BY: ROCANA DASA
Feb 19, CANADA (SUN) — A weekly response to Dandavats editorials.
On account of committing myself to finishing my comments on Hridayananda's paper over the last few segments of Obeisances, I didn't have an opportunity to comment on the GBC reports being posted by each day by Tattvavit dasa. I have been studying the reports carefully, however, and find that they contain enough material to last for many weeks worth of serial commentary. In fact, it's a little hard for me to know where to begin.
As part of the GBC discussion on strategic planning, chaired by Gopal Bhatta prabhu, he states that according to the results of a survey of ISKCON members, half of them were more concerned with issues at the local level, a third were concerned with national level issues, which leaves approximately 17% as those being concerned on the international level. This alone speaks volumes. Most devotees really aren't that concerned with the GBC at all. They would just like things to be dealt with locally.
Here at the local level where I reside, we are represented by three co-GBC's: Gopal Krishna Maharaja, Bhakti Marg Swami, and Hari Vilasa dasa. Of these three, Bhakti Marg Swami and Gopal Krishna were attending, although neither have much to do with the actual oversight of temple affairs, and they seem to abstain more often than not when issues arise that require their intervention. Hari Vilasa dasa, the most active GBC, didn't bother to attend the Mayapur meetings even though he rules with an iron fist here, serving as sole functioning GBC and Temple President. And, if rumours are accurate, he's essentially disbanded the Board of Directors here, having gotten all the Board members to sign their powers over to him as proxy. In other words, he runs this temple absolutely, with no oversight from anyone.
So while one could argue that Bhakti Marga Swami was representing the ISKCON Vancouver temple at the Mayapur meetings, we see that's really not the case. The Swami typically abstains from acting like a GBC locally. In fact, he visited here just before he went to India, and although there was great interest amongst the Godbrothers to meet with him and discuss the Bylaws issue, he was completely unavailable, having booked out his only available time for an "invitation only" get-together. Of course, no serious questions could be presented to him in such a restricted and controlled environment. In the past, Bhakti Marga Swami has made his position clear that he doesn't see himself in any kind of administrative role. In fact, he's against gurus or sannyasis even being on the GBC. In short, ISKCON Vancouver was simply not represented at the GBC meetings.
As one would expect, Bhaktivaibhava Swami, the current GBC Chairman, organized the first day's program so that the work done at the previous meetings held in Italy too precedent. There was some discussion on book distribution, an issue that the GBC members had previously decided should be the first topic of conversation, although that issue only ranked second place at the meeting in Italy. Of course, the meeting in Italy was overwhelmingly influenced by Gopal Bhatta dasa's approach on how to fix ISKCON and the GBC's problems via strategic planning, and that emphasis clearly carried through to the Mayapur meetings. The Chairman also brought up the need for a justice system in ISKCON.
Bhaktivaibhava Swami first of all stated that having the main meeting once a year is a "stifling annual format", and there's a need for additional meetings. As many devotees are aware, the well-known position of the Sampradaya Acarya in regards to GBC meetings seems to contradict the Chairman's position, and in fact contradicts pretty much everything that goes on with respect to the modern day concept of the GBC. Srila Prabhupada's idea was that the GBC should come together in order to exchange preaching ideas and strategies with each other, and to enliven one another with the mood of pushing on Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu's Sankirtana movement. This is in direct conflict with the current mood that prevails throughout the GBC meetings, wherein the stress is now on more meetings, more central influence and control, all strictly based on management.
I suggest that the readers who are so inclined actually study these reports. Try to screen out all the verbiage and back-slapping, and pick-up on the actual problems that the members have highlighted. Take note that the 'big elephant in the living room' type problems are not being addressed because there is one particularly large elephant present -- a major polarization going on within the GBC as to how the GBC should function.
Next to this issue, the biggest elephant in the living room is the guru problem, which has now been delicately characterized as being the problem of "parallel influences".
As a result of action taken at the Italy meetings, a committee was chaired by Sivarama Swami, called "Parallel Structures", to take a look at the problem. The committee concluded with an honest admission that this dynamic has eroded ISKCON's authority structure. At the same time, they reported that when this conclusion was discussed with individual members of the GBC's, the result was that a third of them were in support of the committee's ideas on how to deal with the "parallel influences" issue. Another 1/3 of the GBC members were "sympathetic" (whatever that means), and the final 1/3 disagreed. Sivarama Swami's only solution was to try and get more feedback from the members on their positions, and to wait until the next meeting in June to report back.
The other report from the Italian meeting was made by Ravindra Svarupa, and this report is of great concern to me, personally, considering my position on Srila Prabhupada being a Sampradaya Acarya. Besides the usual designation of Srila Prabhupada as being the Founder/Acarya, they've now come up with a new phrase, nebulous as it may be: that Srila Prabhupada is the "soul of ISKCON". This apparently refers to the concept that Srila Prabhupada should be like supersoul, all-pervading in ISKCON. Ravindra Svarupa concluded that we should compare this concept to the Catholic Church's orders like the Franciscans and the Jesuits, which are permeated by a particular "church soul" of their own. So under Ravindra Svarupa's direction, they've now relegated the Sankirtana movement and the whole disciplic succession down to comparing it to some sub-group in the Catholic Church. That's what we're supposed to be aspiring towards, getting that mood in ISKCON… which only means it's not there now.
I also find it interesting that Hridayananda compared the GBC to the sages at Naimasaranya, which is pretty pretentious. Of course, the plan of the sages of Naimasaranya was for saving the world by preaching Srimad Bhagavatam, and this plan is still held by the Sampradaya Acaryas since 5,000 years ago. But today we see that ISKCON and the GBC are no longer focused on that methodology. Instead, they're focused on how to transform ISKCON into a religion. And as I've said many times, one of their big problems is that between themselves, they can't decide on what kind of religion they want. Do they want a western style of religion which emphasizes the GBC as being the ecclesiastical head of the religion, or do they want an eastern-style religion, with diksa gurus and their disciples in a decentralized matha format? Obviously, there are strongly competing schools of thought amongst the gurus on this issue, as both schools are well-established in different locations around the world.
If the reader carefully reads between the lines on this issue and considers the report on "parallel structure", they can easily see that this is the essence of the problem in ISKCON and at the GBC level - what kind of religious system are they going to adopt? The real question is, why are they considering adopting a religious system at all, instead of actually trying to capture the essence of the Sankirtana Movement as it was demonstrated and propagated by the true Sampradaya Acaryas?
Hridayananda has stated that when he applies this "history of religions" knowledge, an academic approach that I assume is part of his Ph.D program, he concludes that "the charismatic founder's departure demands the routinization of charisma" - which is apparently his rational for the religious structure. This basically means that you have to set-up a church with a hierarchy, and that's what's universally accepted within the GBC at this point in time. I haven't detected any suggestions that they instead look at the whole mood that the Sampradaya Acaryas demonstrated and preached, which is based on using every resource, both personal and other assets, towards pushing on the Sankirtana Movement in whatever way actually works best. And "what works best" is simply demonstrated by the numbers: what are the results of the preaching, how much book distribution is going on, and how many people are joining?
Of course, in the book distribution report that came on the first day, we saw that they admit success is not being achieved in this regard. As reported, over the last ten years the numbers show that the BBT's revenue has gone flat. It's hard to determine what "flat" means without seeing the numbers, but we can guess. The other figures presented by Gopal Bhatta dasa in regards to book distribution said that out of all the "units", in other words ISKCON temples and preaching centers, only a little more than half did any distribution at all, and two-thirds do almost nothing. And now they have to form a committee to find out why that's actually the case.
Gopal Bhatta himself stated that Srila Prabhupada was a "strategic thinker" as opposed to being a tactical thinker, which means he knew how to take care of the immediate problems. He had a long-range plan which featured book distribution. He didn't say that ISKCON and the GBC don't have to concoct a new plan or a better plan, or an improved plan. In fact, they just have to stick to Srila Prabhupada's plan. To execute Srila Prabhupada's plan would take millions more devotees and many lifetimes, so why is it that now we have to hear what the improvement on the perfect is, and not just focus on following the footsteps and the orders of the Sampradaya Acaryas? The figures indicate that we're going in the opposite direction, and yet the solution is to form a new committee to find out why… which according to Srila Prabhupada's plan will take us even further in the wrong direction.
When the topic of what to do about the lack of book distribution came up, there were many suggestions, which is encouraging to see. But as American BBT Trustee Svavasa dasa stated, putting these ideas into action is a whole other question because it requires the individual GBC members to take action, and they're obviously not doing it. We're not privy to exactly which GBC members were serous about following Srila Prabhupada's emphasis on book distribution, and which weren't, but considering that Svavasa dasa is a BBT trustee and we know that book distribution in America has deteriorated to the point of near extinction, you'd think we would hear more from him on this matter. about that from him. But of course, he can't point any fingers at any of the GBC's.
Brahma Muhurta prabhu, who represented the BBT trustees, in a later meeting beseeched the members to accept and continue with his idea of continually editing Srila Prabhupada's books. He essentially said that the mistakes that were created or not taken care of by the earlier editing have to be continually worked on by more conditioned souls, who of course are also prone to make mistakes. So because there's a tendency for mistakes by editors, we can assume that this will require non-stop editing.
Brahma Muhurta prabhu thinks it's a great accomplishment that Krishna.com, the BBT's website, gets 57,000 unique visitors a month, but in today's Internet world, considering the fact that temples around the world are supposed to be focused on distributing Srila Prabhupada's books, that's really not a very good number either.
I'll present my comments on the Day Two report of the GBC meeting under separate cover. Suffice to say, there is a tremendous amount of material that merits close scrutiny.
Obeisances to Dandavats, and to the members of the ISKCON Governing Body Commission.
