A private letter

[Guest guest]

Dear Respected Maharaja,

 

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

I wanted to first apologize for responding to you in passion; I will not

apologize for defending my husband, but I should have written to you

privately, and not in public. I was going to write this letter to you

privately, but in light of my previous letter, I should also apologize to

you publicly.

 

You say to show some sensitivity towards this Gaura Keshava, that the

Mayapur Festival in 2005 was about bringing back the disassociated disciples

of Srila Prabhupada. Well that may be, and many of them deserve to be hunted

down, approached with respect and humility, and asked to forgive, tolerate

the human weaknesses of the majority, and return to the shelter of the

divine and merciful lotus feet of our beloved guru and param guru, Srila

Prabhupada. A nobler intention I cannot imagine.

 

I helped in some small way to organize that festival, and sat in a couple of

meetings with Srila Prabhupada disciples while they discussed who to invite

and who *not* to invite--this list of the disassociated. But it's not a

free-for-all, Maharaja: some "disciples" have been extremely offensive to

this movement, and the group of senior and respected maharajas, prabhus, and

matajis that I sat with in organizing this committee even went so far to say

at one stage that the boundary fence should be wrapped in barbed wire to

keep some of them out, so offensive had they been to Srila Prabhupada and

his movement in the past, and so much disturbance they had caused this

movement. I didn't see Gaura Keshava here at this reunion, keen to amend his

disassociation with ISKCON, nor does his mood resemble that of a disciple

who wishes to return to the shelter of his guru's institution. In that

respect, your defense of him stuck in my throat. I apologize if my response

to you was harsh, but my heart breaks into a thousand pieces at the thought

of someone like him being defended, when my good husband, whose record of

service spanning over 25 years is, to me, more of an example than any

"Prabhupada disciple" the calibre of Gaura Kesava will ever be.

 

There is another reason I became upset at your email, and that is the the

credence given to Gaura Keshava's status as a "disciple" of Srila Prabhupada

over any other fact or detail or element of the discussion. This is *not*

what Srila Prabhupada showed in his example. Srila Prabhupada taught us to

respect the behavior, attitude, the service mood, devotional sentiment, and

most of all, the loyalty of the disciple: not who his guru was. He cursed

his own godbrothers as useless when they ignored his guru maharaja, and left

in disgust when they criticized his guru maharaja's mission or math. Why not

take a leaf from that chapter of Srila Prabhupada's book? Why can you not

see that some do not deserve the loving sentiment you are so ready to offer,

over and above the defense of our beloved Srila Prabhupada? What purpose

does it serve to move Srila Prabhupada aside and say, "Oh, but let us

embrace this disciple..." Sure, let us embrace the disassociated, but

honestly we're a little tired of the disenfranchized and disenchanted, and

their incessant criticism of everyone and everything that is dear to Srila

Prabhupada, all in the name of their superior knowledge or their long

"service record." I don't think so.

 

And this aspect of worshipping Srila Prabhupada's disciples over and above

everyone else is also something that sticks in my throat, but of course the

immediate response would be to say that I am "envious." Well, I'm not. I

know well enough my own mind and my own faults, and envy of Srila

Prabhupada's disciples is not one of them. But I sit and watch this

glorification of his disciples, this mass movement to bring them back to the

fold, and one part of me rejoices. Yet another part of me shrivels and dies

in shame and pain for those who were "unfortunate" enough to not have been

initiated by Srila Prabhupada. What of those disciples? Is their

disassociation from ISKCON not important because the yajna was on the wrong

date, the wrong time? Is it only those who joined in the 60s and 70s who are

considered important enough to want back? Many second generation devotees

suffered the falldown of their gurus: none of Srila Prabhupada's former

disciples have the luxury of "blaming" their disassociation on that, do

they? But still there are thousands out there who deserve our attention,

whether they have left the movement or not: thousands who, in the past 27

years since Srila Prabhupada's departure, built more temples, distributed

more books, made devotees, preached incessantly, followed strict sadhana,

worshipped temple deities, practically more than any of Srila Prabhupada's

disciples combined! There are thousands and thousands of devotees in ISKCON,

and only a very small percentage are Srila Prabhupada's disciples.

 

So please, don't let this "Srila Prabhupada disciple" fixation dim the very

real sacrifices and surrender of the "other" generation. The disciples of

Srila Prabhupada have their place in history, no doubt: they are the

pioneers of this movement, the generals of our army in the fight against

maya, as my own guru maharaja was often referred to; the first to put

transcendental literature into the hands of the western world; the first

disciples to introduce worship of Radha and Krishna worldwide; so much can

be said of their service. I worship their lotus feet, collectively; I love

them in the deepest core of my heart for the youth and vitality and energy

they surrendered to Srila Prabhupada; I ache for the day when the planet

will be devoid of their association. Yet still, I see ISKCON is full of

other devotees who aren't judged on who their guru is, but for who they are

personally, and what they've done for Srila Prabhupada, and for their

service attitude, their devotion, their surrender, their loyalty to Srila

Prabhupada's mission and the mission of their guru, a generation removed.

Let *that* be the norm in ISKCON. Yes, our culture is to worship the

seniors---but never is it our culture to worship someone solely for who

their guru is. That was never what Srila Prabhupada wanted us to be judged

on.

 

The only benefit Gaura Keshava's texts have given is that they might have at

least given all of us the opportunity to be more conscious of avoiding the

elitism of "who's your guru?", as opposed to the culture of respect for

seniors that comes naturally in an environment rich in loving exchanges, not

demands for respect.

 

Your servant

Braja Sevaki dd ¾