Working is required in the material world. Without working, you cannot get anything. Here you have to maintain your body and soul together. Therefore you have to work. So work can be divided in different ways, but one has to work. One may work as a brahmana (teacher), one may work as a ksatriya (public official), one may work as a vaisya (seller) or a sudra (manual worker).
(Srila Prabhupada, Geneva, June 7, 1974)
Infographic by Alissa Scheller for The Huffington Post.
In the French city of Montpellier, Thomas Pallot frets that his future now seems tainted. He is only 25 years old and recently embarked on a career as computer technician. But for the last two years, he has been unemployed.
Read full article at Huffington Post
My theory is that an increasing number of today’s youth are too mentally disturbed to hold down jobs. This is probably mostly due to the liberal’s atheistic, “morality is relative” agenda being crammed down their throats by movies, TV, school teachers, etc.
This should be a great opportunity for ISKCON. Trouble is, ISKCON is very weak, and unable to train them. This is obviously because of the ISKCON GBC’s concocted multiple guru system. This bogus system creates factionalization within ISKCON, and one effect of this factionalization, together with the effect of the ISKCON guru’s “my godbrothers are envious” propaganda, is the almost complete destruction of Srila Prabhupada’s “buddy system” for very effectively and efficiently training new bhaktas and bhaktins.
When I joined ISKCON Detroit in May of 1970, new devotees were joining almost every week, and there was intense social pressure to immediately shave up and start following all of the rules. Now, because devotees no longer speak with one unified voice, such intense social pressure to “shave up or ship out” is no longer possible.
The obvious solution is to return to Srila Prabhupada’s ingenious ritvik system of initiations. At ISKCON Detroit in 1970, many of the devotees were already initiated, but none of them, except for myself, the temple president and his wife, had ever even seen Srila Prabhupada in person. This means that the ritvik system was already firmly in place even at this early date. The actual initiation ceremony, in these cases of “initiation by mail,” would be performed by either the TP or whichever “ritvik representative of the Acharya” was nearest.
The system, in 1970-77 was, “If the temple president said that it was okay for you to get initiated, then you got initiated, otherwise not.” It was as simple as that! Why should it be any different today?
Pratyatosha writes: “It was as simple as that! Why should it be any different today?”
I think that may be the problem. The truth is simple. Most people can’t seem to accept that for some odd reason. Instead we have endless reams of position papers on “parallel lines of authority.”
Back in the 60s & 70s there was a hippies slogan, “Never trust anyone over 30!” I don’t know exactly what the youth of today feel about that, but maybe a lot of them don’t want to join an organization, such as ISKCON, which is being run by the “over the hill gang!” Srila Prabhupada said over and over again, “vanaprastha (retirement) at age 50.” This sounds to me like a prescription for getting rid of ISKCON’s “dead wood,” doesn’t it?