Govinda Dasi / Sivarama / Bhagavat Parampara 06 27 24

PADA: Yeah prabhu, Govinda Dasi does not seem to get it fully. She says Sivaram swami has done a good job -- by removing himself from GBC duties -- to concentrate on his Hungary farm. But what about all the rest of ISKCON? A farm in Hungary is great, but while that farm is going on, the rest of ISKCON is going down in flames. OK maybe Sivarama should have done his job as a GBC and concentrated on the whole society.

And some of the Hungary devotees we know say there are a lot of problems on that farm among the citizens. But Sivaram has evidently been asleep at the switch while all sorts of banning, beating, molesting, lawsuits and murders have been going on full tilt everywhere else in his kingdom.

More to the point, he has supported child abusers like Lokanath and Bhakti Vidya Purna swami. He even said we should give financial support to BVP since he had done so much service. OK like severely mistreating children. Sivarama has retired from GBC duties to hide out in Hungary while the rest of ISKCON becomes a Hindu hodge podge business. No, this is not a great help to ISKCON. 

Why am I not impressed? Govinda dasi has a lot of sentiment for these folks, and that has been her problem all along. And Sivarama supported Narayan Maharaja for years and years, but now he is kicking people out of ISKCON if they are promoting NM. They are making a deviation and then punishing others for participating in the deviation they created. This sounds diabolical, and it is. ys pd

angel108b@yahoo.com   

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Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati's Bhagavat-parampara

(siksa-parampara) Rocana das

Any discussion of bringing the guru-parampara list forward from Lord Chaitanya has to include mention of a debate that has been quietly raging on for decades about Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur's personal connection to the parampara and his preaching on bhagavat-parampara. Voices on all sides have been spinning this debate in their own convenient direction, whether it be devotees in the Lalita Prasad line, the Vrindavan Anti-party (Jiva Institute), or the Rtvik-vadis who are now trying to argue that bhagavat-parampara authorizes the practice of bhagavati-diksa. 

PADA: Diksha means -- di = divyam jnanam that ksha = destroys sins, and certainly Srila Prabhupada's vani (books and audio lectures etc.) is quite capable of delivering that process. I am not sure who or whom -- else -- Rocana proposes as an alternate to getting divyam jnanam that destroys sins from Srila Prabhupada? 

Same problem with the Narayan Maharaja folks like Prem prayojan, he also says we are mainly a shiksha or bhagavat parampara. OK so the Prabhupadanugas / ritviks are giving people siksha, and that is how the siksha line continues. For his part, Rocana, Premprayojan and others are also not claiming to be pure devotees, therefore they are also giving shiksha on behalf of an acharya, and not diksha.

In fact, quite a number of Rtviks today are starting to focus in this direction, hoping that bhagavati-diksa will fill the gap left by technical defeats that have decimated their Final Order siddhanta.

PADA: There is no recent or final order, everyone has been ordered to worship pure devotees since time immemorial, this is not a recent concept. Everyone has to worship a pure devotee, offer their bhogha to a pure devotee, and that has always been the process. And no one should need any "specific order" to know that is the process. Even my Christian friends offer grace to Jesus, they do not need any specific order from Jesus to know that is the process.

In our opinion, many elements of the Bhaktisiddhanta bhagavat-parampara debate are resolved by applying the fundamental tenets of our Sampradaya Acarya position. One significant juncture where these two aspects of guru-tattva intersect happens to be in the List of 32 -- the guru-parampara list handed down by Gaudiya Vaisnava Sampradaya Acaryas, most recently memorialized in sastra as the List of 32 in Srila Prabhupada's Bhagavad-gita As It Is.

While the topic is far too complex for us to introduce in this paper, our commentary on the 'List of 32' will serve as a building block for the arguments we'll put forward in future when addressing the bhagavat-parampara and bhagavati-diksa debates.

In Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Vaibhava [12], HH Bhakti Vikas Swami discusses the criticism leveled at Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur by Visvambharananda dasa Babaji and the caste Goswamis of Vrndavana over the guru-parampara list Bhaktisiddhanta composed. Bhakti Vikas Swami writes:

"Sarasvati Thakura responded by explaining the concept of bhagavata-parampara, or siksa-parampara. He maintained that the essence of parampara lies in the transmission of transcendental knowledge, not merely in a list of contiguous names. The life of the parampara is maintained by the maha-bhagavatas, who embody the essence of scriptural knowledge. Therefore, to trace the parampara through such maha-bhagavatas truly represents parampara."

A portion of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta's response to the caste Goswamis is found in his booklet, Brahmana o Vaishnaver Taratamya Visayaka Siddhanta ('The Conclusion on the Comparison Between Brahmanas and Vaishnavas'), an essay based on a famous lecture given by the Thakur at Midnapur in 1911.

Some devotees point to Brahmana o Vaishnaver as evidence that Srila Bhaktisiddhanta instituted radical reform to the Sampradaya by essentially replacing the focus on pancharatrika initiation with his own new concept of bhagavati-diksa. Some go so far as to suggest that he actually started a new sampradaya: the Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Saraswata Sampradaya.

We suggest that Bhaktisiddhanta did not invent some radical reformation -- rather, he followed the age-old process reflected in the List of 32. While critics of Bhaktisiddhanta point to supposed errors in the Thakur's guru-parampara list, particularly in the line from the Six Goswamis up to Jagannatha das Babaji, the list as he presented it, and as Srila Prabhupada has given it in Bhagavad-gita As It Is, is a faultless representation of the descending line of Sampradaya Acaryas. 

And in fact, the aspects of nomenclature we have been pointing out in this paper -- conjunctive groups, multiple names per line, etc. -- were employed as a means of technically stating or itemizing names and relationships in the disciplic succession that properly follow an eternal process of descent of the pure, unalloyed sampradaya.

We'll save for another paper a discussion of how the guru-parampara list actually serves to reconcile and resolve dilemmas regarding diksa relationships in the context of pancharatrikaand bhagavat, which some devotees characterize as 'radical reform' or 'innovation'. Much remains to be said on this complex issue, but again, it is our belief that the Sampradaya Acarya position serves to clarify and resolve many of the dilemmas associated with this debate.

For now, we can only caution the reader to take the greatest possible care when consuming opinions on the topic of bhagavat-parampara. Such commentaries are becoming more and more prevalent on the Net today amongst the ISKCON community of devotees, most of them originating from Gaudiya branches that are not inline with Srila Prabhupada's teachings. 

Now the Rtvik-vadis have begun proliferating these arguments, putting even more devotees at risk of being contaminated. These arguments are imbued with a most deadly form of poison -- enviousness of the Sampradaya Acaryas.

PADA: Ok so we (ritviks?) are telling people to worship the pure devotee, and not worship Rocana's conditioned soul diksha gurus -- who are falling down left, right and center, and that is a deviation? Rocana says that the GBC simply has to have better rule enforcement for their guru regulations -- to keep these conditioned soul gurus in line and following properly. We need a committee to make sure the guru is following the process and is not deviating.

He also says we should continue the GBC's guru voting system, which itself has created many unforseen consequence problems -- like -- how did a group of pure devotees "vote in" a debauchee as their co-messiah?

And if we need a "guru rule enforcement program" to make sure the guru is not having illicit sex with men, women and children, and the guru is not drinking Vodka etc. -- we are dealing with deviants and not gurus. There is no such thing as a guru rules enforcement committee, that is all speculation. I also have no idea why telling people to worship a pure devotee is "a deadly form of poison." What?

In any case, yeah, we are a mainly shiksha line and the ritviks are giving that shiksha, and thus we are the persons continuing the line.

ys pd angel108b@yahoo.com