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EDITORIAL March 4, 2000 VNN5615 Related VNN Stories Reply To Mahananda Prabhu BY MADHUSUDANI RADHA DEVI DASI EDITORIAL, Mar 4 (VNN) — My dear misguided boy Mahananda, All glories to Srila Prabhupada. You wrote in your recent VNN article (VNN Story 5598) : "Last October a great blunder was made on Topical Discussion on COM when one misguided girl spoke" and "After the girl wrote many things that 'bothered' her" and "I was involved in this event only in that I objected wholeheartedly on the forum and warned the girl" and "Her whole defense has been that our reaction over the comments and strong words of warning to the foolish girl " Your choice of words is surprising, especially given the fact that you repeatedly remind others of the necessity to follow Srila Prabhupada's instructions. I must therefore assume that you have forgotten the following words by our beloved spiritual father and grandfather: 1. "And they used to call every woman from the beginning of life, "Mother." This is training. Matrvat para-daresu. From the very beginning of life, all women they are treated as mother. That is the system, Vedic system. Everyone will call a woman as "Mother." Never mind whether she is younger or older. It doesn't matter. Woman has to be addressed as "Mother." That is Canakya Pandita's instruction. Who is learned scholar? Who has got three qualification, he is learned scholar. What is that? Matrvat para-daresu: "To treat all woman as mother." Ref. VedaBase => Bhagavad-gita 4.16 -- Bombay, April 5, 1974 2. "We advise everyone to address one another as Prabhu. Prabhu means master, so how the master should be disobeyed? Others, they are also pure devotees. All of my disciples are pure devotees. Anyone sincerely serving the spiritual master is a pure devotee . . . Do not try to make a faction . . . Amongst ourselves one should respect others as Prabhu, master, one another. As soon as we distinguish here is a pure devotee, here is a non-pure devotee, that means I am a nonsense." (letter to Tusta Krishna December 14, 1972) Could you please show me one instruction in which Srila Prabhupada says that it is acceptable for a male devotee to adress a female devotee as "girl", what to speak or "poor girl", "misguided girl" or "foolish girl"? As you well know, it was not your defense of Srila Prabhupada that got you removed from the Topical Discussions conference. It was not even the fact that you disagreed with her views. It was your continued disrespect of Dhyanakunda prabhu *as a person* through your insulting and belittling language that made me remove you after repeated warnings. Dhyanakunda shared some personal doubts, which she never tried to impose on others, or put forth as the Absolute Truth. On the contrary, she carefully used "I-language" throughout her article. Yet all you could do in return was to attack her personally. You never even dealt with the content of her text. How do you think this helped resolve any of her doubts? For that matter, how do you think it helped anyone who was watching your attacks to see such immature behavior from someone who is supposed to be a senior Vaisnava? Several other devotees also disagreed with Dhyanakunda and expressed opinions that would probably be similar to yours. However, they were able to do so in a mature, balanced and rational manner. They showed compassion for her as a person, while disagreeing with the ideas she put forward. Those people helped bring the discussion forward and they are still on the conference. Your personal attacks violated the conference rules and stalled the discussion. You were given plenty of opportunities to change your behaviors, but showed that you were either unwilling or unable to do so. I know it didn't feel very good to you to be addressed as "boy" in the introduction to this letter and, as you can probably guess, I used that term only as an illustration of a principle: Insulting and belittling others does not encourage a productive discussion. It is also unlikely to inspire anyone in spiritual life. Yours in the service of ISKCON's abused and mistreated devotees, Madhusudani Radha devi dasi Related VNN Stories  Comment on this storyContact VNN about this storySend this story to a friend
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