BY: ROCANA DASA
Jan 8, CANADA (SUN) — A weekly response to Dandavats editorials.
Today's Obeisances is in reply to an article by Ravindra Svarupa prabhu entitled Nama Hatta in USA.
Ravindra Svarupa begins his speech on Nama Hatta by talking about himself. He lets everyone in the audience know, of course, that he's a graduate Ph.D in Religious Studies, and what his situation was when he became a devotee. Ravindra Svarupa joined the movement about the same time I did, in 1969-70. It's interesting that he said he wrote to Srila Prabhupada and asked him what to do about the fact that those pesky devotees were unduly pressuring him to quit everything and join the temple. Srila Prabhupada said for him to go ahead and earn his Ph.D. As it turns out, he never used this Ph.D in a sustained fashion on ISKCON' behalf. I doubt whether or not it's really helped him very much, either in his Krsna consciousness or his preaching work.
It would be interesting to see the actual letter he sent Srila Prabhupada, as that would help us determine why Srila Prabhupada told him not to quit his studies. I've seen other letters written to other devotees wherein Srila Prabhupada said the opposite. So I think a lot of this may have depended on Srila Prabhupada's having determined what spiritual position the devotee was in at the time, and it was this much more than the fact that Srila Prabhupada approved of people staying in school rather than joining his transcendental movement.
I also had a wife and child at the time I joined, and I didn't feel that the devotees were actually pressuring me. In fact, they found it a little bit inconvenient that I should show up to join with the family in tow. But they kindly made room for me as best they could under the circumstances in Vancouver, Canada.
Throughout his speech, Ravindra Svarupa depicts the circumstances back then, and basically throughout all of Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON lila period, as the devotees being a bunch of immature fools who unnecessarily pressured people to join Srila Prabhupada's movement. As I've pointed out in some of my theme papers, there was a distinct difference between joining Srila Prabhupada in his preaching when he was personally present, and joining the movement after his departure. But this reality is not pointed out by Ravindra Svarupa in this talk.
He also gives everyone the impression that what he was experiencing in Philadelphia was happening throughout the entire movement, rather than making it clear that basically, he didn't know what was happening in all those other places. In fact, in the places I was personally involved in early ISKCON, people weren't being pressured in the manner that he's suggesting. The fact is that if the kind of mood he says should have been there had been there at the time, we would definitely not have gotten the kinds of results that Srila Prabhupada enjoyed. Of course, we have to assume the rest of the Sampradaya Acaryas and Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu also appreciated those efforts on account of the devotee's giving up everything. This level of surrender was not based on other devotees pressuring us, but rather was inspired by our reading Srila Prabhupada's books. On account of hearing the truth, one feels pressure to give up material activities, to join the pure devotee in his transcendental preaching mission. Ravindra Svarupa essentially tries to degrade the early mood of the devotees by characterizing this early mood as simply being unnecessary pressure tactics.
Interestingly enough, after Ravindra Svarupa admits that after he got his Ph.D, he did show up at the temple with his family, and soon after he became the Temple President. In fact, he's still the Temple President today, so what was the need or use of his getting the Ph.D?
Ravindra Svarupa makes out that back in the early 1970's, it was far more difficult to get the American society to accept and understand us than it is now. Today, however, the complaint or excuse we hear from his fellow GBC's is that the reason the preaching is going so poorly in terms of recruiting North Americans or Westerners, rather than just those of Indian culture, is because the time and culture is less conducive now than it was back then. You can't have it both ways, so what's the truth here?
Ravindra Svarupa then goes into a little historical narrative, giving us factoids about the way that America has changed its immigration policy, and so many Asians began to immigrate to America. Srila Prabhupada himself said that Indians coming to America were like crows coming to find garbage. Of course, the main reason that the U.S. put their immigration policy into place was that the Asians coming here generated a tremendous amount of economic stimulation. They could make more money here and enjoy material life better than in India. But Ravindra Svarupa makes it out to be something completely different on account of the fact that now, due to the lack of preaching to Westerners, ISKCON has to depend primarily on the Indians. Consequently they make every effort to accommodate them, facilitating their attendance at the temples, which for the most part is entirely congregational and social. Of course, some become more active than others, but relatively few of them actually give up their family or jobs and join the temple, as the Westerners did during Srila Prabhupada's lila period. Of course, in Ravindra Svarupa's mind this is a good thing. The fewer people in the temples, the better. This has become known in ISKCON as the "Empty Temple Syndrome", another disheartening manifestation of how today's leadership has departed from Srila Prabhupada's perfect plan.
In explaining what the mood was back in those days, Ravindra Svarupa suggests that we "mistreated" or misunderstood the Indians. I also find this statement to be incorrect. We didn't consider them 'blooped devotees' or 'fringies', or anything along those lines. Maybe that was the case in Philadelphia where he was Temple President, but that was not the mood in the temples I was involved in. Just ask Mother Subuddhi in Toronto about the kind of reception and attitude we had towards her and the Indian community in Toronto, and you'll get a very different picture. She's the Temple President there now. So how it is that Ravindra Svarupa, as a great authority, is giving everyone this false impression.
While Ravindra Svarupa's message may have been enjoyed by some of the Indians present at his speech, it's not so appreciated by those of us who did give up our chances for education and personal lives to join Srila Prabhupada's movement. We gave up our close connection with family members so as to join the International Society for Krsna Consciousness, which at that time was an enthusiastic preaching mission.
Throughout his whole presentation, Ravindra Svarupa makes himself out to be the hero who did everything right. The rest of us were fools for not following his example. He's making it out like Srila Prabhupada would have been more approving of what he did than what most of us ended up doing. But if one hears Srila Prabhupada in his preaching during his ISKCON lila period, he is very often praising the devotees who did as we did, rather than as Ravindra Svarupa did. He is very much appreciating our personal surrender, and points to it as an example that his preaching, and the sankirtana movement itself, is devotional service that rids one of material attachment, and purifies one to the point of being ready to give their life and everything to Lord Krsna.
Ravindra Svarupa goes so far as to say that one's individual "reputation", as he calls it, depended solely on how many books you distributed and how much manpower you could get on the streets, which was Srila Prabhupada's program. In the course of his presentation he uses the term "paradigm shift" to refer to ISKCON's current accommodation of its congregational members, which he frankly states are mostly Indians. And that's a good thing. With this message coming from our leaders, it's no wonder that ISKCON has transformed itself into what we see today, which is simply one of the many options Indians have when it comes to engaging their cultural religious preferences.
Ravindra Svarupa then explains how the temple has now become almost entirely oriented towards accommodating this cultural phenomenon, with Sunday Schools and so on. He states, "In this way our movement is growing very, very large while the temple population is not so large." He sees this as a favourable "paradigm shift", whereas in the minds of many of us, it's exactly the opposite. It's unfavourable, because Srila Prabhupada wasn't into just setting up temples with deities and accommodating a congregation. He was into communities of devotees who would find it much easier to participate in his sadhana program by living communally together. That's what he was pushing and encouraging, not the scenario that Ravindra Svarupa is presenting here.
It wasn't Srila Prabhupada's intention, as far as I can understand by reading his books and having participating in his ISKCON back then, to have the kind of situation we have today in the movement. Granted, I'm sure he would be pleased by how many Indian bodied people are attending the temples, but the fact that that the other aspects of Krsna consciousness that he personally introduced and encouraged have been let go almost completely - that would surely not make him happy. Locally in Vancouver, for example, we currently have one brahmacari living at the temple. He's often going out to preach by himself. There are a few devotees living at the temple, but they're given very poor accommodation and no spiritual attention whatsoever. There's not a Temple President at the temple, although the Temple Vice President lives nearby in a suburban mini-mansion. Some of the devotees, meanwhile, live in terrible circumstances, some of them holed-up in little hovels the size of large closets. Devotees have to pay for their accommodations, and the temple residential facilities are basically run like a business. The temple itself is in direct competition with all the other local Indian temples to get what they call the "temple hoppers" to hop to them, rather than to the other nearby Hindu temples.
Near the end of his speech, Ravindra Svarupa even says it's "better late than never". In other words, we should have done this from day one, and this is what would have made ISKCON even greater than it is today. Never mind that it wasn't Srila Prabhupada's real program. All those foolish things we were doing in our youth, like harinama and book distribution, have now finally been corrected, and we're doing the "authentic program" now. Ravindra Svarupa apparently thinks that Srila Prabhupada's program was wrong. Of course, this is from the point of view of someone who stayed in the same temple his whole life as the Temple President, and is now the GBC and guru-in-charge. The Philadelphia Temple hasn't changed much, other than the fact that there's far fewer people living in the temple and going out on harinama. But this is what Ravindra Svarupa considers to be Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu's sankirtana movement: "We find that it’s working out very nicely, and Lord Caitanya’s movement in this way is increasing."
He goes on to say that he's embarrassed by the way things were in Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON lila period, and that it should have been the way it is now. So he's actually criticizing Srila Prabhupada, and criticizing all of the devotees who didn't finish our degrees, and actually joined the movement, sacrificing everything for the sake of Srila Prabhupada. Of course, if you listen to Srila Prabhupada's lectures, he was definitely encouraging us to do what most of us did, rather than what Ravindra Svarupa did. Like I said, Srila Prabhupada could have easily detected back then that Ravindra Svarupa just wasn't ready to join the temple on account of what he said in his letter. As I recently mentioned in another article, Jagadisa, who also had most of his degree finished when he joined, wrote to Srila Prabhupada and asked if he could go back and finish his degree, and Srila Prabhupada said definitely not. At the same time, if you listen to Srila Prabhupada talking about scholars and university and so on, he calls them fools and rascals, saying that they're useless slaughterhouses, making everyone into sudras. That was the message we were getting, because that's what Srila Prabhupada was preaching.
So what's right here? If we listen to what Ravindra Svarupa has to say in this speech, intended for attendants of a seminar on congregational preaching, he actually says very little about congregational preaching. He glorifies himself throughout the article, criticizes Srila Prabhupada, and offers very little content about the topic he was actually supposed to be speaking on. So I don't think I would have found that seminar very satisfying, at all, and the Dandavats article memorializing it doesn't do much for me, either.
Obeisances to Dandavats, and to HG Ravindra Svarupa.
