BY: ROCANA DASA
Aug 27, CANADA (SUN) — A weekly response to Dandavats editorials.
Today's Obeisances is in reply to Hari-sauri's recent article, "A Brief Overview of the History of the Process of Initiation in ISKCON".
In prefacing my comments, I think it's important for the reader to consider what Hari-sauri's position is in today's ISKCON. In the past, I
commented on an article that he'd previously published in Dandavats wherein he describes his current personal circumstances. It would be educational for the reader to re-visit this before proceeding with today's segment.
In the current short little presentation, Hari-sauri takes on the very weighty subject of initiation, giving us his own condensed version. This version, not surprisingly, is also politically correct in today's ISKCON community. In fact, Hari-sauri has recently been deputed as one of their official spokesmen. His background lends itself to this arrangement. He has authored the Transcendental Diary, which draws upon his experiences during Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON lila, when he served as Srila Prabhupada's servant. This role obviously gave him access to 'inside information' or knowledge of the goings-on in Srila Prabhupada's life that were not commonly known to others. In this capacity, he is now serving the interests of ISKCON by "educating" the devotees in the temples on all sorts of subject matters, presenting them in a very ISKCON friendly way. In this particular article, he presents the whole hot topic of initiation in a few easy-to-chew bites.
Hari-sauri dasa is sharing with us not only an incredibly abbreviated conception of what initiation is, but also his version of ISKCON history, which is presented in a voice intended to let us all know that he has the inside story. Of course, anyone who has any understanding of what transpired after Srila Prabhupada's disappearance will understand that Hari-sauri's concept of initiation is at the root of the controversy itself.
The author tries to make us all feel that the IKSCON conclusion and history around initiation is just so abundantly obvious. He tries to explain what initiation is by repeatedly saying that initiation means one is initiated into the chanting of the Holy Names. This is his mantra throughout the article. But in fact, all those who are familiar with the many, many quotes that have been introduced into the guru-tattva debate, by parties on all sides, will know that what Hari-sauri presents is NOT what Srila Prabhupada has consistently said.
When Srila Prabhupada uses the term initiation, he doesn't say "initiation into the Holy Name". Typically, he specifies that initiation means entering into the Sampradaya, which means the siddhanta. This knowledge allows you to understand everything, including the significance and potency of chanting the Holy Name -- and many other things besides. Naturally the Holy Name is of topmost importance, but initiation is not simply about chanting. But Hari-sauri makes it sound like that's all Srila Prabhupada did - he got us to chant Hare Krsna, and that's the end of the story.
Consider the fact that Srila Prabhupada spent his entire life, practically, writing so many books explaining this philosophy. Yet the impression that Hari-sauri gives us is that all Srila Prabhupada did is teach us to chant Hare Krsna, and engage in the sadhana of chanting the Holy Names. The only way that one can actually have the potency to chant Hare Krsna offenselessly is that one understand the siddhanta. It's not that Srila Prabhupada simply had us chanting, even as part of our sadhana. Hearing from the Srimad-Bhagavatam and Bhagavad-gita, hearing from the previous Acaryas, chanting the prayers composed by the Acaryas, which give us the pure knowledge - these things are also key elements of sadhana practice. Although there's no question on anyone's part about the importance of chanting the Hare Krsna mantra, unless one accepts Srila Prabhupada and the siddhanta as he is presenting it, then the chanting doesn't have any potency.
Without having to go through endless quotes from Srila Prabhupada, we know of so many instances where Srila Prabhupada says that official initiation has no meaning unless you're fully surrendered to the guru. Otherwise there's no question of initiation. Srila Prabhupada famously said, "Well initiation or no initiation, first thing is knowledge. Initiation is formality, just like you go to a school for knowledge and admission is formality. That is not very important thing." (Press interview given by Srila Prabhupada on October 16, 1976, Chandigarh)
Hari-sauri goes into some detail about the formality of initiation and in fact, the details he lays out lead one to the conclusion that Srila Prabhupada didn't think the formality was that much important, considering the fact that as Hari-sauri explains, he passed off the formality part to his very neophyte disciples. But here Hari-sauri makes it sound as if by passing off this important aspect of initiation, the formality aspect of giving the names, chanting on the beads, performing the fire yajnas, etc. -- that this somehow indicates how important or how advanced the disciples were. Hari-sauri sees this is an indication that Srila Prabhupada thought they were so qualified to be gurus, and to have all this potency. From my understanding, this simply indicates that the real potency was not in the formalities, but rather in the fact that people were accepting whatever Srila Prabhupada said as absolutely true and unquestionably right, and that he was a direct representative of God.
Basically there are only a few conclusions one can reach from this whole historical phenomenon. One is that Srila Prabhupada didn't think the formalities of initiation were so much important, therefore he could pass it off to his neophyte disciples. Another is that as the Sampradaya Acarya, Srila Prabhupada was so exceptionally potent that he could pass the formalities along to neophytes, and still initiation untold disciples into the pure Sampradaya. Or, you can come to the conclusion that I believe Hari-sauri is wanting us to accept, which is that Srila Prabhupada thought that the disciples he turned responsibility over to were themselves very advanced, and consequently would have the potency to execute these functions. History has revealed the fact that these disciples were ambitious neophytes, and most have since fallen down, proving this to be a fact. Therefore, we come back to the first two choices. Personally, I think the second choice is correct, and it also encompasses the first choice.
ISKCON nowadays is focusing on the formalities of initiation. In fact, that's the essence of their philosophy on guru-tattva - that you have to formally get initiated by an ISKCON-approved diksa if you hope to make progress past the very preliminary stages in your Krsna consciousness. It is in your best spiritual interests to accept an institutionally authorized diksa, and you can expect phenomenal breakthroughs by doing so. Of course, ISKCON history itself proves this to be untrue.
The aspect of Hari-sauri prabhu's presentation that I find particularly disturbing is his comments regarding Srila Prabhupada becoming ill as a result of 'one big initiation ceremony'. In this particular statement he's referring to a ceremony where Srila Prabhupada was physically present and performed the initiation. The system that was set up in ISKCON at the time was that Srila Prabhupada was essentially constantly initiating by approving devotees for initiation throughout the world. Hari-sauri is suggesting that when Srila Prabhupada was actually physically present at large initiation gatherings, he would get sick as a result. But what's the difference between his being physically present, or not? All the disciples were initiated by him, and he made no distinction on this point. Yes this is the conclusion that ISKCON has used as an excuse for the backlog of initiations that was orchestrated by the leadership.
History shows that initiations essentially stopped between May and the time Srila Prabhupada left his body. Hari-sauri suggests that this was on account of him personally concluding that he had to stop initiating because it was making him ill. But there's no evidence that this is the case, other than the words of those close to Srila Prabhupada such as his secretary and servants, Hari-sauri being one of them. What is known is that this phenomenon resulted in the cessation of initiations. All the temples, including the one that I was the Temple President of, were overflowing with uninitiated devotees who were qualified to be initiated. Even though Srila Prabhupada apparently took steps to resolve this problem with the July 9th Letter, still no initiations took place. Hari-sauri and his associates suggest that as early as May of 1977, Srila Prabhupada stopped doing large initiations because it was making him ill. But if that were true, why would Srila Prabhupada have written the July 9th Letter, which if it had been followed, would have resulted in many thousands more devotees being initiated in a short time?
Today, everyone conveniently focuses on July 9th Letter as support for their position, be it the Rtviks or ISKCON itself. But in fact, those named in the letter obviously decided amongst themselves not to act on the instructions contained therein. The excuse they like to give is that that this was due to the fact that they had concluded that Srila Prabhupada was going to get sicker from accepting the karma that would result from accepting more disciples. On this basis, they say, they did not act.
Of course, what seems obvious to many devotees who were present during that time, myself included, is that they were simply waiting for Srila Prabhupada to leave his body so they could initiate all those devotees waiting in the queue. And that's exactly what happened. Within a matter of days they set-up the Zonal Acarya system, initiated all the backlog of devotees, and thereby solidified their power base. In ISKCON at that time it was the newer devotees who formed the bulk of the sankirtana parties, and it was the sankirtana parties who provided the cash flow that supported all the temples. So locking up all the initiates had an obvious effect.
I've written about my own experiences in Seattle, which I invite the readers to consider if they're interested. The Seattle scenario illustrates this point perfectly, as it was one of the first temples to be negatively affected by the Zonal Acarya system. Of course, Hari-sauri doesn't mention this.
If the Zonal Acaryas had truly concluded that Srila Prabhupada himself -- a pure devotee, a maha-bhagavata, and a nitya-siddha -- was going to get sick as a result of taking too many disciples, then why in the world would these neophyte devotees immediately upon Srila Prabhupada's departure initiate all sorts of disciples? They weren't afraid of getting sick, or afraid of the negative reactions to themselves? Even today we find so many gurus who have thousands of disciples. Of course, when the big gurus fall down, part of the ISKCON explanation typically is that they had accepted too many disciples. But if the institutional leaders really believed that, why is there still no policy to this day restricting diksa gurus from accepting too many disciples due to the dangers inherent in that effort? This omission obviously is not due to ISKCON's reticence about controlling or institutionalizing the initiation process, something they're happy to do on many other levels.
Hari-sauri also fails to mention the fact that Srila Prabhupada stated himself that if you fall down as a guru, that means you were not authorized to be a guru in the first place. And how many of these people have fallen down? But he claims these fallen gurus were authorized by Srila Prabhupada to give diksa based on the July 9th Letter. Yet based on Srila Prabhupada's own statements, the reason they fell down was because they were unauthorized to be gurus in the first place. Srila Prabhupada stated that he felt many, if not most of his godbrothers who were big sannyasis were not authorized to be gurus. In many respects they were far more successful at being staunch sannyasis than his own disciples. Of course, they were disciples of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, so what does that say in terms of who should be a guru and who should not be a guru?
What I've been stating is that the first qualification of being a guru, meaning a pure representative of the Sampradaya, is to appreciate and recognize who are the Sampradaya Acaryas -- and that's Srila Prabhupada. Hari-sauri fails to mention that, and in not doing so, he indicates that the present ISKCON diksa gurus who've been appointed by the GBC, not by Srila Prabhupada, are just as much bona fide spiritual masters as Srila Prabhupada. This, of course, is a ridiculous conclusion.
For ten years after Srila Prabhupada's departure, the Zonal Acaryas were the only ones who were allowed to accept disciples, even though there were literally thousands of disciples of Srila Prabhupada who were just as eligible as they were, as time has proven to be true. They could and should have been initiating, and they had just as much authority from Srila Prabhupada to initiate as did the exclusive club of eleven. And based on what we're hearing from Hari-sauri, that would have solved much of the problem of diksa gurus taking on karma from initiating too many disciples. Not that I personally believe that's a fact.
In this brief presentation by Hari-sauri, he's essentially trying to gloss over some of the huge discrepancies in ISKCON's history so as to explain away the controversy that surrounds the whole initiation issue. Regardless of what he has to say, or what ISKCON has to say officially, there is no evidence whatsoever that Srila Prabhupada appointed anyone to be gurus. The July 9th letter doesn't say that. As I've mentioned in my previous writings, particularly in Church of Rtvik, I don't hold this letter to have anywhere near the weight it's given by either the Rtviks or ISKCON. I personally received one of these letters at the time because I was a Temple President. As far as I was concerned then and now, like so many of my peers, this letter was meant only to address the immediate situation. It had no authority after Srila Prabhupada departed. It wasn't even written by Srila Prabhupada. At the time, it was taken as a matter of fact by all the grassroots authorities, namely the Temple Presidents. In his article, Hari-sauri maps out the step-by-step events that lead up to the letter, but as far as it being some big legal document that's supposed to go down in history for 10,000 years, or have any weight whatsoever after Srila Prabhupada departed, this is simply the conclusion of people trying to use it as a means to justify their own personal agendas. There is no evidence to the contrary. If there was, you can be sure we'd have heard about it a long time ago.
So that's what we're left with - the fact that we have to deal with this reality and make philosophical sense of it. You're not going to make sense of it by reading the July 9th Letter or Hari-sauri's article, I can assure of that. Under the present circumstances, every individual has to make a concerted effort to understand it for themselves. Many papers have been written by many sincere devotees on the subject, and we have sastra and Srila Prabhupada's purports and instructions pertaining to the whole subject of initiation.
Hari-sauri would like you to believe that everything's so clear and so transparent but if that were the case, then why was there controversy in the first place? And why does the controversy rage on? Praghosa dasa would like you to think he's made it abundantly simple and clear. The Rtvik advocates such as Yasodanandana dasa and Krishna-kant Desai would like you to believe that it's crystal clear, but the reality is that it's NOT crystal clear.
Everyone has Caitya Guru in the heart, everyone has access to Srila Prabhupada's teachings, and it's a reality in today's world that it's very important for every individual to make a thorough study and discuss this subject threadbare with those they feel are sincere. That's one of the reasons we've created the Sampradaya Sun, so that people can share their realizations on subjects as important as this one. No one has to follow any party line, so don't let individuals like Hari-sauri make you believe that they're some big authority on the subject. As a conditioned soul, he has his own personal circumstances to consider, and they shadow his ability to present conclusively on this subject. The same can be said for all the other proponents, including myself - to a certain degree, everyone carries this burden. The only ones that are absolutely pure are Srila Prabhupada and the other previous Sampradaya Acaryas who have given us their perception on all matters, and especially this subject of initiation.
Obeisances to Dandavats and to Sriman Hari-sauri dasa.
