Bhagavata-purana das, Feb 05 2009, Imola, Italy: Moved by Yadu das’s eloquency in defending Costa Rica’s rural farm, and for the compelling necessity of protecting the Nueva Vrajamandala project in Spain, I’ll try to write something on this farm-selling pattern that is manifesting in present day ISKCON. My only purpose is to understand what’s happening and maybe to get some feedback from others, and contribute to generating some public and society-wide consciousness on the problem.
So, we have three similar cases: Nueva Goloka in Costa Rica, Sri Bhakti-lata Puri in Argentina and Nueva Vrajamandala in Spain. Devotees got those properties through donations and Sankirtana, following Srila Prabhupada’s inspiration of creating rural self-sufficient communities where grihastha devotees could live a simple life working the land, protecting cows and worshiping the Deities.
Those places would give a real reference and shelter to the people when modern society collapses in due course of time. Those places would be the places where varnasrama society could be developed, in which devotees could live a simple life with high thinking. His Divine Grace showed the importance of those communities himself, spending much time in New Vrindavana and speaking very often of the development of those projects in his books and conversations.
In practice, devotees acted in naive ways, putting the cart in front of the oxen in the methaphorical sense of the expression, but not in the literal sense. Without developing a farming, rural culture of simple life, high thinking, they got many cows, established high standards of Deity worship, and soon becoming tired of all of that, blooped, fell-down from sannyasi asrama, tried to get yoga groups to do agro-tourism, offered the places for seminars and conventions, went to the cities to preach, and many of them finally got real jobs in life. So, the once flourishing big communities became deserted, and the “white elephant” concept arose.
You can travel all over Europe to see… No farm has developed self-sufficiency. Not even a single family is living off cows and land in a coherent way. Deities are taken care of by real saints who take on their shoulders the whole sweet weight of dressing, cooking, doing puja, but with barely any external help from other devotees or temples.
Dried cows survive somehow or other while the leaders try to understand how many years a cow can live. At the same time, maintaining these big projects is very often a real economic burden on the different nations. Do you know how many Sankirtana devotees are needed to switch on the seven hundred light bulbs of a European Villa Community? Then, all over these communities we can find devotees that don’t even follow the spiritual programs, are initiated by non-ISKCON gurus, smoke ganja, watch television and do nothing for ISKCON or ISKCON authorities.
In that environment, stressed preachers, GBC members and Regional Secretaries, joined by different devotees tired of these big projects, reach the conclusion that selling the farm is the solution. They watch in front of them the panorama of their country without the white elephant to maintain, without all those unpractical fallen devotees, with city preaching diminished by the profits from the selling, and they cannot get any other conclusion: the farm must be sold. It can be interpreted even as a virtuous yajna: to sell the marble of the temple to print books, to cut the rotten branches to invigorate the tree. So, they decide, as managers, that any opposition to the selling of the farm is maya.
This decision usually makes ISKCON a fighting club. Devotees who worked hard for years to get the farm payed, devotees who love the place even though they don’t live there, devotees who live in those places, devotees who have been for years fighting to develop something there, devotees who don’t appreciate those external managers coming to decide for their lives without considering them, devotees who look the place as a holy dhama, devotees who have been spiritually raised or physically born there, devotees who think that selling is going against Srila Prabhupada’s order and will, devotees who think that selling is weakness, devotees who think that actually the farm has never been used for the use originally established by Srila Prabhupada, devotees who see the selling as an external imposition and a sign of monetary coveting, devotees who have lost faith in the management and see only more corruption in this decision, devotees who love sincerely the Deities and think that Their Lordships are the real owners of the place, devotees who look at the place as their only prospect for the future after finishing their grihastha life duties, devotees who think it is a question of focus, devotees who don’t understand how other devotees can be so crooked on them, devotees who still believe in the project, devotees who have real plans for the farm but never got the opportunity to put them in practice, devotees who know by experience that selling not only doesn’t solve anything but will create a total schism, devotees who want to see real plans behind all that passionate impulse for selling and making money, devotees who walked many many times in those places chanting rounds, devotees who have developed an attachment for those places in which everything is related with Krishna… so many forgotten devotees who will arise ready to fight against the real estate-minded manager.
“Those people are not ISKCON” is usually the first reaction from the manager. “I am the GBC man, the authorized authority, the one who is engaged in real preaching, the one who knows the real needs of management. All those other people are ex-devotees, people who have lost all contact with devotional practice, many of them without known sadhana, people whose real spiritual standards nobody actually knows, people who are doing nothing for ISKCON or exist only to criticize. We’ll find another place for rural community, at an smaller scale, so Srila Prabhupada would be satisfied with this intelligent act.”
So… let the waltz start. It is another front open in ISKCON’s Civil War. Whose side are you on?
My opinion is that the farms should be protected. Not only because nowadays is not the right time to sell anything, rather it is time to prepare for a future of uncertainty — maybe the time for the collapse of modern civilization that Srila Prabhupada very often mentioned. But also because Srila Prabhupada’s desire for small rural communities has never been taken up with enough sincerity by the ISKCON society. The oxen devotee has always been seen as a folkloristic aspect of Krishna conciousness. Leaders never tried to develop a real economy on the farms, to create a real society where devotees were not forced to go to work in the karmi society. No… farms were a weekend retreat for Sankirtana devotees, a curious place for organizing a Sunday feast, a shelter for devotees unable to do city Sankirtana… No real consideration – aside from some modelic isolated examples – have been given to self-sufficiency and the creation of Vedic villages. No real inspiration has been given to devotees to put all their thinking and their skills and energy into make real Srila Prabhupada’s dream of devotee communities, where the main thinking is Krishna and not “Where is the money, where is the money, what will happen next?”
So, the original impulse was right. Passion was put on collecting money and donations to get the farms. That was a success. Now there is a need to put the needed effort into develop those centers in such a way that a real society of devotees can come out. Economy, social organization, religion, education, services, technology, all of these things must be organized in the mode of goodness, to give an alternative to general society. We have done nothing till now on these matters. Srila Prabhupada’s instruction is there. Maybe it is not easy, not enough stress has been given to developing rural communities, but Srila Prabhupada’s instruction is there. We have done something, gotten the farms. Now it’s time to develop them. Or time to sell?
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