Traditional Gaudiyas and Preaching.....

[Kripamoya]

Raga said:

 

Regardless of from whom diksa is to be received, the undisputable conclusion of Hari-bhakti-vilasa and Bhakti-sandarbha is that diksa-mantras must be received, and as much is said (and quoted) in Swami Bhaktivedanta's works.

 

Yes, but for the followers of Srila Prabhupada, he differs somewhat from the orthodox standards as he said:

 

 

This Hari-bhakti-vilasa, also Vaisnava-smrti, that is also imitation of smartaism. It is called smrti. So at least in Europe and America, they will never be able to take all these things. The things should be made shortcut; at the same time, they should be successful. So that is chanting of Hare Krsna maha-mantra.

 

He also states in Caitanya Caritamrita:

 

 

"Sanatana Gosvami wrote his Vaisnava smrti, Hari-bhakti-vilasa, which was specifically meant for India. In those days, India was more or less following the principle of smarta-vidhi. Srila Sanatana Gosvami had to keep pace with this, and his Hari-bhakti-vilasa was compiled with this in mind." (CC Madhya 23.105

 

So, Srila Prabhupada has not fully supported the orthodox standard that is delineated in hari-bhakti-vilas.

 

It is our view that much of the orthodoxy of the Gaudiya tradition was influenced by the pressure to avoid criticism and assault by the smarta dominated Hindu society.

 

As Srila Prabhupada said about hari-bhakti-vilasa:

 

India was more or less following the principle of smarta-vidhi. Srila Sanatana Gosvami had to keep pace with this

 

Thus he said:

 

So at least in Europe and America, they will never be able to take all these things. The things should be made shortcut; at the same time, they should be successful.

 

So, many of us Americans, Europeans and Australian etc. prefer to elimate as much formality and orthodoxy as possible and just reach for the essence.

 

I know this does not set well with orthodox followers. It goes against everything they stand for. We don't expect you to agree or see eye to eye.

Nevertheless, this is what we believe is the essence of Mahaprabhu's Sankirtan movement.

 

We don't really believe in orthodoxy and the smarta-influenced Vaidic version of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.

 

We don't really accept the Vaidic brahmana version of the Sankirtan movement, as the Sankirtan movement is based upon bhagavat-dharma and a bhagavat-parampara.

 

The orthodox Gaudiyas are a product of this effort of the Goswamis to keep the Gaudiya's above the scorn and ridcule of the smarta-community and their attachment to the Vedic rituals.

 

As ISKCON was also spreading in India, it is not surprising that you can also find some references in the books of Srila Prabhupada that support this orthodox standard.

 

However, for Europe and America he said there was a shortcut and no need for all this smarta-vidhi.

 

Chant Hare Krishna and Be Happy!

[raga]

It's not just Hari-bhakti-vilasa as far as diksa is concerned. Bhakti-sandarbha, if anything, is a definitive work on the practice of bhakti, and the commentaries of our acaryas on the Bhagavata echo the same, and so forth.

[Kripamoya]

 

It's not just Hari-bhakti-vilasa as far as diksa is concerned. Bhakti-sandarbha, if anything, is a definitive work on the practice of bhakti, and the commentaries of our acaryas on the Bhagavata echo the same, and so forth.

 

Yes, but Mahaprabhu himself did not practice this orthodoxy in South India which is where he was said to have manifested his greatest shakti.

 

All the acharyas and all the Goswamis were living in India and under the same social pressure that caused hari-bhakti-vilas to promote smrti in the name of Vaishnavism.

 

I wouldn't expect any acharya or Goswami in India to blatantly reject smriti and turn Gaudiyas into the laughing stock of the smarta domimated Hindu society.

 

The hari-bhakti-vilas just became chronic in it's standard, though the same idea had been around for as long as there were acharyas trying to present bhagavat-dharma in a country where religion means smriti.

 

That was the mission of the Goswamis - to give Gaudiya Vaishnavism an orthodox structure to make it more appealing and satisfying to the smriti based Hindu society.

 

Back in them days, preaching in India was it.

It was everything.

thus, smriti dogma became an accepted evil amongst the Gaudiya acharyas.

 

They gave the Gaudiya cult a smriti face, to make it respectable in the higher rungs of Hindu society.

 

Here in the USA, that smriti face is more or less an obstacle and needs to be reduced down to a minimum.

[Guest guest]

Thus the Glories of HDG A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami who evaluated the situation in America, and offered the minimum "orthodox" or formal structure required for our temperament. His instructions were and are our "short cut". That is our mercy.

 

No need for change, he has us covered. Just follow the leader, the leader of Mahaprabhu's Sankirtana Movement, our Srila Prabhupada.

 

Hari bol!

[theist]

Kripamoya prabhu. Thank you for joining this board. Please continue to teach us. We sometimes have a strong tendancy to try complicate the simple and in so doing I fear cover bhakti with religiousity.

 

Pranams

[Kripamoya]

 

Thus the Glories of HDG A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami who evaluated the situation in America, and offered the minimum "orthodox" or formal structure required for our temperament. His instructions were and are our "short cut". That is our mercy.

 

No need for change, he has us covered. Just follow the leader, the leader of Mahaprabhu's Sankirtana Movement, our Srila Prabhupada.

 

Hari bol!

 

Exactly.

ISKCON had it's own "orthodoxy" and formal rituality.

It was not the same as "traditional" or orthodox rituals, but there was ritual and vidhi nonetheless.

 

When that form of orthodoxy and ritual that Srila Prabhupada established gets lost or ruined, then all bets are off and many devotees will just reject ritual altogether rather than accept the smriti version of Krishna consciousness.

 

Ritual is an ornament. It is not the living form of Bhakti.

[Kripamoya]

Just like we sometimes refer to Christianity as "Churchianity".

 

In the same way, sometimes devotees get all enamored with ritual, scholarship and ornamental conceptions.

 

It will also impede the Krishna consciousness movement if devotees try to turn Mahaprabhu's Sankirtan movement into Smritianity.

[Guest guest]

 

There is no reason for any camp outside of Iskcon to even be concerned with Iskcon.

There are plenty of reasons why they are concernced, the main one being that they all leech disciples from Prabhupada. You happen to be one example of that, and the few that you have gathered and taken for initiation are another example.

 

 

I like to think I have largely grown over that. I sincerely hope that I have, anyway.

A few months ago you were one of the biggest supporters of people like Jagat, Advaita, and Nitai. Now you try to pretend you are a different person and have grown over that.

 

Regardless of from whom diksa is to be received, the undisputable conclusion of Hari-bhakti-vilasa and Bhakti-sandarbha is that diksa-mantras must be received, and as much is said (and quoted) in Swami Bhaktivedanta's works.

 

"The chanting Hare Krishna is our main business, that is real initiation. And as you are all following my instruction, in that matter, the initiator is already there."

[theist]

 

There are plenty of reasons why they are concernced, the main one being that they all leech disciples from Prabhupada. You happen to be one example of that, and the few that you have gathered and taken for initiation are another example.

 

That was my quote you responded to but I think you are talking to someone else.

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Just like we sometimes refer to Christianity as "Churchianity".

 

In the same way, sometimes devotees get all enamored with ritual, scholarship and ornamental conceptions.

 

It will also impede the Krishna consciousness movement if devotees try to turn Mahaprabhu's Sankirtan movement into Smritianity.

 

Ha! You to Smart for Smirtianity I see.

 

Those who get enamored by ritual will be revealed by the way they wield it to obtain power over the decision making process of others. You can see it in their eyes. And their bank accounts.

 

I remember the Mangala Arotik at Sri Radha Saradbihari's Abode in the City of Brotherly Love. It was a very strictly followed ritual but it didn't really feel like one, even when I couldn't yet pronounce the words or know what they meant! As long as there wasn't someone breathing down my neck or MAKING me be there, it was so sublime. That was no ritual actually. We only see it that way. It was paradoxically a snapshot of Srila Prabhupada's spontaneous ecstatic movement in worship.

 

All in the eye of the beholder. Any ritual in the hands of a rascal is a prison cage for someone.

[Kripamoya]

In fact, you could completely peal away and strip the Hindu garb and customs from Krishna consciousness and still have Krishna consciousness.

I think in many ways that has already happened to some degree.

[stonehearted]

 

In fact, you could completely peal away and strip the Hindu garb and customs from Krishna consciousness and still have Krishna consciousness.

I think in many ways that has already happened to some degree.

If someone actually does that, as has Siddhasvarupananda, ISKCON people scream about deviation.

[Kripamoya]

 

If someone actually does that, as has Siddhasvarupananda, ISKCON people scream about deviation.

 

No doubt.

Yet, ISKCON devotees are really living in a bubble.

They live like "bubble-boy" who got stuck in a time warp and lost his grasp on "the real world".

 

ISKCON has ceased to be a movement and has become a private club controlled by a cult.

 

The Krishna consciousness movement is "off the chain" when it comes to being the monopoly of ISKCON.

 

Mahaprabhu's spiritual movement can never be contained or bottled-up in any institutional bubble.

 

Sri Krishna Sankirtanam is a grassroots movement - not a religious corperation.

[Kripamoya]

 

Sri Krishna Sankirtanam is a grassroots movement - not a religious corperation.

 

 

I just wanted to add to that, that nowhere in the history of the Sankirtan movement has the grassroots principle been more successful and splendid as it was in South India, according to the Caitanya Caritamrita of Kaviraja Goswami.

 

Maybe that movement in south India eventually dwindled down to very little, but in the time of Mahaprabhu it was said to have flourished more than anywhere in India.

 

We hear of no accounts of the Sankirtan movement in South India as having any orthodox structure as we know it since the time of the Six Goswamis.

 

Imagine the Sankirtan movement in it's most glorious form.

Imagine that there was no orthodox smriti dogma to weigh it down.

 

What a funny coincidence.....

Was it really a coincidence?

[Guest guest]

"Mahaprabhu's spiritual movement can never be contained or bottled-up in any institutional bubble.

 

Sri Krishna Sankirtanam is a grassroots movement"

 

So true.

 

This is why Srila Prabhupada launched an all out assault on the Bottle it up and show for a fee, "Show-bottle Brahmanas" midway through 1974 when he began his Varnashrama talks in Vrndavan.

 

His plan was to root out the fakers by bringing natural human culture to his society. He wanted to ground out all of his disciples perverted human desire energy into its natural outlet of expression by bringing them down to earth in Varnashrama Dharma.

 

A genuine back to the land movement is what he advocated and actually insisted on in no uncertain terms.

 

By limiting everyone to their natural duties, there would be no room for exploitation. No perverted societal systems of Socialist government welfare, dependence on Gangster/Banksters and their debt based fiat currency, dependence on mass produced nutritionally deficient food, pharmaceutical death based health system frauds, relying on placating "congregations" sold out to the military industrial corporate lie, in order to sponsor the next sunday feast and pay the overdue energy bill.

 

In such a natural vedic communal setting, the indolent predators would stick out like a sore thumb, and would not last long.

 

Those who have actually listened to that message still exist at the root level, but still germinating, not much grass to be seen as manpower and funds are elusive as the Show in the Bottle was Bright and Sparkly and caught the gullible eye of scores of thousands of naive neophytes who are now codependent on selling tickets to the Big Top of the Big Lie for their daily bucket of popcorn and stale soda pop.

 

None of this can stop the Sankirtana Movement from rising up anew from the ashes of the Yagna of the Varnashrama devotees whose motives are rooted in Srila Prabhupada's Banyan Tree of Transcendental Instruction.

 

Hari Nam Sankirtana Ki Jaya!

[SishirSaha]

Regardless of from whom diksa is to be received, the undisputable conclusion of Hari-bhakti-vilasa and Bhakti-sandarbha is that diksa-mantras must be received, and as much is said (and quoted) in Swami Bhaktivedanta's works. Harinama is certainly also an initiation, but let us be clear over the fact that the term "diksa" indicates the reception of an actual diksa-mantra, characterized by mantra-bija, a name of god in the dative case and the end-incantation. If you wish, I'll be happy to present to you the actual passages from the writings of the Gosvamis where all of this is explained.

Could you please provide these quotations.

[SishirSaha]

It's not just Hari-bhakti-vilasa as far as diksa is concerned. Bhakti-sandarbha, if anything, is a definitive work on the practice of bhakti, and the commentaries of our acaryas on the Bhagavata echo the same, and so forth.

Could you also provide the references for these things you say. I have Bhakti Sandarbha here on my bookshelf and I would like to check what you say for myself.

[raga]

Sishir - give me a day or two, I'll pull my notes together.

 

--

 

 

A few months ago you were one of the biggest supporters of people like Jagat, Advaita, and Nitai. Now you try to pretend you are a different person and have grown over that.

You must have been rather badly out of the loop the last couple of years to say something like that.

[Kripamoya]

 

If someone actually does that, as has Siddhasvarupananda, ISKCON people scream about deviation.

 

I watched that little video link of siddha I found on the forum the other day.

Personally, I didn't find much charisma in siddha.

He was just talking about drug abuse, though he seemed to avoid lumping marijuana into the category with cocaine and alchohol.

 

As far a being potent, charismatic person, I don't see what all the hype is about siddha.

 

I am not saying that he is not a broad-minded and spiritual person.

I just didn't personally feel any magnetisim or feel the charisma.

[Kripamoya]

 

Sishir - give me a day or two, I'll pull my notes together.

 

--

 

 

You must have been rather badly out of the loop the last couple of years to say something like that.

 

I was around Raga's forum a bit.

I can't say that he was one of the really bad-mouthed critics like Nitai.

 

He did accomodate and accept them a lot more than I am pleased with.

 

Yet, Raga is in a league of his own.

 

Maybe in the process of trying to find some kindred spirits he accepted some bad company and befriended some bad characters, yet Raga is not one to stagnate. Progress and enlightenment are very much in his agenda.

 

I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt, especially if he personally says that he has moved on and disovered better viewpoints from a more mature experience.

 

One thing for sure, Raga makes most all of us look very pathetic with his shastric skills and scholarship.

I don't know of an ISKCON devotee that can compare with Raga.

 

Every once in a while something comes along to rock our world and break down the walls and barriers that we have built around our egos.

 

Raga's scholarship and learning of the Gaudiya tradition is doing that.

 

We can't live in our ivory ISKCON towers forever.

 

There are other Gaudiyas and other parivars out there and they don't all follow the radical innovations of Srila Saraswati Thakur or Srila Prabhupada.

 

If we step on their toes and hurt their feelings with our ISKCON steam-roller approach to Gaudiya society, then we can't blame them if they lash out and strike back to defend themselves and their parivars.

[raga]

Thank you for the benefit of doubt, I appreciate it. Oh whiz, your post sounded like a commercial!

 

I did post a public apology last February for whatever wrongs I may have done in the years past, you can read it here.

[theist]

 

I watched that little video link of siddha I found on the forum the other day.

Personally, I didn't find much charisma in siddha.

He was just talking about drug abuse, though he seemed to avoid lumping marijuana into the category with cocaine and alchohol.

 

As far a being potent, charismatic person, I don't see what all the hype is about siddha.

 

I am not saying that he is not a broad-minded and spiritual person.

I just didn't personally feel any magnetisim or feel the charisma.

 

One thing those videos are from public access television and were designed for the public at large.

 

Siddhasvarupa himself down plays charisma as a reason to be attracted to a devotees teaching. Being attracted simply on the basis of charisma is the foundation of a personality cult and not Krsna conscious darshan.

 

Find your inspiration where you find it, but don't mistake charisma for inspiration to change the heart and love God.

[SishirSaha]

Raga the word diksa has a range of meanings and it is important for us to see the usage of the word in terms of the actual context it is being presented in. The Upanisads speak of sanyasa-diksa as one kind of diksa. Again there is diksa of a student accepting a particular vow or discipline (diksa) undertaken to get the vision of a demigod by a student performing a fire yagna.

 

kim-devato’syam udicyam disy asiti. soma-devata iti sa somah kasmin pratisthita iti. Diksayam iti. Kasmin nu diksa pratisthita iti. Satya iti. Tasmad api diksitam ahuh, satyam vada iti: satye hy eva diksa pratisthita iti. kasmin nu satyam pratisthitam iti, hrdaye iti hovaca, hrdayena hi satyam janati hrdaye hy eva satyam pratisthitam bhavatiti. evam evaitat, yajnavalkya.

 

Yagnavalkya says realization of the truth or the reality (Satyam) is the basis or diksa. In other words you get diksa and do a fire sacrifice so you can attain a vision of a demigod and get boons from them.

 

There is also usage of the word diksa where diksa is meaning to take on a particular "vow". This usage is found in Caitanya Caritamrta. Haridas Thakur said to the prostitute, koti-nama-grahana-yajna kari eka-mase ei diksa kariyachi, haila asi sese :: "I have vowed to chant ten million names in a month." Again, Mahaprabhu said "no diksam na ca sat-kriyam na ca purascaryam manag iksate mantro yam rasana-sprg eva phalati sri-krsna-namatmakah" which Srila Prabhupada translates as "Chanting the holy name does not depend on initiation, pious activities or the purascarya regulative principles generally observed before initiation. The holy name does not wait for all these activities. It is self-sufficient." Again, "diksa-purascarya-vidhi apeksa na kare jihva-sparse a-candala sabare uddhare" or "One does not have to undergo initiation or execute the activities required before initiation. One simply has to vibrate the holy name with his lips. Thus even a man in the lowest class can be delivered." So statements in Haribhaktivilasa about diska do need to be seen in terms of these other important statements about diksa which are given in bonafide scriptures.

[Guest guest]

 

wiki.gaudiyakutir.com

 

this is a nice site. It's good to have a Gaudiya Wiki. I'd like to see a Hindu Wiki setup with articles on all sects, Gurus, and beliefs. This could be a great resource. They already have a lot of articles on Hinduism on the main wiki but it would be nice to have our own wiki as well.

[SishirSaha]

Raga do you have those quotes you mentioned?