What Have Austrians Done Wrong?
BY: ILANA KIRCHBERGER
Feb 26, 2011 — SALZBURG, AUSTRIA (SUN) — A word HG Dina Sharana dasi might not want to hear: Austria. Although for years she writes on her letterhead, 'Dina Sharana dasi, GBC for Austria, Switzerland and Germany', all temples in Austria remain closed.
Whenever there is a GBC meeting and minutes of the Euro GBC meeting are published, it says, 'Dina Sharana dasi, Euro GBC Germany – Austria'. But what have the Austrians done, that for years no ISKCON member puts a foot in this country anymore?
Google says in the past there were Harikesa, Rohinisuta dasa, Suhotra Swami and Prithu posing as genuine spiritual masters. Four men who somehow made a false step and ended up with beastly shame. But this is rather like anywhere else, you might answer. Aren't disgraced direct representatives of God meanwhile left and right, flanking our path back to Godhead?
When Googling further it says:
ISKCON GOVERNING BODY COMMISSION SOCIETY
Registration Number S/74662 under the West Bengal Societies Registration Act, 1961
P.O. Shree Mayapur Dham, Dist. Nadia, West Bengal 741313
MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
SRI MAYAPUR DHAM, FEBRUARY 5 – 15, 2007
6) "That, in view of the German leaders' willingness to accept into its zone Austria (which comes with a 150,000 Euro = $206,300 Dollars debt), the European RGB especially should work to find ways and means to help the German-Austria zone resolve its financial crisis."
So one can only speculate, huge debt might be the reason for keeping everything closed in Mozart's country. Since the EURO GBC refrains from disclosing anything about the status of the obviously ongoing tilted position of their member states, they rather prefer to keep their temples closed and dump the mismanagement upon those who won't protest -- the conditioned souls.
Meanwhile many devotees of Austria realized that there is something terribly wrong within ISKCON and joined the Gaudiya Matha. Others totally lost faith and left the path of Krishna Consciousness altogether. In sum, as soon as someone opens an ISKCON temple in Austria, he/she will receive a payment form of $200,000 dollars the very next day.
People can only guess, but this might be the reason why HG Dina Sharana dasi never puts a foot in this country. Since Prithu's infamous fall-down, all temples closed. Prithu, meanwhile, is out of the woods and looking for a new guru career in Russia. Then there are some of those like Krishnaksetra dasa, an ISKCON guru who is conspicuous by his absence. His only visit was to achieve a mutual ending to his relationship with his disciples.
So the question remains, why HG Dina Sharana dasi is so anxious to always highlight on her letterhead that she's GBC for Austria?
Meanwhile, there are a few disciples of Srila Prabhupada in Austria, and they also report a deviant situation. ISKCON is cementing the living guru doctrine. ISKCON is also essentially suggesting that Srila Prabhupada ordered all those fallen people to take up the position of initiating spiritual master. So what has somehow become the situation in Austria is that Prabhupada disciples are now donating money to ex-disciples of fallen gurus. Because this is what people believe, it was Srila Prabhupada who appointed all those fallen gurus. And to compensate for the damage, they give monetary help to poverty stricken ex-disciples of fallen ISKCON gurus. At the same time, I hear that these Prabhupada disciples are also not rich. But the victims of ISKCON's false guru chaos are seeing it like that -- they want compensation payment.
In any case, after so many years of keeping all temples closed in a country like Austria, wouldn't it be fair to say that such inefficient leadership has to be replaced?
