BY: ROCANA DASA
Mar 5, CANADA (SUN) — A weekly response to Dandavats editorials.
Those who read my last Obeisances segment will be familiar with my preliminary thoughts on the annual GBC meetings. Some of these previously discussed topics will be expanded upon today. In fact, there were only a handful of primary subjects covered in the public reports of the GBC meetings, and these focused mainly on the various committee reports made during the first part of the GBC meetings. The members then broke into discussion groups based on the same themes that were discussed in Italy, and further discussed them, then made additional reports, recommended sub-committees, etc.
One could write volumes on each one of these subjects but for today, we'll focus on the published reports about each committee's progress, or lack of it. These GBC committees included:
the Parallel Lines of Authority Committee;
the GBC Teamwork Committee;
the Committee on Srila Prabhupada's Position;
the Preaching Strategies Committee;
the Constitution Committee; and
the Succession and Leadership Training Committee
Parallel Lines of Authority Committee
As previously mentioned, the 'elephant in the temple room' (which is a 30-year-old elephant) is now being called the "Parallel Lines of Authority" issue. Only days after Srila Prabhupada departed, the entire movement began to realize that this was a big problem, and it remains a big problem to this very day. Unless the GBC manages to resolve it, then all the other committees and projects will most likely fail. As Bhakti Caru Swami said, the "GBC is being proactive in dealing with issues that are stifling the movement."
What is "stifling" is that the GBC is not even able to explicitly define what they're referring to as the "Parallel Lines of Authority". We know that it refers to the fact that the GBC is on one track while the diksa gurus are on the other track, and they're supposedly running parallel. Of course, they haven't really been running parallel since Srila Prabhupada's departure. Upon taking power, the Zonal Acaryas promptly de-commissioned the GBC and like a maha-committee, they dominated and controlled the entire movement.
At the close of the Reform Period, around 1986, they introduced the idea that whoops, we made this big mistake, sorry about that. Srila Prabhupada actually wanted us to control the movement as the 'ultimate managing authority', not as Zonal Acaryas. Consequently the Zonal Acarya construct was supposedly disbanded, although the Acaryas kept all their disciples and zones. The real "reform" was that after getting a 10-year head start, they finally let other people enter the race. Over the course of the next 5 years, most of the original Zonal Acaryas had fallen down or petered out, having gotten entangled with women, sidetracked into educational pursuits, or nursing 30-year headaches. While the other gurus got busy trying to catch up, only one was really successful - that was Radhanatha Swami, whose great success was due to the fact that he inherited a part of the zone of his siksa guru and mentor, Kirtanananda. As a result, he has now become a de facto Zonal Acarya himself.
The only surviving original Zonal Acarya is Jayapataka Swami. It's interesting to note that Hridayananda gave up his GBC portfolio, but apparently being 'bored in Beverly Hills', he decided to get re-involved in the GBC. Rather than take charge of a zone that presented a burden of serious day-to-day work, he just chose a zone comprised of all the "fly over" states, i.e., the U.S. states that didn't have any temples. This allowed him to again assume the GBC title, attend the meetings and enjoy the benefits as he's done this year, adding his sagacious comments to the GBC meeting mix.
It's also interesting to note that on the Parallel Lines of Authority Committee we have Radhanatha Swami as one of the participants. As I've mentioned many times, from my perspective ISKCON is unabashedly moving as quickly as possible into becoming a religion. This process is what Hridayananda himself describes as being "the routinization of charisma", which is a scholarly way of saying that ISKCON is trying their best to become a religion.
The essence of the problem they're having, however, is that they can't decide amongst themselves which type of religion they want to be: a western style institutional religion wherein the GBC rules, or an eastern type religion comprised of diksa lineages, where the diksa guru is supreme and not controlled by a GBC body. Radhanatha and Jayapataka Swamis are obviously proponents of the eastern model, and they rule their zones primarily as diksa gurus, and not as members of the GBC. These two Swamis personify the eastern religion mentality. They both have their constituency primarily in India, and the Indian-bodied devotees are used to that style of religion, so everything goes nicely. They run their zones just like a Founder/Acarya, if not a Zonal Acarya, and Srila Prabhupada is conveniently relegated to the role of the "past Acarya".
Because of this dichotomy, which is the essential disagreement amongst the GBC membership, all of their committees are struggling to succeed in bringing any of the important issues to conclusion.
GBC Teamwork Committee
One of the current committees is the GBC Teamwork Committee, which is supposed to "improve camaraderie". To do that, they have to go on spiritual retreats together. So here we have a group comprised of many sannyasis and diksa gurus who are at the Holy Dhama, and they have the whole Mayapur Festival to attend right after these meetings. Yet with all that nectar at the ready, they have to take one of the few precious days out of the year they have to meet and work together, to go on a spiritual retreat. This is obviously an arrangement to help them resolve some problem. If you have to improve camaraderie, that indicates there isn't enough, and that's due to the fact that a certain portion of the GBC lean heavily towards the eastern style diksa guru religion, while another leans towards the western style GBC religion. And this dynamic brings all sorts of philosophical and emotional issues to bear on the GBC body.
Committee on Srila Prabhupada's Position
Another committee at the table this year is the Committee on Srila Prabhupada's Position. One can easily see how the above-described problem also reflects on this committee's work, since how the different GBC members view Srila Prabhupada is a keystone to any and all GBC efforts. If you take the eastern religious viewpoint, Srila Prabhupada is the previous Acarya. The diksas of today who are purporting to be in the disciplic succession see themselves as the present Acaryas, whereas from the western GBC perspective, Srila Prabhupada becomes an almost Jesus-like figure, and the religion is designed to put the focus on him. Of course, that has its downsides too. While it's not even a Vedic model, it helps take the pressure off the present diksa gurus, who are acting more in the capacity of Cardinals. They don't have to come up to the same standard as Srila Prabhupada, they just have to take a position in the institution and cut a reasonable profile, putting the onus of keeping to standards on Srila Prabhupada alone.
This mentality is reflected in the problem they're facing with newcomers to ISKCON (and when I say "new", I'm referring to those who joined and became initiated by an ISKCON diksa) who don't ever read Srila Prabhupada's books or listen to his lectures. They don't understand what his position as a Sampradaya Acarya is because they're relying primarily on a "regular diska guru" to instruct them. Yet they hardly know and seldom meet that guru, who probably never writes anything, rarely corresponds with them, and is acting mainly in an institutional capacity. Consequently all these devotees are untrained. And now the diksas want Srila Prabhupada to do the training for them, as the so-called siksa guru. In their minds, this requires producing DVD's so that people can understand Srila Prabhupada's Indian accent, or something like that. Of course, any person can get a copy of the Folio and the audio of Srila Prabhupada and sit at their computers, simultaneously reading and listening to the Sampradaya Acarya. It's as easy as that. But I can venture a guess that many of the GBC members themselves don't do this. They would rather spend the time and money to produce flashy DVD's which make it appear that they're "all about Srila Prabhupada". In fact, they're simply abdicating their responsibility as diksa gurus to train and spiritually nurture their disciples.
Preaching Strategies Committee
We also see evidence that the GBC members themselves aren't taking advantage of Srila Prabhupada's instructions by the manifest presence of the Preaching Strategies Committee. This group's mandate is to "look at Srila Prabhupada's classic preaching strategies". So most of these GBC's have been Srila Prabhupada's disciples for over 35 years, but now they have to form a committee to go and study Srila Prabhupada's "classic preaching strategies"? This simply means that one has to hear from Srila Prabhupada. Let's keep in mind that the GBC/BBT still hasn't even bothered to make 40% of Srila Prabhupada's audio instruction available to us. Of course, this also implies that they themselves haven't heard this material. So if they're relying on Srila Prabhupada's instructions for their inspiration and their ideas for preaching, then with all the money that's available to keep them hopping the globe, it seems they could easily have caused this to happen by now. Instead, they're publishing biographies, building their own preaching projects, temples and tape ministries, while 40% of Srila Prabhupada's original audio instructions languish on the shelf, unavailable to the devotees. In my mind, this is one of the greatest crimes ever committed by the leadership of ISKCON. I urge all readers to personally take up this issue, get educated about this state of affairs, discuss it publicly, and put as much pressure as possible on your local gurus, sannyasis and GBC members to correct this egregious error. Background information has been provided in the article, "Srila Prabhupada's Audio Legacy".
All the new content available in ISKCON is, to one degree or another, actually competing with Srila Prabhupada's content. This includes all the published biographies, memoirs and other Vaisnava literature. Still, these books are consumed in high volume, in part because they're more enjoyable to read for the conditioned soul. Srila Prabhupada's instructions are far more austere, not because of his Indian accent, but because of the no-nonsense content.
It doesn't take the curious searcher long to discover that when listening to most GBC or sannyasi preachers in ISKCON, you'll have a hard time finding one that sounds at all like Srila Prabhupada's preaching -- what to speak of the potency that a pure devotee has in comparison to someone who's somewhere on the sadhana-bhakta scale of enlightenment. So this DVD idea put forth by the Preaching Strategies Committee is basically some kind of hope that Srila Prabhupada will come and save them yet again from having to do the hard work he expected them to do, which is to preach, write, motivate and inspire rather than to manage, travel to meetings with each other, and engage in online discussions with each other while basically ignoring their disciples and the temples.
Here in the Pacific Northwest we seldom even see our GBC members. Here, we don't even see the Temple President, and traveling sannyasis generally stay only for a few days, during which time they meet with a select audience that doesn't include anyone who's having any real problems.
Constitution Committee
The Constitution Committee admits that Srila Prabhupada wanted a constitution to be written over 30 years ago, but because of the same aforementioned elephant problem, they also can't get anything together. Of course, they don't mention the real reasons for that. It seems that they can't even figure out who they're writing the constitution for, because no one knows what ISKCON really is today. The first thing a constitution does is define who and what the organization is. As we mentioned, some see ISKCON as a kind of umbrella organization composed of many diksa guru lineages, and another group sees ISKCON as a western-type church with an institutional hierarchy, the GBC being like the College of Cardinals. Until this contradiction is resolved, how can you write a constitution?
Sesa Prabhu, the lawyer who has been deputed to come up with this constitution, has put out a plea for someone to recommend anyone who has the skills to help prepare a constitution. The false assumption being put forth here is that there's no disagreement amongst the GBC as to what the constitution should contain, it's just a matter of finding someone who knows how to write it. But in reality, the technical writing aspect is relatively straightforward. The problem is there's a lot of disagreement amongst the members about what the constitution should say, who it should represent and protect, and to whom it should give absolute control.
It took the founding fathers of the American constitution years to compose their thoughts and social ideologies into writing. During that time, and for many years prior, they were meeting constantly in order to come to agreement as to what should be contained in the American constitution. But our GBC members aren't willing to face this type of austerity, nor have they been able to easily come to any consensus among themselves. Of course, one of the underlying issues is that the GBC want to appear to be harmonious and saintly and cooperative, but they can only do this so long as they don't have to deal with the really serious issues, like the Parallel Structure.
So I don't believe we'll see a constitution in the near future. I don’t believe that we'll have a clear definition of who Srila Prabhupada is, nor will the preaching improve, nor will the problem of succession be resolved. At this point in time the members of the next generation are at the same age that most of the members of ISKCON were during Srila Prabhupada's lila period. But there seems to be almost no one in sight that can graduate into these positions, party because no one has been trained, and partly because the leaders are holding onto their power positions for all they're worth. Few among the next generation seem inspired or interested in getting entangled in the ISKCON power structure, and who can blame them?
In a morning walk that I was recently listened to, one of the devotees told Srila Prabhupada that they were having a lot of trouble preaching to the "old people". Now the "old people" this devotee was referring to were people who are the age we direct disciples are today… mostly in their 50's and 60's. They appeared so set in their ways that it seemed hard for this devotee to get them to understand Krsna consciousness. And Srila Prabhupada agreed! So for us to now expect that these old folks who make up the GBC are going to listen to anyone or change their minds is just wishful thinking. Paramatma and the time factor are the only ones that can ultimately deal with the problems, as they have in the past. It was Krsna, not the GBC, who got rid of most of the Zonal Acaryas. We can always trust that change happens.
Succession and Leadership Training Committee
As far as training is concerned, the Succession and Leadership Training Committee has made it abundantly clear that their idea of training is based on the western religious construct of sending people to university-like settings with a curriculum and teachers, rather than sending them to the diksa gurus who are purportedly teaching what they were taught by Srila Prabhupada.
Srila Prabhupada made it abundantly clear what his conception of Varnasrama College is, and one of the main points he made is that it should be staffed by sannyasis, and that they shouldn't charge anything for this service, because they're not taking a big salary or living an opulent lifestyle. The vaisyas are to provide food for the school, so the students shouldn't be obliged to pay tuition. We can see that this scenario is near impossible in ISKCON today.
This is the sum and substance of what I find in Tattvavit dasa's public reports on the GBC meetings that inspires commentary. Of course there were also secret meetings wherein they finessed the soon to be released resolutions and decisions on such contentious issues as Dhanurdhara Swami, and whatever else we'll be introduced to in terms of more laws. This is surely one of the main problems that Sesa prabhu has in writing up a constitution -- how is he supposed to incorporate all the GBC resolutions and laws that have come and gone? Some resolutions virtually cancel out others, while many have been ignored for the most part for years and years.
My conclusion is that ISKCON and the concept of a GBC only applies and works on a local level. Once the GBC members leave that meeting, they have as much power to fulfill their responsibilities as they choose to employ, or not. In every local area, the GBC is totally different. Without having to belabour the point, locally our situation is absolutely pathetic. I'm not saying it's that way everywhere, and obviously it isn't. It's just the luck of the draw as to whether you get a good GBC or not. But once you have a GBC, you can't get rid of them. You're stuck with that person, and the GBC as a body will not do anything to help if you're as unfortunate as we are here in Vancouver, with Hari Vilasa dasa.
Based on the apparent progress made at this year's annual GBC meetings, it would be hard to overstate just how difficult the road ahead appears to be for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Obeisances to Dandavats, and to the members of the Governing Body Commission.
