unfortunately Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati was unorthodox in this matter of parampara. Srila Prabhupada was in many matters. So that label alone doesn't prove that this position is wrong. If Srila Prabhupada wanted us to continue the unorthodox system of parampara we have to even if it means heresy. The Gaudiya Mutt according to Srila Prabhupada failed because they did not follow strictly the instructions of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura to form a GBC, which was his ingenious concept for a world wide movement. They did this, thinking that GBC body running a mutt has no precedence and is not in the sastra. So they did not follow. At that time the concept of a "GBC" would have been appeared as farfetched to the leaders of Gaudiya Mutt as much as Srila Prabhupada's idea of "officiating acarya" is to many ISKCON leaders today. Srila Prabhupada long before even 1977 he made GBC body a reality so that we do not make the same mistake. The movement was being managed by the GBC even during his presence. Why can't we take the direct meaning of Srila Prabhupada's words on May 28th 1977 and see that he devised the ingenious concept of "officiating acarya" system to conduct the initiations after his disappearance to facilitate a movement based on control through corporate management principles(GBC) and not on the strength of ownership of disciples or a multiple acarya institution. Today it is clear that the disciples think they have to give their absolute allegiance to their guru. This is the position only of an Acharya. Absolute allegiance means absolute honor from disciples. Absolute Honor means well meant honorable control of the life of the disciple by the gurus(who are de-fact acaryas today). But wanted the institution to be managed not by gurus but by the GBC body, Zonal secretary and Temple Presidents. Today we see that out of necessity to run the institution we have laws like the Guru cannot change the service of the disciple in a temple without discussing with the TP. Practical devotional service is the life and soul of a disciple and over that area the guru has no final say. Surely a guru who genuinely wants to help a disciple will be constrained by the system along with his disciple. All such incompatibilities will be avoided if initiators act as "officiating acarya" or official initiator gurus as instructed by Srila Prabhupada. Jasomatinadan Prabhu brings this point out philosophically very well. He explains that Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur clearly differentiated between the line of official initiators and the line of Mahabhagavatas. In fact his brother Lalit Prasad criticized him for this and stuck to the line of official initiators as the parampara. Even today that school claims that Gaudiya Mutt and ISKCON have no parampara because of this so called deviation. (Satyanaryan of Vrindavan now belongs to this school) Actually by sticking to the idea of parampara which is not of Mahabhagavatas, today the GBC is more in line with Lalit Prasad than with Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura. Jasomatinandan Prabhu explains that this can at best be a line of pancharatiki gurus who do not receive absolute allegiance from the disciples. A mahabhagvat, sakshad haritvena, sad guru can alone take that absolute position with respect to a disciple. He is an Acarya and others are officiating Acarya. For ISKCON there is only one Acarya- Srila Prabhupada. In future even if someone qualifies to be a Mahabhagavat still he is bound by Srila Prabhupada's order in the matter of initiation to only "act as officiating acarya". Note that Srila Prabhupada did not say I am appointing some of you as officiating acaryas. Rather he said he will give a list of people who will "act as" "officiating acaryas". Nobody can stop the strong spiritual influence of future mahabhagavatas on other devotees. As long he "acts as officiating acarya" his genuine influence will never overshadow Srila Prabhupada's influence as the acarya for everyone simply because everyone feels Srila Prabhupada is his primary guru and all influences will be taken only to primarily strengthen this relationship with Srila Prabhupada. In this way the movement really keep Srila Prabhupada in the center. Any reforms to keep Srila Prabhupada in the center will be superficial unless it means doing everything to keep Srila Prabhupada in the center of the HEARTS of the devotees in ISKCON. We have to genuinely try to understand this problem within the institution. In order to get cheap supporters one can make a statement that our stand means end of parampara system. But that is cheating by not telling them exactly which way the parampara continues as per our stand. Parampara means parampara of knowledge and not of bodies. How will it end if go on printing,distributing Srila Prabhupada's books and keep preaching, since he said he will live in his books. Anyway even now in our institution this transmission is not happening through the mouth of the individual guru to the disciple. Everyone gets preached to by the whole society who are all getting knowledge from Srila Prabhupada through his books. As far as divine knowledge is concerned Srila Prabhupada is the Current link for everyone in his institution. Someone told me whether this will not bring in a system wherein the Temple President becomes like a zonal acarya. My reply would be there is nothing wrong with the "zonal" idea. The problem is with the "Acarya" being linked to zones. You can make any number of checks and balances to deal with the human weakness of the TP, Zonal secretary and GBC members as is done in any corporate set up. With Sakshad haritvena gurus you cannot do it. For instance the GBC appraisals of last year of many gurus shakes the faith of the disciple in their guru. It is a spiritual violence. One cannot do this to a disciple who holds his guru as good as God. In other words we can clearly see that these two things cannot co-exist in an institution. i.e. the Acaryas and GBC. Only One Acharya and GBC can exist smoothly. And that Acharya can be none other than Srila Prabhupada. Regarding your question how our position differs from TFO. I would say we derive our position by not trying to avoid May 28th Conversation. We feel May 28th conversation has to be accommodated in any understanding of the initiation system intended by Srila Prabhupada. The opening statement of July 9th letter clearly links up with May 28th conversation. However our stand is independent of the July 9th letter. There is some additional information in May 28th Conversation which is not in the July 9th letter. That additional information is that the officiating acaryas are clearly for future when he is "no longer with us" and that they are gurus. Even though they are only officiating, giving diksha, Srila Prabhupada says "he is guru, he is guru". So we say that they are official initiator gurus. Frankly in spirit or substance there is not much difference from the TFO. They say rtviks are only priests. In that sense every bonafide priest is a brahmana and a guru for the society without being the kind of guru with absolute hold over disciples. I do not wish to make this letter any longer as I am afraid you would not read it. However if your holiness or anyone else wants more details I can send papers supported extensively from Srila Prabhupada's words on the following subtitles 1. Qualifications of a bonafide spiritual master. 2. Who should be considered as good as God. 3. The predicament of second generation. 4. Direct disciples: The Goswami's example. 5. Desire and Order, an important difference. 6. The real process of initiation. 7. Taking stock of situation in 1977. 8. Learning from others mistake 9. Can a bonafide guru fall down. 10. The difference between Sad guru and Officiating acarya. What can be legislated by GBC and what cannot be. 11. Notes on Madhvacarya and Ramanujacarya Sampradayas. Thank you for your patience. I hope there can be genuine discussions on this issue among devotees who can think and are concerned for the survival of Srila Prabhupada's movement for the next ten thousand years. If you can help us in anyway , we will be ever grateful to you. your servant Madhu Pandit dasa See Related VNN Stories This story URL: http://vaishnava-news-network.org/world/WD9812/WD09-2645.html
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