Pariprashnena — Q&A Archive

what does fallen mean?
that he wrote a controversial article or that that he ran away with someone elses wife?

physical falldown more than anything, controversial article will qualify him for a medal from the base devotees these days.

the more controversial the article then the more followers you can get from the education avoiding types (majority). people dont care so much about correctness as they do a good emotionally charged popularity stunt. so expert ambitious types make a career out of manipulating the folks who expect guidance to come in a way that measures up to the emotional impact that the cinema offers these days.

.... all the while avoiding the simplicity and piety of genuine Vaisnavism.

(hows that for an emotionally charged statement?)

:)

merriam-webster online on "base":
----------------------------------------
synonyms BASE, LOW, VILE mean deserving of contempt because of the absence of higher values. BASE stresses the ignoble and may suggest cruelty, treachery, greed, or grossness . LOW may connote crafty cunning, vulgarity, or immorality and regularly implies an outraging of ones sense of decency or propriety . VILE, the strongest of these words, tends to suggest disgusting depravity or filth .

since you dont qualify "controversial," caballero_vaishnava, i agree with your last post.

ys phani.

the consequences of sannyas, guru falldown:

http://www.chakra.org/discussions/succMay26_04.html

Can disciples really look to a fallen guru as a maha-bhagavata still? (scratch, scratch)

phani: I found the first meaning in my mother language (spanish) being --> Base = COMMON, so I was referring to common devotees.
If you are looking for synonyms to meet your ends, that is another thing.

ENGLISH SPANISH
EXACT RESULTS (23)
base [beuc0u618 s] adj com'fan [kou737 mun] adj
base [beu618 s] adj infame [inu737 fame] adj
base [beu618 s] adj vil [bil] adj
basa n base [u737 base] f
base [beu618 s] n base [u737 base] f

in english "base" does have a negative connotation (far as i know; my first language is german), and this discussion happens to be in english, not spanish.

but my previous post was just playing with words, splitting hairs, whatever you want to call it, and im sorry for that - i know what you wanted to say. i couldnt resist because the mistake you made in your use of english fits so well with what i perceive to be wrong in your argument or perhaps even your attitude (please try to forgive me if im wrong in my perception, if the attitude im talking about isnt yours):

"anything and everyone attacking the powers that be is ok; lets fight against the establishment, and the more noise it makes, the better."

i can sympathize with that because for a long time i considered myself an anarchist, thinking that everything would work out just fine if there wasnt any government, police, or private property; peoples good qualities would eventually prevail.

unfortunately thats not how things & people work, a realization that didnt come easy. we do need some structure around us, guidance from those who know more than we do, and if no maha-bhagavata is around to tell everybody what to do, well have to make do with who- and whatever we can arrange for the purpose.

smashing everything into pieces doesnt help, especially not whatevers left of srila prabhupadas ISKCON. IMO theres many good things left that i dont want to see trampled into the mud - even though some things arent right at all, and some people in leading positions may behave in ways that need straightening out. i have no problem if these are criticized, but the idea is to keep the welfare of all of us (my definition of ISKCON, roughly) in mind.

ys phani.

> Can disciples really look to a fallen guru as a maha-bhagavata still? (scratch, scratch)

thats up to the disciples, isnt it? sastra provides pretty clear description of the type of behavior that entitles a disciple to reject his guru, but it leaves a lot of leeway for the disciple to wait for his gurus return, or try to help him.

ys phani.

The question was about what society has to do, and what is procedure for fallen sannyasi, stick to ashram and guruship or get a white regular dhoti.

We all know that we can waste our life as we please, as in the case of the "forgiving" disciples.

Is that even good for the fallen individual?

> The question was about what society has to do, and what is procedure for fallen sannyasi, stick to ashram and guruship or get a white regular dhoti.

heres my understanding of this issue:

procedure is pretty clear: someone who doesnt follow the rules of an asram shouldnt pretend to belong to it. here in india brahmacaris are supposed to put on white once they start thinking or talking about marriage. many places i know enforce this rule pretty strictly - in regard to brahmacaris.

once you get to sannyasis and especially gurus, other considerations come into play: effect on ISKCONs reputation, the society as a whole, and on the disciples in particular.

i can understand the reasoning, particularly if its not a major offense the sannyasi was involved in and everybody thinks hell straighten himself out again really quick. (not raping anybody, just talking to someone too often, riding on a motorbike, something like that.)

trouble is this never works; somehow these things have a way of surfacing sooner or later, and whatever negative effects one wants to avoid get aggravated by the attempted cover-up. has happened a million times and is one main reason for people to loose faith in the leadership.

IMO itd be much better to face the music straight away and have the leaders lead by example: if something even seems fishy, then put on white. the sannyas-ministry can review everything and, if warranted, reinstate the person. whats the harm? were supposed to be more humble than a blade of grass, after all.

regarding guruship, that depends. from the institutions side, the GBC procedures for approving gurus should be applied again, probably: so many senior devotees to give no objection, and whatever else is required to become a guru nowadays. disciples have to decide for themselves, of course, if they still have faith in their guru, even in white.

get ready guys ... another guru falldown controversy is about to hit the fan. just heard about it today from a GBC friend - and its a particularly ugly scene involving alleged pedophilia.

here we go again .... Im getting used to this now and Ive only been involved with this institution for 10 or so years.

...

now. well see what are going to be the consequences for the involved. I hope not the usual mild chastisement (if any) for fallen, big problem for disciples and stampede in "zone".

They will say:
He did this on a moment of weakness.
They will glorify the service he did...in the past
They will say dont be cruel with him. We are vaishnavas!

Meanwhile:
Tears and anger in affected victims families.
Karmis who hear about this stop being interested in devotees.
Junior devotees lose faith and are afraid of anyone they know finding out about this.
90% of the devotees will say: i dont want to have anything to do with this. just chant hare krishna.
The rest will want to hang the managers but will be accused as aparadhis.

5 years later the story will repeat itself with another person who had just "a moment of weakness".

im afraid your pretty accurate in your predictions, abhiram prabhu. im also afraid youre wrong that well have to wait 5 years for a repetition.

and i still dont want to hang the managers. (if pedophilia is involved, i might want to hang the guy in question, though.)

people will make mistakes, will fall down from their vows, except very, very few, like srila prabhupada. thats a fact of life, and hanging anybody wont change it.

its not the managers personally who are at fault. the problem is that at some point in ISKCONs expansion they should have thought how this would work out in the long run, just using the corporate system of management and organization that sort of naturally was taken over from other companies and organizations.

after the first wave of devotees, many from hippy and new-age background, the leading positioins were taken over by people who had training and background in the corporate world, or at least subscribed to the ideas from that world. hippies arent very good at pushing themselves into front positons (and neither are humble devotees, by the way). people with corporate elbows are, and a lot of ISKCONs structure reflects this.

we want to expand, we want to make money (all for krsna, of course), so well do it like all the other guys who expand & make money. seems simple enough, but we ended up where we are now.

the whole idea is at fault, and i dont think any single manager, GBC, or guru can do anything about it unless the whole idea changes. hanging everybody wont achieve that, im afraid.

ys phani.

and on the other hand... an "offense" in the part of a expendable little devotee, meaning many times just disagreeing with a wrong managerial decision on them, results in:

* total ban from the temple/s
* they are "non devotees" for the rest of their lives
* anything they do is non authorized and maya, even if preaching of the first order
* any "accidental fall down, moment of weakness, mistake due to anger, etc is adding on the heavy unbearable weight of being a "demon".

I am sure you know at least one case, and still we cowardly shut our mouths up.

What to do?

Have we become another Church driven by passion and ignorance?

Help!!!

> I am sure you know at least one case

honestly, I don'92t. i'92ve read about cases, of course, but mostly they came from people using a lot of polemic and subscribing to crazy ideas like ritvikism, which disqualifies them from the very beginnning, in my eyes. (not polemic, but the r-thing.) i have to admit that i wanted to lump you in with the r-crowd in the beginning, but reading your comments carefully i had to revise that opinion.

i also have to admit that there are many things in the ISKCON world i know nothing about, and you'92d probably be right to say that i have been consciously ignoring them, running away.

i joined in '9282 (madras, india) and was fortunate enough to be in a protected, family type of environment: small temples run by good old SP disciples, who weren'92t into any crazy schemes or excesses.

i'92ve been TP for some seven years, in a pretty insular situation again: bangladesh. what problems we had didn'92t come from the top-hierarchy, but were created by ourselves: ambitious managers, petty politics, etc. i never experienced situations like you describe, never had to deal with autocratic or abusive regional secretaries or GBCs. i'92ve heard about problems in other parts of the world, of course, but it was easy to put them away as irrelevant, having enough on my plate as it was, without worrying about far-out places like US or europe.

later i came to mayapur and was involved for some time in local management as a dept.-head. again, what fried me wasn'92t the top-administration, but local-level politics, my inability and unwillingness to deal with them, and involvement in a family situation that was more than chaotic at times.

now i'92m looking after the congregational development ministry'92s web sites, and while still not liking it, i can'92t really ignore what'92s going on any longer. but my ability to help, you in particular or the world at large, is very limited, i'92m afraid. i'92ve removed myself successfully from most connections to ISKCON, locally and globally, dealing only with devotees i can easily relate to. one of them is my present '91boss,'92 kaunteya prabhu, secretary of the cong. dev. ministry and, since this year'92s GBC meetings, GBC for iran. he is an intelligent and decent devotee, but being the newest member in the GBC-club i'92m not sure how much he could do for you, or even wants to'97i know that he has many things to worry about already.

i can say what i think, revise my ideas as i learn more, and try to tell those few people who'92ll listen to me what i think should be done. what else am i supposed to do?

Dear Phani,

I can appreciate your sincerity and I apologize for my sometimes fiery torrent of words. Try to understand that this is mainly caused by my profound worry and anxiety to see how things are at the present moment and how they could easily be.

This last message of yours, believe or not is a great step in the healing of our movement. As we awake, the decent leaders will understand more and more and the rascal ones will not have anything to cling on and will have to depart for good.

And, yes there has been a lot of suffering, lots of sincere Srila Prabhupada disciples scattered for various reasons (main being Zonal Acarya blunder), matajis and cows mistreated and young devotee promises (I know a few very qualified youngsters being turned down right under my nose), etc etc.

At least, we should try to give shelter to each other and continue the mission of Srila Prabhupada, trying our best to fix things, mainly by the best way, self example, real mercy and staunch personal effort.. And, please leave out to themselves the merciless leaders, the no-brain followers and the hindu religion proponents.