One VAD possibility

[Guest guest]

I am writing this Gaura Pournima morning. Some portions are lifted from

previous taxts, which accounts for the lack of good flow. This is not

meant as a finished polished piece, more as a start to be made on this

auspicious day. Please excuse the obvious flaws in good writing

technique and try to see the concepts.

 

Before I woke this morning, I had a dream that I remembered on waking.

I dreamt I was in India, and there had been a big flood along a river

that had wiped out all the bridges. There was a great sense of

separation, of loss, disruption, and an urgency to reestablish the

bridges, yet the materials in the old bridges had been completely

washed away. There were stone walkways and plazas, where the stones

had been set thousands of years before, carefully cut and set with a

greatly admired workmanship that had been used and were an integral part

of the patterns of life along the river. They were of a gray type of

granite, extremely durable.

 

The need for bridges was so great, however, that permission was

granted to pry these stones from the ground and use them for rebuilding

the bridges. The people begin prying them from the ground, often

lacking even tools and working only with bare hands. The task of

rebuilding was huge, daunting, but, with applied energy, doable.

 

When I awoke, I thought of the bridges as being the key portions of

the old forms of VAD that had been swept away in the flood of modern

ugrakarma. The stone walkways and plazas represented the portions of

VAD that had survived. The tearing up of old walkways was not seen as

the destruction of the old ways, but of the reconfiguring of them in

ways in order to rebuild the bridges that are so necessary for the

survival of the greater concepts, even if manifest in different forms

than historically recorded.

 

ONE VISION OF VARNAASHRAM DHARMA (VAD) UNFOLDING IN MODERN TIMES.

 

Srimad-Bhagavatam Canto 8: Chapter Twenty-four, Text 5 :PURPORT

 

Without protection of cows, brahminical culture cannot be maintained;

and without brahminical culture, the aim of life cannot be fulfilled.

 

 

Srimad-Bhagavatam Canto 1: Chapter Nineteen, Text ; :PURPORT

 

Cow protection means feeding the brahminical culture, which leads

towards God consciousness, and thus perfection of human civilization is

achieved.

 

These are only two representative quotes from hundreds about the

necessity for cow protection in Srila Prabhupada’s books. Largely,

they have been ignored in ISKCON, which is only to be expected, since

ISKCON had it’s genesis in the belly of the beast of ugrakarmic

culture. By the 1960s , over 90% of the population of the US that

Srila Prabhupada came to had been either driven or lured from a

connection to the land. Not only were they disconnected, but they had

been brainwashed to think that lack of connection made them somehow more

sophisticated or advanced in material civilization.

 

A civilization based on cow protection is going totally against the

grain. So how to do such a thing. Early attempts by ISKCON projects

have been by and large failures, with lots of breeding and no long range

plan to deal with unslaughtered animals. The nectar in the beginning of

milk production soon turned into the poison of undersupported

overflowing barns of nonproductive animals. Additionally, the

reality of the lives of most Western devotees is such that the

romantic agrarianistic vision of what VAD was is emotionally

unobtainable. Even those who have a desire to try, very quickly hit

the hard economic realities of land ownership, lack of an older

generation to draw guidance from, and harsh competition from

agribusiness that maintains artificially low prices subsidized by the

blood of cows and the blood of the earth in the form of oil.

 

So how to make a situation where young idealists can get out on the land

without dissipating their youth just accumulating the capital necessary

to get there? How to connect devotees in urban circumstances whose

realities are such that they are most likely to remain in the cities?

How to build a society based on the principles of VAD when the

historical circumstances have been so radically changed? How to provide

the stable social environment for cow protection to flourish, thus

meeting the precondition necessary for brahminical culture to flourish?

 

 

 

The key thing is establishment of Trusts to protect the cows and

properties at the core of a Krsna conscious community. Once things are

held in Trusts, as, incidentally, Srila Prabhupada ordered, then

devotees stability can be more assured. Most , if not all, successful

enduring institutions, use Trusts to ensure stability. Large donors

are more apt to support Trust type situations. These trusts could be

separate from ISKCON, in the sense that they will not be under the

direct control of ISKCON per se. I like the term Greater ISKCON, to

start to develop a society centered around Krsna but not necessarily

under one legal umbrella.

 

ISKCON should, I believe, evolve more along the lines of educational

institutions, another of Srila Prabhupada's instructions that has been

pretty much ignored. ISKCON centers would be places where people come

to get education of religious and hopefully also practical knowledge.

Key difference is that now, when devotees come to the temple,

expectation is that they have made a lifetime commitment, and when, as

they inevitably do, they leave, they are considered blooped. In the

Srila Prabhupada paradigm, they would be considered alumni, and

treated as valued potential contributors. Thus I see ISKCON evolving

more as a brahminical organization, with Deity worship, education,

and community counseling as their focus.

 

The vast majority of devotees would move on , with blessings. Networks

of devotee businesses would hopefully work somewhat cooperatively and

provide employment opportunities for graduates. Others may move on and

get regular jobs in regular society, the cash economy. Most of these

devotees would be in urban environments, so how to be connected? They

could make donations to Trusts set up to protect cows.

 

While it is indisputable that VAD is land based, I am not an agrarian

romanticist. One barrier to actually having more devotees on the land

has been the unrealistic expectations placed on them. Another of the

either/or type deals. However, material life is not about the actual

attainment of some idealistic situation, but rather the struggle, or

endeavor to attain such an ideal. As I hope to make a VAD cliché, it

is not where you are at, but the direction you are heading. Yes,

there are city dwellers who would be engaged in the cash economy. The

method they would be plugged into VAD would be by purifying the blood

milk they drink by paying into Trusts that own the land at the core of

the Greater ISKCON farming communities. Past experiences of throwing

money at farm projects that was used for operational expenses has not

been very successful. The donations to Trusts would be capital gifts,

the assets of which would be managed by Trustees. The trustees will be

the modern day ksatriyas

 

Facility would be provided by the Trust so the young idealists who did

want to get directly onto the land, would be able to do so while still

young, instead of having to expend their peak productive years making

the money to get into the situations themselves. There would be an mix

of temple property, leased land, and private ownership. But it would

require a lot of initial capitalization, which is where those still in

the cash economy would be essential.

 

In the long term, devotees on the farms would ideally be producing land

based products for sale to the city devotees, which would further

stimulate the agrarian economies, where often the hardest part of

farming is not the growing, but the marketing. Initially , however,

the cash economy devotees would continue to purchase from the

agribusiness markets ( the de facto reality we have anyway).

 

As for the ISKCON colleges, a minimal part of every devotees education

would be at least one summer spent in a rural community, either as

part of a temple program , or as an apprentice on a privately run

devotee farm Even though the majority of devotees will not stay on the

farm, it will give them an appreciation and a broader perspective.

Connection to the land is an essential part of VAD. For some, this will

be a direct connection, for most, it will be in the form of retreats

to farm communities, and by supporting financially the Trusts that are

expanding the land based economies.

 

Brahmanas show by example. So two practical ideas how to stimulate all

of this. One, for two days each month, all brahmanas would eat only

things grown by devotees. If they have no connection for such things,

then it would be a water fast. As the connection grows, they could

have all sorts of things, no limitation, except that it be grown by

devotees. Other varnas would be expected to help make a nice

arrangement for brahmanas on those days, and to follow themselves as

they feel inspired. This would stimulate demand for devotee products.

The other is that no blood milk be allowed to be offered to any

Deities. That if no protected milk is available, the Temple would pay

into a Trust an amount over and above the financial cost of the blood

milk, equal to what it would have additionally cost to produce the

protected milk. This is typically 4 times blood milk market price. The

eventual goal would be that the Trust would be generating enough income

to actually buy real protected milk from devotee communities.

 

So, stay in the city, make money, fund Trusts that subsidize devotee

agriculture that produces protected milk to offer to Krsna in the

temples. Support colleges that produce devotees that either move to

the land, or stay in the city, make money, fund Trusts that subsidize

devotee agriculture that produces protected milk to offer to Krsna in

the temples.

 

In this way, we have brahmanas providing education, vaisyas generating

capital and agricultural products, and ksatriyas managing land for the

benefit of the other varnas. If all that is happening, lots of work

opportunities for sudras.

[Guest guest]

Okay, I meant the newsletter

-

"Madhava Gosh (das) ACBSP (New Vrindavan - USA)"

<Madhava.Gosh.ACBSP (AT) pamho (DOT) net>

"Cow (Protection and related issues)" <Cow (AT) pamho (DOT) net>

Wednesday, June 21, 2000 10:09 PM

Re: One VAD possibility

 

 

>

>

> "ISCOWP (Balabhadra Dasa & Chaya Dasi - USA)" wrote:

>

> > Dear Madhava Gosh Prabhu,

> >

> > PAMHO. AGTSP.

> >

> > I was thinking of putting thisletter in the cow conference under some

title

> > like How to Establish Cow Protection within the Hare Krsna Movement"

What do

> > you think and are there any changes you would like to make?

> >

> > Your servant,

> > Chayadevi

>

> Too busy to make any changes - let it fly as is is fine with me.

>

>