[PADA: Original article seems to have been erased from the ISKCON Dandavats site.]
Another Reason Why Women Should Not Be Leaders in ISKCON
BY: JAMBAVAN DASA
...Never be attached to not doing your duty (Bhagavad-gita 2.47) "According to the rules and regulations that are mentioned in the Agamas, women can faithfully render devotional service to Lord Visnu while remaining devoted to their husband, and sudras who have taken initiation can also worship Lord Visnu." (Hari Bhakti Vilas 1.195)
Regarding the recent text about the unhappy affairs in the life of a married female GBC. There is another side to the story. While everyone is giving Dina Sarana Mataji a shoulder to cry on, no one thinks to ask how this situation came to pass. If there is a house fire, the inspectors from the Fire Department will go through the debris to search for the cause. If a plane falls out of the sky they search for the black box and try to find out the cause. If there is a road accident, the police study the scene and try to determine what happened and why. For everything there is a cause so in the same way, what is the cause of this tragedy?
Now I am by no means trying to besmirch the character of Dina Sarana Mataji, but it seems that this whole episode has come about because she failed in her Stri Dharma. That instead of faithfully serving and taking care of her husband she was seduced away from performing her prescribed duties by the GBC of Germany, Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu who wanted her, not a man, to personally assist him.
[PADA: OK, this means that it is the GBC's (mostly men) leaders and gurus who are the primary persons causing problems in marriages, just like they caused countless other marriage problems all over the society. Does no one recall what happened when the GBC gurus over-lorded Sulochana's wife? And how many GBC gurus actually ran off with the wife of a follower?
Is that not what the recent complaint is about Mahanidhi swami, that he interfered with someone's wife -- his own alleged female disciple? PADA has recently looked at the Mahanidhi site and its still plastered with all kinds of "Radharani ki jaya" photos, as if nothing wrong has happened.
The manipulation of women and marriages is not being done by the women as a class, its seems to be much more or a major deviation and problem coming from the male leadership of the ISKCON society. The track record is that the (mostly men) leaders have a tendency to dominate and over-lord others, including other's wives. Not sure really how this is the fault of the women who are mainly the victims of this manipulation policy? The women as a class are victims of these heavy handed men and their bogus policies towards women. Its not clear why this means the women are to be blamed for any of these problems?]
*** She thus started to focus her attention on the needs and desires of Ravindra Swarupa Prabhu – all in the name of Krsna Consciousness and devotional service mind you – but gradually over the course of time she became consumed by such duties outside of the home and her husband was left in the cold, seldom seeing his wife. So naturally some other woman saw an opportunity here to fill in where the wife was neglectful.
[PADA: The wife was being neglectful? No her husband was being neglectful -- because her husband is allowing these bogus gurus to take over their own wives. These husbands should have complained long, long, long ago -- that these GBC leaders have no business associating with, and cavorting with, their wives. That is mainly the fault of the males in the society, they are allowing this policy of exploitation of women, even their own wives, without making proper protest. It means the men as a class are weak.
That is also basically what happened in the child molesting issue, a few of us protested, hardly any of us really, and most of the rest of the men in the society refused to assist PADA and Sulochana in forwarding this issue. They were weak. That does not mean the women are to be blamed because their men "protectors" needed to be the leaders on these issues, and the men have not been.
Some karmis who are friends of ours are also amazed that some "gay gurus" walked all over thousands of big tough men in the ISKCON society. They are astonished at the lack of back bone in these alleged men. So we should blame the women, that the men abandoned the battlefield and the men as a class could not properly resist what Sulochana called "the gay MAFIA"? No, the men have to lead the charge on these issues, not the women? That's not their job description?]
*** Has anyone noticed that Ravindra Swarupa dasa only likes to work with women? There was also the scandal of him appointing Hari Ballabha Mataji as his representative in Germany, and he put her on the PAMHO GBC discussions forum. But all along she had secretly taken initiation from Narayana Maharaja and was passing all GBC correspondence directly to NM.
[PADA: The GBC gurus were working closely with Narayana Maharaja all along, claiming he was their "rasika advisor." He used to visit Tamal in Dallas; He was part of many meetings with the GBC's guru's in their "rasika club"; He was instrumental in helping the GBC write various position papers and so on. He was thus being passed confidential information all along because he was the GBC's close "advisor."]
*** Prescribed duties should never be renounced. If one gives up his prescribed duties because of illusion, such renunciation is said to be in the mode of ignorance. Anyone who gives up prescribed duties as troublesome or out of fear of bodily discomfort is said to have renounced in the mode of passion. Such action never leads to the elevation of renunciation.(Bhagavad-gita 18.7-8)
[PADA: And the men of ISKCON as a calls have failed miserably to even challenge these bogus gurus? There are people out there still saying that PADA and Sulochana were "sari wearing sahajiyas," so -- they are saying only the sari wearing sahajiyas are brave enough to go out in public and hand out papers protesting the gay MAFIA gurus? All the rest of these brave men are not as brave as the sari wearing sahajiyas? So this means, these men are admitting they are even less brave than the sahajiya class.
Of course, there is no evidence we ever were wearing saris. Its just an excuse for these weak men to complain that we did something while they did nothing. So yes, this verse is significant, the men of ISKCON have had a duty to defy and check the gay MAFIA, the women exploiters, the children exploiters and so on, and they failed in that duty because they thought it would be troublesome and cause bodily discomfort. They copped out.
What does this have to do with women no being competent or not? First of all deal with the primary problem, the men leaders are causing troubles, and then the men in the rank and file are not properly opposing, so its mainly the fault of the men that we have had all these problems.]
*** This is not the first time this has happened: Kusha Mataji has admitted that this is the same reason that her 25+ year marriage to Sruta-kirti Prabhu broke up. She was encouraged by the Women's Ministry and other feminist forces in ISKCON to take up the role of Temple President of Honolulu – again, all in the name of devotional service and Krsna Consciousness. This took up most of her time and energy, leaving nothing for her prime prescribed duty of Stri Dharma. She thus grossly neglected her husband. Another woman saw that the husband was neglected and she made it clear that she was ready, willing and able to fulfill such duties, and they got married after he divorced Kusha Mataji who had already symbolically divorced her husband by giving up her prescribed duties.
[PADA: Sruta Kirti is another prime example of a man who has never been heard protesting all the exploiting. Where has he been all this time? Where has he protested all the abuses? Instead, he is looking for another woman while all this chaos is going on?]
*** It is better to engage in one's own occupation, even though one may perform it imperfectly, than to accept another's occupation and perform it perfectly. Duties prescribed according to one's nature are never affected by sinful reactions. Every endeavor is covered by some fault, just as fire is covered by smoke. Therefore one should not give up the work born of his nature, O son of Kunti, even if such work is full of fault. (Bhagavad-gita 18.47-48)
To me the fault is clear: it is shared by the persons who seduced these senior women into giving up their prescribed duties and to the women involved for giving them up.
[PADA: OK good, these women were mislead. Who mislead them? The bogus men.]
*** But we all know that is not politically correct, so instead the neglected husband will be blamed. Why? Because he is the man. Yhs Jambavan dasa
[PADA: Well yes, the men are causing these problems, especially the bogus gurus. and the women are victims, that's the pattern here. However, none of this proves that women should not have a say in ISKCON affairs. As many folks have commented, had women had a bigger role in ISKCON, especially the children's programs, the children never would have got mass molested like this, the women would not have tolerated children being treated like this.
Anyway we have some stalwart women fighters in the PADA program.
We'd rather be in a foxhole fighting with even one of them if we were in an actual war, rather than 10,000 men compromisers, who would get so frightened they could not even open their eyes to see what was going on. In fact, some women were the first people to step forward and give us the original stories in our newsletters and such, so a number of the women have fought way better than many of the men, and its sad to have to report that.
In any case, the author of this paper does not seem to target the bigger issues here, he seems to want to say that women should not be having a say in our affairs, when some of our women might have something important and useful to say. Its also called -- blaming the victims. ys pd]
PADA: "And the men of ISKCON as a calls have failed miserably to even challenge these bogus gurus? "
ReplyDeleteRight, simply sitting in a male body does not automatically qualify someone to be a real man to whom woman is subordinate.
Nowadays even karmis realize this phenomenon and conclude, "out of ten men nine are useless morons". Prabhupada wrote one letter telling a disciple that, yes, your wife left because you are penniless and can't take care of a family. Either you manage to generate sufficient income to maintain a family or, stay brahmacari.
In other words, Prabhupada considered the fault with this man.
Just like vedic siddhanta never says that you are by birth a brahamana, same with being a man. There is qualification required. Not that male genitals is the only thing what is required.
So basically male ISKCON leaders have created such colossal hoax, 45 fallen male gurus, 110 fallen sannyasis, that these so called men have no right to tell Vaishnavis that they are subordinate.
A bogus man who is a rascal pseudo guru is a rather an animal and not even human. Just look how many fallen ISKCON gurus are living right now. Harikes, he lives exavtly like an animal. Simply he stole some cash and therefore his wife stays with him. A soon the money is gone his so called wife immediately leaves.
ISKCON leaders are mainly folks who were in their past live thugs and criminals. So much so that after Prabhupada left, this whole worldwide movement was turned into a charade within 30 years.
Only hope when things are totally in chaos, elected leaders. Election is so to speak a safety net in times when human society is degraded at lowest possible point. Then all those fools elect a leader. Often it happens that this leader is also a crook because he was elected by crooks, but at least they can place a motion of no-confidence and elect another.
In sum thats where we are at. ISKCON degraded not only lower than Christianity who never replaces their bona fide God's representative with a cheater, but present ISKCON also degraded lower than many karmis who won't abuse children so badly as happened within ISKCON.
What it boils down to is that demons like Ravana want Sita without Rama.
ReplyDeleteBut what can the victimized husbands do to protect their wives now that Srila Prabhupada is no longer able to personally chastise the ISKCON leaders? They can leave ISKCON, but what if the wife is not willing to leave ISKCON?
ISKCON has become a tyrannical dictatorship with no checks and balances. There is no way to get rid of ISKCON leaders who are in the habit of breaking up marriages. The other ISKCON leaders don't even seem to take it seriously. In that way, they are even more immoral than the average karmi! :-(
All of the ISKCON leaders are either criminals directly or criminals by association, but the women who neglect their husbands in order to serve these criminals are too stupid to figure out that they become implicated in the crimes of those whom they serve, and thus have to share in the bad karma of offending Vaisnavas. What punishment awaits these rascals for the very, very great offense of allowing hundreds of helpless Vaisnava children to become sexually molested? The women who serve these demons are going to have to share it their hellish fate!
Pada, I don't see how the above article is wrong. This "always blame the man" attitude is wrong. As he points out, she neglected her husband and so he found another woman. Let's reverse the roles. If a man neglected his wife and his wife found another husband, you would criticize the man, for neglecting his wife. So what's with the double standard? No matter what a man does, he is damned if he do, damned if he don't. So many men are saying "What's the point even anymore in getting married, especially to an ISKCON woman?" And thus we see many male devotees marrying non-devotee women. And interestingly, those marriages work out a lot better than the opposite.
ReplyDelete[PADA: The article is claiming to be about why women are not fit to be leaders and manage, but then it gets into another issue altogether, the fact that women are being manipulated by the men gurus, and their men husbands are not doing anything to oppose that.
Worse, some of the men whose wives are in the hands of these gurus, run off to find another (usually younger) brahmacharini and have that relationship. It simply compounds the instability and misery tenfold. So the gurus are manipulating the wives, and the husbands are allowing their wives to be manipulated by these gurus, both are bogus.
The title of the article is mis-leading from the get go, and it does not even discuss women and leadership and managing?
As for men marrying outside of ISKCON women, yes and the same is true of women who marry outside men, their relationships are better. That is because for starters they do not have crazy gurus trying to manipulate their marriage. For that matter I am also living outside the walls of ISKCON for the same reason, the outside people in my life are much more stable, reliable, helpful, and caring and etc. That is because their guru is Jesus and so they do not have a crazy bogus messiah manipulating their lives.
Pratyatosa summed it up nicely above, these people are serving demons and so we have to expect ill effects. The article does not deal with the fact that these gurus have no authority to claim proprietary rights over ISKCON, or the women therein, and especially those women who are already married. The articles seems to blame the women saying they are defective and thus should not be leaders. The women are wrong in that they also should not accept these gurus, that's true, but they are not the main cause of all this mess, they are mainly victims. ys pd