In2-MeC

"Polish Woodstock" Festival, Zary, Poland
2 August 2003

Heaps of His Holinesses here: Indradyumna Maharaja of course, but also Jayapataka Maharaja, Bhakti Brnga Govinda Maharaja, Sacinandana Maharaja, Kavicandra Maharaja, Rtadhvaja Maharaja, Bhakti Vijnana Maharaja, Kadamba Kanana Maharaja; plus Dina Bandhu Prabhu from Vrndavana, Dharmatma Prabhu from Alachua USA, Mother Urmila from New Goloka (North Carolina) USA, and other famous names too numerous for me to remember right now.

With HH Danavira Maharaja at the Czech summer camp festival.	My Czech disciples gather round.

The devotees are working so hard late into the night to put on an excellent KC festival. Boy, are the Polish kids insane! All right, a few seem serious...I've gotten a couple nice questions from here and there. But most of these thousands upon thousands of young folks are staggeringly drunk and stutteringly incoherent. This crazy generation of Poles, the first of its kind to be seen in this country, is the fruit of modern education.

Poland is a Catholic country. The kids go to science class and learn that life appeared hundreds of millions of years ago as a protoplasmic blob in a primordial chemical soup. That blob gradually evolved into many species of sea life. One day a primitive lungfish crawled ashore and decided it liked the land. Its decendents mutated into all varieties of animal species. Homo sapiens was the capper.

Then the kids go to religion class. They learn that in the beginning God said let there be light and there was light. Within seven days He breathed life into a lump of clay to create Adam, the first man. While Adam slept God took a rib from his side and made the first woman, Eve. In the same religion class they learn that the Pope has given his blessing to Darwin's theory of evolution. The Holy See sees no contradiction between God creating mankind from a lump of clay a week after the beginning of time, and apes taking hundreds of thousands of years to mutate into human beings.

Yajna for the saligram-silas at the school in Zary, Poland.	Outside the Zary school with HH Kavicandra      Maharaja.

The kids come out of school as twenty-first century schizoid men and woman: one half of their brains hosting atheistic evolutionary theory, the other half host to a seven-day creation of the world by God. No wonder they go beserk and try to forget everything in a haze of alcohol and marijuana.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Saints are the sinners who keep trying. And that's why I argue, as I did yesterday, that a society like ISKCON is sure to retain some of the dirt that it is dedicated to clean up. I wonder why this is so hard to understand. Actually this question fascinates me. The mentality of persons who feel that ISKCON must be squeaky-clean in all respects--and if it is not, someone must be punished--I find quite remarkable, in a pathological sense.

To me, people who think like that are not merely naive. They are ill. What else can you say about persons who live with their eyes shut to simple facts of life?

With HH Jayapataka Maharaja.	With HH Kadamba-kanana Maharaja.

For example: name the place in any city where the world's most dangerous diseases are sure to be found. Is this a hard question? Don't you know what a hospital is?

What kind of person would insist that for a hospital to be "bona fide," it should be absolutely free of any trace of disease? That's a person who doesn't know a damn thing about the treatment of illness.

What kind of person would insist that for him or her to have faith in ISKCON, it should be absolutely free of any trace of sin and human failings? That's a person who doesn't know a damn thing about preaching, about rectification of the fallen souls, nor about Srila Prabhupada.

Watching the Srila Prabhupada Memories video series, we find again and again that Srila Prabhupada was very magnanimous in his treatment of his disciples' failings. He was not lax. Failings had to be corrected. But correction administered by Srila Prabhupada was never draconian.

The word draconian comes from a historical figure named Draco, who lived in Athens in the 7th century BC. He devised a legal system that was highly unpopular. Oh, it was very unbiased. But it was also very severe. Thus draconian means exceedingly harsh.

Those who reach for draconian legalisms are desperate fellows. They have "lost the touch" of how imperfect but basically sincere persons can be rectified of their errors. To my way of thinking, the more leadership turns to severe legal measures to control devotees, the less that leadership has taken to heart the mood and method of Srila Prabhupada.

Now, one can argue that Srila Prabhupada is unique. We oughtn't imitate him. He could guide by rule of love, but now in his absence we must have justice. I remember when I was elected chairman of the GBC, a Godbrother came to me to plead, "We must have justice!" I didn't trust his motives; and sure enough, a few years later he joined sides with a party of rtviks who sued the GBC in the Calcutta courts.

Kirtana in the "meditation tent"	With HH BB Govinda Maharaja.

While I am suspicious of persons who loudly sing "All you need is justice" (to the tune of the Beatle's All You Need is Love), I am certainly not an advocate of injustice. But look here: that person who is only just, has a mechanical and impersonal heart. A computer could be programmed to administer justice according to unbiased mathematical principles. Is this goodness? What kind of mentality demands that human beings should live under such a system? In its impersonality, it is just cruelty. And in fact it is stupidity.

I agree that Srila Prabhupada was unique. I agree that we can't do everything the way he did. But I believe it is a non sequitur that ISKCON must be tightly wrapped in legal codes. (Non sequitur is a term of logic meaning "it does not follow".) One thing Srila Prabhupada did that he himself said we shouldn't do is that he accepted a large number of disciples, many of whom were not qualified. This was his great mercy. This was his preaching vision. But he also warned it was a risk. If we continue to imitate Srila Prabhupada in this way, then we risk having a large class of "devotees" difficult to train. How to control such people? Stifle their freedom of movement under heavy lawbooks, that's how.

But does this make for a transcendental society? I don't think so. Heavy laws are needed to control people who can't control themselves. The foundational qualification of a Vaisnava is that he or she is dhira , self-controlled.

There is a very important instruction from Srila Prabhupada that, after all these years, ISKCON is still faltering to implement successfully. This instruction is found in a letter to Karandhara Prabhu dated 72-12-22.

There is some symptom of missing the point. The point is to be engaged in doing something for Krishna, never mind what is that job, but being so engaged in doing something very much satisfying to the devotee that he remains always enthusiastic. He will automatically follow the regulative principles because they are part of his occupational duty--by applying them practically as his occupational duty, he realises the happy result of regulative principles...our leaders shall be careful not to kill the spirit of enthusiastic service, which is individual and spontaneous and voluntary. They should try always to generate some atmosphere of fresh challenge to the devotees, so that they will agree enthusiastically to rise and meet it. That is the art of management: to draw out spontaneous loving spirit of sacrificing some energy for Krishna. But where are so many expert managers?

By this definition, the expert managers are not those who envision ISKCON as a sterile, squeaky-clean society of nicely programmed automatons. When I was young my mother used to buy me painting sets. The canvases came with numbered sections printed on them. The tubes of oil paint were numbered according to color. The method was called "painting by numbers"--in the sections numbered "2", I would brush on paint from tube number 2. In this way a landscape, or a bowl of fruit. or whatever the design of the painting was, would manifest. "Painting by numbers" is not art. Similarly, "serving Krsna by numbers" is not the spontaneous, voluntary devotional service that Srila Prabhupada instructed in the letter quoted above.

But because it is very predictable, it seems the safest way to go for a certain type of mind. This is the mind that values form over essence. That's a good definition of materialism: "the value of form over essence."

Essence is spiritual. We all are of that essence. Good spiritual management brings forth that essence. Maya will endeavor to smother that budding essence of the soul's true identity, but we should know that as long as the spiritual identity continues to grow, all setbacks are only temporary. The best solution for falldown is to increase spiritual engagement. The mundane legalist looks to suppression as the answer to human failings. The transcendentalist looks to liberation as the answer. But don't forget: in Gita 7.3 Lord Krsna states that not everyone is ready to take up the path of liberation.

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