ISKCON "Membership Fees" / Kavicandra Health / ISKCON Short Term Managing 05 15

ISKCON Slovenia

DRAFT OF CHANGING OUR COMMUNITY INTO AN INTERESTING SOCIETY

We were recently informed the members of Skupnost za zavest Krisna - ISKCON SLOVENIJA that the management had prepared a draft of the new community statute. As one of the innovations, they also thought about signing up for membership and paying a regular membership fee.

Because the credibility of social measures or philosophy always needs to be checked in accordance with the example of guru, sadhus and shastra, in this article I will shed light on the membership and payment of membership clause from these three key aspects.

GURU

Srila Prabhupada is a common original guru and the founding acharya of the International Krishna consciousness community. That's why his teachings and example should be the most important benchmark, whether something is appropriate or not. Srila Prabhupada established the International Community for Krishna Consciousness as an organizational form of his Krishna Consciousness Movement, whose purpose was to systematically disseminate the spiritual teaching of Lord Chanting and thus bringing the highest good to all mankind.

Though Srila Prabhupada has expanded the movement like no other, he has introduced no contractual signing up process, special enrollment documents, or ongoing membership fees for his members / students. Interestingly, he came up with the so-called "life membership" but only for rich Indians, so they could contribute large sums of money to the movement, but he did not expect them to devote their lives to bhakti yoga and spreading the mission of Lord Chanting.

So, as we can see from Srila Prabhupada's example, the so-called membership fee for devoted bhaktas is foreign and an inappropriate measure.

SADHU

Nowhere in the history of credible spiritual movements did they mandate the signed contractual membership and membership fees for their students or bhaktas -- not in our tradition -- or anywhere else. Can we imagine Jesus introducing a membership contract and membership dues for his apostles? Just the thought of it is just ridiculous. Maybe someone would argue that Jesus only had twelve apostles and therefore he did not need a membership. That is why we can use another example of a much larger community than Slovenia can handle - wise men from Naimasaranya. According to various data, there were between 33 and 88 thousand of these, but despite that no one thought of introducing signed contracts, enrollment and membership fees. 

Let's look at it in a bit more modern time. Advait Acarya also didn't sign up members with a contract or collect membership fees for bhaktas who gathered beside Him. Neither Lord Caitanja didn't even think of this, even though he had thousands, in fact millions of devotees. Entry membership contracts and membership fees were not known by Gosvamiji of Vrindavana, the later acharyas, like Bhaktivinoda Thakur, and Bhaktisiddhant Sarasvati Thakur, who was Srila Prabhupad's guru and also founded the organisation.

Actually, as soon as we put such an idea in a historical frame, it becomes funny.

SHASTRA ( HOLY SCRIPTURES )

Shastra is the highest standard of credibility. And what are the tips of the shastra?

A verse from Narad Pancharatra, also mentioned by Caitanya Caritamrta and Bhakti rasamrta sindhu, says sarvopādhi vinirmukta, tat-paratvena nirmalam,  vinīkena h vinīkeśa sevana ata, bhaktir ucyate. Bhakti means we get rid of all "upadhi" or equations on the body level. Enrollment by contract membership and membership fees, on the contrary, encourage equality with material bodily circumstances. It is a mundane idea. 

So theses ideas are at fundamentally opposite with the purpose and mission of our movement, which is trying to save people from the "upadhi". Thus Srila Prabhupada commenting on Srimad Bhagavatam 7.5.41 says: “The individual’s consciousness is the cause of material slavery, but if we cleanse consciousness with bhakti-yoga, we can understand the falsity of our upādhis – equations with being Indian, American, Hindu, Muslim, Christians and so on. 

Supreme consciousness is -vinirmukta ta Tat-paratvena nirmalam. We need to forget these definitions and use our consciousness only for serving Krishna. Our lives will surely be successful if we, therefore, embrace what the Krishna consciousness movement gives us. "

So I hope that the leadership of Krishna Consciousness Community will listen to the voice of reason and adhere to the example of gurus (especially Srila Prabhupada), sadhus and shastra and will not introduce this bogus membership contract and membership fees. Instead, we should focus on spreading the love of God and the principles of bhakti yoga across Slovenia and beyond, and on connecting people in spiritual community without any obstacles or conditions (as it has been in practice throughout known history). 

This is the only way that we can follow the mission of Srila Prabhupada and other acharas and get closer to God or Krishna. I request everyone to resist this attempt at introducing mundane bureaucracy into the Krishna consciousness movement.

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Request for prayers for HH Kavicandra Swami well-being.

Hare Krishna dear devotees, please accept our obeicanses all glories to Shrila Prabhupada.

We have a small update and prayer request on behalf of HH Kavicandra Swami.
He is traveling in Germany now and since last week he fell sick, there's not much information since we still cannot get hold on local devotees. As per maharajes words doctor treating him on strong antibiotics that seems to help but he still experience pain in his body and severe face swelling due to which he cannot get proper rest and needs continue his treatment.

We will update all of you when we have more information but as of now we humbly request all devote community for extra prayers on behalf of HH Kavicandra Swami health and well-being.

Your servant,
Yogamaya dasi

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“SHORTERMISM” AND ISKCON’S MANY PROBLEMS.

Case 1: Going on holiday for the first time in decades. Asked one devotee about accommodation at a temple I’ll be visiting. $40 a night per person. Asked if there was any reductions for someone who collected about $300,000 for that project.
Answer: No. we would prefer not to charge, but we’re faced with a negative budget each week.

2) Asked another devotee , who I’ve met a couple of times if I could park my car at their temple for three weeks, near the airport I’ll fly out of.

Answer: we’re doing construction and tearing up half the lot. So we are short on space.

Probably both answers are true. Particularly don’t know the parking situation one ………….but one car spot which probably only once a week for 3 hours might be needed?……..but if I were a big doner who had just recently donated $10,000 to the other temple would I get a free stay?

Here’s the real point. Since I joined in 85, short term thinking wasn’t just a hallmark of Iskcon but the very essence of everything we did. We’d set up temples and projects that would be abandoned or 100% reversed later, losing all sorts of money and assets in the process.

We’d do all types of scams and tell lies to collect money, despite the damage it ultimately did to the consciousness of our devotees as we learnt duplicity as a way of life. An integral part of Spiritual life which caused so much schisms in (my) our own journey and internal life.

We’d openly lie to people to distribute books despite the terrible damage it did to our reputation etc etc etc. So how does it relate to child protection?

We hired pedophiles, monsters, violent cruel sociopaths, to take care of our children, because God forbid the long term life of children was waaaaaaay too far off, compared to the short term need for qualified people to collect and distribute, to get short term money.

We then shuffled the monsters around to ‘save our reputation’, short term, while simultaneously avoiding dealing with the short term hit of lost manpower.
Almost Every aspect of Iskcon life is dominated by this short term thinking. 

Judging successful ‘preachers’ and Gurus by how many people they bring to the movement, how many temples they open. Not how many of those people stay, or many become disenchanted when they figure out Gurudeva is nowhere near as pure as he pretended to be. Not how many of these temples remain open or aren’t now a white elephant, a great burden.

In 82 as a young teenager, alone in London, the devotees fed me in Soho St and were generally very kind to me. At the time I vowed ‘ I’ll pay them back’. I grew up in a time of no credit cards, where you didn’t have debt. You paid back. So I paid the society back many times over.

Now how likely do you think it is that I’ll give to either of these projects when I start donating again?. (I stopped last year after decades of giving as I could no longer support a leadership and society that engaged in a massive criminal conspiracy and cover up of horrific brutal crimes.)

How much more gratitude and indebted I would feel to either place had they responded positively? In contrast, my non devotee Aunt is letting me stay in her expensive rental cottage for free. My sister will squeeze 4 of us into her small house and already texted me asking what vegetarian food she should buy for us.
Ok they’re family. But didn’t Prabhupada say we were all a family of devotees?

I’m not looking for charity, and I completely understand how we have many crazy and lazy people in our temples that shouldn’t be there. But I was never one of them. This short term management system and thinking is still being implemented as so many temples totter from one financial, moral, or manpower crisis to the next, as does the society leadership, afraid to draw a line in the sand and start a new long term type of thinking. 

Terrified to challenge the child abuse supporters in one part of iskcon. Afraid to upset Ambarish and fire the two brutal child rapists working at the Tovp. Unwilling to think of the life and welfare of the devotees and making decisions based on that rather than some bricks and mortar. Funny I thought we were a Spiritual organization, who saw the soul or spirit in others, particularly devotees, and eschewed the material? It doesn’t look like this based on the behavior of our leadership.

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Karma is catching up.

PADA: Bhakti Vikas swami has encouraged many of his God brothers to take sins, and the result is -- they often fell down, got sick and / or died. He is still at it. Of course his molester messiahs also banned, beat, sued, molested and took the lives of Vaishnavas as a side bonus for his program. 

BVKS's star accomplishment ??? is having ISKCON spend $100,00,000 on lawsuits, so now the temples are dried up of money and so they are trying to make member fees because -- they wasted all their money buying new Mercedes for lawyers so BVKS's lawyers could go out and get their chicken tikkas in style. Told ya!

angel108b@yahoo.com