Varnasrama and ISKCON - the Unfulfilled Mission -

[Guest guest]

"Since the time Prabhupada began speaking extensively about implementing

varnasrama dharma, there has been much discussion in ISCKON on the way to

go about it. I can report that there is still little, if any, consensus."

 

"I also have my own views on the application of varnasrama-dharma, for I too

have thought about the subject, but I assure you, that whatever I speak or

write will not go uncontested by someone else in ISKCON."

 

"Nevertheless, I will venture here to propose the major reasons why ISKCON

is having such a difficult time coming to grips with this matter. The first

and foremost is that ISKCON put it starkly--has no brain. Or, at least the

brain it has is underdeveloped."

 

"A reporter asked, why have you come to the West? I have come, Prabhupada

replied, to give you a brain. Your society, he continued, is headless."

 

ISKCON and Varnasrama-Dharma:

A Mission Unfulfilled

 

Ravindra Svarupa dasa

 

A paper presented at the Conference 30 Jahre ISKCON-Deutschland (Germany)

Köln, 29 January, 1999

 

On the eleventh of July, 1966, in New York, Srila Prabhupada incorporated

the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. By then, Prabhupada had

already discovered an audience for his exposition of Srimad Bhagavatam,

which he characterized as a cultural presentation for the respiritualization

of the entire human society (S. Bh. Canto 1, preface). Now, in a further

step toward the culture of a respiritualization, he established ISKCON.

ISKCON was to be that exemplary society within which the culture of Srimad

Bhagavatam would be realized and by which it would be spread to the rest of

the world.

 

While this understanding of ISKCON has always been bedrock truth to its

members, it is a fact that over ISKCON,s thirty-three years, their ideas of

what exactly ISKCON is, in terms of its internal articulation, and of how it

should relate itself to the surrounding society have been fluid. The ideas

of its members have undergone changes. It seems that even Prabhupäda,s ideas

changed.

 

The reason for this unsettled state has to do with the accommodations theory

must make to reality whenever it would actualize itself in practice.

Prabhupäda,s own tradition recognizes the need for practical accommodation

by the maxim that even absolute truth must be fine-tuned to the relativities

of desa-kala-patra -- the circumstantial environments of place, object and

time (S. Bh.1.6.26-30, purport). The often hard-won expertise in doing this

is what we call a wisdom (in Sanskrit, vijnana). In the application of

principle to practice we frequently must have recourse to the method of a

trial-and-error. You learn from experience, Prabhupäda is often quoted as

saying. And experience means you make mistakes.

 

We followers of Prabhupada have been trying to find ways to establish what

Prabhupäda called an ideal society within the modern world. I hope to

acquaint you, in the time aloted me, with some of the history of our

experience and of our mistakes. I hope you will also find exhibited herein

the beginnings of a little hard-won wisdom. I also hope you will gain a fair

idea of some of the difficulties we are confronting.

 

In order for you to understand these matters, you need to become acquainted

with two contrasting social ideals or models transmitted to us by Srila

Prabhupada. The first is that of a society of Vaisnavas, of transcendental,

liberated devotees who conduct themselves spontaneously in accord with the

principles called sanätana-dharma. The second is that of a society of

materially conditioned human beings who strictly conducted themselves in

obedience to the injunctions of the Vedas under the system called

varnasrama-dharma.

 

To understand both systems, you need to be clear about what is meant when we

say that someone is bound or condition, on the one hand, and liberated or

transcendental, on the other. This is presented clearly in the

Bhagavad-gétä. (The entire fourteenth chapter is devoted to this

exposition.) To be a bound or conditioned soul means to be bound or

conditions by the three gunas, or modes of material nature; they are termed

sattva-guna, the mode of goodness or purity; rajo-guna, the mode of passion;

and tamo-guna, the mode of ignorance or darkness.

 

The three modes are most readily recognizable in the tripartite cycle of

nature: We see that things come into being, they endure for a while, and

then they undergo destruction. Then the products of destruction furnish the

raw material for a new phase of creation as the cycle begins again. In the

Vedic understanding, these three phases exemplify fundamental categories for

understanding the material world. When things are being created, nature is

said to be acting in the mode of passion, rajo-guna. When things are being

maintained, nature is acting in the mode of goodness, sattva-guna. And when

things are undergoing destruction, nature is acting in the mode of

ignorance, tamo-guna.

 

According to the Bhagavad-gita, these same modes also function to determine,

or condition, the human personality. Thus we have a three-fold psychological

typology. The mode of goodness is manifest by an attitude that is detached,

dispassionate and interested in knowledge for its own sake. The mode of

passion is evident in the hankering and longings that impel strenuous

efforts to obtain objects of desire. The mode of ignorance is manifest in

apathy, indifference, obliviousness, and bewilderment. When, for example,

consciousness is conditioned by sattva-guna, it will be alert and attentive

(toward nearly any subject presented) and, at the same time, detached and

disinterested. Consciousness condition by rajo-guna is excited and narrowly

focused upon the object of desire. Consciousness conditioned by tama-guna is

unaware, inattentive, easily distracted, and disposed toward chronic

misperception.

 

I suspect that most of us can recognizes these three psychological states

from our own experience. We have probably spent some time in each of the

modes. For all three modes are present in each person, and among them there

is always a competition for supremacy, as the Bhagavad-gita says (14.10).

Nevertheless, there is a tendency for a particular mode or combination of

modes to predominate naturally in a given individual, conducting him in its

own programmatic manner to its characteristic end.

 

Thus, the Bhagavad-gita says that the mode of goodness conditions a person

to happiness or satisfaction, and it results in knowledge. The mode of

passion conditions one to selfishly motivated activity, and it results in

misery (because passionate desires never cease multiplying and goading us

into action, never producing satisfaction). The mode of ignorance binds one

to delusion, and it results in systematic delusion or madness.

 

Prabhupada characterized the three pure types of the modes like this: One is

happy, another is very active, and another is helpless (Bh. G. 14.6,

purport).

 

We have all of us encountered various organized structures of thought

whether cultural, philosophical, religious, scientific, or

ideological--which present to us systems of abstract categories by means of

which we can apprehend and understand the world. When we school ourselves in

such a system often trying to get inside of it by the method of sympathetic

projection or "Hineinfühlung" (germ.) we sometimes find that the system

illuminates or makes intelligible certain areas of experience that we had

not before particularly noticed or considered relevant. If we then apply

that system to our practical endeavors and find ourselves newly enabled to

deal with the world in a manner that seems consistently fruitful and

productive, we award the system that highest of accolades, truth.

 

Thus it was for me and many devotees with the Bhagavad-gita, as Prabhupada

presented it. I looked at society--and at myself--through the lenses of the

Bhagavad-gita, and, once the gunas had been pointed out, I could see them

plainly. While these categories might not be fruitful to the endeavors of an

atomic scientist or an agronomist, say, they were indeed germane to the goal

of most who were attracted to ISKCON: We were seeking liberation,

transcendence. And transcendence meant, concretely, to transcend the modes

of material nature.

 

This was possible, Prabhupada said, for anyone:

 

.. . . if one wants, he can develop, by practice, the mode of goodness and

thus defeat the modes of ignorance and passion. . . . Although there are

these three modes of material nature, if one is determined he can be blessed

by the mode of goodness, and by transcending the mode of goodness he can be

situated in pure goodness, which is called the vasudeva state, a state in

which one can understand the science of God.

(Bh. G. 14.10, purport)

 

The initial result of the proper culture of Krishna consciousness should be

the disappearance in the practitioner of the symptoms of the modes of

ignorance and passion. Lust, greed, anger, and the like should vanish from

the heart. In this way, one becomes established in the mode of goodness. The

mode of goodness is the existential condition necessary for a person to be

able to understand and experience spiritual reality. Thus the mode of

goodness is the material platform, the launching pad, as it were, from which

one can make the final voyage into transcendence, where there is neither

creation nor destruction, but everlasting existence, or, in other words,

pure, unalloyed sattva.

 

In this way, the theory of the modes provided devotees a road map of the

material world, with the way out clearly marked.

 

The theory of the modes also provided the basis for another set of

categories, that of the four varëas. Just as the human body is equipped by

nature with head, arms, belly, and legs, so the social body is constituted

in the same natural way by the four occupational groups: the brahmanas who

comprise the thinkers and teachers (head); the ksatriyas, the governors and

protectors (arms); the vaisyas, the producers and traders (belly); and the

sudras, the workers and general assistants (legs). Every society requires

the specific contribution of these specialists in thinking, governing ,

producing, and working. Krishna states in the Bhagavad-gita (4.13) that this

ordering is generated by God, such that each person is naturally disposed

toward a particular category by virtue of guëa, or controlling mode of

nature, and karma, specialized activity and means of livelihood.

 

The system in which guna and karma thus determine varna Prabhupada calls

daiva-varnasrama-dharma, the divinely established system. This godly system

he explicitly contrasts to the standard Hindu caste system in which birth is

the sole determinant of membership; Prabhupada calls that

asura-varnasrama-dharma, or the diabolically created system (see, e.g., the

purport to Cc. Madhya 3.6). Prabhupada and his predecessor teachers

condemned this hereditary system as a corruption of the authentic system,

viewing it as the major source of social injustice and turmoil in India. In

several lectures Prabhupäda even traces the cause of the partitioning of

India back to the injustices spawned by the degraded principle of ereditary

brahmanism (see, e.g., lecture on S. Bh.1.2.2: Rome, May 26, 1974).

 

A brahmana must factually be in the mode of goodness, for varna is

determined by guna. A good way to think of the system is to imagine the

guëas distributed along a continuum, with goodness at one end, ignorance at

the other, and passion in the middle. At a somewhat arbitrary line when

goodness become sufficiently mixed with passion the demarcation between

brahmanas and ksatriyas occurs. Similarly, when passion becomes sufficiently

mixed with ignorance, there is a demarcation between ksatriyas and vaisyas.

When ignorance sufficiently predominates over passion there is a division

between vaisyas and sudras. The individuals situated in the boundary regions

could, in principle, be occupationally engaged on one side or the other,

according to variables such as education, training, or aptitude.

 

The categories of the gunas and of the varnas are important in understanding

what Prabhupada conceived as a primary social mission of ISKCON. Once in the

early 70s I was present when Prabhupada was interviewed by the press after

his arrival at a New York airport. A reporter asked, why have you come to

the West? I have come, Prabhupada replied, to give you a brain. Your

society, he continued, is headless. Using the analogy of the human body, he

explained the articulation of human society into four varnas. He then

asserted that modern Western society was malformed. There are a few vaisyas

and everyone else is sudra. In other words, those now engaged in research

and education, in government and defense, are, knowingly or unknowingly, in

the employ of a handful of vaisyas. (Prabhupada,s perception is perhaps

supported by the report that in America, five percent of the families now

control ninety percent of the wealth.) There are no proper brahmanas or

ksatriyas.

 

Prabhupada,s intention was to re-create a class of genuine brahmanas. This

would help rectify the deformities of modern society and ameliorate the

spiritual, psychological, social, political, and ecological problems spawned

by a hypertrophy of economic development and other outgrowths of

unrestrained rajo-guna. Prabhupäda notes: Modern civilization is considered

to be advanced in the standard of the mode of passion. Formerly, the

advanced condition was considered to be in the mode of goodness (Bh. G.

14.7, purport). Genuine brahmanas, he hoped, would help reset the priorities

of advanced civilization.

 

Yet Prabhupada,s mission of creating brahmanas was in a sense derivative, a

kind of automatic by-product of the primary mission of producing Vaisnavas.

The word vaisnava in the strictest sense denotes a pure devotee of God, one

who is accordingly transcendental to all the modes of nature. Brhmanas,

however, are conditioned by the mode of goodness, and Prabhupada wanted to

produce liberated souls. Such liberated Vaisnavas are more advanced than

even brahmanas. Nevertheless, his Vaisnavas would function socially

primarily as brahmanas.

 

It should be recognized that historically speaking the Vaisnava traditions

in India all have propagated a socially and spiritually radical teaching.

Vaisnavism fostered the spiritual enfranchisement of previously

disenfranchised groups, and, in so doing, undercut the spiritual (and

social) prerogatives of the hereditary brahminical caste. Hence in the

Bhagavad-gita (9.32) Krishna cites groups traditionally considered

unqualified for spiritual advancement he mentions women, vaisyas, and sudras

and says that by practicing devotion to Him they can attain the supreme

destination. In the Bhagavatam it is stated that even an outcaste (candala

dog-eater), if engaging in devotional practices, becomes immediately

qualified to perform Vedic sacrifice (traditionally, of course, the monopoly

of brahmana males)(S. Bh.3.33.6).

 

Such statements reflect the conviction that devotional service to Krishna,

or bhakti-yoga, is so spiritually powerful that it can quickly uplift even

the most morally and spiritually debased people. Thus facilitated, one does

not need to spend many lifetimes transmigrating up the caste hierarchy to

reach the brahminical platform. Bhakti-yoga can take çüdras and those even

less qualified and transforms them into Vaisnavas and brahmanas.

Prabhupada,s own Bengali Vaisnava tradition, as reformed by Caitanya at the

beginning of the sixteenth century, paid great respect to this spiritual

egalitarianism. So schooled, Prabhupada came to try this principle out in

the West--in the United States in the 1960s. It was, of necessity, a kind of

experiment.

 

Prabhupada discovered, rather to his surprise, that the main audience for

his teachings tended to be drawn from the counterculture, and Prabhupada was

not impressed by the counterculture. He described hippies in various places

as morose (S. Bh. 4.25.11, purport), distressed, wretched, unclean, without

shelter or food, (S. Bh. 4.25.5, purport), irresponsible and unregulated (S.

Bh. 5.6.10, purport), lying idle, without any production, (Bh. G. lecture,

1976), and so on. We should recognize this as a precise catalogue of the

characteristics of tamo-guna, the mode of ignorance. When in 1971 Prabhupada

remarked to Kenneth Keating, the then american ambassador to India, that his

service to America was Aturning hippies into happies (Letter to Damodara: 3

December, 1971), Prabhupada was in a witticism stating that he was taking

people in the mode of ignorance and elevating them to the mode of goodness.

 

Early after his arrival in America, Prabhupada wrote of his mission in these

terms:

 

Though a person be even the most sinful man, he can at once be purified by

systematic contact with a pure Vaisnava. A Vaisnava, therefore, can accept a

bona fide disciple from any part of the world without any consideration of

caste and creed and promote him by regulative principles to the status of a

pure Vaisnava who is transcendental to brahminical culture. The system of

caste, or varnasrama-dharma, is no longer regular even amongst the so-called

followers of the system. Nor is it now possible to reestablish the

institutional function in the present context of social, political and

economic revolution. Without any reference to the particular custom of a

country, one can be accepted to the Vaisnava cult spiritually, and there is

no hindrance in the transcendental process.

(S. Bh. 2.4.18, purport)

 

 

Here, Prabhupada expresses his doubts about the feasibility of a varnasrama

system. Yet even without it, he thought he could produce Vaisnavas who could

perform the brahminical function of spiritual guide to the people. He makes

the same points emphatically in a early Bhagavad-gita lecture:

 

So at the present moment, there is no possibility of persons following the

principles of varnasrama-dharma, either here or anywhere. . . . .Therefore

this is the panacea, to engage everyone in Krsna consciousness, chanting

Hare Krsna. He comes above the highest principle of brahmanism. This is the

greatest gift to the humanity, that even [if] he is in . . . the most

degraded position, he can be raised to the highest position simply by

chanting. This is the only remedy. Now you cannot again introduce this

system of varnasrama. It is not possible. But if one takes to Krsna

consciousness, automatically he becomes immediately a brahmana and above the

brahmana. A Vaisnava is above the brahmana.

(Lecture on Bh. G. 3.18-30: Los Angeles, 30 December 1968)

 

It is also clear that by 1974, Prabhupäda had changed his mind about

instituting the varnasrama-system. One major reason for his doing so is

clearly disclosed in this 1977 conversation concerning a sannyasi who had

fallen down from his celibacy vows:

 

Prabhupada: Just like our (name withheld). He was not fit for sannyasa but

he was given sannaysa. And five women he was attached, and he disclosed.

Therefore varnasrama-dharma is required. Simply show-bottle will not do. So

the varnasrama-dharma should be introduced all over the world, and--

Satsvarüpa: Introduced starting with ISKCON community?

Prabhupada: Yes. Yes. Brahmana, ksatriyas. There must be regular education.

Hari-Sauri: But in our community, if the--being as we're training up as

Vaisnavas--

Prabhupäda: Yes.

Hari-Sauri: --Then how will we be able to make divisions in our society?

Prabhupada: Vaisnava is not so easy. The varnasrama-dharma should be

established to become a Vaisnava. It is not so easy to become Vaisnava.

Hari-Sauri: No, it's not a cheap thing.

Prabhupada: Yes. Therefore this should be made. Vaisnava, to become

Vaiñnava, is not so easy. If Vaisnava, to become Vaisnava is so easy, why so

many fall down, fall down? It is not easy.

 

And later in the same conversation:

 

Hari-Sauri: Where will we introduce the varnasrama system, then?

Prabhupada: In our society, amongst our members.

Hari-Sauri: But then if everybody's being raised to the brahminical

platform--

Prabhupada: Not everybody. Why you are misunderstanding? Varnasrama, not

everybody brahmana.

Hari-Sauri: No, but in our society practically everyone is being raised to

that platform. So then one might ask what is---

Prabhupada: That is-- Everybody is being raised, but they're falling down.

(Room Conversation: Mayapura, 14 February 1977)

 

It had become clear to Prabhupada, after some years of experience in the

West, that the elevation of his followers to the brahminical platform of

goodness, what to speak of the Vaisnava transcendental platform, was not

going to happen universally or swiftly. His earliest hopes were unfulfilled.

 

Since the time Prabhupada began speaking extensively about implementing

varnasrama dharma, there has been much discussion in ISCKON on the way to go

I also have my own views on the application of varnasrama-dharma, for I too

have thought about the subject, but I assure you, that whatever I speak or

write will not go uncontested by someone else in ISKCON.

 

Nevertheless, I will venture here to propose the major reasons why ISKCON is

having such a difficult time coming to grips with this matter. The first and

foremost is that ISKCON put it starkly--has no brain. Or, at least the brain

it has is underdeveloped.

 

You will recall that Prabhupada originally thought that ISKCON would

perform the brahminical function for the rest of society I have come to give

you a brain. Prabhupada based this effort on books. By books he could

transmit the Vedic heritage, and through books he could instruct and train

large numbers of followers, who, by studying his writings systematically and

practicing their teaching, could advance to the mode of goodness and beyond.

At the same time, by having those same followers distribute the books to

others, Prabhupada would engage them in preaching and teaching to the

general public. Book distribution is one type of sankirtana, congregational

glorification of God, and sankirtana is described in scripture as the

particular form of sacrifice authorized for this age. Moreover, devotees

would be able to maintain themselves and their activities by donations

received though book distribution. In this way, ISKCON members would

performed the six engagements enjoined upon a brahmana: yajana, yajana,

paöhana, paihana, dana and pratigraha. A brahmana performs sacrifice and

engages others in sacrifice, studies the Vedas and teaches the Vedas,

receives in charity and gives in charity.

 

We have already noted Prabhupada,s disappointment when many devotees turned

out to have great difficult in steadily following the strict principles of

Krishna consciousness. Another, related, difficulty, was also noted by

Prabhupada. For example, this exchange took place during a 1972 lecture:

 

Prabhupada: Similarly, the GBC member means they will see that in every

temple these books are very thoroughly being read and discussed and

understood and applied in practical life. That is wanted, not to see the

vouchers only, "How many books you have sold, and how many books are in the

stock?" That is secondary. . . . . Now, suppose you go to sell some book and

if somebody says, "You have read this book? Can you explain this verse?"

then what you will say? You will say, "No. It is for you. It is not for me.

I have to take money from you. That's all." Is that very nice answer?

Devotee: No, Srila Prabhupada.

Prabhupada: Then? "We have written this book for your reading, not for our

reading. We are simply collect money." That's all.

(Lecture on S. Bh. 2.9.2: Melbourne, 5 April 1972)

 

Prabhupada often brought up the point when a devotee seemed ignorant of

verse:

 

Do you remember, any one of you, this verse from the Bhagavad-gita? Eh? But

you don't read. So I am writing all these books simply for selling, not for

reading. This is not good. And if somebody asks you, "You are so much eager

to sell your books. Do you read your books?" Then what you will say? "No,

sir, we don't read. We sell only. Our Guru Maharaja writes, and we sell."

That is not good business. You must read. Why I am writing so many books?

(Lecture on S. Bh. 1.16.24: Hawaii, 20 January 1974)

 

And, in an exchange in which Prabhupada implicitly links karma and guna in

his student:

 

Prabhupada: You do not read Bhagavad-gita, you are publishing for selling.

It will be read by others. We are simply to make money? These [the qualities

of a brahmana] are in the Bhagavad-gita. Don't you read it?

Devotee: Yes I read it. The qualities of a brahmana is given, along with the

qualities of all the other varnas.

Prabhupada: We have [in ISKCON] taking sacred thread [who] has qualities

less than sudra. Camaras, cobblers. Camara means expert in skin. I am white,

I am black, I am this, I am that. That is camara. Expert in skin.

(Morning Walk: Vrndavana, 16 March 1974)

 

I know from my own experience how sankirtana in America tended to become

less and less of a brahmincal preaching activity and more and more of a

vaisya commercial activity, with books eventually being replaced by secular

paraphernalia. This shift from preaching to fund-raising after Srila

Prabhupada,s demise has been well documented by E. Burke Rochford in Hare

Krishna in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986). While

the movement prospered financially, it declined spiritually. Prabhupada,s

misgivings proved sound.

 

In 1987 ISKCON in America fortunately changed course. The North American

leaders resolved to stop all sales of secular items by the temples and to

return them to what was, in effect, a brahminical mode of maintenance,

depending mainly upon donations from the congregation and working residents.

All the temples in North America quickly went broke. However, there has

been since then a slow but steady recovery, both spiritual and financial.

Both depend, in my view, on turning the temples into exemplary brahminical

institutions. The brief history I have recounted illustrates the truth and

the prescience--of Prabhupada,s perception.

 

Let me note another important indication of ISKCON,s failure to organize

brahminical training. In 1976 Prabhupada ordered a gradated system of

examinations to be instituted in ISKCON. To this day this order is

unfulfilled.

 

This is from a letter Prabhupada had his secretary send out the GBC members

to conveying Prabhupada,s directions:

 

 

Re: Examinations for awarding titles of Bhakti-sastri, Bhakti-vaibhava,

Bhaktivedanta and Bhakti-sarvabhauma.

 

.. . . .Srila Prabhupada has requested me to write you in regard to the above

examinations which he wishes to institute. Here in India many persons often

criticize our sannyasis and brahmanas as being unqualified due to

insufficient knowledge of the scriptures. Factually, there are numerous

instances when our sannyasis and brahmanas have fallen down often due to

insufficient understanding of the philosophy. This should not be a point of

criticism nor a reason for falldown, since Srila Prabhupada has mercifully

made the most essential scriptures available to us in his books. The problem

is that not all the devotees are carefully studying the books, the result

being a fall down or at least unsteadiness.

 

His Divine Grace therefore wishes to institute examinations to be given to

all prospective candidates for sannyasa and brahmana initiation. In addition

he wishes that all present sannyasis and brahmanas also pass the

examination. Awarding of these titles will be based upon the following

books:

 

Bhakti-sastri - Bhagavad-gita, Nectar of Devotion, Nectar of Instruction,

Isopanisad, Easy Journey To Other Planets, and all other small paperbacks,

as well as Arcana-paddhati (a book to be compiled by Nitai Prabhu based on

Hari-bhakti-vilasa on Deity worship)

 

Bhakti-vaibhava - All of the above plus the first six cantos of

Srimad-Bhagavatam

 

Bhaktivedanta - All of the above plus cantos 7 through 12 of

Srimad-Bhagavatam

 

Bhakti-sarvabhauma - All the above plus the entire Caitanya-caritamrta

 

Anyone wishing to be initiated as a brahmana will have to pass the

Bhaktisastri exam and anyone wishing to take sannyasa will have to pass the

Bhaktivaibhava examination as well. This will prevent our Society from

degrading to the level of so many other institutions where, in order to

maintain the Temple, they accept all third class men as brahmanas. Any

sannyasis or brahmanas already initiated who fail to pass the exams will be

considered low class or less qualified. Anyone wishing to be 2nd initiated

will sit for examination once a year at Mayapur. Answers will be in essay

form and authoritative quotations will be given a bigger score. During the

exams books may not be consulted.

 

Srila Prabhupada wishes to begin this program at this year's Mayapur

meeting. He requests that you all send your opinions and comments here

immediately so that everything may be prepared in time.

(Letter to all Governing Body Commissioners: Nellore, South India, 6

January 1976)

 

 

A Bhakti-sastri examination was held in Mayapura in 1977 (a year late), but

after Prabhupada,s demise later that same year, the examinations soon

disappeared. Only within in the last five years or so have Bhakti-sastri

courses and examinations been regularized in some places in ISKCON. To this

day neither curricula nor examinations exist for the other three degrees.

 

Finally, let me briefly note a second major reason ISKCON has had

difficulty understanding and instituting varnasrama-dharma. This is the fact

that the system can neither be understood nor practiced within the material

and conceptual framework of an industrial society. Prabhupada taught that

the modern industrial economy was artificial, unnatural, and harmful to the

human and non-human world. In one way or another it would one day have to be

sized-down and scaled back. Humanity would have to develop a new economy in

which the family would be restored as a unit of production and in which

local self-sufficiency most importantly in the matter of food supply--would

become a major value. Therefore, from the very beginning Prabhupada wanted

ISKCON to establish self-sufficient, rural communities, not only to

construct the material basis necessary for varnasrama-dharma, but also to

provide working examples of an alternative when the inevitable transition to

a neo-agrarian economy began to impose itself upon the industrialized world.

 

ISKCON has established a number of these rural communities in advanced

industrial countries. Many devotees have moved to them to learn to live off

the land and practice plain living and high thinking. Yet over the course of

time these projects have evolved largely into suburban-style Hare Krishna

communities. We still await the self-sufficient agrarian community in

practice. Although there are social and economic reasons why this ideal has

failed in practice, I suspect a necessary condition for its future success

will be the contribution of genuine brahmanas, whose creation is still

ISKCON unfulfilled mission.

 

My proposal, therefore, for establishing varnasrama-dharma in ISKCON, and

even in the society at large, is first of all to take the first step and do

everything needed to form a proper community of brahmanas. According to

Bhagavad-gita (18.42), two of the traits evinced by brahmanas are jnana and

vijnana, that is, they have genuine knowledge of the Absolute Truth and

they posses the wisdom to apply that knowledge appropriately. If this first

step is taken, and ISKCON is thus given a brain, then I am sure we shall be

in a better position to know where to go further.

 

As I speak today I am happy to report that a movement is gaining strength

among the leaders to make ISKCON an organization primarily dedicated to

education and training. If we continue in this way, I am sure we will become

eligible to receive Prabhupada,s legacy and empowered to convey it to the

rest of humankind.