Guest guest Posted November 15, 2002 Report Share Posted November 15, 2002 Too busy to follow the threads , will catch up this weekend but caught a couple messages and that I would throw this into the mix. It was written Gaura Paurnima year 2000. I am writing this Gaura Pournima morning. Some portions are lifted from previous texts, 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 is 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 a 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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