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EDITORIAL  Sins Of The Brothers, Sins Of The Sons BY JALAKARA DAS EDITORIAL, Jun 21 (VNN) — Brothers and sisters! We have stood on the shoulders of a giant, and wrongly we think we are tall. We write articles for each other, convincing no one except those who are already convinced. Thus we continue with our endless discussion of tattva, or more exactly, political issues we mistakenly classify as tattva, as temple politics is tattva for us. All the while impersonalism and voidism are on the rise. Do we think that by posting our articles on the Internet we are spreading bhakti to the innocent? We have no idea who Prabhupada really was, yet we try and retain proprietorship over the man who transformed Gaudiya Vaishnavism into a world religion and made Hare Krishna a household name. We argue, "Prabhupada is ours, not yours; you cannot claim him; you must stay away from him. He is ours, not yours. Because you didn't recognize his greatness and render him aid during his lifetime, you and your descendents are forever banned from appreciating him and sharing in his glory." We ban vaishnavas from performing service and even from visiting temples, yet the demonic and imperialists can visit them openly. We copyright the holy name and declare it our monopoly. We post announcements that no vaishnava preachers should come here, it is our exclusive territory, that no vaishnava preachers need apply, or, if they can apply, there is a lengthy application process to make sure the candidate is idologically correct. We have become inward looking, protective, reactive and exclusive. Instead of empowering, we are controlling. Instead of bringing together, we keep apart. Instead of thinking ours, we think mine. Because one group has a different mangla aratik song, or a different bead bag, or a different strategy for preaching, or even a different realization, we marginalize them and keep them apart. Indeed, the smarta brahma tendency beats hard within the brest of all. Once upon a time the Indian devotees looked down on us and wouldn't accept prasadam we cooked, though they would accept our money. Now the tables are turned, Prabupada is acknowledged and we are accepted as vaishnavas of the first rank, but we can never forgive, never forget. We will pass the remembrances of past injustices from father to son, and we will turn the tables, and discriminate against them. Thus the smarta cycle will be complete. We will find some little differences between us and another devotee or group, some real or imagined slight which offends our hyper-sensitivity, declare them unsound, and say they are not speaking like Prabhupada spoke, so they must be wrong. Only we are right. There is a pitter-patter of feet as devotees leave, but it's all right, they were in maya anyway. We are better off without them. There are more where they came from. Will the last devotee to leave please turn out the light? The light of the Bhagavat; the light that the Prabhupadas lit, will the last devotee please turn out that light. Yet Prabhupada didn't explode Krishna consciousness onto the world to have it snuffed out by the infighting of disciples who imagine themselves his equals. Nor did he work to make every temple and every devotee and identical clone of each other. That's because he wasn't an impersonalist at all. He knew he couldn't bend every conditioned soul in every circumstance to his will, so he didn't even try. Nor did he try to make every Gaudiya organization an exact clone. And he wasn't a bitter man. What he did, he did for all, for every spirit soul on the planet, including his Gaudiya brothers, whether they were brothers to him or not. It was done in a joyful mood, because this knowledge brings great joy. How unhappy with us he must be, with our fighting over this detail and that detail, arguing over what he said and what he meant, what he wanted and what he didn't. The god brothers try to bend each other to their will. They won't accept small differences, they won't tolerate you listening to someone of whom they don't in advance approve, thinking they have the power to approve or not. They know so much; they have become the self-appointed guardians of Prabhupada's will. They know better, they know more, and you can't know what they know unless they tell it to you, and let you into their little group. And there is a pitter-patter of little feet; it is still going on, heading for the door. But there are more where they came from. Absorbed in making our points, absorbed in our self-appointed roles as guardians, we badger each other over little points. We criticize. We theorize. We think we are keeping ourselves pure. And the impersonalism and voidism increase in the Western world. The innocent living entities are searching for the way out, yet they have no access to us. Inward looking, we avoid them. We paralyze ourselves. We just go on in our small little ways. De-habilitated, independent, uncooperative except with members of our own little group, we fight with each other more than we fight with maya. Which, after all, is just what maya wants. How else can the bright shining light of freedom be extinguished, unless we do it ourselves? Narrow, narrow, our vision narrows, and as we fight and criticize, as intelligence lessons, our advancement stops. As our advancement stops, our mission slowly grinds to a halt. Instead of leading with the vision Prabhupada gave us, we relinquish the lead to others who haven't had the preceptorial advantage we had. That's because instead of sharing Prabhupada with others, we have kept him to ourselves. Hypersensitive to real or imagined slights or statements lacking the most lavish and grandiose appreciation, we reject all who don't ostentatiously match our public displays of Prabhupada fervor. We fail to allow others to appreciate Prabhupada in their own way. It is somehow worse not to appreciate him enough, then not to appreciate him at all. Yet this saintly man turned Krishna Consciousness into a world religion, freeing it from Vrndavan, Puri and Bengal. Do we think that vaishnavism as a world religion automatically means ISKCON and ISKCON only? Or conversely, do we have such a narrow vision of both ISKCON's history and future. Is ISKCON merely a name on a document registered with a government registry somewhere? Do we somehow imagine that out of six billion people, only ISKCON Incorporated has the right to preach? Do we imagine that there will not be hundreds and thousands and even hundreds of thousands of vaishnava organizations? Do we imagine that each of these organizations will be exactly the same? Do we imagine that members of these organizations will not migrate from one to the other from time to time? And why do we imagine there is anything wrong in that? It is a question of vision, or lack of same. If a person or group outside of ISKCON wants to appreciate Prabhupada and even claim him as one of there own, do we imagine that is something we must fight to prevent? All these things are going to happen. We might as well get used to it. More than that, we ought to have the simple courtesy and wisdom to accept the inevitable with good grace. We can only hold our finger in the dike so long. A new way of working together, a new paradigm of vaishnava cooperation is going to arrive, whether we like it or not. Those who oppose it will just get passed by. Everyone has a right to spread Krishna Consciousness. We ought to cooperate together as much as possible, criticize and quarrel as little as possible, and not obstruct others, even when we can. We ought not be so attached to our own disciples that we become blind to the reality that the Lord within the heart can make any arrangement he desires. That the arrangement of the Supreme Lord to manifest his external representative is a private arrangement between the Lord and the candidate, and it is not subject to legislation. "Those who are on this path are resolute in purpose and their aim is one. O beloved child of the Kurus, the intelligence of those who are irresolute is many-branched." Once I was walking with a vaishnava guru. We were near the sea. Waves were breaking on the rocks. He stopped and turned around and looked at me, ignoring all the others who were there. "Do you see that ocean? That is the ocean of devotion. The waves are the waves of the ocean of devotion; asakti, ruci, bhava. There is an undertow; that is Srimati Radharani. Do you see those sea birds? They are taking drops from the ocean of devotion and dropping them on the land. And what is that land? That is the tatastha, the living entity. Do you see how those sea-birds are sometimes fighting? It is their nature. But still they are taking drops from the ocean of devotion and depositing them on the land." Just because it is our nature to fight, we should not let it inhibit the mission we all share. We should learn to appreciate all preaching endeavors. We should empower instead of restrict. We should learn to forgive and forget, and not be proud. When we allow bitterness and combativeness to enter our hearts, we cannot grow. And then everybody loses. When a country is fighting a war, it will welcome any ally who will join them. It does not make conditions. When there is a fire, one will accept any help offered. In our opulence and material success have we forgotten what an emergency situation we are in? All who are in this fight against maya should open their hearts and work together. Otherwise we are already lost. Impersonalism and voidism are spreading fast, even among devotees. The effective Krishna conscious grows propaganda is less and less, our impact is less and less, our energy is limited, and facing inward. Our resources are small. There are so few devotees, so many non-devotees. We cannot afford to lose a single woman or man. Better someone goes to another math then he is lost to vaishnavism forever. After all, guru is one. Prabhupada said so. Contact VNN about this story  Send this story to a friend
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