Reactions of Devotees: to be serious or nothing.

[Guest guest]

A response to Tandy, Mukunda dasa.

 

Since I know your mental disposition towards me, from previous discussions we

had together, I can resume your argumentation to a simpler proposition. What

you want to get from me is either I retract what I said -that our philosophy

contains some radical aspects- or I get lost. Your syllogism: 1) A disciple of

Srila Prabhupada follows his philosophy. 2) You are criticizing the

philosophy. 3) Therefore you are not a Prabhupada's disciple. Thus, you cannot

be respected amongst us as a bona fide devotee. In fact, if you are to stay

with us, you could possibly do it, but as a sudra.

 

That is the Vaisnava way of life you want to demonstrate to others as the only

possible one. Hence my heading: a serious devotee or not. On another forum,

you have already accused me of being non-respectful towards Srila Prabhupada.

When we then asked you to show us where you thought I was disrespectful, you

became evasive. You are squeezing up the meaning of "disrespectfulness" to

that same radical philosophical stand I was alluding to here in my message. I

am reproducing that dialogue from the other forum:

 

You: OK prabhu, how about this--you be more sensitive in what you say about

Prabhupada's verifiable teachings, [...] Does this sound fair?

 

Devotee: And what specifically is it that you want Akhiles not to write about

Prabhupada's teachings?

 

You: "It's not specific, it's not just Akhilesh, it's not just what I want,

and it is whatever violates this spirit (Bhagavata, 6.17.15)" And then you

give the quote: "Coming to his senses, King Indra realized that he was not a

very sincere disciple of his spiritual master, Brhaspati. Therefore he decided

that henceforward he would be nisatha, nonduplicitous."

 

Me: "Why are you always using these kinds of practice when you want to defend

your position? What did I say, anyway, so that you got upset? Why do we have

always to go through all these discussion instead of just getting to the

point? From now on I am not reading anymore your posts. I propose you do the

same with mines. Hare Krsna." (I will keep my promise for this forum also. If

I read this one, it is because it came into my personal mailbox.)

 

Here, on Prabhupada's disciples, in this exchange, you are exemplifying the

paradigm that does not exist for you:

 

Me: "Why, anyway, do we have members either living in the society or quitting

it? Couldn't we have a between, what we used to call in a derogative way "the

fringes"?"

 

You: "This isn't at all the paradigm I've seen in recent years."

 

I understand why you don't see it. It is, however, very simple for most people

to realize why we having difficulties recruiting new bhaktas and keeping the

one we have. But for members of the society like you, it is not evident. For

them, it is just an organizational problem.

Ak