Pariprashnena — Q&A Archive

Where is the stats? Its not my experience. When a guru visits the temple, all devotees come to hear him, not just his disciples.

>Its not my experience.

Then we must be living in different ISKCONs.

>Where is the stats?

There are devotees who will go to hear a Guru irrespective of whether they are his disciples or not but there are many who will go to hear only their own Guru.Onkars observation is not baseless. This phenomenon does exist.

I simply objected against generalization. Existence of a phenomena doesnt equal prevalence.

Yes, therere different ISKCONs in every country, often temples differ significantly.

>I simply objected against generalization. Existence of a phenomena doesnt equal prevalence.

Thats right. ISKCON is a big society with thousands of devotees and it will be wrong to generalize.

Veda - Yes, therere different ISKCONs in every country, often temples differ significantly.

I do not understand . Can you pls explain further.

It means that the overall temple atmosphere differs, often significantly. It could be classified acc to four varnas:

- brahmana (strict sadhana, renunciation, detachment, philosophy, learning slokas, study of sanskrit)
- ksatriya (discipline, systematization, control)
- vaisya (result-oriented, business)
- sudra (hard work or entertainment-focused and easy-going, too much of bodily care)
- transcendent (jive-daya, nama-ruci, vaisnava-sevana)

If devotees (esp. leaders) with particular tendencies prevail, they influence the temple atmosphere.

Actually we never experienced this in iskcon however recently we saw such symptoms in devamritas sawmis disciples who seem to be gradually changing....since their preaching strategy is lacking .They are becoming more and more a householder community,naturally they are forced to adapt. Because in their sub-culture,such grihastas are barely devotees....close to total fall down... they are searching for acceptance .Hence are more inclined to appreciate deity worship...and the total Iskcon mood and flavour within our fully loaded temple experience and matured family environment..However many temples are on survival mood especially it seems in the USA.This many times creates a slightly unusual attitude and dynamic,which is symptomatic of spiritual immaturity and general hand to mouth survival.. ......Since many temples have few senior devotees these days and we truly are unable to fully appreciate such devotees ...both men and women,such varied moods are because many householders and so called brahmacaris are lazy and usually on government assistance in my humble opinion..!Either way management is responsible to fashion a progressive sankirtan environment and culture to at least pay all the bills.

Such slightly immature attitude is natural when one firstly enters Iskcon....however we are a siksa bhagavat line after the profound influence of srila Bhaktisiddanta saraswati takura.So as we serve older servants of radha and krishna we do infact change for the better.

VEDA - Prabhu

Correct me if i am wrong. What you are saying is there are different levels of devotees on
different levels of spiritual / social advancement and if the leader of that particular temple happens to
have a sudra mentality prevailing then this particular nature tend to influence the temple
atomsphere meaning the rest or most of the devotees in that particular temple behaves likewise.

SGD prabhu

Is this the same Devamrita Swami who was with Kirtananda Swami before and who has been
bestowed the title " The Toilet Sannyasi " by some devotees.

sg: One leader is usually not enough, there must be more persons on the similar level. Therefore I said "prevail".