charity and ISKCON

[Guest guest]

Dear Adipurusa Prabhu and other devotees.

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

 

> Just to bring it back into the original context: do any of the outspoken

> proponents of "no charity" really accuse Indradyumna Swami in leaning

> towards mundane charity to the detriment of preaching??? Please remember,

> the topic has come up in connection with the tsunami relief work. Please

> also remember about the scale of Indradyumna Maharaja's direct preaching

> in Poland and other places. Why some of the authors here hurried to defend

> one of our revered swamis and not the other?

 

It is interesting, that you metnion this. I was defending Jayadvaita

Maharaja, as I would defend Bhakti Vikasa Maharaja, or Indradyumna Maharaja.

I beleive, that in recent debate just Jayadvaita Maharaja was approached

improperly, but I may be wrong, I may have missed some texts in debate.

 

Your point goes deep into mechanism of understanding appearantly

contradictory statements. You are expert in this field. Till now we have

been basically gathering quotes, facts, opinions. Authors were presenting

facts in favor of charity, against charity, and in favor of regulated

charity. Also many personal ideas were proposed. More or less we exhausted

most of material in this connection.

 

My question now is about what we have gained? Personally I must admit, that

I'm more confused now, than I was before. Probably thats a good thing. But I

think there must be some conclusion. We have prepared our field, worked hard

"fighting" with each other, many emotions came out.... Now what?

 

Can we come to some conclusion? There must be solid understanding of

situation! Please somebody finally explain what is to be done in ISKCON,

according to different situations and persons involved.

 

Maybe GBC has the answer. Maybe IC can come out with some solution. Or SAC

should research it. Maybe it is already done, and we are just not aware of

conclusions. If anybody has any official statements, please post them.

 

Who has the power to say "It is to be done like this"? Do we have such

person? Some say that it is Prabhupada "As he is", but some seem to desagree

and try to extrapolate Prabhupada's teachings and adopt them for todays

time, and for the time to come. I heard, that some follow Prabhupada's

words, being frozen in the 70s, while proper thing is to capture

Prabhupada's mood and adjust things as necessary.

 

I believe, that as wordwide organization, we should have this things

defined. Is anybody working on it? When can we expect any solid results?

 

I think this is quite serious. This discussion exposed a very touchy side of

ISKCON. I beleive, that If people are expected to identify with ISKCON

mission, then we must present proper, unified answers to such topics as

divorce, feminism, sports, homosexuality, academics, charity, guru issue,

position of Prabhupada and probably many others. And then either you are

"in", or you are "out". Am I correct ot am I wrong. Please correct me.

 

It is most disturbing, that even ISKCON leaders, especially sannyasis,

cannot come to same conclusions. How is it possible, to read the same books,

serve Prabhupada, and come to diametrically opposite conclusions! How are we

to understand this? Can we have just one, unified Prabhupada ISKCON, instead

many ISKCON-mathas, where each leader has his own independent mood?

 

Please help in any way, before my mind explodes.

 

Your servant Giri-nayaka das BVS