BY: ROCANA DASA
Oct 16, CANADA (SUN) — A weekly response to Dandavats editorials.
Today's Obeisances is in reply to a paper that was mentioned and linked from a recent Dandavats article entitled "European Leaders Meeting - Day Two".
The paper, Duties of GBC and Guru in ISKCON, was written by HH Prahladananda Swami, and was presented on day two of the European GBC and leaders conference. This paper was also published in today's edition of the Sun. It was described in the Dandavats article, as follows:
"This paper challenged the audience to reflect on whether the guru in ISKCON is properly situated under the authority of the GBC. And if there is not proper alignment on this point then how to rectify it and if it isn’t rectified what is the fallout likely to be?
After the presentation of the paper the plenary group broke up into 6 smaller groups who further discussed the details of the paper. After an hour those groups came back and presented the results of their discussions to the plenary group.
As a result of this process the ELM have drafted a proposal to the GBC body requesting them to research this subject with the ultimate aim of producing a definitive paper on this issue."
This article by Prahladananda Maharaja is one of the most honest and brahminically-minded presentations of what is going on at the GBC level of ISKCON that I have seen in a long time. Prahladananda Swami gives us a little faith and hope that perhaps there are more sannyasis of true brahminical nature than meet the eye. Papers such as this one are certainly needed in order to bring about the much desired change.
Prahladananda Maharaja had to leave out names and not mention specific ISKCON history, relying solely on sastric quotes. On that level, he's done a very good job. Of course, those the paper was intended for can easily envision who the author is actually referring to, both as individuals and as groups within ISKCON.
For many years I've been stating the very thing that he's said in this paper:
"In the absence of a GBC Body that clearly represents the desires of Srila Prabhupada to preach Krsna consciousness as a unified movement, the Society remains together more on the basis of a loose confederation of initiating gurus and independent local leaders, than as a unified movement of surrendered servants."
In other words, ISKCON and the GBC are simply a façade, a sort of marketing tool, while the reality is, as he says, that every reader can look at the local circumstance and wonder how much this applies because ISKCON is so variegated. It depends entirely on who you happen to have as a leader.
Take for instance our local scene here in Vancouver, British Columbia. The points Prahladananda Swami brought up about the position of the GBC have been totally ignored here for years and years. Even though Vancouver has three co-GBC's, there's no Temple President. The GBC are acting in place of the Temple President, and the only GBC who's actively involved, Harivilasa dasa, doesn't even live here.
What is interestingly new in Prahladananda Swami's paper is that he's asking the GBC to cooperate with each other. All this call for cooperation among the grassroots devotees has really meant that we should cooperate with the GBC. But Prahladananda has the audacity to say the truth, that the lack of cooperation is actually coming down from the top. They have to be united, and be seen as united, and they're not. Many people take advantage of that fact to manipulate the system.
Prahladananda Maharaja described how Srila Prabhupada wished to have the GBC function:
"According to Srila Prabhupada's instructions, the GBC Body’s principal duties are to organize the worldwide preaching and to supervise the local temples and their members. Each GBC member should see that the devotees whom he or she is serving as a GBC secretary are performing activities in a Krsna conscious way and are enthusiastic to spread Krsna consciousness. The GBC Body and its members are not to interfere unnecessarily in the affairs of the local temples." (13)
Srila Prabhupada clearly outlined the kind of management structure he wants, and it's been common knowledge since his ISKCON lila days that this is how he wanted to manage the society. Yet the local GBC in Vancouver, as elsewhere, have no faith in Srila Prabhupada's management structure. GBC's like Harivilasa dasa want to setup an entirely different type of management structure wherein the Board has all the power and you don't need a Temple President. He thinks he can easily run the temple just by talking on the phone occasionally to different people at the temple. Meanwhile, the preaching languishes and so many things are mismanaged. So this is our local situation.
When you get down to what Prahladananda Swami is really saying, his main theme is that there's a great lack of Krsna Consciousness on the GBC level, and that if the devotees there were more spiritually advanced, things would be much better. He itemizes the problems, which have been presented for decades by other non-GBC people who have been ostracized for saying them. Let's see if that same fate befalls him. While we applaud Dandavats' decision to provide a link to the paper, they obviously didn't want to make it overly public, or it would have appeared as a stand-alone article on the Dandavats front page.
While I agree with nearly everything Prahladananda Maharaja says, there are a few very important things I see lacking in his idea of a solution. In fact, I think his suggested solution is just a dream. First, he insinuates that a good portion of the GBC are contaminated by false prestige and are maintaining the previous Zonal Acarya system mentality. At the same time, he's asking them to be real sannyasis/GBC's, and be humble. In other words, his solution counts on them being far more advanced than they actually are. While he condemns the idea of pretense, he doesn't appear to recognize that the truth beneath the pretense actually dictates their ability to reform.
From a practical point of view, there's another important element that isn't covered in the Swami's paper. If what he describes is true (and I believe it is), then the Society has to implement a different type of process for removing GBC members. Some sort of electoral process is required. The idea that GBC members should maintain their status for life has to be challenged. Maybe the other GBC's can come together and caucus to get them off, but I don't see that happening. ISKCON must confront the fact that unseating some of these entrenched leaders will mean a great risk of loss of people and assets.
Unless and until there is a governance program that takes into consideration the fact that we're all fallen conditioned souls, subject to all sorts of mistakes and falldowns, and which provides a standard for judging our leaders, ISKCON cannot be successfully remediated. The people who are affected by all these rules and power can be the judge of the results, and if they don't get the results that are expected, then the system should provide them with a means to get the removal of a non-performing leader. How can a process succeed that doesn't allow them to leverage their influence, when their whole lives, and most importantly, their spiritual lives, are dependant upon ISKCON functioning in the way that Srila Prabhupada desired and demonstrated. He gave us detailed instructions on how to keep it together spiritually, and we must have a means to unseat leaders who refuse to implement and follow these instructions.
While I'm aware that Prahladananda Maharaja is very scholarly and brahminical, and is not inclined towards managerial processes, there is another major point he neglects to emphasize in his paper, that is the fact that it was Srila Prabhupada's original conception that the GBC would follow his example and just go around preaching. He arranged it so that everything should stay local, and the local Temple President and leaders should make decisions on how the temple is developed and how money is collected and spent. Of course, very few of the original GBC's, even during Srila Prabhupada's lila period, complied with that request. Many of today's GBC use that fact as precedent-setting proof: Srila Prabhupada said he wanted it that way but the original GBC's didn't comply. Srila Prabhupada knew they weren't complying but he just accepted it, therefore it must be alright to continue ignoring his instructions.
Having personally been a Temple President during that era, I can tell you that we were very independent. Of course, there were big temples that the big GBC wanted to sit down on, staying put and doing the exact opposite of what Srila Prabhupada wanted, such as Rameswar in Los Angeles and Jayatirtha at Bhaktivedanta Manor, what to speak of the Indian temples like Bombay and Mayapur. Basically, Srila Prabhupada wanted the GBC to change zones every few years. To expect the GBC to comply with Srila Prabhupada's wishes in this regard at a managerial level is, in some respects, even more fanciful than Prahladananda Swami's solution that everyone should just make spiritual advancement and start acting like Vaisnavas, and we'll be bound to improve. Either way, it seems to me we have a long way to go back to the time when they started improving on the perfect.
Prahladananda Maharaj ventures into a realm of reality very seldom traveled by ISKCON leadership when he brings up the point that many of the GBC who are initiating gurus only remain as GBC's in order to make sure that their autonomy is preserved and they can still be considered as being in ISKCON. In other words, they're Zonal Acaryas and they want to keep it that way. Of course, Prahladananda Maharaj is against this. What I've discovered, and he doesn't mention, is that the disciples are also into this scenario. They want their gurus to retain a great deal of power, they don't want to be subjected to GBC oversight. They just want their guru to oversee them, and they're ready to rebel if pushed on the issue. (See the recent article, "Big Friends in High Places for an example of this dynamic.) In fact, that is the real power that these Zonal Acarya types have. If they decide to remove themselves from ISKCON, they'll take a lot of disciples with them, because they've trained them up in this way. Prahladananda Maharaj brings up another important point in saying that when these big gurus die, then what are we going to do?
Of course, the most important point that I think Prahladananda Maharaj missed in his paper is how important it is in solving ISKCON's problems to recognize Srila Prabhupada's rarified spiritual status. Recognizing Srila Prabhupada as the Sampradaya Acarya would go a long way towards resolving many of these problems. No one makes the clear distinction between him and themselves, sastrically. Whatever else they may purport to be to their disciples, they would be hard pressed to convince anyone that they're a nitya-siddha, maha-bhagavata, as Srila Prabhupada is. By clearly making that distinction, the balance of power will immediately shift.
ISKCON has to be set-up in the way that Srila Prabhupada wanted and, as Prahladananda Swami full-heartedly agrees, the GBC should be more powerful than ISKCON's initiating gurus. The disciples of initiating gurus should be instructed as to how advanced Srila Prabhupada really is, and how in comparison to him they are insignificant.
Obeisances to Dandavats, and to HH Prahladananda Swami.
