What does this have to do with developing varansrama in ISKCON?

July 5, 2004

> What does this have to do with developing varansrama in ISKCON? Excuse me

> if this is a stupid question (actually stupid questions are my forte) but

> I am new to this conference and likely do not know the context of this

> text.

>

> Vyapaka dasa

>

Dear Vyapaka Prabhu,

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

Bhakta-vigna-vinasa Nrsimhadeva Bhagavan ki jaya!

We know only too well that you are not stupid. You ask a good question. Why

should we be interested in that text? (Copy at end of this text)

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/7/emw138739.htm

The short answer:

We have to ask ourselves this question because, aside from religious

affiliation and tradition, us Vaishnavas from the Western countries have

a lot in common with Westerners in general: education, secular,

political, economic and social world views, social history, and language

among other things. With so much in common, we can safely presume that

if confronted with similar issues we will respond to them in similar ways.

So we should keep an eye on the culture war taking place among the

non-devotees in the West so we can get a better idea of what works, what

doesn't and why."

The long answer:

Please bear with my explanation.

To any of you who have had any experience with web development there is a

famous website called "Web Pages That Suck" http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

the premise being "Learn good web page design by studying bad web design."

We let the author speak for himself:

"The purpose of this web site is to help people design effective and

aesthetically pleasing web pages. My methodology is somewhat different. I

believe that if someone is exposed to bad web page design they'll be less

likely to use these techniques in the pages they create."

Hence the purpose of my post was to expose people to what we should not be

doing in regard to VAD.

We often study the opposing party in order to learn how to defeat them.

Seeing how communism miserably failed would be a strong impetus to not allow

such communist tendencies creep into our budding knowledge of VAD. Similarly

senior devotees study Advaitavada, Mayavada, and Buddhism in order to defeat

them.

So in this case I am presenting a text that shows exactly what is the result

of feminism in reality as opposed to the opiated myths that feminists in

ISKCON want to foist on us. This is especially relevant because

materialistic atheism in its mutation as post-modern feminism, the bane of

human society and spiritual values, is a very potent force in today's modern

world. It is presently one of the strongest adversaries that anyone wanting

to develop Varnashrama has to deal with. After all a society is not just

about agriculture, but it is about the cohesion of people bonded to fulfill

a common goal.

In society there are basically only two kinds of people-male and female. If

males and females cannot get along and trust and depend on each other and

instead mistrust and hate each other in an adversarial mood then society

simply ceases to exist. Feminism has such pernicious and corrosive effect on

society. And while Srila Prabhupada was an outspoken adversary of feminism

we now find that feminism has made significant inroads into ISKCON even into

the highest echelons of the GBC. This is evidenced by creation of female

GBCs, female TPs, the 2000 GBC resolution to establish gender equity, the

recent nomination of a woman as guru etc. I trust that most devotees are

aware of these aberrations, all posing under the rubric of giving women

equal access to serve Krsna.

This last statement is too broad of a topic for me to dilate at this time as

I am focusing on answering Vyapaka's question. But it can and will be

addressed at a different time. In the mean time this subject is often taken

up at http://siddhanta.com/weblogs/culture/.

Returning to Vyapaka's question of how this is significant to a discussion

on Varnashrama Dharma. Well as previously mentioned society functions by the

cooperation of men and women and arguably one of the most important Ashramas

is the Grhasta ashrama. In fact varna in varnashrama dharma is only

meaningful in the grhasta ashrama as the livelihood of the associated varna

is the means of supporting the grhasta.

In the text and associated link that I have sent we see what is the result

of 40+ years of the feminist myth in the USA. Instead of a utopia American

men simply do not want to marry American women. They may use them for play

but they don't want to marry them. As the saying goes "I might drive a car

with 300,000 miles on it, but I wouldn't buy one." The reason that American

men do not want to marry American women is because of the bad character

qualities they developed as an effect of post-modern feminism (for a comment

on this by a woman see: http://www.nomarriage.com/comments.shtml ). This has

lead to a silent but effective "marriage strike" by American males.

See http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0812.html

and

http://www.mattweeks.com/strike.htm

Now most men, unlike the propaganda given by feminists, would prefer to be

in stable marital relationships, but that would be an oxymoron if the woman

were American. (We should say that all Western countries could be

substituted for USA in this text-Canada, Australia, UK Germany, etc.).

Therefore, being believers in the free market system these men looked and

found that there still are women who love and respect men, but they don't

live in feminist dominated Western countries, especially the USA. So as the

text points out American men started going in droves to marry foreign

brides. American women, not being even close to keeping up with the

competition (think Japanese or German car versus American car in recent

history) want to set trade barriers with the plan of effectively forcing

American men to marry American women against their own will.

Sound too Orwellian for you? The terrible fact is that it is true see

http://www.theorator.com/bills108/hr2949.html.

While on the surface it seems innocuous but the text I originally sent shows

the real intent of this bill and originated from the "Feminist Majority

Foundation" http://www.feministmajority.org/

This can be established by going to

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2004/7/emw138739.htm

and looking on the right side where it says "Contact information" you will

see an "MB" which if you click below it brings to the "Feminist Majority

Foundation" home page.

On the previous link it clearly states that under the guise of protecting

foreign women they actually want to stop American men from marrying women

"unspoiled by feminism." If feminism is so great why karmi men are running

from them? It seems that in ISKCON we are behind the times and haven't

figured out yet what the karmis already know. Feminism is a bad deal, bad

not only for men but ultimately for women because it makes them very

undesirable and unhappy even from a material point of view what to speak of

spiritually. See http://www.nomarriage.com/comments.shtml.