Sastra yonit vat

[Guest guest]

> You could argue however that all of that is somewhat ephemeral if ISKCON

> does not develop its own economic system based on the Vedic bedrock

> principle of land and cows.

>

> Perhaps, as an illustration of that last point, I have learned that the

> Tennessee farm, once a thriving, rural community has only one couple

> living there, everyone else has gone. The husband works at night and the

> wife has one or more children, so deity service is occasional at best,

> farm animals are zero, and any other ISKCON presence there is zero. One

> initiated Mataji and her daughter recently left there and became

> Catholics. What to do?

 

You have hit the nail on the head, as they say! I feel that we have a shared

responsibility to encourage at least new devotees to get on the land. If we

put as much energy into developing this 50% of Srila Prabhupadas mission, as

we did in keeping book distributors on the street during the last 3 decades

we might start to see our society develop in the way which Srila Prabhupada

seems to have intended when he started our farms.

 

It seems to me that many of our book distributors have gone away. Maybe if

we give our devotees land, and train them up, they might well stay on living

happily in a society of devotees and becoming more and more influenced by

the mode of goodness. I ask the devotees to just watch the 'final pastime'

video and hear what Srila Prabhupada chose to speak as his last recorded

words. Words spoken with his last breaths and with much deliberation. Here

they are if you dont have the video.

 

"If we live with good association then we cultivate knowledge therefore we

should always seek good association. If we have a chance of association with

devotees our character and nature is improved. By hearing Srimad Bhagavatam

this raja guna and tama guna are subdued and sattva guna remains. nasta

prayesu abadresu nityam bhagavata sevaya, then raja guna, tama guna cannot

do us harm. Therefore varnasrama dharma is *so essential*, that people

*live* in sattva guna. Tama guna, raja guna increases lust and greediness

and that implicates the living entity that exists in this material world in

many many forms. That is very dangerous therefore they should be brought

into sattva guna by the establishment of varnasrama dharma."

 

Your servant

Samba das