namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

These resolutions I found looking through the published minutes of ISKCON's Governing Body Commission, mostly in Dandavats.com archives.

Originally I wanted to provide a reference of laws that exist in our society to deal with problems between rank-and-file devotees and their managers. Such procedures have been laid out by the GBC and I'll publish them here a little later (almost falling asleep, and will have to spend most of tomorrow at the lab's and my doc's waiting room).

I found the spirit of this Guideline from 1996 very inspiring, though, and wanted to bring it to your attention straight away. If everybody followed this, there'd be much less problems than we see today...

by Ravindra Svarupa das

In this essay, Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu describes his involvement in ISKCON's guru reform movement, instrumental in ending the "zonal acarya system," the dark ages into which ISKCON descendet soon after Srila Prabhupada's disappearance from this planet.

Analysing what went wrong with ISKCON at that time, Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu arrives at conclusions that are important to today's issues as well.

"The point is that the difficulties that precipitated the guru reform movement are intimately connected with psychological patterns and styles of relationships that began to establishing themselves from the beginning. These are grounded in the inability of many devotees to acknowledge and deal fruitfully with their own spiritual shortcomings and failures, or, in traditional vocabulary, their inability to execute the process of anartha-nivrtti (the eradication of "unwanted things" from the heart)."

And while the zonal acarya era is a thing of the past, ISKCON, the institution and we, it's members, would do well to apply the remedial measures he recommended at that time in our own lives and spheres of influence.

"...I concluded that the only way I could responsibly conduct research on such a loaded subject was to attempt to entrust myself to the guidance of Supersoul, the indwelling guide and director of intelligence. I feared more than anything else my own stupidity. I was the Straw Man, and I needed a brain. I decided to entrust myself to Prabhupada's instructions for attaining direction from Supersoul. Thus, as a remedial measure, I undertook to rigorously restore my sadhana to a strict level." ...

"At the beginning of the reform movement, I tried to show how within ISKCON concealment of failure leads to isolation. This principle holds as much for relations among communities as among individuals. Progress in spiritual life, individually and institutionally, depends first of all on the frank acknowledgement of shortcoming, errors, and mistakes. Without that, all "progress" is mere bluff."

by Gauragopala das

In April 1972, the Melbourne City Council in Australia began a campaign to try and move the Hare Krishna devotees away from the city streets. This struggle with the Council would continue on for another three years.

Not only were we now continuously harassed on the streets by the Council, we were also harassed in our own Temple with middle of the night Police raids looking for devotees who had never paid their fines for chanting on the streets, distributing books, and performing drama plays in the City square.

Photo: Kurma Prabhu being dragged away to jail for chanting Hare Krishna on the streets of Melbourne, Australia in the early seventies.

Any student of Srila Prabhupada will at once recognize the phrase “plain living and high thinking.” It occurred frequently and memorably in his discourse. It functioned as kind of motto or slogan to epitomize Prabhupada’s vision of a natural spiritual culture, an alternative to our modern, “soul-killing” industrial civilization.

Source: The Prabhupada Connection

For many of us who came of age in the sixties and seventies, the counterculture and its promise of an alternative society based on love and peace was an important part of our lives. Art, music, poetry, philosophy, ecology and human rights were just a few of the buzzwords floating through the collective psyche of the sixties generation. Revolution was in the air. "The establishment" was doomed and soon to be replaced with a kinder society. Peace would reign supreme, and all peoples of the world would unite and be free from the chains of oppression. Or so we thought.

At the time, it appeared that massive cultural changes were about to sweep away the capitalist system (or the "military industrial complex," as we liked to call it). Every day there was a new victory for change. Underground newspapers proliferated, broadcasting the latest progress reports: the sit-ins, the love-ins, the be-ins, the antiwar and civil rights demonstrations, the Democratic National Convention of 1968, the Chicago Seven Trial, Woodstock, etc. Something was happening here, and it was big.

by Bhakta Eric (New Vrindavana)

In 1995 I moved to New Vrndavana and eventually was introduced to the term "fringie." I was a new bhakta then, all fired up and judgmental of anyone else who wasn't. We'd talk about the fringies out on the ridge with their TVs and kids in public schools—they were practically demonized!

That is, until I got a chance to actually know them. I'd sit and listen to their stories of Olde Vrndavana, their pastimes with Srila Prabhupada, their advice on being a new devotee, and advice on making it to the point of being an older devotee.