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EDITORIAL February 28, 2000 VNN5566 Related VNN Stories Reply To Mother Malati BY PRAGHOSA DAS EDITORIAL, Feb 28 (VNN) — Hare Krsna Mother Malati das, You have asked in the opening sentence of your comments, "Pray tell me, what makes you so senior?" May I ask you why you are requesting this information. Why are you opening your remarks with such a superfluous and unecessary question. There is nothing within my response to Rabindra Swarup prabhu that begs that question. You cannot quote anything from my comments that even remotely resembles my resorting to such infantile silliness. I would ask that you or any one who might read my comments, quote something from my response that has anything to do with issues that you are trying to extract.
To attempt to reduce the subject down to such piddle is a disservice to yourself and the readers. The only reference to senior devotees within the content of my paper refers to HH Trivikrama Swami and the likes of Mahananda Das - both very serious devotees and both senior by "years, age and service" to the devotees who were being taken to task for their behavior. If you cannot understand this and recognize the importance of precisely what I was pointing out, then your power of discrimination is at present somewhat jaded and needs a little adjustment. What you do succeed in doing is changing the subject. The actual subject of my comments to Rabindra Swarup prabhu deal exclusively with the offenses committed to both His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada and his senior devotees who were attempting to point out the need to eliminate that. That's all. That he managed to circumvent the actual issues raised in my letter to him was obvious to anyone. That you are following in his footsteps and are similarly intent on creating a different subject for discussion, one upon which all devotees will naturally agree with you, is unfortunately also a disservice to yourself and to the readers. Quoting Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur is wonderful but it would behoove you or anyone to actually see the relevance of the quote you have introduced to the "actual" point of my letter to Rabindra Swarup Prabhu. You quote, ""Gurudeva in human form, which is the best amongst of all living beings, is my only object of worship. Visible worlds are eager to worship him, but a man like me, who is averse to God, is satisfied in thinking Gurudeva to be a perfect man. Human beings, as devotees of that perfect man, are all Vaisnavas. They are manifestations of my Gurudeva in various forms. Positively they are my guru-varga and instructors, negatively they are persons who, at the time of performing Bhajan are very much eager to hear delirium from an abominable wretched person like me." This wonderful quotation from Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur exactly summarizes the central issue of my letter to Rabindra prabhu. That is, that "Srila Prabhupada is perfect - far beyond the limits of mundane sholarship and worthy of being our only object of worship! " Devotees who do not share that view or are running the risk of having that pristine understanding of our Acharya compromised in some way or other require the good counsel of "senior" devotees who do not share their misunderstandings and/or doubts. That is the core issue of my comments and nothing else. The devotees I mentioned, recognized the very obvious "delerium" represented in the negative comments about Srila Prabhupada, that were being circulated by some devotees and "tolerated" by devotees who should have known better. If these devotees had actually recognized that honest and concerned devotees were attempting to help them and applied Srila Bhaktsiddhanta's vision that you have so nicely introduced ( "Human beings, as devotees of that perfect man, are all Vaisnavas. They are manifestations of my Gurudeva in various forms. Positively they are my guru-varga and instructors) then this entire matter would never have become an issue in the first place. The rest of your letter closely resembles the tactic employed by Rabindra Swarup prabhu, in form, if not in content. Rabindra played the pschotherapist and determined precisely what mental malady I was presently enduring, and then proceeded to detail all the symptoms of this malady and the negative impact that this sickness generates. All very interesting but quite disconnected from reality or relevance to the issues. Now you are following his tack and wasting your valuable time and that of the reader with the same silliness. You state, "So, you see prabhu, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta believes himself unqualified but you want us to swallow your seniority on the grounds you your calling yourself a "gentleman' and of your claiming you did so much service for you guru. I think you could use further clues" Naturally you are going to win support in your attack on this egregious mentality. Who does not find a braggart odious? Who does not find such consciousness totally incompatable with Mahaprabhu's third sloka from the Siksastakam - trnad api sunicena? Were that actually the consciousness exhibited in my comments or in my dealings with devotees, then certainly I would be worthy of your's and everyone's ridicule. Yet you offer no tangilble evidence from my comments that would demonstrate that I merit such slander. You reject my understanding of what constitutes being a gentleman, "In fact it is in my willingness to speak with you as forthrightly as I am, that actually establishes me as a gentleman." but I stand by this comment most emphatically and it is in no way a manifestation of the nonsense and odious consciousness that you suggest. I take both yours and Rabindra's comments to be feeble attempts to obfuscate the facts and divert the attention of the readers to anything but the core issue of this matter. Your comment "your claiming you did so much service for you guru." is not a quotation of anything I wrote or said in my letter to Rabindra. I never once mentioned a single word about my service to Srila Prabhupada. It was never an aspect of the discussion. Never. For you to attempt to portray my comments in that light is disingenuous at best and devious at worst. Only I mentioned that Rabindra had admitted to having exploited women in the past and I admitted to never having exploited any woman in the past. That was the extent of my commentary upon the past. That you would defend Rabindra's comments and fail to address the real issues raised in my comments to him is revealing about just what you do and do not recognize as important in all of this. If you reread my comments, in view of the above quotes from Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, perhaps you will better grasp the central issue in all of this and realize that you are unfortunately defending the indefensible and will now concern yourself with the offenses directed to Srila Prabhupada and those who venerate him, instead of those who have chosen to do otherwise. Mother my e-mail address is praghosa@datastar.net I only address you in this forum because you chose to address me in the public forum initially. My comments to Rabindra prabhu were also only private until he chose to place them in the public forum. Having done that I was forced to respond. However if you wish to address me personally and privately - please feel free. We have spoken in the past and you have no reason to think that I would not be as encouraging to you as I have always been. Sincerely Praghosa Das Related VNN Stories  Comment on this storyContact VNN about this storySend this story to a friend
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