More Trouble in ISKCON Phoenix (Arizona, USA)

ISKCON Phoenix: 'My Way or The Highway'

BY: S. GUPTA

I would like to comment on "ISKCON Phoenix : Love of Power." The Governing principle of our activity should to do what is favorable for pleasing Krishna. My question is, by banning and threatening devotees, is the management trying to please Krishna. In fact, the Vice President of the Temple resigned when she came to know that five families were banned from the Temple.

The situation in Phoenix is in dire need of intervention by the GBC but nobody wants to do anything. I don't know what is stopping them from taking any action. Is it something that we don't know? The Temple President has no qualifications as a leader, cannot even lead the arati or give any lecture, but still is in the position.

The devotees at the temple are scared and treated like employees of a motel instead of devotees of Krishna. It's either 'my way or highway' for the management. Devotee of Radha Madhav Hari

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[PADA: Right. We were told a while ago that the GBC had made the manager of a Subway Sandwich shop into one of their temple presidents here in the USA. So this person had little actual time to even participate in the temple's affairs, being full time engaged in running their shop. And so this temple suffered due to lack of "hands on" managing. At least that was the report we received.   

And then again there are complaints of just the opposite in other temples, that the temple president is always there acting as a mini-tyrant, watching the every move of everyone there, harassing the services of others, over managing, micro-managing and making it hard for people to function.  

At the same time we heard a report that a few years ago a devotee couple went to a USA temple to "manage," and they managed to remove some of the important people doing temple services there. And how did you guess -- that right now, after "getting rid" of various servants, they want to "leave and go to India." So after making the place an even worse disaster case than it was, now they want to simply run off and let the place sink further into the ground. 

We are not sure how far things have to deteriorate before the GBC actually declares that they have failed to properly manage the ISKCON society. We thought they were going to declare rock bottom after they created the New Vrndavana fiasco, but nope, they just keep on making more and more airplane crashes. The only good news is, we are getting more and more readers all the time, since it seems a lot more people are waking up to all this.   

Ultimately, its the GBC's responsibility for all these problems, since their main effort is to continue their personal worship, and very little effort is given to making sure these temples are running nicely. ys pd]