by Jayadvaita Swami
Bombay,
March 1998
Two years ago, when Krishnakant Desai and
Yaduraja Dasa came out with their supposed refutation of my paper “Where the
Rtvik People Are Wrong,” I was more amused than annoyed. Their arguments, I
thought, were so bad that hardly anyone would take them seriously.
I was naive. Some people have taken them seriously, and been
bewildered.
Still, I wasn’t going to waste time on a
further response. Rule One for dealing with fanatics: Don’t. But recently my
respected friend His Holiness Giridhari Swami earnestly requested me to
respond. So I said, “Ok, I won’t write a paper, but I’ll give you some
arguments, and you can do with them as you like.”
So I scribbled out some arguments (ok, I
typed them in WordPad). And by the time I was done, I thought, “Well, all
right. Might as well go ahead and publish the scribbles.”
So here they are. I apologize for the lack
of polish—sometimes the rtvik people are referred to as “they,” sometimes as “you,”
and so on. But in one sense I think this is the right form. Graffiti does not
deserve to be answered by Sanskrit poetry.
If at the end of reading this paper you’d
rather quit reading papers, leave controversies aside, and go back to reading Srimad-Bhagavatam and chanting Hare
Krsna, I will consider these scribbles something of a success.
Hare Krsna.
Jayadvaita
Swami
Bombay,
March 1998
Part 1
This paper has two parts because I wrote
it pretty much in two sittings. Throughout,
I give a quote from the supposed refutation of “Where the Rtvik People Are
Wrong,” followed by a response.
QUOTE:
“We shall use the term ‘Multiple Acarya
Successor System’, or M.A.S.S., when referring to your favoured method of
continuing the parampara - . . .”
RESPONSE:
Straw-man argument. The focus of my paper
is that the rtvik theory is bogus. The details of how the parampara should
continue is a subject my paper doesn’t deal with. So they are dragging in a red
herring (a fish we shall run into several times in the course of their paper).
QUOTE:
“According to your analysis we are
supporters of the ‘hard rtvik doctrine’ with a subtle modification
(underlined):
“Srila Prabhupada should be the only
initiating acarya for ISKCON, for as long as the society is extant.
All members of ISKCON should, in our
humble view, aspire to act as instructing spiritual masters, or siksa gurus.”
RESPONSE:
J Swami identified only three flavors of
rtvik theories. But fertile is the mind, and infinite are the possibilities for
concoction. So here we have a fourth. And other flavors could surely be
invented. Baskin-Robbins, here we come.
(NOTE: After going further down in the
paper, we find that their supposedly subtly different theory—shall we call it
the “semi-hard” theory?—is really not different from the “hard” one. But that’s
ok, even if you don’t have a different flavor, no harm in advertising that you
do.)
QUOTE:
“All members of ISKCON should, in our
humble view, aspire to act as instructing spiritual masters, or siksa gurus.”
RESPONSE:
A very humble view indeed. Here’s Krishnakant
Desai, not even initiated, and Yaduraja Dasa, a second-generation devotee,
advising Srila Prabhupada’s disciples, including GBC men and sannyasis and
Srila Prabhupada’s most senior devotees, how they should aspire to act. Very
humble indeed.
As Srila Prabhupada said, “Our Krishna Consciousness movement is based
on complete fellow feeling and love, but there is a word maryada which means
respect which should always be offered to the Spiritual Master and elderly
members.” (Letter to Jayapataka, 17
April 1970)
As Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu explained (Caitanya-caritamrta, Antya 4.130 -131):
tathapi bhak ta-svabhava—maryada-raksana
maryada-palana haya sadhura bhusana
“[I]t is the
characteristic of a devotee to observe and protect the Vaisnava etiquette.
Maintenance of the Vaisnava etiquette is the ornament of a devotee.
maryada-langhane loka kare upahäsa
iha-loka, para-loka—dui haya nasa
“If one
transgresses the laws of etiquette, people make fun of him, and thus he is
vanquished in both this world and the next.”
And (166):
maryada-langhana ami na paron sahite
“I cannot
tolerate transgressions of the standard etiquette.”
But I suppose that this must be an
emergency. Srila Prabhupada’s philosophy has gone to the dogs (his senior
disciples—woof! woof!), and only brave souls like Krishnakant and Yaduraja can
save it.
Great. But if you’re wrong and you’re
really just violating etiquette and committing aparadhas, may Lord Siva and his legion of ghosts have mercy on
your wretched and miserable souls.
QUOTE:
“Anyone wishing to initiate on their own
behalf should do the honourable thing and form their own institution.”
RESPONSE:
Among the devotees serving as gurus in
service to Srila Prabhupada, how many have expressed a wish to initiate “on
their own behalf” anyway?
Again, here our friends have defeated only
their own straw man.
QUOTE:
“The type of ‘spiritual master’ Srila
Prabhupada constantly encouraged all his disciples to become, was siksa, not
diksa.”
RESPONSE:
An authoritative statement from the Krishnakant Samhita.
QUOTE:
“This is clear from the purports to the ‘amara
ajnaya guru hana’ section of the CC: It is best not to accept any disciples’. (CC.Madhya Lila 7:130)”
RESPONSE:
They chose a great purport but the wrong
quote. This one would have been better:
[T]here is a
class of sahajiyas who think that
these activities [making disciples and writing books] are opposed to the
principles of devotional service. Indeed, they consider such activities simply
another phase of materialism. Thus opposing the principles of Sri Caitanya
Mahaprabhu, they commit offenses at His lotus feet. They should better consider
His instructions and, instead of seeking to be considered humble and meek,
should refrain from criticizing the followers of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu who
engage in preaching.
Apart from that: It’s best not to accept
any disciples. That’s why Srila Prabhupada accepted 5,000 of them, right?
QUOTE:
“To kick off there are two basic
assumptions in your paper which we feel are seriously flawed. The first of these is that p.s. rtvik, by
definition, means the end of the disciplic succession, or guru parampara. This is a false assumption.”
RESPONSE:
My paper doesn’t assume this at all. In
fact, it makes clear that according to the “soft” rtvik doctrine, the parampara system is supposed to
continue, as soon as one or more “self-effulgent acaryas” appear on the scene.
It would be nice if our friends would
argue against the assumptions I made, not the ones I didn’t.
QUOTE:
“ISKCON will only last for 9,500 more
years. Compared with eternity 9,500
years is nothing, a mere blip. That is
the time period in which Srila Prabupada shall remain the current link within
ISKCON. “
RESPONSE:
So their doctrine is now clear. It’s not
the “hard” rtvik doctrine “with a subtle modification.” It’s simply the
unmodified hard rtvik doctrine, as defined in my paper:
Srila Prabhupada
is the only initiating spiritual master for all ISKCON devotees, and he shall
continue to be so forever. Acting as rtviks on his behalf, certain disciples
may initiate new devotees, who then become not their disciples but his. ISKCON
shall follow this system, and only this system, forever.
Ok, “ISKCON shall follow this system
forever” means “as long as ISKCON exists.” But that’s obvious, isn’t it? Well,
I guess for guys who need to be told that “henceforward” need not mean “for all
eternity,” figuring out that in this
context “forever” means “as long as ISKCON exists” might come as
something of an intellectual breakthrough. Congratulations on your satori, men.
BY THE WAY:
Nearly all the rtvik people I’ve met have
tried to sell me on the “soft” rtvik theory (or the “hard/soft” one), in which
pure devotees sooner or later reappear and the disciplic succession continues.
Those rtvik people get no help from
Krishnakant. In fact, he’s their opponent. As our previous paper showed, the “hard”
and “soft” brands of rtvikism are mutually exclusive. If one is true, the other
must be false.
So even if Krishnakant’s arguments were
strong enough (which they’re not) to prove that his “hard” rtvik theory is
right, they’d also prove that the “soft” rtvik theory is wrong. So either Krishnakant
is right and the soft people are wrong, or I’m right and both he and they are
wrong. Either way, the “soft” rtvik theory is wrong.
(The “hard” one, of course, is wrong too.)
QUOTE:
“Previous acaryas have remained ‘current’
within the parampara for hundreds or even thousands of years. For example Srila
Vyasadeva.”
RESPONSE:
You picked a great example, didn’t you
guys?
According to a well-known verse, Vyasadeva
is among several ancient persons still alive even today. “Some of the sages,
saintly persons, are still living. Still living. They are tri-kala-jna. They have no past, present, future. When this whole
universe will be annihilated, then they will go to Vaikuntha or spiritual world
personally. So Parasurama, Vyasadeva, and many others, they are supposed to be
still living.” (Srimad-Bhagavatam
lecture, Los Angeles, 25 September 1972)
Even more to the point:
Regarding
parampara system: there is nothing to wonder for big gaps. Just like we belong
to the Brahma Sampradaya, so we accept it from Krishna to Brahma, Brahma to
Narada, Narada to Vyasadeva, Vyasadeva to Madhva, and between Vyasadeva and
Madhva there is a big gap. But it is sometimes said that Vyasadeva is still
living, and Madhva was fortunate enough to meet him directly. In a similar way,
we find in the Bhagavad-gita that the Gita was taught to the sungod, some
millions of years ago, but Krishna has mentioned only three names in this
parampara system—namely, Vivasvan, Manu, and Iksvaku; and so these gaps do not
hamper from understanding the parampara system. We have to pick up the
prominent acaryas, and follow from him. There are many branches also from the
parampara system, and it is not possible to record all the branches and
sub-branches in the disciplic succession. We have to pick up from the authority
of the acharya in whatever sampradaya we belong to.” (letter to Dayananda, 4 December 1968)
That does a lot to support the posthumous
rtvik doctrine, doesn’t it?
QUOTE:
“The second point we need to urgently
address is your ‘regular vanilla’ concept.
If there is one feature which most distinguishes diksa transmission in
our guru parampara, it is that it is almost entirely devoid of regularity. . .
.We feel the ‘regular vanilla’ frame is drastically incomplete, and hence
potentially misleading.”
RESPONSE:
The “plain vanilla” they’re so unhappy
about is merely a statement, in the plainest possible terms, of Srila
Prabhupada’s basic teachings on the subject of parampara, the teachings His Divine Grace repeated again and again
and again.
In the rest of their paper, our friends
will devote an inordinate amount of effort to trying to pierce holes in those
teachings, by coming up with “exceptions,” “irregularities,” and whatever else
they can scrape up.
In this way, they will take Prabhupada’s
teachings—clear, simple, and standard—and try to turn them into something
equivocal, complicated, and full of ifs, ands and buts. “Potentially misleading”
indeed!
By the way, I said “plain vanilla,” not “regular
vanilla.” “Plain” as in “simple,” “clear,” “unadorned,” “easily understood.”
They change it to “regular vanilla” so that they can play their little word
game of contrasting “regular” with “irregular.” Ho hum. Are we having fun yet?
QUOTE:
“According to you the regular form of
diksa involves a guru teaching his disciple everything he needs to know about
Krsna Consciousness. The disciple cannot just enquire philosophically from the
guru, he must personally approach and serve him as well - (we are not sure if
you mean this service and approach must be to his physical body, one to
one. If so that was certainly not Srila
Prabhupada’s modus operandi - many of his disciples never met him physically at
all). After the guru leaves the planet,
the disciple is connected to him largely through his indebtedness and is
immediately free to act as a diksa guru, initiating his own disciples.”
RESPONSE:
Step one in attacking what JS said: Change
it.
Step two: Attack the changed version.
“According to you the regular form of
diksa involves a guru teaching his disicple everything he needs to know about
KC.” Well, that’s not quite how I put it, is it? Where are you getting this
from?
“The disciple cannot just enquire
philosophically from the guru, he must personally approach and serve him as
well.”
Is that also supposed to be “according to
Jayadvaita Swami”? (Hmm. One must surrender to the guru, enquire from him and
serve him—those of us who’ve been at least through the new bhakta program
probably recognize the verse that idea comes from.)
“(we are not sure if you mean this service
and approach must be to his physical body, one to one. If so that was certainly not Srila Prabhupada’s
modus operandi - many of his disciples never met him physically at all).”
Of course you’re not sure, because, it
seems, you’re looking for some sort of hidden meaning in what JS wrote. JS
meant what he said, that’s all. Why are you unsure whether JS means that the
service “must be to his physical body”? Because that’s not a topic the JS paper
is talking about.
“After the guru leaves the planet, the
disciple is connected to him largely through his indebtedness. . . .” Again,
you’re replacing what JS actually said with something of your own concoction.
Or reading into his words something he never intended.
Well, that’s not surprising, is it? For
our friends, this seems to be the regular stock in trade: Take an author’s
words, screw your own meaning from them, and then misrepresent your screwed-up
version as being what the author intended.
Well, maybe they can get away with that
with Srila Prabhupada, because he’s no longer physically present to protest.
But, unfortunately for them, this time the author is still physically on the
scene, and here’s what he says: “Krishnakant and Yaduraja, you’ve
misrepresented me. What I really said and what you say I said —what I intended
and what you say I intended—are entirely different. You’re full of prunes.”
Free advice: Next time you want to
misrepresent an author’s intended meaning, do it the way you did with Srila
Prabhupada: Wait till he’s no longer physically around to say you’re wrong.
What JS actually said:
The genuine
disciple feels everlastingly indebted to the spiritual master and continues to
serve him forever. In this way, even when the master leaves this world, the master
and disciple are connected.
The author’s own explanation: “Yes, the
spiritual master and disciple are connected by that feeling of indebtedness.
But, more important, they’re connected by service.
The disciple who sincerely serves the spiritual master is always connected.
If you have a problem with that, tough beans.”
“After the guru leaves the planet, the
disciple is . . . immediately free to act as a diksa guru, initiating his own
disciples.” Well, look in the essay again: JS didn’t say that either.
Again, the strategy: Modify what the
author said, then attack the modified version.
QUOTE:
“Perhaps we are in deeper trouble than you thought.”
RESPONSE:
Yes, we certainly are.
You’ve now completely misrepresented what
JS described as “plain vanilla,” and you’re going to proceed to tear apart the
misrepresented version. And some people are going to take you very seriously,
not realizing that you are leading them into deep doo-doo.
QUOTE:
“The very first example you give involves
interplanetary diksa, (Bhagavad Gita 4.1).”
RESPONSE:
The authors here begin to argue—seriously!—for
interplanetary diksa. “We. . . know that as a Mahabhagavat Srila Prabhupada is
at least as powerful as demigods like Iksvaku. So transferring or transmitting
diksa to receptive disciples should present him no difficulty at all, from
whichever planet he may presently reside.”
Interplanetary diksa—does my memory fail
me?—is not a course of action Srila Prabhupada recommended. But our authors are
very bright and creative people. So why not? Hold onto your hats, ladies and
gentlemen! You’re in for quite a ride.
QUOTE:
“[Interplanetary diksa] seems to be
slightly more mystical than mere feelings of ‘indebtedness’. . . “
RESPONSE:
The authors are to be commended for this
astute observation.
QUOTE:
“If you really do believe 4.1 is an
example of ‘regular’ diksa then maybe we are not so far apart after all. [Some people say] that off-world diksa
transmission violates sastra. And yet by
using 4.1 as your only sastric example of the parampara you imply it is quite
the thing to do.”
RESPONSE:
Huh?
I start off quoting the standard verse
from Bhagavad-gita, and by the time
KK and YD are through with me, I’m implying that people should seek diksa from
gurus on other planets. Wonderful!
QUOTE:
“We have observed that violations of ‘regular
vanilla’ fall into five basic categories, although we do not deny there could
be many others:”
RESPONSE:
Again, the strategy is made clear: Take
Srila Prabhupada’s standard teachings and shoot them down by finding diverse “violations.”
QUOTE:
“1) Gaps.”
RESPONSE:
For our friends out there, “Gaps” affords
an opportunity to get creative. For those more sober, Srila Prabhupada’s answer
to Dayananda Dasa is enough to put the matter to rest.
Note also:
This subject of “gaps”—how Srila
Prabhupada dismisses it and how our friends seize upon it—demonstrates a clear
difference between what Srila Prabhupada was doing and what our rtvik friends
are up to. Srila Prabhupada was in the business of extinguishing needless doubts. Our friends are in the business of igniting them.
QUOTE:
“These [gaps] are all the occasions when
an acarya in the parampara leaves, and there is no next link to immediately
start initiating. Or the person who is
to become the next link does not immediately receive authorisation from his
spiritual master to initiate on, or straight after, his departure. For example there was a gap of some twenty
years between the departure of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta and the next bona fide
initiation in our sampradaya. Gaps of
more than one hundred years are not uncommon between members of the disciplic
succession.”
RESPONSE:
The logic here is intolerably bad. Srila
Prabhupada was initiated in 1933, in the physical presence of his spiritual
master. But the fact that he himself didn’t initiate until 20 years later is
somehow proof of a “gap,” akin to the supposed gap between Vyasa and
Madhvacarya, and evidence for the cuckoo-bird philosophy of post-samadhi
rtvikism.
Put in another context, the argument would
go like this:
Sons take birth from fathers and
themselves become fathers. But sometimes fathers have no sons until 20 years or
more after their own fathers have passed away. This is clearly a gap—a “violation”—and
it demonstrates that a son need not be born of a father. He can just as well be
born of his grandfather.
Right.
QUOTE:
2) Reverse gaps. . . .
3) Siksa/diksa links. . .
4) Mode of initiation. . .
RESPONSE:
The arguments here amount to virtually
nothing.
QUOTE:
“5) Successor systems.
“This refers to differing successor acarya
systems within our sampradaya. For
example Srila Bhaktisiddhanta adopted a ‘self-effulgent’ successor system. As far as we know Srila Prabhupada opted for
an officiating acarya system with his books as the successor.”
RESPONSE:
As far as you know. We’re glad you said
that.
QUOTE:
“With such abundant variety as this it is
a challenge to identify what ‘regular vanilla’ actually means.”
RESPONSE:
In other words: When Srila Prabhupada
spoke of parampara, “disciplic
succession,” he was speaking of something so complex or so obscured by
violations and exceptions that we can barely make out what he meant. Srila
Prabhupada gave no plain, standard teaching. The real truth is “tutti fruti”—almost
anything goes.
Yes indeed.
Our friends proceed to argue further along
this line. The arguments are just more of the same. No need to waste time on
them.
QUOTE:
“If by ‘regular vanilla’ you are referring
to the general principle of accepting a current link guru who is an authorised
member of the disciplic succession, then we are in total harmony.”
RESPONSE:
By now it’s clear you haven’t a clue what
I’m referring to.
The rest of your paragraph is just
rhetoric. “The p.s.rtvik system allows unlimited numbers of people to approach,
enquire and serve Srila Prabhupada, who is just such a spiritual master. The mechanics of how such acceptance takes
place may vary according to time place and circumstance, but the principle
remains the same. This principle is
certainly not compromised in any way by p.s.rtvik.”
Ok, Srila Prabhupada is the siksa-guru of
everyone. That’s not compromised by the p.s. rtvik doctrine, any more than it
would be by the Telehone Pole doctrine (as long as you accept Srila Prabhupada
as your siksa guru, you can get initiation from the telephone pole of your
choice). So what? Does that mean the p.s. rtvik thing is legitimate? No.
QUOTE:
“According to the cover of the Bhagavad
Gita (1983 edition), which you yourself revised, Srila Prabhupada is the
current representative of the disciplic succession. Despite being clearly stated on your own
revised book, when we last met, you adamantly insisted in the strongest
possible terms, that Srila Prabhupada was in fact not the current
representative of the disciplic succession.
“To justify your dramatic shift in
position since ‘83. . .”
RESPONSE:
The sales copy on the book jacket (and did
Jayadvaita Swami write it, or edit it, or even see it?) is now supposed to be a
clear statement of his philosophical views.
QUOTE:
“To justify your dramatic shift in
position since ‘83 you invoked the injunction that ‘in order to be a current
link the guru must be physically present’.”
RESPONSE:
What our friends dive into after that is
an account of a discussion they had with JS, with a batch of arguments about “current
link.” Conveniently, our friends are now able to argue against points they
selectively remember from a conversation.
But we thought, from their opening words,
that they were going to be responding to JS’s paper. In that paper, “current link” isn’t even mentioned.
We don’t blame them. If we had to argue
against that paper, we’d look for a way out of it too.
Anyway, here’s what their argument is
leading up to. . . .
QUOTE:
“As
the current link, it is Srila Prabhupada we must approach for initiation.
[emphasis in original]
“Whether Srila Prabhupada is physically
present or not is utterly irrelevant to the transcendental process of diksa, as
he made amply clear in his books, in his lectures, in his conversations and
letters - time and time and time again:
“ ‘Physical presence is immaterial’, (S.P Lecture 19.1.67)” [etc.]
RESPONSE:
What this amounts to, clearly, is an
attack on the idea of disciplic succession.
According to the dictionary meaning, succession
is “the coming of one person or thing after another in order, sequence, or in
the course of events.”
It’s this idea of “sequence” our friends
have trouble with. Why should the succession go from Srila Prabhupada’s
spiritual master, to Srila Prabhupada, to his disciples, to his
grand-disciples, and so on? Why not just directly from Srila Prabhupada to
anyone, now or 9,000 years from now?
Thus, what are friends are arguing for is
not “disciplic succession” but “disciplic cessation”—an end to the parampara system. Or—to be fair to them—a
9500 year period in which the succession is “put on hold.” Followed, in their
account, by the demise of ISKCON and, in short, the utter disappearance of
Krsna consciousness.
You see, they’re not arguing that the
disciplic succession should end. Just that it should go on hold until spiritual
life on earth becomes untenable and such niceties as “disciplic succession” no
longer matter anyway.
And that, you see, is what Srila
Prabhupada “consistently taught up until 1977.” Got it?
Hare Krsna.
PART 2
Our friends now proceed.
QUOTE:
“Let us now go to the centre of the
controversy. The final instruction.
“Although you optimistically refer to the
May 28th conversation as the ‘final instruction’; on consulting our fully
authorised BBT calendar we find that July actually follows on from May by two
months.”
COMMENT:
Here the authors are being not only cute
but insulting. “You can’t even tell time.”
If people ten or more years my junior in
the Krsna consciousness movement find pleasure in insulting me, I don’t mind. I’m
sure I deserve to be insulted.
I’m also sure they can find ways to “prove”
they’re being Krsna conscious. Oh, well.
As vexing as it may be to have to explain
what ought to be obvious—and as vexing as it may be to know in advance that for
every bogus argument knocked down, two more will spring up in its place—here
goes:
I refer to the May 28th conversation as “the
final instruction” for a simple reason: It’s the last time in history that
Srila Prabhupada is directly asked the relevant question we’re discussing—How
would initiations go on after his
physical departure.
The question, placed before Srila
Prabhupada by His Holiness Satsvarupa Maharaja, is as follows:
Then our next
question concerns initiations in the future, particularly at that time when you’re
no longer with us. We want to know how first and second initiation would be
conducted.
That’s precisely the question at hand. It
is asked clearly and unambiguously. And that is the question to which Srila
Prabhupada, on May 28, is undoubtedly responding.
You would like to believe—and you would
like us to believe—that the letter written on July 9th is also a direct answer
to that same question.
But why do we have to believe this? Does
the letter say it? No. Then who says it? You
do. Fudge!
The logic goes like this:
Thesis: The “final
answer” to Satsvarupa Maharaja’s question comes not on May 28 but on July 9.
Q: How do we
know that this is the “final answer”?
A: Because July
comes after May.
Q. But how do we
know that the letter written in July is truly addressed to the question asked
in May?
A. Because it
is.
Q.E.D.?
QUOTE:
“You say everyone accepts the July 9th
order and the establishment of the rtvik system. In our experience most devotees have never
read the July 9th letter before we give it to them, and are quite surprised
when they do.”
RESPONSE:
You are becoming tiresome. How many times
am I going to have to deal with statements from you beginning with “You say”
and ending with something I never said?
Here’s what I actually said:
Now, let’s move
on to something else that everyone agrees on.
Srila Prabhupada
himself, in 1977, appointed eleven disciples to serve as rtvik gurus, or “officiating
spiritual masters.”
He authorized
these rtviks to decide which candidates to accept, and to chant on the
candidates’ beads and give the new disciples spiritual names. The rtviks were
to do this on Srila Prabhupada’s behalf, and the new disciples were to be not
those of the rtviks but of Srila Prabhupada himself.
On July 9, 1977,
Srila Prabhupada signed a document that makes these facts unmistakably clear.
Do you see here—or anywhere else in my
paper—”everyone accepts the July 9th order and the establishment of the rtvik
system”? My point was not that everyone has read the July 9th letter, or that
everyone accepts your posthumous rtvik guru system, but simply that just about
everyone agrees that Srila Prabhupada appointed eleven rtviks.
Yet again, you are arguing with your own
straw man, not with me.
QUOTE:
“[On May 28, after some “muddled questions
about disciple relationships”] Srila Prabhupada then finishes by saying that
there would be gurus if he orders them, and should he ever do so there would
then be disciples of his disciples. Just
see.”
RESPONSE:
Notice how faithfully our friends have
reported what Srila Prabhupada said.
The transcription reads:
When I order, “You
become guru,” he becomes regular guru. That’s all. He becomes disciple of my
disciple. That’s it. [or—an alternative transcription—”Just see.”]
But in the hands of our friends, “when”
becomes “if.” And they have helpfully (that is, meddlesomely) added “should he
ever do so.”
In sum: They are putting words in
Prabhupada’s mouth.
They do it to me, they do it to His Divine
Grace. They do it and do it and do it.
By the way, the “muddled questions” they
speak of are such as this:
Tamal Krsna
Maharaja: [T]hese rtvik-acaryas, they’re officiating, giving diksa. . . . The
people who they give diksa to, whose disciple are they?
A muddled question indeed! But if you can’t
accept Srila Prabhupada’s answer, then of course you’d like to get rid of the
question.
Our friends then proceed further with
their interpretation of the exchange on May 28th. No need to comment on that
here. In a paper by Giridhari Swami, Umapati Swami, and Badrinarayana Prabhu,
that interpretation has already been demolished.
Only perhaps one more point, in passing:
They again assail “your M.A.S.S. doctrine,” as if they were attacking something
my paper advocated. Again, clearly this is easier than addressing what the
paper actually says.
QUOTE:
“The final order
“Moving on to the actual ‘final order’, .
. . “
RESPONSE:
Again: Why is this ‘the final order’ as to
initiation after Srila Prabhupada’s departure? Because Krishnakant and Yaduraja
say it is, that’s why. It is “the final order” merely by their fiat. Phooey!
The paper continues with some brief
sophistical arguments not worth talking about. Then. . .
QUOTE:
“From
where do you derive the notion that Srila Prabhupada wanted the system to stop
at his departure?” [emphasis in original]
RESPONSE:
That’s what my paper was about. But while
busy jousting with straw men, you seem to have missed it.
How much time am I supposed to waste going
around in circles with you? For the answer to your question, read my paper
again.
QUOTE:
“[T]he most important issue, the one which
Satsvarupa Goswami and all the GBC had specifically asked him about, i.e the
process of initiation for after his departure and on for ten thousand years, he
remained utterly silent on. No written instructions to his temple presidents,
no orders to the GBC, no signed letter.
The absurdity of this proposition beggars belief.”
RESPONSE:
Srila Prabhupada speaks to a delegation of
his GBC men, and because he doesn’t put his words into writing, according to
you he is “utterly silent.” The absurdity of this proposition beggars belief.
QUOTE:
“If Srila Prabhupada’s teachings on how to
run the parampara in his absence were as crystalline clear as you imply they
were, for an entire decade, so clear he did not even need to issue a specific
directive to the movement on the matter, why on earth did the GBC send a special
delegation to his bedside in the first place?”
RESPONSE:
Again, you are badly missing the point. My
paper is not about “how to run the parampara.” It’s about the fact that there’s
supposed to be a parampara.
Which—ok, ok—our friends accept. There’s
supposed to be a parampara, a disciplic succession—just there aren’t supposed
to be any successors. More precisely: For the next 9,500 years, no successors.
After that, no nothing.
Just as Prabhupada taught us, right?
QUOTE:
“The only examples you can offer of Srila
Prabhupada ever mentioning his disciples initiating are extracted from letters
to ambitious deviant devotees like Tusta Krsna.”
RESPONSE:
Well, I suppose I could offer more
examples. But what would be the use? Whatever words from Srila Prabhupada I
might offer, you can simply wave them away, as you do here, in this case by a
character attack on Tusta Krsna.
If I were trying to defend your argument,
and if I were up against such a clear, unequivocal, unambiguous statement as we
find in Srila Prabhupada’s letter to Tusta Krsna, I suppose I’d be desperate to
get rid of it too.
You can speculate on Srila Prabhupada’s
motives. You can try to trivialize Srila Prabhupada’s letter by disparaging its
recipient.
But you can’t get rid of it. In fact, here
it is again, this time in its entirety.
New Delhi
2nd December,
1975
My Dear Tusta
Krishna Swami,
Please accept my blessings. I beg to
acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 21 November, 1975. Every student is
expected to become Acarya. Acarya means one who knows the scriptural
injunctions and follows them practically in life, and teaches them to his
disciples. I have given you sannyasa with the great hope that in my absence you
will preach the cult thruout the world and thus become recognized by Krishna as
the most sincere servant of the Lord. So I’m very pleased that you have not
deviated from the principles I have taught, and thus with power of attorney go
on preaching Krishna consciousness, that will make me very happy as it is
confirmed in the Guru vastakam yasya prasadat bhagavata prasadah just by
satisfying your Spiritual Master who is accepted as the bonafide representative
of the Lord you satisfy Krishna immediately without any doubt.
I am very glad to inform you that
Sudama Vipra Maharaja is also now following my principles. So I am very very
happy to receive all this news. Thank you very very much.
Keep trained up very rigidly and then
you are bonafide Guru, and you can accept disciples on the same principle. But
as a matter of etiquette it is the custom that during the lifetime of your
Spiritual master you bring the prospective disciples to him, and in his absence
or disappearance you can accept disciples without any limitation. This is the
law of disciplic succession. I want to see my disciples become bonafide
Spiritual Master and spread Krishna consciousness very widely, that will make
me and Krishna very happy.
I hope this letter finds you well,
Your ever well wisher,
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Of course, we’re supposed to believe that
this letter is just a sop for a deviant. The rest of us can blithely disregard
it, because—how obvious!—it wasn’t published to the world. And what Srila
Prabhupada told Tusta Krsna about making disciples was of course something the
rest of us had never heard about. As if we’d never read the first verse of Upadesamrta:
vaco vegam manasah
krodha-vagam
jihva-vegam
udaropastha-vegam
etan vegan yo visaheta
dhirah
sarvam apimam prthivim sa
sisyat
A sober person who can tolerate the urge to
speak, the mind’s
demands, the
actions of anger and the urges of the tongue, belly and
genitals is
qualified to make disciples all over the world.
So long as he does it as a rtvik, right?
I’m sure there’s a Krishnakant purport to
that verse. But here’s Srila Prabhupada speaking—secretly? to ambitious
deviants?—in the Srimad-Bhagavatam class
in Sridham Mayapur (March 6, 1976), 10 days before Gaura Purnima:
[P]eople in
general, they cannot understand, but those who are
preaching, they
must be very sincere, the same way. Rupa
raghunatha
pade,
haibe akuti. They should read the literatures, the
instruction,
just like Upadesamrta, The Nectar of Instruction. We
should follow,
strictly follow.
Then prthivim sa sisyat. Then you’ll
be able to preach
and make
disciples all over the world. This is the injunction.
It really is.
WINDING UP:
I’m getting tired of this. I’ve been
through ten pages of your piece, full of specious arguments, and ten pages are
yet to go, full of arguments equally crummy. Am I supposed to take it all
seriously? Your paper doesn’t deserve it.
Anyone who hasn’t figured out by now that
your paper and its theories aren’t worth two turds in hell would be unlikely to
get the message even if I were to write a book as long as the Mahabharata, as tight as the Vedanta-sutra, and with footnotes as
numerous as the verses in all the Vedas.
Oh, yes. I can hear it already: “Jayadvaita
Swami chickened out. Our arguments were so powerful there was nothing he could
say.”
Fine. You can spend the next 9500 years
preaching to the world that Srila Prabhupada has frozen the disciplic line,
from now till the year 11,500, by little more than one “henceforward” and three
words about property trustees in his will. Meanwhile, I’m getting on with my
work.
Just one more thing. . .
QUOTE:
“THERE IS NO REGULAR VANILLA. . . .
[capitals in original]
“In summary, you insist on the following:
“a) The rtvik system must stop.
&
b) It must stop on Srila Prabhupada’s
departure.
“Neither statement a) or b) appears in the
July 9th letter. They are purely your
own invention. An invention inspired by
the ‘regular vanilla parampara system’, which, as we have clearly shown is
itself another fiction created from your own imagination, with no basis in
reality.”
RESPONSE:
For some reason, the July 9th letter is
now supposed to be the essence of everything, and nothing can be said without
reference to it. Nonsense cannot be called nonsense unless Srila Prabhupada
explicitly said it was nonsense in a letter on July 9, 1977. A curious
restriction on evidence.
Anyway:
For anyone who might think that earlier
you were merely being cute, not insulting, this time the insult should be
clear.
I am supposed to be Srila Prabhupada’s
disciple, a preacher of his words, yet what I present as his plain teachings,
you dismiss as a fiction, an offspring of my imagination.
As I mentioned before, I’m sure I deserve
to be insulted. But Srila Prabhupada’s teachings do not.
And so I am adding as an appendix to this
paper my supposedly fictional work, this time with footnotes. However much you
say you honor Srila Prabhupada, I don’t believe you should be allowed to walk
up and punch his teachings in the face.
Hare Krsna.
In
Srila Prabhupada’s service,
Jayadvaita
Swami
