A Lot Of Broken Hearts Out There

[suchandra]

Nice words of conciliation by Yogesvara prabhu. "A lot of broken hearts out there" - Yes, Yogesvara prabhu how true - being pushed from Prabhupada's Ark into the ocean of kali-yuga leaves me broken hearted and traumatized for the rest of life. But since I learned to use this non-ending suffering to chant the Holy Names with rapt attention I don't want to miss it anymore. Lord Ramachandra returned from exile after 14 years but for us it seems better to remain in exile and somehow try to remember the Prayers of Queen Kunti. Her voice trembled with sublime joy when saying: "O Govinda, I wish that all these calamities would happen again and again."

 

Prabhupada: "Therefore Kuntidevi says, vipadah santu: "Let there be calamities." Vipadah santu tah sasvat: "Let all those calamities happen again and again." Because she knows how to remember Krishna at times of danger, she is welcoming danger. "My dear Lord," she says, "I welcome dangers, because when dangers come I can remember You." When Prahlada Maharaja's father was putting him into dangerous predicaments, Prahlada was always thinking of Krishna. So if we are put into a dangerous position and that danger gives us an impetus to remember Krishna, that is welcome: "Oh, I am getting this opportunity to remember Krishna." Why is this welcome? It is welcome because seeing Krishna or remembering Krishna means advancing in spiritual life so that we will not have to suffer any more of these dangers. Tyaktva deham punar janma naiti mam eti so 'rjuna (Bg. 4.9). If one becomes advanced in Krishna consciousness, the result will be that after giving up the body (tyaktva deham) one will not have to take birth again in this material world (punar janma naiti). This is to be desired."

 

<!-- the top of the post, the background graphic gets applied here, and we truncate the title itself so it fits, in case of long post titles - title will still show the full title though --> BEATING HEARTS: Reflections on the Devotee Life

 

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<!-- end .post-top --> <!-- the main section of the post goes here --> By Yogesvara dasa

For a documentary on yoga in America, my partner and I recently interviewed renowned cardiologist Mehmet Oz. “If you come to me with a heart condition,” he said, “and you expect me to cure you, but then after the operation you go back to your old habits or you don’t exercise or you don’t do yoga, then all that I’ve done is palliate your problem. You’ll be back with the same problem again, expecting me to fix it. The bottom line is that if your heart doesn’t have a reason to go on beating, it won’t.”

How many times in recent years have I met up with old friends who seem to have “lost heart,” whose enthusiasm for devotional life has waned? Too often. For those of us who began our lives in Krishna consciousness thirty years ago or more, keeping the fires burning can be a real challenge. Maintaining faith is less of an issue: Anyone who had the honor of meeting Prabhupada knows what I’m talking about. We’ve seen the Promised Land. But maintaining enthusiasm for actively growing his mission, giving the heart “a reason to go on beating” as Mehmet so eloquently puts it—that’s the tough part.

And it seems to be as much of a challenge for men and women who work inside the Krishna Consciousness institution as it is for those of us who live outside temple communities. Sometimes the challenges seem so overwhelming, it is tempting to just throw up your arms and say, “I’m out of ideas. Somebody else has to do this.”

After Prabhupada’s departure, it became pretty clear that his request to preserve what he had built was not a call to put everything in mothballs. He was asking us to recognize ISKCON as a living, breathing entity and to take responsibility for keeping the community alive—to keep his movement “moving,” healthy, and growing. “Preserve” did not mean become librarians or collectors of devotional artifacts. Preserve meant preserving a rate of growth. It meant looking both at our tradition and at the world around us and figuring out how to make the two fit together.

There was a study conducted a few years ago at UCLA that compared the aging of the human body and the aging of an organization. The body ages whether one is spiritual or not, and so does an organization no matter if it exists to spread Krishna consciousness or sell widgets. Young entities (bodies and institutions) are vulnerable but flexible, uncoordinated but capable of rapid growth. Older entities (like some of my devotee buddies) are less flexible, more resistant to change, i.e. more bureaucratic and lacking creative energy.

And that brings us back to finding reasons for keeping the heart beating. The hardest part for those of us committed to becoming Krishna conscious may well be overcoming a sense of despair over having tried to make things better before and not succeeding. There are a lot of broken hearts out there, and they deserve to be recognized and heard. When the Spiritual Strategic Planning Team (an initiative of my dear friend Gopal Bhatta) invited people to attend a gathering and share ideas for moving Krishna consciousness forward in North America, many wrote back saying, “What’s the point? We’ve tried this before. I can’t afford the time. Who needs another committee?”

Well, on one level that’s an understandable reply. This isn’t the Sixties anymore. People work harder for their money, have less free time, are less idealistic, and they want to see evidence that if they get involved with a group there will be quantifiable benefits. On another level, it is a reply that camouflages a much deeper concern, namely a fear of once again facing an insensitivity that characterized ISKCON’s early years.

Here is a word that is often undervalued: personal. Of the many gifts Srila Prabhupada bequeathed to us, the greatest is that he revealed the personal face of God. He revealed the personhood of the Supreme Lord and of the soul. That personhood has to be demonstrated. For myself, I know I would not be practicing Krishna Consciousness had it not been for the personal care and attention I received as a 19-year-old visiting the London temple in 1969. I owe my devotional life to Umapati Swami, to Gurudas and Yamuna, to Shyamsundar and Malati, to Mukunda and Janaki, and Tamal Krishna Maharaja. They cared for me, nursed me to health when I got sick, told me stories about their beloved spiritual master. They showed me the meaning of friendship, and that personal care was so gratifying that I decided to stay. I wanted to be in that kind of company.

So why I did I leave temple life after thirteen years? It’s politically correct to say that someone went away because of sex. It’s politically correct because it’s understandable: “Well, he couldn’t handle the celibacy.” But that’s a simplistic explanation. There are much deeper issues at work. If people feel embraced by the larger devotee community, if they have that intimacy, then they can continue on as devotees in the traditional way. If that personal affection and friendship are not there, that’s when the sex becomes more important. And acting on that desire becomes a displaced attempt to find the lost intimacy.

We really need to think about what it means to be personalists. It has to manifest in our behavior. Philosophy alone won’t bring people to Krishna consciousness. Just because we know Krishna in Vrindavan doesn’t mean the human psyche has become any simpler. Neuroses don’t automatically disappear; poor parenting and other trauma don’t magically get reversed when you take to the devotional path. The transformations occur through honest, personal exchange among sensitive, thinking people.

I for one don’t want to live without the company of devotees in my life, and it doesn’t matter to me if they’re old farts who just complain or young Turks working on Wall Street (we have a few of those now, too). There is a self-curing mechanism in honest association, and if we can just continue to work on opening our hearts to one another, maybe that will be the impetus for them to keep on beating.

 

This article is republished from Yogesvara dasa’s blog with permission 10/21/07

[Murali_Mohan_das]

 

Preserve meant preserving a rate of growth.

 

Suchandra Prabhu will kill me, but this is the only thing with which I can find fault in this article.

 

The obsession with growth seems to be a pollution of the Western capitalist mindset. The quote I saw recently (somewhere around here) from Srila Prabhupada about "boiling the milk" was very revelatory. Also, it's interesting to note that that quote was from *1972*. By that time, Srila Prabhupada seemed satisfied by the growth and was more concerned with maintaining and improving *quality*.

 

Other than that, a lovely expression!

[cbrahma]

ISKCON isn't just atrophied - it's completely fragmented despite the attempts of the autocratic and centralized GBC to force artificial unity.

The temple community I frequent, is cold unfriendly, fragmented into cliques. Unless one makes fast friends with some inside devotee for some compelling material reason - such as youth, nationality (that's the overriding one), fame or money, one is completely isolated.

For this to change - the superstructure has to change. The hierarchy has to move from being an authoritarian caste system to a flexible organization based on service and equality.

[Murali_Mohan_das]

The environment is not so easy to change. It's much easier to change ourselves.

 

 

ISKCON isn't just atrophied - it's completely fragmented despite the attempts of the autocratic and centralized GBC to force artificial unity.

The temple community I frequent, is cold unfriendly, fragmented into cliques. Unless one makes fast friends with some inside devotee for some compelling material reason - such as youth, nationality (that's the overriding one), fame or money, one is completely isolated.

For this to change - the superstructure has to change. The hierarchy has to move from being an authoritarian caste system to a flexible organization based on service and equality.

[cbrahma]

 

The environment is not so easy to change. It's much easier to change ourselves.

It isn't just an "environment'. It's an elite caste system.

What changes can somebody make in themselves when the parameters are all material?

[Murali_Mohan_das]

Ignoring the question, let me ask you, do you imagine that things were any different in ISKCON during the manifest pastimes of Srila Prabhupada?

 

I'll answer "yes" and "no". Yes in that all of the same tendencies (cliques, etc.) were there, no in that the spiritual potency of Srila Prabhupada was able to harmonize so many things.

 

Cliques based on mundane distinctions will always be there. In the presence of the pure devotee, such considerations vanish from the minds of the aspirants like fog before the sun.

 

So, to answer your question: become a pure devotee and there will be no mundane considerations any longer.

 

 

It isn't just an "environment'. It's an elite caste system.

What changes can somebody make in themselves when the parameters are all material?

[cbrahma]

 

Ignoring the question, let me ask you, do you imagine that things were any different in ISKCON during the manifest pastimes of Srila Prabhupada?

 

I'll answer "yes" and "no". Yes in that all of the same tendencies (cliques, etc.) were there, no in that the spiritual potency of Srila Prabhupada was able to harmonize so many things.

 

Cliques based on mundane distinctions will always be there. In the presence of the pure devotee, such considerations vanish from the minds of the aspirants like fog before the sun.

 

So, to answer your question: become a pure devotee and there will be no mundane considerations any longer.

I was in the movement during Prabhupada's vapu, and there is no comparison. Take the elitism and multiply it by a large factor even with a fraction of the devotees in the LA temple.

[Murali_Mohan_das]

 

I was in the movement during Prabhupada's vapu, and there is no comparison. Take the elitism and multiply it by a large factor even with a fraction of the devotees in the LA temple.

 

I was "in the movement" during that time as well.

 

That "large factor" is the pure devotion factor, wouldn't you say?

[suchandra]

 

I was "in the movement" during that time as well.

 

That "large factor" is the pure devotion factor, wouldn't you say?

This is perfectly explained by Gauranga Kishore Das, who says today, Krishna gives the highest to the most undeserving.

 

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

 

The Highest to the Most Undeserving

 

http://gaurangakishore.blogspot.com/2007/10/highest-to-most-undeserving.html

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

 

I was sitting sitting on the roof this afternoon relaxing eating some bananas when a polite elderly female monkey appeared on a ledge about fifteen feet away from me. She very made some cooing sounds as a friendly gesture in hopes that I would share some of my ripe delicious bananas with her. Which of course I did, who could resist such a cutie.

 

Then I started thinking about how Krishna likes to feed butter and yogurt to monkeys. This is actually quite amazing if you think about it, yogurt and especially butter are the most valuable substance. They are the most nutritious foods, and Krishna is just distributing them freely to the monkeys who are in many ways are the most undeserving.

 

No one really likes monkeys, they don't serve any useful purpose and they are always causing trouble. You hang your clothes on the line and the come and ripe you clothes to pieces just for the fun of it. If you leave your shoes outside they come and steal them.

 

They are rascals, but nevertheless Krishna loves to feed them butter and yoghurt.

 

Krishna's nature is so compassionate that he is naturally inclined to give the highest thing to the most undeserving.

[cbrahma]

 

I was "in the movement" during that time as well.

 

That "large factor" is the pure devotion factor, wouldn't you say?

The large factor is in inverse proportion to pure devotion.