Founder-Acarya versus Sampradaya Acarya

Ceto darpanam sung by Atmarama dasa

By Mahasana dasa

July 29 2011, FLORIDA, USA — People have been wondering how it is that the title, “The Sampradaya Acarya”, has become so popular. I don’t remember Srila Prabhupada ever calling himself, “The Sampradaya Acarya”. All the years I lived in a temple, no one ever called him “The Sampradaya Acarya” either.

When I first heard the title, I wasn’t sure what it meant! Somehow or other, it has become so popular that everybody is using it. My suspicion is that the title, “The Sampradaya Acarya”, has become popular because of the online newspaper, The Sampradaya Sun, and in particular, because of its editor, Rocana dasa, who coined the title.

I know that Srila Prabhupada used the title, “Founder-Acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness”, because it is on the jacket of his books.

I wondered, “Does Srila Prabhupada use any other titles besides ‘Founder-Acarya’ in his books?”
I have all his first printing big books in my collection, so I thought I would look through them and tally what titles Srila Prabhupada uses and where they are located. Then I thought I would examine Rocana dasa’s writings page and see what titles he uses for Srila Prabhupada and make a comparison.

I noticed that Srila Prabhupada uses a title in several places: on the front of the book jacket at the bottom, on the jacket where it folds over the front cover, on the title page inside the book, and beneath his glossy photo in the pictures section.
So, I went through Srila Prabhupada’s books, book by book, listing occurrences of titles. Here is what I found:

(Note: in two places, S.B. 2.1 and Adi 1, Srila Prabhupada uses a lower case, “founder-acarya”. Both times it is only used under the glossy photo inside the books. In all other places in these two books and in all places in all the other books, the title, “Founder-Acarya”, is upper case. Therefore, the two lower case spellings are probably oversights and not intentional.)

Next I went to Rocana dasa’s writings page, http://www.harekrsna.com/philosophy/vada/writings/writings.htm. He has 18 links there. 17 are active and if you click on them, you can read his articles. One is his famous “The Church of Rtvik” article.
So, I went through all 17 of his articles, one at a time, and listed any occurrence of “Founder”, “Acarya”, “Sampradaya”, or anything that was a variation of these words that indicated a title for Srila Prabhupada. Below is a table of what I found. It is not in order of occurrence, but in order of frequency.

Next, I made a summary table of titles.

And finally, I turned the summary table of titles into two graphs, so that a comparison could be easily made. Below are the graphs (click to enlarge).

Here is what stands out:

• Srila Prabhupada uses a different title than Rocana dasa.
• Srila Prabhupada uses “Founder-Acarya” exclusively.
• Rocana dasa uses “Sampradaya Acarya” dominantly.
• Rocana dasa rarely uses “Founder-Acarya”.
• Srila Prabhupada never uses “Sampradaya Acarya”.
• Rocana dasa uses many titles.
• Rocana dasa uses the title, “Founder/Acarya”, more frequently than “Founder-Acarya”.

This leads me to wonder, “Why?”

My guess is that because “Founder-Acarya”, meaning “both Founder and Acarya”, favors the ritvik conclusion (only one person can be “both Founder and Acarya” of the International Society for Krishna Conscious), and because “The Sampradaya Acarya” favors the anti-ritvik conclusion (it is absurd to say, “The Sampradaya Acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness”), Rocana dasa prefers “Sampradaya Acarya” to “Founder-Acarya”.

A related point is Rocana dasa’s use of “death language”. Terms like “manifest lila”, “the departed Sampradaya Acarya”, “the most recent Sampradaya Acarya”, “during Srila Prabhupada’s ISKCON lila”, “list of 32 Sampradaya Acaryas”, “prominent Sampradaya Acarya”, ”preeminent Sampradaya Acarya”, “post-samadhi period”, “post-samadhi Rtvik priests”, “post-samadhi diksa initiation from the Sampradaya Acarya”, “pre-samadhi ISKCON”, “post-samadhi proxy diksa”, “post-samadhi era”, “entered into maha-samadhi”, and “post Srila Prabhupada’s maha-samadhi” tend to put Srila Prabhupada out of the picture, supporting the “Sampradaya Acarya” idea. In Church of the Ritvik, Rocana dasa uses the word, “samadhi”, 18 times.

Conclusion:

Rocana dasa is a Prabhupada man. He fights the injustices of the ISKCON guru system, the Hinduization of ISKCON, Interfaith, the trivialization of Lord Krsna, and Srilas playing with toy cars. He even supports the possibility that Srila Prabhupada was poisoned. These positions endear him to us.

However, the “anti-ritvik” philosophy is a poor fit for Srila Prabhupada’s philosophy, just as the “anti-emergence” philosophy is a poor fit for Srila Bhaktisiddhanta’s philosophy.
Like any poor fit, alterations have to be made to try to make things fit right.
ISKCON’s “elected guru” philosophy is such a poor fit that Srila Prabhupada’s books had to be rewritten. It is like a garment that is such a poor fit that a tailor has to take it apart at the seams and try to put it back together again.
Rocana dasa’s “emergence” philosophy is also a poor fit, but not as poor of a fit as ISKCON’s poor fit. Rocana dasa’s philosophy is more like a pair of shoes that are too tight, so you take them to the cobbler to have them stretched. Thus Rocana dasa has to stretch Srila Prabhupada’s language to make things fit.
Rocana dasa’s philosophy is a good fit for Srila Bhaktisiddhanta’s philosophy because both are emergence philosophies. However, things were different during Srila Bhaktisiddhanta’s time. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta was confident of the emergence philosophy because he recognized Srila Prabhupada among his disciples. He saw the moon among the stars.
Srila Prabhupada, however, saw no moon among the stars. That is why the emergence philosophy is a poor fit for Srila Prabhupada’s philosophy and why the ritvik philosophy is a better fit.
The ritviks don’t have to change Srila Prabhupada’s books or replace Srila Prabhupada’s title to make things fit. We can keep things as they are.