ISKCON and sentimentality

[Guest guest]

> > PS. One very nice sannyasi recently said that "ISKCON lacked heart and

> > that until ISKCON developed heart it will never succeed"...

>

> There's truth in this, if it's true that Srila Prabhupada said

> our mutual dealings must be based on love and trust. Where's love

> without heart? Where's trust, without love? For some reason, we're

> often afraid to be sentimental--even responsibly sentimental. That's

> possibly one reason Krsna sent ISKCON Narayana Maharaja, though I suspect

> he has his own limitations. Somehow or other, we need to eventually

> embrace, and act on, the fact that it really is all about emotions (rasa).

> As the Taittiriyopanisat (2.7) says, "raso vai sah" (He is indeed

> rasa)--something Srila Rupa Gosvami really emphasized (i.e., Krsna is the

> "akhila-rasamrta murti," the reservoir of all pleasure).

>

> Klaus Klostermaier, now teaching Vaisnavism among ISKCON devotees

> at Oxford, often speaks of what he calls "the universe of feelings," by

> which I gather he means Rupa Gosvami's conceptual paradigm of rasa

> experience. He was trained by Prabhupada's godbrother Bon Maharaja, who

> translated part of the Bhaktirasamrtasindhu in the 1960s, so it's not

> surprising that that work seems to have influenced Klostermaier's

> impression of Gaudiya Vaisnavism the most. But he's on to something, I

> think. He met Srila Prabhupada several times.

>

> According to the late Alan Entwistle, who is widely regarded as

> the foremost scholar of Braj studies, while ISKCON is well respected in

> India, some Vrndavana residents have doubted that it's members have the

> proper "bhava." It's hard to say what that means in context, but it also

> sounds a bit like what your abovementioned sannyasi observed. There are

> links between envy & impersonalism on one hand, and sentimentality & raga

> bhakti on the other.

>

> However, and ultimately, if the Absolute truth is really pure

> sentimentalism, can we handle it?

>

> On the other hand, it isn't at all accurate to say that ISKCON has

> no heart, and perhaps not even to say that ISKCON has too little heart.

> It's a fairly vague declaration to begin with, made all the more diffcult

> by the fact that few (if any) of us can actually see into others' hearts.

> There are certainly some genuine saints in ISKCON--and some outside of

> ISKCON too. Better to be respectfully cautious always. We know that the

> absolute truth is revealed only to those whom He chooses Himself.

 

Thank you, Mukunda datta Prabhu, for the text. Sounded well-balanced, wise

and reasonable. Thank you again.

 

 

Viraja