BY: ROCANA DASA
Oct 30, CANADA (SUN) — A weekly response to Dandavats editorials.
Today's Obeisances is in response to two recent articles on Dandavats by HH Niranjana Swami: The Need for Struggling Together to Help Each Other, and Niranjana Swami on Book Distribution.
Having both been posted on the same day, it seems likely that Praghosa dasa chose to post these two items, and they're not actually recent writings of Niranjana Swami. Still, anyone who reads the articles will see they're very similar in tone, mood, and style. While many readers may find them entertaining and nostalgic, I found it difficult to understand exactly what the message was amongst all the reminiscing Niranjana Swami chose to offer in order to address his points. Of course, we also understand that these excerpts are probably taken out of context, and we're not reading the entire message here.
My past association with the author has been primarily in the capacity of him as a GBC authority, when for a short time he took the responsibility as GBC for Eastern Canada. My experience with Niranjana Swami is that he does not exemplify the personality type that typically defines the GBC managerial group. In his articles, he indicates that he finds it difficult to manage, and perhaps that's why he gives us what I consider a borderline sentimental approach. This approach may work for a lot of devotees for a short time, but basically doesn't achieve anything in terms of dealing with real problems in the real world.
Niranjana Swami's particular style of writing assumes that by telling us what it was like in the early days, and trying to compare that to what it is now, progress can be made. The writer's analysis of why it isn't the same way now, and his proposed solution to that conundrum is described in terms of the relationship devotees have with one another. Ultimately, Maharaja feels that a counselor system should be established within the institutional framework and that through counseling, better devotee relationships can be achieved. Or course, this system isn't verified by sastra -- the comparable, bona fide system described in sastra is siksa relationships.
If you're a diksa guru and feel that you can't accommodate the needs of your disciples, then you arrange for the disciple to develop a siksa relationship with someone who is capable of effectively representing the diksa guru. Peer counseling systems in ISKCON are basically a substitute for this bona fide system.
It seems that ISKCON is simply averse to establishing the concept of siksa, although it is one of the hallmarks of our Sampradaya. I've written about this extensively in the past.
From a spiritual vantage point, we can consider the dynamic of siksa gurus by looking at Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON lila days and how and why things functioned, under very adverse conditions. Regardless of the pressures, the devotees served and remained joyful on account of the wholesome and relatively pure relationships they had. These relationships were not only with Srila Prabhupada, but also with his representatives who, were siksa gurus.
In those days the dynamic was that there was one guru, who happened to be a nitya-siddha, maha-Bhagavata, Sampradaya Acarya. Of course, we were unaware of his rarified spiritual status, and most simply thought of him as our guru. He was making very practical arrangements for his disciples' training, such as developing the temples, publishing the books we were reading, and giving us a very detailed program for performing sadhana. The temple environment supported that program, and the siksa gurus enforced and guided it, seeing to it that Srila Prabhupada's program was followed as closely as reasonably possible.
Nowadays the problem we see, which Niranjana Swami does not bring up, is the classical ISKCON leadership mentality. In nearly all the temples there are many disciples of many different ISKCON diksa gurus. The great majority of these diksa gurus have not assigned siksa status to any of the local authorities, or encouraged their disciples to take shelter of any siksa instruction. The disciples are not taught how to obey or cooperate with the local authorities, and such instructions are not enforced as an order of the Spiritual Master.
In a recent morning walk I was listening to, a devotee was subtly complaining to Srila Prabhupada that the temple authorities were not to his liking. Srila Prabhupada made it abundantly clear that an important principle of the guru-disciple relationship is the obedience of the disciple to the orders of the Spiritual Master. It was Srila Prabhupada's order that you cooperate with the temple authorities, and on the basis of that you should transcend all your personal likes and dislikes, and work with the local authorities for the sake of preaching. This clear message is definitely not being projected today by the various gurus. Consequently, we have a management structure where there's no clear lines of authority. Those who have the ability to manage in a professional way refuse to participate in such a scenario because of the high degree of frustration. This is something I personally experienced for many years after Srila Prabhupada's disappearance, when I was trying to manage in that capacity. After trying my best for many years, I finally had to give up, as did almost all my friends who were participating at the same time as Temple Presidents.
The GBC of today don't have a solution to this problem. They can't get the gurus to agree to any kind of a program. Not so long ago at a GBC meeting, the whole concept of siksa was brought up. They couldn't come up with any agreement whatsoever on what it was, how to implement it, or even that it was Srila Prabhupada's original program.
The Rtvik advocates would have us believe that we used to have a Rtvik system when Srila Prabhupada was present on the planet, but that was actually not true at all. We had a siksa system. The Rtivk system that Srila Prabhupada enshrined in the famous July 9th Letter, which both the Rtviks and the Zonal Acaryas relied on as evidence, was actually never implemented. Those on the list of eleven never executed their responsibilities as Rtviks because, by all appearances, they were waiting for the day when Srila Prabhupada would leave his body, and they could take all his waiting candidates as their own diksa disciples. This is a charge that the GBC, Zonal Acaryas and big diksa gurus have never responded to, let alone rebutted.
I don't know of a single person who was actually initiated by Srila Prabhupada via one of the eleven Rtviks after the July 9th letter went out. No one got their name and their beads chanted on by one of these Rtviks. There was a period of four months where they could have executed Srila Prabhupada's instruction in this regard, but they didn't. As a result, every temple was overflowing with uninitiated, qualified disciples of Srila Prabhupada who ended up being the disciples of the Zonal Acaryas. This gave the Zonal Acaryas instant power, and the rest is history.
So in reality, there was no such thing as Rtvik, it was really siksa. Srila Prabhupada essentially pushed all his disciples into becoming siksa gurus, whether it was within the structure of the ISKCON temple or out preaching to the fallen conditioned souls. The fact is that in today's ISKCON, this is obviously not a reality, at least in the situations that I know of. The only exceptions may be temples where one guru alone has initiated most of the disciples, cent percent. So until the GBC sorts this mess out, the problem that Niranjana Swami is trying to highlight will never be solved.
The problem in ISKCON with inter-devotee relationships beyond the institutional authority structure also has its roots in this no-siksa situation. One devotee is initiated by a guru who has a different mood and different slant on Krsna consciousness from another, and another. All the disciples think that their guru is better than the other person's guru. One neophyte devotee we met here in Vancouver, who has taken first initiation from HH Radhanatha Swami, actually imagines that her guru knows everything that she thinks and does, as though he were omnipotent. Never mind that he's thousands of miles away nearly all the time. Srila Prabhupada, on the other hand, when asked whether or not he was aware of the service of one of his disciples, said well, I've set up the Temple Presidents and the GBC, and if they know, then I know. This is a very practical answer, not some mystical concept like the ones being promoted today.
In his article on book distribution, Niranjana Swami mainly tells us of his own personal experiences in the 1970's, and his somewhat sentimental depictions of how he overcame the mental problems he was encountering and went out to get a taste of book distribution. This is all well and good, and is meant to inspire people like his disciples or those in his zone to adopt the same mood as he did, but so many other dynamics are in play in today's environment that weren't present back when the Swami was struggling. These issues are not mentioned here, but are perhaps addressed elsewhere in a more comprehensive article. In fact, it has become some sort of taboo to even talk about these factors in ISKCON.
You can't deal practically with the essence of the problem, which is rooted in this whole multi-diksa guru vs. GBC authority conflict, without addressing that essential source. From the spiritual point of view, the real intrinsic difficulties that are brought about by the Western institutional model compared to the eastern model of guru-disciple have never been sorted out in ISKCON. In fact, they've been exacerbated by the fact that ISKCON has tried to solve their problems by opening up the floodgates of diksa guru, giving people more opportunities to chose all sorts of various diksas without the diksa gurus themselves agreeing on what their relationship is with the institution. Consequently, we have the big problems which Niranjana Swami is trying to resolve by offering his endearing mood of sweetie-pie reminiscing. The message sounded good at the time of the lecture, I'm sure, and was a feel-good for a short time thereafter, but then everyone had to go back to dealing with the reality of the interpersonal dynamics in ISKCON, including all the dynamics that lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness. These problems make it difficult for the devotees to establish meaningful loving relationships. How can they develop appropriate relationships with their temple community associates when they hardly ever associate with their diksa guru, who dominates their loving affections, and discourages them from developing reciprocal loving relationships with local siksas?
It's so unclear in ISKCON today what the proper etiquette is for devotees to relate to one another. It doesn't take much reading of Srimad-Bhagavatam or Krsna Book to discover how formal the relationships were in Vedic or Varnasrama structure. There was a very detailed etiquette structure as to how people would relate to one another. Today's devotees sort of know what these practices are, but trying to institute anything like that in today's context is just superficial. Everyone's just pretending -- pretending to be very reverential towards Srila Prabhupada disciples or senior devotees, or with the institutional authorities. When it comes to relating to one another, many devotees today find it very fuzzy. They can't just pretend. You've got to actually feel empathy and have a context in which to engage in loving relationships with one another, beyond the occasional kirtans or taking prasadam. Instead, devotees are relying more on their immediate families than they did in the old days, but these relationships are also complicated and difficult to manage for the neophyte.
How ISKCON can possibly untie the Gordian knot they've created for themselves over the last 30 years is beyond me, but what Niranjana Swami is trying to do is the equivalent to blowing on a boil. It's not going to work, and to my knowledge it has never worked. I don't know the history of the Maharaja's zone in Moscow, but if any readers can fill us in on whether such an approach has produced anything tangible, I'd be interested to hear.
We are, after all, practitioners of Bhakti yoga. Bhakti means devotion, and devotion to Krsna can't simply be directed towards the Deities or Srila Prabhupada. It has to be engaged with one another. Devotion begins at home and with each other, but devotion itself has to be cultivated within the context of some kind of structure. Frankly, ISKCON has never been able to create that structure since Srila Prabhupada left.
Niranjana Swami is one of the most sincere devotees I've encountered since coming to Krsna consciousness. I know he has a heart of gold and he's a lovable personality due to his sweet nature. I know he means well and is very sincere in his attempts to resolve these problems, but frankly I don't think that his way of going about it can bring any lasting results. By preaching in the way he's doing in these two articles, he is helping to convince the community of devotees that the solution can be found in mundane practices such as peer counseling. Sastra, however, tells us a very different story.
Obeisances to Dandavats, and to HH Niranjana Swami.
