The San Francisco Ratha festival was very nice this year. Isvari dasi and Jaya Radhe dasi painted the Jagganatha deities — and they looked bright, fantastic, ecstatic. Good job! A few years ago it seemed there was barely enough people to pull the carts, but this year there were many more people, it was quite encouraging. Gauri Dasa Pandit’s son Damodara Prasad prabhu was leading one of the kirtans — and it was good to see some of the younger people finally being engaged. Overall, there were lots more younger people and less of the older fogeys.
I think the mood is changing, the younger people are basically taking over — albeit gradually — and that was very blissful to see.
Some of the older folks like Gurudasa, Pusta Krishna and similar others were there, but these veterans seem to be lost in “the good old days” and they have never spelt out their plan how to fix ISKCON’s future and get it moving ahead. Here in San Francisco there is no longer the 1980s era of “guru factions,” rather everyone seems to be solidly fixed on the worship of Srila Prabhupada. We are told that in other “zones” the followers of different ISKCON zonal gurus are not cooperating on projects, so at least we are getting ahead of that process here. Actually, Srila Prabhupada and most of the folks around here think the whole idea of a “guru” having a “geographical zone” is foolishness anyway.
Srila Prabhupada’s murti was there on the cart, just as he was on the cart in the 1960s, and all the mantras were being sung to him, so this was basically a Prabhupadanuga event. In that sense, the good old days are returning. This proves our theory that if people are allowed to worship the pure devotee Srila Prabhupada, then ISKCON will re-grow itself.
Bystanders were seen smiling and waving their hands in joy, and it was a very nice sight to see. It reminded me of the mood of earlier Srila Prabhupada era festivals. Sura was there with his band on stage and they were quite good. Good job Sura! There were also some other singers and dancers on the stage and they were great performers. Some of the young “Golden Gate park hippies” were jumping up and down during the kirtans, and it was really nice to see their enthusiasm. One of the hippie girls was later on sitting and reading a book by Srila Prabhupada very intently, and this was quite nice to see.
I talked to a lot of people at the site and it was interesting. One of the Alachua book distributor devotees asked me if I was “still criticizing.” I said that my view is the actual ISKCON view: that the ISKCON leaders like Jayadvaita are wrong to say that Krishna’s guru successors / acharyas are “engaged in illicit sex with men, women and possibly children.” I said folks like Vaisesika are wrong to promote these type of deviant thinkers as qualified to re-edit the books of Srila Prabhupada. He agreed.
I said Satsvarupa Das Goswami is also wrong to say that Krishna’s gurus are found “engaged in abominable actions” — like illicit sex, because now we are saying that our ISKCON gurus — who are said to be residents of Krishna loka — are abominable. And he agreed with me that these leaders and SDG are wrong to state these things. I explained that if we say the shaksat hari (same as God) guru is abominable, it is just like saying that God is abominable. He agreed this is wrong. In sum I said, “If we say the village drunk is equal to God, then we are attacking God,” he said this is not what he supports either.
I reminded him that one of the ten offenses is to consider the guru to be ordinary, and the ISKCON leaders even admit their “gurus” are worse than ordinary men, they are often perverts, criminals and deviants. He finally said he agreed with me on all of the above, and that we are probably more in agreement than not. Good progress. I also said that the ISKCON leaders are criticizing Krishna and Hinduism when they say that Krishna’s and Hindu’s acharyas are perverts and deviants, and I am merely pointing this out and that is not criticism, it is stating facts. So we are gradually getting more and more people to agree that the successors to God must be as pure as God, shaksat hari tvena. This is the standard.
I talked to some members of the Narayana Maharaja group and they were astonished to learn that Narayana Maharaja had invited me to his ashram to speak with him, first of all at eight in the morning, then he cancelled our meeting three times during the day and at five o’clock he left the property without seeing me at all. They agreed this is not even good karmi etiquette, and is unacceptable to cancel meeting another Vaishnava after inviting him to your house. They also agreed that Narayana Maharaja should not have backed the bogus gurus of ISKCON as he has done. They also agreed that for Narayana Maharaja to interfere when I was trying to reign in the child molesting was only helping the deviants and not the children. Overall, good progress.
One thing we noticed was that Jayadvaita swami (Jay Israel) did not show up. Last year, we told Jayadvaita that he has the greatest historical writer in ISKCON since — his summary of the ISKCON GBC guru process is when he wrote that ISKCON gurus are found to be “engaged in illicit sex with men, women and possibly children.” No one has summed up their post-1977 guru deviations better than that. Out of the 230 (or more?) gurus that the ISKCON GBC has “voted in” — most of them have fallen away into illicit actions. Then again Srila Prabhupada says that gurus who are “voted in” are — bogus.
Later on I told a group of other people that the same man who establishes the worship of the illicit sex messiahs club, namely Jayadvaita, is “editing the books” They were astonished at this! I said to these people, Srila Prabhupada says the guru is a resident of Krishna Loka, and Jayadvaita says gurus are engaged in illicit sex with men, women and possibly children, what is wrong with this picture prabhus!
So they agreed with me that we need to read original editions of the books. They were absolutely shocked to find that a person who says his guru lineage is chock full of deviants and perverts is writing anything at all! So it was a good day all way around. Some folks told me that Krishna Kanta Desai of the IRM has finally realized that we were right all along, since he too is writing exposes of the bogus guru sabha.
I also saw a few devotees who were looking very bad from drug habits and its is sad to say, but some of our devotees are dying of a broken heart which lead them to drug problems, due to being bereft of ISKCON — and they are falling away and dying. I told a few people that the ISKCON leaders are responsible for these people having to suffer like this by removing them from ISKCON artificially. So we said this is going to all come together at the time of death when these leaders will have to pay mightily for all the problems they have best upon others.
Rather oddly, one older devotee said to me that — for the ISKCON leaders — I am like “the grim reaper” because I am reminding them that when their guru party is over, they will have to answer up for their misgivings and mistreaments of so many vaishnavas at the time of death. I said, well sure, but its not me — it is the truth which is the grim reaper, I am merely reminding them of the truth. Overall, good progress in 2009. Our Hareksna org web site is also getting several million hits per month, so we are progressing along on all levels. Satyam eva jayate, ys puranjana dasa
Speak Your Mind