Seminar on Vaisnava Culture and Trust given by HH Hridayananda Das Goswami at ISKCON Alachua in 2007.
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We’re trying to understand one line from the Upadesamrita. We’ll read more of Prabhupada’s purport and then try to understand this. The first is dadati which literally means he or she gives, and pratigrihnati – takes in return. One gives and one takes in return. Guhyam akhyati – one explains a secret; pricchati – one inquires; bhunkte – one eats; bhojayate caiva – one gives to someone else to eat; shad-vidham priti‑lakshanam – these are the sixfold symptoms of love.
As we read last night, Prabhupada stated that even in ordinary activities these six types of dealings between loving friends are absolutely necessary. Prabhupada says that ISKCON has been established to facilitate these six kinds of loving exchanges between devotees, and that people must be given a chance to associate with the devotees of Krishna because simply by reciprocating in the six ways mentioned above an ordinary man can fully revive his dormant Krishna consciousness.
So these methods are very important, and Prabhupada goes on to explain that, for example, chanting Hare Krishna is a loving exchange revealing something to people: that people need to give up non-devotee association and associate with devotees.
Prabhupada says that if the members of human society actually want peace of mind, tranquility, and friendly relations between men and nations, they must follow the Krishna conscious system of religion, by which they can develop their dormant love for Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
So Prabhupada also says we should avoid the Mayavadis. We don’t particularly want to have the Mayavadis reveal their mind to us – well unless they want to talk about it, but if they just want to try to persuade us then that’s not exactly the reciprocation we’re looking for, although we certainly wish them well.
Then, Prabhupada summarizes this whole discussion by saying the conclusion is that we should always keep company with devotees, observe the regulative devotional principles, follow in the footsteps of the acaryas, and then with full obedience, carry out the orders of the spiritual master. In this way, we shall be able to develop our devotional service and dormant Krishna consciousness.
The devotee who is neither a neophyte nor a maha-bhagavata (a greatly advanced devotee), but is within the middle status of devotional service, is expected to love the Supreme Personality of Godhead, make friends with devotees, show favor to the ignorant and reject the jealous and demoniac. So I guess if your wife or husband is jealous, you can reject them? No, this means of course those who are very strongly jealous of Krishna. Other forms of jealousy may sometimes be tolerated. So, in this verse, there is a brief mention of the process of making loving transactions with the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and making friends with devotees. So these reciprocations even apply to Krishna. We offer food to Krishna, and Krishna, to this day, has always offered it back. So what if offerings start disappearing on the altars? No, that hasn’t happened – so Krishna himself reciprocates.
According to the dadati principle, an advanced devotee is supposed to spend at least fifty percent of his income on the service of the Lord and His devotees. Srila Rupa Gosvami has set such an example in life. When he decided to retire, he distributed fifty percent of his life’s earnings to Krishna‘s service, twenty-five percent to his relatives, and kept twenty-five percent for personal emergencies. This example should be followed by all devotees. Whatever one’s income, fifty percent should be spent on behalf of Krishna and His devotees, and this will fulfill the demands of dadati.
So you could fulfill this dadati requirement by going bankrupt. I’m joking actually, but what Prabhupada says is that we should follow Rupa Gosvami’s example. So Rupa Gosvami’s example is that when you retire you should take all of your assets and give fifty-percent to a Hare Krishna project which is not likely to collapse in your lifetime so that you won’t be frustrated, and then twenty-five percent to your relatives, who I’m sure will be very pleased to see that they’re getting only a fourth of your estate, and then a fourth you get to keep.
It’s interesting that it is a fourth for all the relatives and a fourth for yourself. There’s certainly no shyness here about individual self-interest. So of course in principle we certainly have to follow this and regarding the details, everyone is free to seek a lawyer and work it out in some practical way.
Regarding the principle of dadati pratigrihnati, Prabhupada says that we should always carry out the orders of the spiritual master in full obedience. I thought I’d tell you what it’s like up here from the cockpit to have large numbers of fully obedient disciples – well I would like to tell you that, but I haven’t had that experience – so actually this dadati pratigrihnati principle is really essential for our spiritual life, we really need to do this. We really need to develop these kinds of relationships where we give gifts and accept gifts in return and we allow devotees to feed us – according to our regular dietary requirements – and also feed them. Actually I wonder if, in ISKCON, we should probably have the first international cholesterol competition, and there’s a way we could probably get some media attention and show that this movement is able to compete on an international basis.
Anyway, among these reciprocations, the one we’re especially focusing on is guhyam äkhyäti påcchati, and Prabhupada does talk about the guru-disciple relationship as an example of this, so I would like to bring up a few points about this. Some are slightly controversial – and you are free to take these controversial points and use them in your next rap song, you just have to give me a mention in there somewhere.
So we know, in the real world, that sometimes spiritual authorities may have given instructions to their dependents and followers and it didn’t quite work out. For example, insisting that you need to marry this person, you need to not marry that person, or you need to pursue this vocation or something, and at times it actually didn’t work out well and there was trouble.
In terms of the guru-disciple relationship, we’ve also had the experience in ISKCON that some gurus have had difficulty. Some people have occupied the position of guru and then had some difficulty. Sometimes those having difficulty have – on their way down – admitted a series of somewhat eccentric constructions. So how do we really approach this? What about for example husbands and wives?
In general, in ISKCON we have – or we used to have – a hierarchy, and ultimately the movement is based on the understanding that there is a God, Krishna, and that Krishna is the highest authority, and there are people who represent Krishna. So if you take Krishna seriously, if you take God seriously, and if you believe that someone is representing Him, then it becomes a very serious relationship.
Parents represent Krishna to their children, devotees who go out to preach represent Krishna to the public, gurus represent Krishna to their disciples, and more advanced devotees represent Krishna to less advanced devotees and so on. So I would like to discuss this point of authority.
Authority has been somewhat controversial in ISKCON – who is actually an authority and to what degree should we obey authorities – so I thought I’d dwell on that.
For example, one can ask, “If someone is a pure devotee of Krishna or if someone is an advanced devotee of Krishna, does this mean that that devotee is expert in everything?”
Now Prabhupada quotes a particular verse from Chaitanya Charitamrita about 200 times at least in the database , and the verse is yare dekha – whomever you meet; tare kaha – tell that person; krsna-upadesa – Krishna’s instructions, either by Krishna or instructions given by devotees of Krishna; amara ajnaya guru hana – by my order become a guru; and tara ei desa – save this land.
So Prabhupada mentions over and over and over again, dozens and dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of times in his explanation of these verses that it’s not hard to become a guru, it is not difficult to become a guru – one simply has to repeat what Krishna said.
So in a sense Prabhupada is demystifying the guru-disciple relationship. You could say demythologizing it or demystifying it, and explaining it in very common sense terms that Krishna is certainly the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and as we know when we begin to serve Krishna, when we begin to follow the devotees of Krishna, we all have experiences which can only be explained through spiritual experiences. It’s not that Krishna consciousness can be reduced to mundane psychology or sociology. All of us who are engaged in spiritual life have spiritual experiences. At the same time, our spiritual experiences should be understood through the eyes of shashtra or authoritative books about Krishna consciousness.
Prabhupada emphasizes – in his explanations of what it means to be a guru and what a guru is – that it’s not difficult. It’s not a magical thing. It’s actually quite simple based on the ability of the guru to intelligently and accurately repeat authorized knowledge coming down in parampara. So then one could raise the question, if we are allowed to raise questions like this: at what point is a guru acting as a guru? In other words, if someone is with relative or reasonable competence performing the duty of a guru – and this could be not only a diksha guru, a siksha guru, a vartma-pradarshika guru, it can be a parent – if one with reasonable confidence is performing this duty of a guru, does that mean that that individual in every moment, in every situation is acting on the actual platform?
In other words, let’s say I’m driving with a disciple and there’s red light ahead of us and I say, “Don’t slow down the light will change.” Is that actually coming from Krishna?
Or for example, if I give a disciple advice on financial planning, is it necessarily true?
So it is not my understanding, because I’ve never read any scripture and Prabhupada never said it, that if someone is acting as a bona fide representative of Krishna that means automatically everything that person says on any subject will be true. So on the one hand there’s a certain etiquette, but on the other hand there’s a certain fact of the matter.
In all Asian traditions including Buddhism, they tell a story that if the guru tells you a snake is a rope or a rope is a snake then the disciple accepts it. But then one could ask the question: if I tell a disciple that a rope is a snake, is the rope actually a snake? Acting as a bona fide guru, does one have the power to change ropes into snakes? So there’s a principle of obedience, but my understanding of this situation, my understanding is that even in a guru-disciple relationship, a devotee has to maintain some level of personal integrity, intelligence, and responsibility for their lives.
For one thing, Prabhupada often tells us or gives the example of Shukra Acharya which literally in English means Professor White. Shukra means white. Shukra or shukla – the R and the L in Sanskrit are almost interchangeable in many words, so Shukra actually means white and by extension it can mean semen, and Acharya means like a professor so Professor White. Prabhupada always gives the example of how Bali Maharaja rejected his guru because his guru gave a bad instruction. It was like a one-strike-you’re-out policy.
So it seems to me that there are two extremes. One extreme would be to train disciples to be suspicious, like, “Whatever your guru says stop, think, consult a friend, ask the guru to blow up a balloon or walk a straight line – maybe its diksha under the influence.”
So it’s not that we should train disciples to be suspicious and cynical, but at the same time there is a certain level of personal responsibility. And there’s another point regarding trust, and that is it seems to me that the duty of any leader, any person in the position of authority, and this is especially true for devotees, should be trying sincerely to elevate the people under him or her and not keep them down. In other words, as a guru with disciples it seems to me that the first responsibility of every guru is to try to help and guide, encourage, and empower the disciple to become an autonomous, mature adult human being, and vaisnava, as opposed to on ideological grounds, keeping an adult in a child-like situation or trying to engender a child-like state of mind.
Questions
Are there examples of a situation where the guru will hand the disciple over to a more advanced devotee for training?
It is an interesting question, nothing comes to mind immediately. It seems to me that a guru, if he or she is doing their job properly, will simply try to arrange whatever is best for the disciple, which may include instruction from a particular person.
How much is it necessary for one to think for themselves as a disciple?
Prabhupada once wrote to me and said that the guru is a spiritual father – assuming of course the guru is male, if it’s a female guru, it probably wouldn’t be a spiritual father – but the idea here is that if you think about parenting or any relationship of authority where someone is subordinate or someone is on top, the authority is not unnecessarily or excessively exercising that power. You only exercise authority to the minimum amount necessary to bring about a necessary good for the person under you.
So if I exercise authority, it’s not because the guru should act like God or in order to demonstrate my position I should exercise authority. It seems to me that’s getting everything backwards. One should exercise authority as a parent or as a guru or as whatever, because it’s actually needed. Because the person actually needs it and if you have the good fortune of having a child or a disciple that is mature and does not need to be micromanaged then why would you do that. Why would you tell someone something, or why would you coerce someone into acting a certain way, when they could actually do fine by themselves. It seems to me it’s actually harmful for the person and retards their development rather than stimulates it.
So it seems to me a principle of minimal authority: it should be a rule that I should tell someone what to do only within what is my actual areas of expertise. A spiritual master is supposed to be just that – a spiritual master – someone who is an expert in spiritual science, and sometimes that of course obviously intersects our material life, like for example, the guru may feel that the disciple is pursuing an occupation, which may ruin their spiritual life and may not be good for the disciple.
But again even then, as I said yesterday, it’s not healthy to treat adults like children. I think it’s just not a good idea. Now spiritually, we are – again we are born at a certain point and then we’re like spiritual children but even though we may be like spiritual children, someone may be materially an adult and therefore if a guru is speaking to a disciple about material affairs and the person is a material adult, I think that person should not be treated like a material child. I think it’s just artificial and I think it’s not part of the job description. And also, it avoids embarrassing situations where someone in the position of authority just gets it wrong. If I’m simply speaking from shastra then I think I can really get it right, but if I’m speculating about financial planning, vocational counseling, marriages and thinks like that, then I can’t be sure.
Prabhupada in the early days of the movement was arranging marriages but they kept turning out so badly that one point even Prabhupada got burned out and wrote a letter to all the temple presidents to tell the presidents that basically, “I have had it, just you figure out whoever you want to marry.”
So when Prabhupada first came, he converted some hippies and people who had pretty awful lifestyles in some ways. He had to teach them basic principles like hygiene and how to cook, and I think the result of that was we have this image in our minds that the guru has to sort of baby the disciple or tell the disciple everything. Some disciples may need that because they are materially dysfunctional but if the disciple is not materially dysfunctional it’s a different relationship.
So if you look at Prabhupada’s relationship, for example, with people in India, his life members and some of the most important people in India – very wealthy people and very influential people who were materially quite expert and quite mature and they were already middle aged – Prabhupada didn’t tell them how to clean themselves after they went to the bathroom. He actually treated them very much like adults. He insisted on the spiritual science, but in terms of their human relationship, he very much treated them like adults and there was mutual respect in the relationship. So in many ways we sort of imitated Prabhupada just like children imitating the parents without real understanding.
I think in general there are certain principles, which ensure a healthy relationship in the case where someone is on top and someone is underneath. It’s like the trial of Galileo. The church thought that because we are the vicars of Christ on earth therefore we are expert at astronomy. It turned out not to be the case and the church was very embarrassed. It’s almost 500 years later and everybody is still talking, “Yeah, did you know about the trial of Galileo?” It’s this real black mark on the church in which 500 years, almost a half of millennium later, we can still remember the trial of Galileo as the great historical symbol of obscurantism – you know spreading darkness throughout the world. So the church kind of backed out of astronomy at a certain point and left it to the astronomers. So in the same way I think that to treat adult disciples like children even in material affairs is, first of all, I think is unhealthy for the disciple and also will inevitably embarrass the guru.
The idea of guru-devatah, that the guru is a deity, again you could raise a simple question: does this apply to the guru when he is explicitly performing guru activities teaching Krishna consciousness, or what about if he is commenting on World War II, or talking about a cure for the common cold – are those absolute statements? Well Prabhupada indicated they’re not. I mean that doesn’t mean we should just be rude and disrespectful – sometimes the guru may actually say something right, and you can actually give advice to someone – but I think it’s very important that gurus themselves have a mature understanding of what their responsibility is and what their area of competence is.
I don’t want to abolish noble etiquette and culture because that’s very valuable – but what you said is very interesting. There’s a fact – there is a fact that Western culture is in some ways significantly different from Eastern culture. Western people for thousands of years, actually as far as back as we have recorded in history, there’s been sort of a tension between East and West in the sense that the West tends to be a little more individualistic or rebellious and not to have the same attitude to authority as the East. So we have certain statements about guru-disciple relationship and how to deal with that in the real world so that it doesn’t become unhealthy – so on the one hand we don’t just ignore it and pretend those statements aren’t there, but on the other hand it doesn’t just become sort of a hypocritical show.
So I mean there are gurus that just don’t give any instructions, they sort of accumulate disciples and everyone knows they’re not going to tell you what to do. I mean there are situations where sometimes a lot of etiquette has been shown, great worship and so on and so forth, many flower garlands and – you know probably eventually old gurus will have neck problems –but it’s kinda like understood that the guru is not going to tell me to do anything.
In a religious society, there’s always a danger of hypocrisy, because the higher the principles are, the more likely it is that people won’t follow the principles – so probably the greatest opportunity for hypocrisy is in a religious institution. So there’s also this danger of empty formality, where we keep the shell of the guru-disciple thing, but on the ground people really do what they want or they may not even follow the etiquette even outwardly.
There is also the other extreme. You may have a situation, like in some communities, where cradle to grave your life is strictly regulated – someone’s telling you what to think and you’re told what to do and whom to marry and everything’s kinda like that.
There are some communities in ISKCON, where frankly– I’m not talking about here, as you’ll soon see – there are some very strong leaders, and devotees who are kinda creative and think for themselves gradually or quickly don’t make it there, and so you gradually get a community with sort of, I don’t want to say sudras, but people that are sort of just content to work within a system, and it produces certain efficiency. But that raises the issue of what do you do if you’re a little creative. What do you do if you actually are a mature adult and you’re in a situation where that’s not okay? There are communities where really it’s not appreciated if people think too much because there’s one person who thinks for everybody.
So there are all these different situations, and there’s a tendency to play this card, like one boy who came to see me in Mayapur. He is from another country, and he was in a temple where he is not really happy because he’s sent out just to sell things, to collect money, on sort of like an eternal fundraising campaign. And this young man, he’s not really happy with it but when he talked to the temple president or even the visiting sanyassi guru he was told that Krishna put you here, Krishna wants you to do this. So there’s this invoking of divine authority to support what may be my imperfect administrative decision or that fact that I just have some cockeyed plan of how I want to get something done and so I may intimidate the people under me by saying, “Krishna wants you to do this, if you don’t do this, you’re rejecting Krishna,” when in fact it really is my idea.
Then again there are genuine, powerful guru-disciple relationships where gurus are actually representing Krishna, and if you don’t follow them then you’re really not doing what Krishna wants because in that particular case, the guru is successfully channeling the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
So it may seem like I’m just trying to prove that bhakti yoga is essentially impossible to practice, but the reason I’m bringing up these points is that I think that those of us in positions of leadership have to be very careful about pushing people around in the name of Krishna. We have to develop mature intelligent relationships, which are aimed at making people mature and intelligent. The purpose of a guru-disciple relationship is to make the disciple a mature, adult, autonomous Vaishnava. To keep someone dependent just because it feels good to have people hanging on me or because I love being able to just tell people what to do – that’s one of the dangers: Lord Caitanya says na dhanam na janam.
So everything that I do in relation to the disciple should have the purpose of helping that disciple to become autonomous and mature, so that the person can actually make intelligent decisions on their own. Otherwise, I am sort of purposely keeping the person beneath what they might be – holding them back, just because I want followers or I think that you should merely be a follower.
I mean, I’m not suggesting that at a certain point you give up your guru or reject your guru, but we’re grateful to Prabhupada precisely because he is setting us free. Prabhupada has given us the path to freedom.
If things are working properly, if there is a mistake by the leader, in a sense itshould also be the community’s mistake because a leader should be someone that sort of engages the community and helps to empower it –we should do things by consensus. I know I’m GBC in Atlanta, Georgia, and even though I am the ‘glorious GBC’ of that place, still whenever we make important decisions, at least among the senior devotees, we try to do it together because after all, it just seems to me that’s the way we should offer it. We should try to build a consensus; we should try to do things together.
Also I think that we have to be honest and admit that we are works in progress. We are conditioned souls trying to become Krishna conscious. I remember being a young devotee and hearing that proverb ‘power corrupts – absolute power corrupts absolutely’, and thinking that I’m really grateful that it didn’t apply to the Hare Krishna movement. I remember the first time I was really given power in the Hare Krishna movement – like if you have ever seen The Andy Griffith show where Barney Fife had like one bullet and as soon as he took it out he just fired it compulsively – so the first time I was really given any authority I’d been in the movement about a month, and then two other guys joined and one was a hippie. I mean we had to hire a U-haul trailer to take his hair away after we shaved him up. So anyway so I was told to take these two guys, these two young devotees, about 1 1/2 blocks down Durant Avenue and Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley to join the Harinam Sankirtan party, which was blanketing the community with incense fumes. So that was my job, I had to go 1 1/2 blocks down the street with two new devotees.
So I remember as we walked out the door of the temple and started going down the street I basically went crazy because I was representing Krishna and they were under my authority, and all of the power of God and all of the power of the absolute truth was pulsing through my body and coming out my effulgent lips, and as we started walking down the street, I literally started firing off instructions. I don’t know, in retrospect, I can’t imagine what I told them, but I was literally giving them a series of commands – like I think they weren’t walking properly or breathing properly or something, because I mean what else could you tell someone when you’re walking down a street? So at a certain point, they just said – they kinda protested, “Can you please stop?” and I realized that I had really just gone crazy with this absolute authority over other human beings.
So that’s why religious movements are the salvation of the world and at the same time they are dangerous, because people, human beings, conditioned souls, believe that they have absolute authority, and if you are a conditioned soul that can sort of mess your head up a little bit. I think all of us who were in positions of leadership were affected by this, and one of the safeguards is of course now we’re older, and also we have all kinds of glass ceilings in ISKCON. I mean in the old days people at very young ages were given very big positions and in a normal setting we give those positions to older people.
So I think we need to develop a culture, which is not so – forgive this term – fascist in a sense. Now I’m not promoting anarchy here, that ‘everyone go home and take out a picture of your guru and rip it up’. I’m not promoting anarchy or rebellion, just that I think that sort of a tyrannical structure or culture of banana republic dictators, it’s not healthy for the people in leadership positions, I think it’s not healthy for the people under them, and it’s an absolute disaster in terms of our preaching.
So we do need authority, we do need leadership, but I think we really have to cultivate a leadership culture, which is more in the mode of goodness.
What about the fact that Bhaktivinoda said some people want to be misled?
Well I don’t think we should have inappropriate gurus on the grounds that Prabhupada built a house where everybody can live and some people really need inappropriate gurus. I think that would be a dangerous way to think about it. It is a fact though that some people feel comfortable, and perhaps some people only feel comfortable, if someone else is directing their life.
So at the same time, according to the principle of minimalism, if a disciple really needs help, like if the disciple confesses, “I can’t figure this out, I really need you to help me, please tell me what to do in this situation”, then if it’s really a case where the disciple is begging for that kind of assistance then the guru may step in or may refer the disciple to an expert. For example, if a disciple approaches me and they have some kind of emotional problems then it may be prudent and necessary to refer the disciple to a mental health professional who is sympathetic to Krishna consciousness.
It seems to me that if I’m guru it doesn’t mean that I always have to pretend that I have the answer. It should mean, or may mean in many cases, that I refer a disciple to an appropriate expert in the field, whether it is financial, emotional, vocational, and so on.
What about if a guru has a controlling tendency and wants to use that in Krishna’s service?
Yes, but I may have to ask a question: if someone is attached to ‘being the boss,’ is that person really ready to act as a guru? It seems to me Lord Chaitanya said the opposite. He said, “I don’t want to be the boss, I don’t want money.”
I mean guru is not a position one assumes just to dovetail one’s propensity to lord it over. I mean if someone really wants to lord it over and also really wants to spread Krishna consciousness they can find their niche. They can find some people and they can dominate them and make them Krishna conscious perhaps, but I think it’s dangerous for someone to become a guru in order to dovetail their propensity to lord it over other people.
So do we need psychological or character testing for gurus?
Well people have track records. If someone is really advancing spiritually, they should be transcending at least the grosser manifestations of their condition. Perhaps because of my background and where and how I grew up it has some effect to me, but I am advanced enough in Krishna consciousness that, for the most part, I should be beyond that and I should at least be able to make decisions and give instructions or advice in a professional way. For example, let’s say someone is a competent airline pilot. They undoubtedly have a certain history, a psychological history with emotional issue, but when the person gets into the cockpit and starts flying the plane, they just have to do their job right. They just have to do the job. I mean someone might be a brain surgeon who has emotional issues, but when they go to the operating theatre they have to do their job right. So there has to be a certain level of professionalism in the guru position – not only in the sense of happily accepting donations – but there has to be a certain professionalism that whatever my childhood was or whatever kind of mood I’m in, I have to do my job right. I have a certain job to do properly. So if there’s professionalism, then that can allow someone, despite the inevitable imperfections we all have, to do their job properly.
So what if someone is very Krishna conscious but also has heavy conditioning?
Where there is darkness, there is no light. Where there is light, there’s no dark. To say that one is very Krishna conscious and very heavily conditioned is, I think, a contradiction, but that’s what culture is about, it compensates.
Let’s say for example I have a tendency to shout, but if I’m trained that it’s impolite, that you shouldn’t do it then I can control it. For example, I spend a lot of time in Los Angeles where when you drive your car through the city it’s kind of like going to war. So when I moved up to this nice little mode-of-goodness, super civil town in the Central Coast of California, I remember when I got there, the first week I was behind someone and I honked my horn and it was like everything stopped in the city. Everyone and everything stopped in the city and people started looking at like me like: what did you just do? And I realized that you don’t honk your horn here. And I remember it took me like a month just to slow down because I was in this nice little city and everybody’s peaceful and driving slowly and I was driving as if I was in Los Angeles.
So that’s what culture is about. Good fences make good neighbors. That would be cultural fences. We have to establish a culture where certain types of behavior are appropriate and some are not – there’s certain things you don’t do and certain things you must do. That’s the beauty of culture, especially Vedic culture, is that it allows everyone to act appropriately even if inside they’re weird, so that if everyone follows the rules, you’ll have civil society. People may not all be civil, but if somehow they’re trained to follow the rules you will get civil society.
How do you confront a guru? When is it appropriate? How is it done?
You’ve had the pleasure of living in West Virginia, I suppose?
Well nowadays ISKCON is so diverse. It’s so different in different places, and I think people do speak out a little more now. But in answer to your question of what should you do – I think that if you think that something is seriously inappropriate, dangerously inappropriate, that that it is a behavior which is actually harmful, which actually could cause significant harm to people, then I think you have to say something.
I would take it up in a discreet way because if we are indiscreet we actually lose control of the process. You may get a vigilante mob and it may turn out in some cases that I didn’t understand things perfectly. Discretion doesn’t mean sweeping things under the rug. It doesn’t mean just looking the other way. Discretion means that you act with discretion, and you keep control of the process so that it doesn’t get out or it doesn’t just go wild. I would start with people you trust, who are either in positions of authority or know people in positions of authority, and just start discretely speaking about it and pursue it.
Should gurus or authorities apologize for their mistakes?
I agree that’s part of it. There’s always that human tendency to want to save face. I mean I’ve seen people – I suppose I’ve seen myself and I’ve seen other people – where you see something is wrong and so you just try to save face but then you correct yourself, and of course sometimes that doesn’t satisfy the people or affect it. I think you’re right and it’s all a part of the process in the sense that the more we recognize what an appropriate authority culture would be in ISKCON the easier it becomes to apologize, because you don’t think you’re supposed to be on a pedestal – you don’t have to be on it. You just have to do your job right. So in a sense, trying to create a more appropriate sense of what leadership and authority is in ISKCON makes it easier for people to admit what was done wrong in the past.
I’m not anti-apology, but I actually did have one experience with a disciple of mine where I felt I had done something which wasn’t right in the past or given an improper instruction and so I apologized, and then this person actually got even more angry and said, “Well if you’re apologizing it means maybe you did something wrong, and if you did something wrong when I was a young devotee, when I thought you couldn’t do anything wrong, that means you cheated me.” I mean it’s not that I’ve told these people that I can’t do anything wrong in, it’s a sort of a collective consciousness, so again I’m not saying we shouldn’t apologize, I’m just saying that that sometimes it gets a little complicated but in general, it is a very good idea to apologize.
I think if we had a more human, a more realistic sense of what a guru is, that it wouldn’t be so cultish, and on the other hand people wouldn’t be so disappointed. You might be willing to allow a teacher sometimes to be human. Of course, as we know, human being is a material bodily designation but it gets into this fine line between bodily identification, just thinking I am this body and I am a human being, which we’re not supposed to do and on the other hand, thinking that I’m a spirit soul and I’m part of Krishna, however, I am in human body, I am coming from a background of bodily conditioning. I am sincerely trying to serve Krishna but I still have this reality of a body and all the momentum of my past conditioning, so I’m serving Krishna and at the same time having to deal with my human condition.
For example, we know we’re not the body and yet we all eat food and sometimes even eat tasty foods. So Prabhupada said that if you tried to imitate the Goswamis and just eat 2-3 old rotten grains of rice a day then you’ll fall down. So at times there’s been a mythological sense of a guru and that leads to great anger and bitterness if you feel that, “I’ve been cheated because I was led to believe this.” It’s like the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
I mean there is a sense that because this person is a guru it’s like ‘one false step and this person should be publicly humiliated’. I mean there’s a sense in which people think, “I gave so much to this person, I thought so highly of this person.” Some people having once exalted someone or thought very highly of them, and when a person has difficulty actually react almost with a certain, you could say a heightened sense of sympathy, that because I value this person so much, I feel greater sympathy to try to help this person or try to overlook this person’s fault because I value them. That’s one way that in the real world some people react. But then you get a whole other group of people, also numerous, that react in the opposite way with great anger and outrage and bitterness and thinking they were cheated. It seems to me there was something unhealthy about their original conception because if someone reacts with such anger and bitterness I think there’s just something unhealthy, something wrong about their original approach that’s somehow irrational.
Interestingly, Krishna himself tends not to be a Kantian ethicist, because Krishna tends to look at the consequences – if you look at various historical incidences in the life of Krishna. People react differently, for example in marriages – some marriages survive infidelity and some marriages don’t. For some people it’s over immediately and other people have the power to forgive. So we’re talking about the power to forgive. With some people, it’s just that they’re so offended they feel so strongly about these moral principles that they just absolutely cannot forgive. So I think you brought up a very good point that these are different psychological types in a sense and people by their different psychologies are led to embrace different moral approaches. Most people don’t know that there are different moral philosophies but they don’t put a name on it but they do sort of organize themselves into these different groups.
That may include practical things, so if the guru is able I think it’s okay to engage in a dialogue with the disciple, just you know sit down and talk about it like two adults, and if one of those people has let’s say more Krishna consciousness then that spiritual insight is definitely useful, but I think in general there should be mutual respect between gurus and disciples and you should treat adults like adults as Prabhupada did. Even with his own disciples, he treated adults like adults. I saw that and I think it’s not so dangerous, you just sort of talk about it and try to work together to figure out what’s best.
I saw Prabhupada in India where people were sort of – they were more natural in this culture – often Prabhupada put his Indian disciples, especially the more educated ones, it was sort of like a family relationship. It wasn’t like this big majestic thing with thunder and lightning. I think every relationship, whether guru-disciple or whatever, has to be on a human level naturally. Two people meet each other and there has to be a natural relationship, and then if one is more advanced and the other one is open to it, then there’s teaching going on, but it has to be natural at a human level.
It can’t be that a guru is just following the role or the image of how a guru should walk and talk and what kind of sandals to wear and how to modulate my voice. You see it can get to the point where I’m just sort of like, I’ve become an abstraction. There has to be a real relationship.
I know myself personally, I can understand very well when Prabhupada says that Krishna is more pleased when someone just treats him as a friend. I have disciples that I really enjoy their company, and sometimes other disciples they don’t know me that well, they come and they’re extremely reverential and treat me as if everything I say is miraculous and everything is I do is totally mystical and it’s kind of annoying.
I feel like saying, “Could you be a real person?” So I don’t mean to denigrate those people, but I think there has to be real human relationship, and if within that real human relationship there is a good teacher-student thing then that can become a guru-disciple relationship.
But shouldn’t the disciple always be a fool in front of their spiritual master?
It’s kind of absurd if I actually can do this but I should act stupid in front of my guru because that’s the Vedic culture. I mean as a guru, why should I want to push someone beneath their actual level of ability and maturity? It seems like I should be trying to push them up and not push them down.
Well there’s a danger – there’s a danger for anyone in a leadership position. You start to see yourself through the eyes of the followers. It can be seductive. If I have people around me telling me you’re great, you’re this, and you’re that, it’s like, “Don’t stop.” So it can definitely be seductive and at a certain point you kind of cave in and just “Okay, I’m the person you say I am.” Then of course that person can have difficulties – where do they go for help, because they start to think, “Oh my god, I’ll be torn to pieces by the angry crowd if I don’t play along.”
I think the general principle is that we should be scientific. Bona fide gurus are wonderful people, but so are mothers and fathers. So it seems to me that in ISKCON there’s been a kind of wrong thinking in the sense of ‘let’s pull everyone down before they fall so you can’t fall off the first floor – if you’re already on the ground, you can’t fall’.
It seems to me there should be a general culture of generosity. We should honor mothers, fathers, teachers, gurus. In fact in the Bhagavatam there is that famous verse that one should not be a guru, or a mother, or a father and so on, if one cannot liberate their dependents.
So the Bhagavatam talks about parents and gurus and public leaders on the same level and it’s like if you live in a country where everyone drives a Mercedes then it’s not really like a big status because everyone drives one. But if you live in a country where only a few people do, then it’s a big deal and so on. So in the same way, if we live in a culture which is in general generous, and we honor people, then when a guru is also honored it’s not so seductive because many people are being honored – but of course there’s a special honor reserved for the guru.
So somehow or other we need to be generous and respectful without being fools – and of course familiarity breeds contempt, so there’s danger on both sides. I can underestimate a guru, I can think, “Oh I know this guy, I’ve been with this guy for so long I know him”. You can underestimate someone; you can become contemptuous to someone who really is an advanced devotee.
So in general I think some people are just like cult followers – that’s just who they are. I mean there are certain people in ISKCON who psychologically are kind of cult followers. That’s what they want and they’re sort of locked into that. It may be of course if the guru is actually sober, he should want to surround himself with people that are sort of more sober and so it also depends on how a guru responds – if you surround yourself with obsequious sycophantic people then that’s very unhealthy.
But a part of the humility is to know what your limits are so you don’t order people in areas of their life where you’re really not an expert, or you don’t confuse your advice on a practical matter with your absolute position when you’re repeating Krishna’s words. So there has to be a certain maturity and sobriety and humility in a person of position and authority so they do their job right.
I think it gets back to the same point of having a more realistic, moderate culture where we respect people and honor people but we keep our own responsibility and integrity. Actually, I brought it up at the GBC meeting that I think ISKCON by its success – we now have something like 500 projects – it has now come to the point where we really need people whose primary service is thinking about the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
People are working in different regions and the reason there’s a sense, I think, that many devotees feel that the GBC as a body is not so relevant. The individual GBC members, many of whom are actually very good devotees and competent, they spend like 11 1/2 months a year in their zones and fly into India and suddenly you have to think about the world that you haven’t thought for a year. Also, we have an executive committee, but all the members of it have full-time service in their respective areas. So I think it is coming to a point where we need some devotees who are competent, who are good devotees, who actually have a primary service, perhaps it’s their exclusive service, to really try to provide an international leadership, not over the GBC but under the GBC.
That was Prabhupada’s system. I mean people are so busy nowadays, everyone’s rushing around. The world is so accelerated, and if you think of a boat, the faster the boat goes on a water, the higher it is on the water so that it literally hydroplanes. They have very fast boats and they really are above the water and as the boat goes slower, it begins to sink into the water more and more deeply and so life moves so quickly nowadays that I think that many people, including unfortunately many leaders in ISKCON, physiologically speaking and neurologically speaking, can’t think that much.
It’s like sometimes you’re in a rush and someone tries to talk to you about something and you say, “I can’t think about that now. I’m in a rush. I’ll talk to you later.” So if you’re always in a rush, when does it sink in? Apart from ISKCON, just in the world in general, it’s a very thoughtless, shallow world we live in. Everything is going so fast. The faster it goes, the more shallow it is and I know with a lot of these leaders, it’s hard for me to get quality time with them. I mean I’m not going to give them a donation or be initiated by them or re-initiated by them, so I think we need to create a system which allows some leaders to be more thoughtful, so there’s really a sense that someone is guiding the international society.
So there certainly are problems, at the same time Bhaktivinoda says that there’s nothing worse than a stupid critic. So sometimes criticism is constructive and intelligent and invaluable, and sometimes it’s just irrational. But as far as the GBC, my conclusion having gone to the meeting for the first time in 12 years – so I don’t think I’m lost in the trees and can’t see the forest – my impression is that the problem is more systemic than individual. There are many GBCs, most of them are actually very good devotees and in their individual zones, they do a reasonably good job and in some cases an excellent job, so it’s not that I mean this on an individual level – I’d say most of them are sort of doing a reasonably good job. But, when they get together as a collective body, they lights go out. So I think the reason is systemic in the sense that the system doesn’t really allow them to be competent.
For example now we’re having more GBC meetings, which is a good thing. I mean imagine a big corporation with 500 branches, millions of members in 100 countries and the people that are managing the corporation meet once a year for a week. I mean that’s absurd! So now it’s planned to have more meetings and perhaps a permanent executive. I think the problem is more systemic, most of the GBC members are actually good, sincere, overworked people but the system actually is really not altogether functional. So thank you very much. Hope to see you tomorrow.
