What´s going on in Spain?

by Jagannatha Mishra das

All of a sudden and after almost 20 years living his own life apart, Vedavyasa Prabhu ( acbsp) came to “rescue” Málaga temple ( the situation is even worse than before after a year and just ask the regular people why they stop going there) and a few months later, he volunteered to “help” New Vrajamandala farm, going there for a few months. After barely 3 months of “helping” out, he sends a report to the European GBC with a specific plan for the sale of the farm (a 5 million€ property at this moment according with some devotees’ calculation), without consulting any of the residents of the farm or grassroots spanish devotees, not even the swami in charge of the farm, Kadamba Kanana Swami. The deal with the European GBCs is to sale for half the price (see worldwide economic crisis) and half of that goes for his own project in another part of Spain (yes, you read well, temple president for Malaga, for the farm and now wanting to use half of the money to buy land for his newly added project. Neat.

Now,  it looks like he has done a good deal to partition the booty with the National spanish council (laxsmi is always needed after all) and probably has a deal with the European GBCs to boost European projects too.

Such spoliation is done by a person that has serious character flaws and problems with money management, during more than 10 years he controlled exclusively all the millions that were pouring over from the sankirtan parties in the early eighties. we have the raw figures, but the expenses documents and details were burned by Veda Vyasa himself, when confronted with us. Then at that time sankirtan leaders wanted some explanation on the accounts after Bhagavan and the local swami fell down. We got no explanation and this fact led many devotees to stop sankirtan and collect Laxmi  altogether.

His character is far from amicable, sweet and people minded. He is known among his own godbrothers (e.g. ask Bhakti caru Swami) as a fierce cold hearted fanatic, incapable of developing normal relationships with anyone. Except for his own family, he actually counselled his daughter to take initiation from Puri Maharaja, and she and her husband (puri maharaj disciples too) are taking care of the day to day farm operation now. He is known also to despise Iskcon gurus and GBC, typical of a tamo guna devotee, thinking that he alone is very advanced.

And, the cherry on top, is that he is going to be proposed GBC for Spain. Sounds familiar? Prabhupada ”man” with a power trip?.

A few days ago, an internet group was opened in haste by concerned devotees to inform spanish devotees about the rascal silent operation.

All is going very fast, in a few days, 3, 4 and 5 of next month euro GBCs are coming to the farm to cement the deal. They say they come to consult the residents, but we know by now, how these things go, pre meetings, emails and telephone calls among a few elite authorities suffice to close the deal.

And having said all this, we, spanish devotees deserve it by all these years of silence, individualism and impersonalism. There you see, you have what you deserve after all.

Alea jacta est.

Wages for Sages?

unpublished comment to http://www.dandavats.com/?p=6541

by ccd

I found it particularly interesting to hear a definition where, as it seemed, such a clear line was drawn between those who are ‘maintained’ and ‘others’ e.g. congregational devotees. I welcomed some later comments where a lady (I think Malati) stressed that the definition was too much about ‘dependent’ devotees in direct contrast to congregation. Quite a few comments, especially when devotees were trying to highlight what contribution ‘non-maintained’ devotees can do, sounded as if they were limiting what type of services they can do. It almost suggested that if one does not reside in the temple, one can not be a preacher, can not be a pujari and can not be kirtaniya:-). A very notable I must say discovery, as I always thought that such segregation is highly counterproductive. Well at least we are not to be kirtaniyas for hire..

It will be highly unlikely to see this being fully resolved, but it appears that the movement in the right direction is being made. The danger is of course is if only semantics are changed and instead of the word ’salary’ a different word is being used – ‘dependents allowance’. Just by calling something differently, the essence will not change. To change the essence, one needs to encourage unmotivated, enthusiastic and ultimately unpaid service, but any step in that direction is a good thing, as you can not measure devotional service in dollars (not even if you follow the suggestion of Pragosha:-) to convert it all in gold as soon as possible). At the same time it has to be clearly an attractive feature – both materially and spiritually, to live in the temple.

I would suggest as a solution that salaries/maintenance allowances are not awarded by the temple or temple authority in the form of a contract, but rather donated by the congregational community board on a monthly basis. It will not only make community more involved, but will create (as suggested by Ravindra Swarup) an independent brahamana type of sevaks, not a sudra-like dependents.

It would be a nice thing to hear the question “Why Prabhupada was so specific and said, repeatedly, that no salaries should be paid?” in discussion. I guess if one answers it correctly, the solution is just around a corner.

From a more practical perspective, even it was touched by the discussion, the key should be not how to retain devotees in the temple (pensions / maintenance), but how to invite and engage devotees who are outside (96% that is). Good direction at 4%. What about the rest?

From concerned iskconmedia.com admins

We would like to express our views, concerning some difficulty we are having at www.iskconmedia.com.   We worked really hard putting together a nice photo gallery at this site.    It contains many photos of our founder acarya, Srila Prabhupada and so many beautiful pictures of Krishna, His pastimes, etc…  The BBT has sent an email restricting the site to use only twenty pictures, and other regulations.  We can understand the need to have a copyright notice, but to force us to take down the whole website that contains more than 19,000 photos, why?

 

The reason, they say is for protecting Srila Prabhupada’s rights, but how?  If they are referring to losing laxsmi on sales, it is proven that authors now WANT their work distributed widely on the internet.  Why?  When the author’s works is distributed widely on the internet, it becomes known, and people want the hard copy of it.

 

 Take for example, Paulo Coelho’s strategy:

“ I use the internet for distribution.  I released one book exclusively on the internet and we had an amazing one million downloads.  But even though this is a high number, I didn’t receive a single comment on the book.  No one was actually reading the book.  In 2001, we had really no readers in Russia.  My best seller, The Alchemist was selling a one thousand copies per year.  And then it was pirated on Bittorrent and people started to download it.  The next year it sold ten thousand copies, the following year, one hundred thousand copies, and today we have sold over ten million copies in Russia. “

 

Here are just a few advantages of the site:

Any devotee can print high-resolution pictures for their temple.  We have not seen another web site like it.    

We are now working on a word search, which you can search by locations, people, etc….

It is a fantastic way to distribute Srila Prabhupada’s photos on the internet.  

 

On the other hand, what are the advantages of prohibiting us from putting on these photos on the internet as we are doing now?  What could be the positive result of such actions?  How does this restriction enhance preaching?

 

We would really love to hear your opinion on this matter.

 

More “ksatriyas” for Bush

http://www.dandavats.com/?p=5016 Sankirtan nectar in the army (?)

It is unbelievable that intelligent people supposed to be vaishnavas take the role of soldiers for corporate America’s interests, but more puzzling is that an official ISKCON site takes part on this ignorance and happily endorses it.

We were told that Partha sarathi Prabhu was making the best of a bad bargain as he was enrolled previous to meeting his spiritual master, but THIS is shame, shame, shame…

refused post by user Kubrick at dandavats.com

Malati dd on breast cancer

http://www.chakra.org/news/blogOct15_07.html

I would recommend Malati dd to gather more information than the one coming from mainstream medical world before taking the post of “guardian” of Mother’s health.

For example there is data that generally speaking people lives more time and better lives if they DO NOT get conventional treatment. Also, the breast screening is just a way to gain “customers”; the sad truth is that cancer patients are lab rats and not more than that at this moment.

The most accepted idea in circles that are not so money bound about the cancer cure is to improve the immune system, and that is not exactly what the medical science is focusing on.

I will not want ANY mataji to become an object of experimentation for demons and a profit booster for pharmaceutical companies.

There are certain areas like surgery that medical science is very advanced and that is not to deprecate their expertise in those particular areas, but I would be very careful to put myself blindly in their hands for the above reasons and many more that would make this post too voluminous.

Open letter to Akruranath Prabhu

Dear Akruranath Prabhu,

pamho agtSP!

Thank you for your email, your kind words, and your time!

It is very strange that dandavats.com has given you my email address and that constitutes a privacy breach and not very polite on their part.

I know cause I am webmaster to several sites, forums, etc and that is a kind of primary duty, to maintain the privacy of users unless we are told otherwise. They should be writting to me on your behalf to see if I wanted to initiate a private email exchange with you.

I am including them as recipients of this email so I ask them here to erase my email address from their database to prevent such light give away again.

Not that this really bothers me, I am a kind of public person, but it doesnt speak well about the webmaster, or the authority above him, whoever he is.

No, I do not belong to any group, schism, reform, math, etc. I do belong to the internal ISKCON of Srila Prabhupada and his sincere followers, since the day one that I distributed magazines in the name of ISKCON when I was 14 years old, back in 1975.

My question is why you do not want to publicly debate the issue for the benefit of all?

My experience is that all people, be it karmis, new devotees, etc will benefit of a gentlemanly and straighforward exchange.

In the event that we do not arrive to a conclusion personally, still the disclosure and public debate of the different arguments will be always useful to one and all.

I am glad to hear that you have not traded Srila Prabhupadas desires for the often changeable establishment opinions and policies.

You ask me for the 1974 doc, here is the link:

http://16108.com/DOM/dom.htm
(the last document, at the bottom)

I recommend you the excellent article by Ameyatma das about the DOM:

http://www.harekrsna.com/sun/editorials/06-07/editorials1687.htm

Regarding the SB story you mention, personally I am finished with the cover ups in the name of advancing the mission, that are actually regressing it to unthinkable levels.Having myself been a TP, sankirtan leader, temple commander, tskp cook, etc, I can agree that some amount of flexibility has to be applied to leaders.

Sometimes managing can become so difficult that you may damage someone even unwillingly.

But what we are facing here is a major managerial question, so no personal considerations might be in place nor i think is needed.

Due to the censorship in dandavats my article-commentary (as is this letter) are being posted in my personal blog:

http://jaganat.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/dom-gbc-corporations-et-all

and at Sampradaya Sun:

http://www.harekrsna.com/sun/editorials/07-07/editorials1784.htm

 

your eager servant,

JMdas