Why the Gaudiya Matha Failed

[Guruvani]

 

When I first read that letter to Rupanuga I lost almost all of the faith I had in Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. I still haven't got that faith back now. I don't think I ever will.

 

-m.

 

It's obvious that Srila Prabhupada wanted to build the Great Wall of China between his movement and his Godbrothers.

 

Just choose which side of the wall you want to be on and make the best of it.

 

Your faith must be weak, because most devotees are not affected by this issue and just accept the wisdom of Srila Prabhupada to do what he did and say what he said.

 

Even those that think that there are many great devotess on that side of the wall still accept their assigned position on this side of the wall with faith in Srila Prabhupada.

 

If Prabhupada would have stayed under the thumb of his Godbrothers as they wanted, none of us would have ever become devotees and the Krishna consciousness movement would never have been started.

 

If you knew the history of all the repression and depression that Srila Prabhupada experienced from his "Godbrothers" you might be able to understand why he said what he said.

 

He had to break away by force to accomplish anything.

 

The narrow vision of his Godbrothers would have effectively blocked the spreading of the Krishna consciousness movement all over the world.

[Shakti-Fan]

 

I don't assume anything really.

But it is quite obvious that persons of your bent always try to pidgeonhole every devotee into some vaidhi-bhakti stereotype.

 

talk about high horse?

 

Climb down out of your ivory tower of vaidhi-bhakti and find ou that your mechanical bhakti is an obstacle to pure love of Krishna.

 

I am a sahajiya.

I don't practice mechanical bhakti.

Wait a minute here. I'm the sahajiya around here, NOT YOU!!!! :eek:

And you can quote me on that! Wait a minute, what did I just say? Yes, I'm going mad, Audarya Fellowships is driving me mad, quite mad. Wait a minute I've got to get a grip. Maybe a double mango lassi will help. Yeah thats it a double mango lassi.:eek:

[Guruvani]

 

Wait a minute here. I'm the sahajiya around here, NOT YOU!!!! :eek:

And you can quote me on that! Wait a minute, what did I just say? Yes, I'm going mad, Audarya Fellowships is driving me mad, quite mad. Wait a minute I've got to get a grip. Maybe a double mango lassi will help. Yeah thats it a double mango lassi.:eek:

 

There's room for all us sahajiyas in the great world of raga-bhakti.

Like SRila Prabhuapda wrote in his books that even sahajiyas can become pure devotees in contact with a pure devotee.

 

so, I am holding out hope and against hope that this sahajiya can become a true devotee someday.

[Guest guest]

 

It's obvious that Srila Prabhupada wanted to build the Great Wall of China between his movement and his Godbrothers.

 

Just choose which side of the wall you want to be on and make the best of it.

 

Your faith must be weak, because most devotees are not affected by this issue and just accept the wisdom of Srila Prabhupada to do what he did and say what he said.

 

Even those that think that there are many great devotess on that side of the wall still accept their assigned position on this side of the wall with faith in Srila Prabhupada.

 

If Prabhupada would have stayed under the thumb of his Godbrothers as they wanted, none of us would have ever become devotees and the Krishna consciousness movement would never have been started.

 

If you knew the history of all the repression and depression that Srila Prabhupada experienced from his "Godbrothers" you might be able to understand why he said what he said.

 

He had to break away by force to accomplish anything.

 

The narrow vision of his Godbrothers would have effectively blocked the spreading of the Krishna consciousness movement all over the world.

 

So from this can we take it as final, that you disconnect yourself from anyone on the other side of the Great Wall?

[Guest guest]

Seems like this discussion pops up on a fairly regular basis. We've all seen the quotes, pro and con. Ultimately, we have to learn to harmonize apparent contradictions. IMHO, anyway.

 

 

"Even amongst our God-brothers we have misunderstanding but none of us is astray from the service of Krishna. My Guru Maharaja ordered us to execute his mission combinedly. Unfortunately we are now separated. But none of us have stopped preaching Krishna Consciousness. Even if there was misunderstanding amongst the God-brothers of my Guru Maharaja none of them deviated from the transcendental loving service of Krishna. The idea is that provocation and misunderstanding may remain between one man and another. But our staunch faith in Krishna Consciousness may not allow any material disruption. Please therefore try to be sympathetic with any person even if they differ. The only qualification we have to scrutinize is if one is acting in Krishna Consciousness as far as one is able to do it. This personal grudge is not inhuman and as I have told many times, that individualism is the cause of personal misunderstanding. When such individualism is employed in the center of Krishna there is no harm even if there is personal misunderstanding. Personal misunderstanding exists even in the higher levels. There is competition of loving Krishna even in the party of Srimati Radharani." Letter to: Brahmananda : 67-11-18 Calcutta

 

 

The disciples of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami Maharaja are all Godbrothers, and although there are some differences of opinion, and although we are not acting conjointly, every one of us is spreading this Krsna consciousness movement according to his own capacity and producing many disciples to spread it all over the world." Srimad-Bhagavatam Canto 4: Chapter Twenty-eight, Text 31

 

 

"Those, whose judgement is made of mundane stuff, being unable to enter into the spirit of the all-loving controversies among pure devotees, due to their own want of unalloyed devotion, are apt to impute to the devotees their own defects of partisanship and opposing views." Sri Brahma samhita p.72

[Guruvani]

My purpose with starting this topic was not to make bad propaganda against the Godbrothers of Srila Prabhupada.

 

I really don't care if other devotees sympathize with them or not.

It's not my problem or my business.

 

My idea was to show that Srila Prabhupada did not and would not accept any such arrangement of GBC approved, nominated or regulated gurus.

 

In fact, he attributes the ruination of the Gaudiya Matha with the very matter of the GBC trying to regulate or appoint an acharya or acharyas.

 

Srila Prabhupada promoted the "self-effulgent" concept for disciples becoming gurus.

 

Even though ISKCON has officially departed the zonal acharya system, there are still some gurus in ISKCON that are still running off of the momentum they got in the zonal acharya days, which they probably would never have gotten without the boost of the zonal acharya rip-off.

 

Especially, we have a guru in Mayapura who made it to stardom in the zonal acharya days and has made his whole career on the false position he attained in the zonal acharya days.

 

If we had never had any zonal acharya situation in the early days after the passing of Srila Prabhupada, the BIG guru in Mayapura might not be the ISKCON superguru that he is today.

 

Probably not.

[gHari]

What passes for logic in that camp speaks volumes about their conclusions. It is like being bewildered by the old childhood joke:

<B><center>The more you study, the more you know.

 

The more you know, the more you can forget.

 

The more you can forget, the more you do forget.

 

The more you do forget, the less you know.

 

The less you know, the dumber you are.

 

So, why study?

</center></b>

And when some rational person points out the clear flaws in their logic, the oversights are quickly swept under the carpet, and we proceed to operate under sheer emotion. Is this the quality of sincerity required to attract the heart of Sri Krsna? I guess the truth is: it doesn't matter what they 'think', for it was all simply pretense from start to finish.

[theist]

 

Srila Prabhupada said "If Guru Maharaja could have seen someone who was qualified at that time to be acarya he would have mentioned."

 

I guess we can also understand this to mean that Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur did not recognize Srila Abhay Charan Bhaktivedanta as being qualified to be Guru either.

 

Wow. This thread has really taken off since this morning. Someone else mentioned this letter caused him to lose his faith in Srila Prabhupada.

 

Why would you lose faith over this letter guest? Is it possible your place had been misplaced and that losing that faith was a blessing?

 

The problem comes from thinking that the previous acarya has to make some official decree or no one will know who the self-effugent acarya is. Does the term self-effulgent give a clue?

 

Krsna is self-effulgent and His manifestation as the pure devotee is also self effulgent. Think self evident. The sun gives evidence of it's self. One is acarya by dint of his particular bhakti-shakti and not by votes, appointments, flipping coins or drawing straws. Only Krsna reveals Himself as God and Guru. Therefore ONLY Krsna can give us the eyes to see His representative and instill within us the properly directed faith that we need.

 

Lose all faith in the ecclesatistical guru system and the self appointed ritviks. They all want to put themselves between us and God and guru. That is horses***.

 

The Lord lives directly within us as the Soul of the soul. There is no room for any materially motivated characters to weasle in between the soul and the Supreme Soul.

 

But if we don't have our eyes firmly focused on the Lord for guidance we will have our faith misdirected in so many ways. Better to lose that false faith.

 

A soul can awaken to his status as pure servant of Krsna in transcedence at any stage of his life. Also Krsna may not give that devotee the mission to take over his guru's matha. He may have His devotee start his own matha or just wander unaffiliated. Are we thinking every pure devotee must be the leader of a matha??? Is that how we tell who knows and loves Krsna which is what qualifies one as guru??? If so that is a major misunderstand that we need to be disabused off quickly.

[theist]

 

It's obvious that Srila Prabhupada wanted to build the Great Wall of China between his movement and his Godbrothers.

 

NONSENSE. Go back and read his earliest coresspondence from before Iskcon was incorparated. He was asking for help and wanted to start a Gaudiya Matha temple. The help never came. Instead he receive some envy. It was the enviousness that Srila Prabhupada wanted to wall off.

 

YOU GURUVANI are trying to build a wall that doesn't exist. Please don't do that. It is like their are two Guruvani's here. One is offering all these wonderful quotes from BR Sridhar Naharaja and the other one is towing the ritvik line to avoid anyone from Gaudiya Matha.

 

Will the real Guruvani please stand up?!

[Guruvani]

 

 

YOU GURUVANI are trying to build a wall that doesn't exist. Please don't do that.

As if my views have caused the GBC and ISKCON gurus to maintain a policy of apartheid with the Godbrothers of Srila Prabhupada.

 

That wall is well in place as far as the ISKCON people are concerned and it was not my doing.

 

They used Sridhar Maharaja and lied to him to get what they wanted, then when he showed that he wasn't the puppy dog of ISKCON gurus they all turned on him.

[theist]

I was referring to your statement which I quoted. You said Srila Prabhupada wanted such a great wall and I dispute that.

 

All this other stuff about the iskcon gurus means nothing to me.

[Guruvani]

 

I was referring to your statement which I quoted. You said Srila Prabhupada wanted such a great wall and I dispute that.

 

All this other stuff about the iskcon gurus means nothing to me.

Srila Prabhupada said that what he wrote in his letter was for all his disciples to know....

 

 

This is my instruction to you all. They cannot help us in our movement, but they are very competent to harm our natural progress

 

I truly beleive Srila Prabhupada wanted his ISKCON devotees to just stay away from his Godbrothers and I think he was right and knew what he was talking about.

 

 

 

So it is better not to mix with my Godbrothers very intimately because instead of inspiring our students and disciples they may sometimes pollute them. This attempt was made previously by them, especially Madhava Maharaja and Tirtha Maharaja and Bon Maharaja but somehow or other I saved the situation. This is going on. We shall be very careful about them and not mix with them. This is my instruction to you all. They cannot help us in our movement, but they are very competent to harm our natural progress. So we must be very careful about them."

Of course, he did mention three Godbrothers by name.

So, I think his instructions in this matter applied to them especially, but maybe not so much all of them completly.

[Guest guest]

This Guruvani dude really spoils my day. Every time I come to this forum this person is putting someone down. It really ruins it for all the other nice informative contributions that I find here.

Is this Vaisnavism or Audarya fellowship?

[Guest guest]

BSS said that institutions are like dams that impede the flow of pure bhakti.

 

So any institution is thus bound to:

 

a) fail

b) all in all, be just another brick in the wall [Pink Floyd]

c) goodness gracious, be Great Walls of China [Jerry Lee Lewis]

 

So just become enlightened and get in touch with the pure river or stream of

devotion inside of you. That is why castles made of sand fall into the sea eventually. Because you cannot institutionalize consciousness any more than you can institutionalize and legislate Love.

[Beggar]

 

This Guruvani dude really spoils my day. Every time I come to this forum this person is putting someone down. It really ruins it for all the other nice informative contributions that I find here.

Is this Vaisnavism or Audarya fellowship?

Yes reading Guruvani's (KB's) posts are like torture to me but I keep coming back for more, every day. I don't know what's wrong with me. Am I sado-masochistic or something? Anyway I have an appointment to start psycho-therapy with Dr. David Wolf aka Dhira Govinda Prabhu. Maybe I'll be able to get some insight and answers. In my condition I'm looking for relative knowledge not necessarily Absolute knowledge. I was thinking, if there's enough of us we could start an online twelve-step program for Audarya Fellowship "Spiritual Discussion" addicts. Off course we'll be required to allow Guruvani into the meetings, since we can't discrminate. All bonafide twelve step programs are open to the public. Is anyone interested?

[Guest guest]

If he's a good therapist he'll probably advice you to give up the sound of frogs croaking they are like those constant drips in the night that lead to insomnia and push a sane man to take therapy. I hope you've done your research before hand, he would'nt be a ritvic therapist would he?

 

You're probably just going to take some devotional association You know one plays the Kaviraj, the other the patient, I hope you both benefit.

The only thing that stops me going to one is their fees.

 

You should lay your problems out on the forums here Prabhu and we could fix you up in no time. Open a thread called 'Save the beggar' and we can all believe we are engaged in doing Gods work.

[Beggar]

 

I hope you've done your research before hand, he would'nt be a ritvic therapist would he?

 

Actually he's a "Prominent Link" therapist. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srila_Prabhupada:_The_Prominent_Link

Also see:

http://www.satvatove.org/

Yep, like I always say, If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

[Guest guest]

I can't see anything with those prominent links. I just get a sound like a big drop of water hitting the ocean..... then nothing. Like going nowhere. Am i supposed to go somewhere.

[Guest guest]

OK I'm in but don't have the time to digest all that info yet.

[Guest guest]

 

Yes reading Guruvani's (KB's) posts are like torture to me but I keep coming back for more, every day. I don't know what's wrong with me. Am I sado-masochistic or something? Anyway I have an appointment to start psycho-therapy with Dr. David Wolf aka Dhira Govinda Prabhu. Maybe I'll be able to get some insight and answers. In my condition I'm looking for relative knowledge not necessarily Absolute knowledge. I was thinking, if there's enough of us we could start an online twelve-step program for Audarya Fellowship "Spiritual Discussion" addicts. Off course we'll be required to allow Guruvani into the meetings, since we can't discrminate. All bonafide twelve step programs are open to the public. Is anyone interested?

 

 

how about 'Lost servants anonymous' DASANON

[Guest guest]

So the GM has failed? Has Iskcon don't any better?

[Kulapavana]

 

So the GM has failed? Has Iskcon don't any better?

 

valid question, but perhaps it is all about cultivating a wrong perspective.

 

neither institution has failed as they produced thousands of wonderful devotees all over the world, advancing the mission of Lord Caitanya far beyond what many Gaudiyas thought possible. If you want to see failure you will find it.

 

would Lord Caitanya call GM or Iskcon a failure? or would He rejoyce at the many great things they have done? How would He se each one of us? a failure, or a success?

 

one is a failure as a devotee if all we see and think about is faults and failures of others.

[theist]

 

valid question, but perhaps it is all about cultivating a wrong perspective.

 

neither institution has failed as they produced thousands of wonderful devotees all over the world, advancing the mission of Lord Caitanya far beyond what many Gaudiyas thought possible. If you want to see failure you will find it.

 

would Lord Caitanya call GM or Iskcon a failure? or would He rejoyce at the many great things they have done? How would He se each one of us? a failure, or a success?

 

one is a failure as a devotee if all we see and think about is faults and failures of others.

 

I agree. Let's not get hung up and obcess over these things.

 

Failure can mean that the GM and ISKCON have not lived up to what the founding acaryas kept as their higher aspirations for their organizations but you can't say GM or ISKCON are failures especially in light of the fact that we are chanting Hare Krsna due to the efforts of those in those org.s. And so much sukriti has been distributed that will bare fruit for the fortunate jiva in this life or the next, this planet or the next.

 

So let's be careful about how we use the word failure.

 

Let's be real. The failure is with us as jiva's, individuals and not with some imaginary entity like GM or Iskcon. Corp.s are paper creations and hold as much value as people put value into them. The real value lies in the heart of the living being.

[Hari Bhakta dasa]

 

valid question, but perhaps it is all about cultivating a wrong perspective.

 

neither institution has failed as they produced thousands of wonderful devotees all over the world, advancing the mission of Lord Caitanya far beyond what many Gaudiyas thought possible. If you want to see failure you will find it.

 

would Lord Caitanya call GM or Iskcon a failure? or would He rejoyce at the many great things they have done? How would He se each one of us? a failure, or a success?

 

one is a failure as a devotee if all we see and think about is faults and failures of others.

 

---------------

. one is a failure as a devotee if all we see and think about is faults and .

. failures of others.

---------------

 

Print and cut on dotted lines. Hang in easily to view place on computer monitor.

[Guruvani]

I would just like to add that it was Srila Prabhupada would evaluated the Gaudiya Math as having been a failure, and I think he was quite right.

 

Little minds setting on computers in 2006 trying to judge the opinions of Srila Prabhupada, who went through so much criticism and repression from these so-called sannaysis of the Gaudiya Math, are hardly sufficiently informed to pass judgement on Srila Prabhupada and their doing so is simply their own undoing.

 

 

Srila Prabhupada's Letter to Hayagriva 9/14/70: "Disturbance is caused by ignorance; where there is no ignorance, there is no disturbance. The four Sannyasis may bark, but still the caravan will pass. There is every evidence that they are influenced by some of my fourth-class Godbrothers."

 

 

 

Srila Prabhupada's Letter to Niranjana 5/21/73: "Our big, big godbrothers in India, they could not preach Lord Gauranga's name all over India. They are simply inclined to criticize me, that my students call me Prabhupada. They could not do anything practical and tangible. They are satisfied with a temple and a few disciples begging alms for the maintenance of the temple.

"So, we can understand that they have all become sudras. How can they have interest in Bhagavad-gita. Although some of them have been born in brahmana families, but by quality are all sudras."

 

 

 

our, this Bon Maharaja. He never speaks of Krsna. His rascal, that Institute of Indian Philosophy, nobody goes to [pass] urine there. We see practically. And our temple is always filled up, five hundred men. And he is trying for the last forty years. He is simply planning: 'This will be playground. This will be this ground. This will be this ground.' And it is becoming jungle. Still, he is so envious, black snake. So one circular letter should be issued to all our center, that 'Any Bon Maharaja or anyone, his representative, should not be received.' They are envious. Yes. Quoting that. We have got several complaints like that. Satsvarupa also complained. Sometimes our order was cancelled by Bon Maharaja's propaganda."

 

 

So these rascals, Godbrothers, they are envious that... What he has written? Bon Maharaja. Just see what kind of men they are. They are not even ordinary human being. They are envious of me, and what to speak of make a judgment by estimation? They're envious. Enviousness is immediately disqualification of Vaisnava, immediate. He is not a human being