No Government Syllabus for ISKCON Gurukulas (BY: TRIBHANGA DAS)

No Government Syllabus for ISKCON Gurukulas

BY: TRIBHANGA DAS

May 19, 2019

The third offense against the Holy Name is to disobey the instruction of the Guru or minimize his instructions. In the following dialogue Srila Prabhupada gives a very direct instruction. This instruction has been violated and disregarded by ISKCON leaders at the so-called 'Bhaktivedanta College' in Radhadesh Belgium, at the International School in Mayapura, and specifically in Vrndavana, the focus of the dialogue, as well as other places. And we then wonder why ISKCON has difficulties? How can we not have difficulties if we blatantly disobey Srila Prabhupada's direct instructions?

[PADA: Technically this is right, Srila Prabhupada wanted more emphasis on Krishna consciousness education for the ISKCON gurukula students. That would naturally assume that these students would later on "graduate" to secure posts within ISKCON in mostly brahmana type positions. 

The idea was simple, Krishna conscious children would later populate and manage the future ISKCON as they became adults. Srila Prabhupada said, these children are the future of ISKCON.

*** And these students would then take over the temple's deity worship, cooking, sewing, and so forth. 

*** And they would be doing the harinama, the preaching, the book printing and distribution, college programs and so forth. 

*** And they would be running the temples, the farms and restaurants, and getting their own "sattvik" incomes by various Vaishnava businesses (like Spiritual Sky was supposed to be) to make a "varnasrama" society.

And in fact these students would become later -- the next wave of ISKCON's various administration leaders and Governing Body managers, educated enough to become the new training teachers themselves. And they would be training others, like the new bhaktas and bhaktins, as future poojaris, priests, preachers, farm and restaurant managers, and general senior administration leaders, senior laymen brahmanical council members and so forth.

Unfortunately, this was not meant to be. 

The leaders evidently exploited the gurukula school program as a fund raising technique, but siphoned off much of the kuli's funds for their own independent opulent lifestyles. Hence the children did not get the proper spiritual or even material learning that they were supposed to get. Did I forget the psychological and sometimes physical abuse issue? To sum, part or perhaps almost all the money meant to educate, facilitate and care for the children was being stolen away for the personal opulent use of a few elite leaders. 

Fast forward to now, and most of these ex-student or kulis are completely alienated from the ISKCON society. There are perhaps hundreds of them around the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas, but few if any participate in ISKCON. And a lot of them had major troubles re-educating themselves by going back into the mundane school system, because they were not given a proper mundane education in a number of cases. 

Meanwhile, the "kulis" have been sort of edged out of ISKCON as unwanted progeny by the leaders. Meanwhile, a big administrator in ISKCON just recently attended the college graduation of one of his own sons. And he has three other sons also in the "karmi" college pipeline. We also know of other examples of ISKCON leaders giving their own kids a separate and costly type of education away from ISKCON, including college expenses. So its ok for you rank and file peon's kids to have sub-standard material education and then be kicked out into the material world ... but our kids will get nice mundane educations, paid for by -- ISKCON's funds? 

So it would seem as though the GBC / leaders have used ISKCON as a personal business to facilitate their own personal material accumulations, and that means they had to stand on the crushed skulls of the other Srila Prabhupada people -- kicking them out so they could usurp the assets -- and at the same time kicking down their society's children by not giving them proper facility either in the past or now.

Anyway, we sent our own kids to karmi schools and they thanked me ever since for doing that, especially after their "kuli" friends told them the major problems they had in the GBC's schools. For starters, we were not EVER going to have our kids worship deviants as their messiahs, that is a bogus school system right out of the gate. So this is interesting, some ISKCON people are now arguing that we need to make the current kids (gurukula students) full on devotees with no government syllabus, but -- devotees of whom and what? And what security do these new kids have they they will not be also edged out as essentially unwanted progeny? 

At the same time, the Windle Turley lawsuit gave at least some funds to a number of these children who told me, without that lawsuit they would have been possibly homeless, penniless, and destitute altogether. Apparently many parents had little or no money either after serving for 10 - 20 years in ISKCON, so they had a hard time financing their now grown up children when ISKCON began to implode.

So, the karmis have had to give some paltry "start off funds" to a number of these ex-kids, and some "leaders" meanwhile have got some of their own kids in an expense paid college? As one devotee said just today, anyone who does not yet understand that this whole thing is a "guru business" as described in the Isopanisad, is a clueless person. Yup! 

How did you guess, there are people who are still upset that some of these ex-kid victims got at least some funds from the lawsuit, yup, lets just drive a number of these ex-kids out into the streets -- with nothing?

ys pd ] 

  

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