namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

This is a comment from Vijay Venugopala Prabhu, who together with his good wife Prema Padmini Mataji, established Bhakti-vriksha preaching in Mathuradesh (Middle East), where no regular temples are possible. They started from zero, and today there are thousands of devotees in this yatra. You can read an account of their preaching activities in Mathuradesh here, and an ongoing diary of their present service as "Bhakti-vriksha consultants" here.

The Bhakti-vriksha System provides the basic 'Mood' and 'System' for lifelong (not only 18 months) love, care, and training for devotees.

Most importantly, there is a complete Vaishanava Community Development program built around this, which produces a community where

• Everyone has the interests of the whole community at heart
• Everyone is trained to love every member as you love yourself
• Devotees learn to sacrifice their time, their false ego, their money, their privacy—and the results will be enduring
• Devotees get wonderful guidance and security to help cope with daily challenges
• Natural and innocent love burns away unhealthy behaviours
• The Vaishnava Community is a living organism—not a set of concepts and rules

At the end of the eighteen months, when the qualified among the members become leaders, they continue being guided and cared for with love by the same devotee (who was their Bhakti-vriksha group leader, and now becomes a sector leader). This guidance never stops. The training and milk-boiling never stops either—this is a living vibrant comunity, with a full complement of services, seminars, Bhakti-sastri courses etc., apart from festivals, dhama visits, etc. They share their entire lives together, including the samskaras of their families, from birth, till death.

And because the emphasis is on being servant leaders, rather than being ambitious and power-hungry, the leaders in a Bhakti-vriksha communty are eager to serve, and not at all eager to become leaders. The expansion thrusts servant leadership on them, which they take only as a responsibility to Guru, Srila Prabhupada, and Lord Caitanya. Rather than fulfilling any material desires, their old material desires get burnt away one by one due to their service mood and sacrifice.

I have lived with and seen all this for the last twenty years, and therefore wish to assure Devaki Mataji that I can show here all the above in real life.

Any community leaders anywhere in the world can choose either of the two systems and they will certainly not lose out in the slightest in terms of 'boiling the milk' if they choose Bhakti-vriksha; nor is it going to create a 'power trip' for anyone, since whatever system they choose, it is the community leadership which is in command in any ISKCON community, and not any outsider.

Your Servant,
Vijay Venugopal dasa