BY: ROCANA DASA
Oct 18, 2021 — CANADA (SUN) — Studying Srila Prabhupada's conversations with ISKCON leaders.
Today's Talks is inspired by Srila Prabhupada's Morning Walk in Mayapur on February 12, 1976. This walk took place on the roof, and you can hear Srila Prabhupada's cane hitting the cement floor. When there wasn't not enough time in the morning schedule, Srila Prabhupada would have his morning walk on the roof. On this day, I was present for the walk, which obviously took place during the GBC meetings. I've chosen to include several classes and morning walks from this time period, and especially in 1976, when Srila Prabhupada was much more active than he was a year later, when his health was deteriorating.
On today's walk, Srila Prabhupada was joined by Dayananda and Hridyananda. The duration of the walk was relatively short, and the main theme being transmitted to the GBC is summarized in the opening statement: "We don't encourage laziness. We never encourage."
He then quotes a sloka from Bhagavad-gita 4:13 wherein Sri Krsna is talking about the four divisions of human society. Srila Prabhupada quotes this sloka so as to emphasize the fact that according to your particular duty or position within human society, you have to work. And of course, ISKCON was working in that way. Anyone who spent any time in Srila Prabhupada's direct association, serving him in any capacity, could understand how he felt about devotees always being engaged. He would not tolerate any kind of extra sleeping or anything that even remotely appeared to be laziness, and he himself exemplified this principle on the highest level. In fact, in a morning walk a few weeks later, on March 2nd, Srila Prabhupada again emphasized this principle, saying: "No idle life… 'people are maintaining some lazy men.' Then everything will be spoiled."
Then later in the year, September 21st in Vrindavan, he says, "We do not allow any lazy man. He must be engaged. That is Krsna consciousness movement. That is Krsna's order."
In this regard Srila Prabhupada often mentions that Arjuna's request not to fight was essentially a form laziness, in that he wouldn't perform his duty. Now one can wonder why Srila Prabhupada is repeating this theme over and over again during this period. It would seem that he's detecting that his disciples are becoming lazy, and they're not working as hard as they could or should, and he's trying to drum this message into his disciples.
The problem that many devotees have, and had at that time, is that on one hand, we were trying to live up to brahminical standards and engage in brahminical work, which can appear to be laziness in the sense that you're not actively working. But if you're not on the brahminical platform, and you're trying to pretend that you're brahminical or advanced, or if you have some exalted position in the institution or society, that means people are always ready to serve you. In such circumstances there's a great tendency to become lazy and not even realize it. It's my conclusion that this is what Srila Prabhupada was picking up on in his leaders.
Dayananda goes on to ask, isn't laziness a demoniac quality? Srila Prabhupada states that it's less than demoniac because demons are active, but lazy is ignorance. Therefore sleeping is very, very bad. And as we all know, Srila Prabhupada hardly slept, and he set down this example very, very nicely. He definitely expected us to follow this principle.
He said that although sense gratification is there -- which he begins by listing sleeping, then eating, mating and fearing -- that we should try to attempt to bring these down to nil. But he also says that's obviously not possible, and one should be striving constantly to try and reduce these four animal propensities. That's a sign of real advancement.
Hridayananda tries to introduce the topic that there's this constant struggle between the workers and the management, in the sense that the workers are always trying to reduce their work week. Srila Prabhupada doesn't really respond to this. He responds to the fact that inventing machines is the real problem, and that machines put people out of work. Interestingly, the machine he mentions is computers, and this is way back in the 1970's! We all know how those machines have proliferated since that time. Srila Prabhupada says that tractors are putting bulls out of business. Bulls and plowmen can't be employed, and the bulls are killed on the basis of that principle.
Srila Prabhupada makes an interesting statement when he says that due to unemployment, the demons create wars such as Vietnam, and they send all these unemployed people over there to be killed. Hridayananda then says something I find somewhat prophetic -- that over in Vietnam, the soldiers are so disgusted with their leaders that they kill the leaders and make it look like the enemy killed them. He actually repeats this twice, saying that the soldiers are killing their officers. Of course, in the context of ISKCON he is an officer, and in due course not long after Srila Prabhupada disappeared, the 'soldiers' became very disgusted with their leaders. Of course they didn't kill them, except for Jayatirtha; one of his soldiers killed him.
After this side discussion, which Srila Prabhupada did not participate in, he goes on to emphasize the fact that you always need authority. You can't get away from having an authority over you. And if you don't have authority, then it's a chaotic condition. And of course, the perfect authority is Krsna. Srila Prabhupada recalls how he had a discussion with the Russian professor, Kotovsky, wherein he made the statement to the professor that, "you have got a fool leader, we have got intelligent leader." Otherwise you cannot avoid leadership, authority. That is not possible."
Of course, surrounding Srila Prabhupada were all of ISKCON's authorities, and when he established ISKCON he did make sure there was always an authority, and that authority was empowered by him. For most of us, that authority was the Temple President. At that point in time, the GBC members were not so much leaders, at least not in Canada. We very seldom saw a GBC. And because Srila Prabhupada emphasized the need for authorities and empowered them, the temple devotees obeyed the leadership, regardless of the fact that they were the same age, had very little experience, and made plenty of mistakes. But because the leadership was there, a lot of people were fully engaged; they weren't lazy, and a lot was accomplished. Some foolishness also was accomplished, but overall, a great deal of preaching was done, especially in the form of book distribution.
This principle I find sadly lacking in ISKCON today. Even though many temples have a so-called Temple President, that person isn't necessarily a leader. And where you do find leadership, you find that a lot is getting accomplished. Unfortunately, that chain of authority has been interrupted since Srila Prabhupada's departure, primarily due to the fact that so many of the temple devotees are now looking to their guru as an authority rather than the local temple authority, as it was back in Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON lila days. So it has become a thankless and frustrating task to try and instruct someone else's disciple, who naturally does not want to surrender. In fact, they want to be lazy, which is the nature of persons in this material world. Most of the gurus are absent, and this actually suits the disciples, because then they don’t have to surrender to authorities. They can simply wait for the occasional visit and pretend that they're surrendering, even though they're not. Srila Prabhupada states very clearly in this morning walk that we have to work very hard under direct leadership in order to serve him, and therefore Krsna.
Hridayananda, who was the main contributor on this walk, flatters Srila Prabhupada by telling him that his books and his arguments in regards to Communism have been very helpful in preaching, especially in South America. At this point in time, Hridayananda was the big GBC authority there, and he was achieving very good results at that stage. It was understood and accepted during that period that he would spend his whole life developing that huge preaching field, but for whatever reasons, he hasn't been doing that for many years now. In fact, soon after Srila Prabhupada left Hridayananda left South America, even though he was the Zonal Acarya in that area. He arranged his life so that he spent less and less time focusing on his prabhu-datta-desha. I don't think he's preaching against Communism much anymore, either. It's interesting to note that historically, Communism is now making a big comeback in South America. It looks like Hridayananda should go back down and start preaching… perhaps in Venezuela.
