Addressing Guru-tattva
BY: SUN EDITORS
Jul 05, 2011 — CANADA (SUN) — Today marks the start of an unanticipated phase in the Sampradaya Sun's publishing plan. We are running a number of nice Feature series at the moment, including Srila Prabhupada on Bhagavatam, Glories of West Bengal, India Design Motifs, and Sri Krsna's Vrindavan Associates (which is overdue for a next chapter), along with various other topics. But we've decided to take a short break from our daily Features, because we need the extra time to focus on another issue: guru-tattva.
With recent court decisions in the Bangalore-Mumbai legal battle and the numerous editorial commentaries that have followed, our friends in the Rtvik camp appear to have gone on high alert. We have been swamped in recent weeks with article submissions and emails challenging us on guru-tattva, and generally challenging our editorial policies about publication of pro-Rtvik pieces. Naturally, they wish to publish pro-Rtvik articles right now in an effort to support Madhu Pandit dasa and bolster ISKCON Bangalore's public persona.
We have been tempted to ignore the great majority of these letters and articles, almost none of which are logical or philosophically sound enough to merit a serious response. That, or they don't meet the Sun's editorial guidelines for Rtvik articles because they simply reiterate the same well-worn Rtvik preaching we have always heard. We recently addressed Hasti Gopala dasa, whose recent submissions fit into both categories. While we're not interested in making more addresses like the one to Hasti Gopala, we also don't wish to foster a plethora of Rtvik complaint articles on the Net that are allowed to go unanswered.
That said, we want to emphasize that we have yet to receive from anyone in recent years a question on our guru-tattva position that has not already been answered in one of the many papers we've written on the subject, nor have we received a challenge that has not already been addressed and, in our opinion, defeated in prior writings.
Several Rtviks have written recently to demand that we provide an encapsulated version of our position, or that we answer questions like, "What does Srila Prabhupada want?" or "How should initiations be conducted in ISKCON" – but they don't want the answers to be much longer than the questions. In other words, they are either unwilling or incapable of reading a body of writings on the subject – including two main position papers that deal with it specifically – and thoughtfully considering the contents so as to arrive at an understanding of our position. Instead, they hanker to be fed a very small portion that contains the entirety of our position on guru-tattva. Something akin to the transcendental atmarama verse might satisfy them... if only we could compose such a rare thing. They also seem to forget that their own 'Final Order' thesis is itself a very long and tedious read.
So, hoping to avoid further pointless arguing, while not wanting to simply ignore these inquiries and challenges, thus creating further disturbance with our Rtvik godbrothers, we'll now go to work and try to provide a more succinct statement. It will, of course, be linked to the places where all our answers, assertions and rebuttals already exist in previously published documents, just to underscore the point that we have already made conclusive statements. But hopefully the new format will be found helpful to Rtvik adherents wishing to get a better grasp on our position.
Towards this end, we will now temporarily revert to 'summer reruns' for the Sun's daily Features, for as many weeks as it takes us to accomplish our goal. We'll be re-presenting a few Feature serials from several years back that we particularly enjoyed presenting, and that we hope our readers will again find interesting to read.
Likewise, over the next few weeks we're going to re-present some of our past editorials on the issue of guru-tattva that address in detail various aspects of our position. We'll also be highlighting some of the quotes and supporting statements for our main positions.
As soon as possible, we'll return to our daily offering of original Feature presentations, picking up where we left off. Hare Krsna.
