Diddy Destroyed me! / Chanting for what? / Haribolananda 11 20 24

PADA: I don't think a lot of devotees have yet been able to come to grips with how devastating mental, physical, spiritual and / or sexual abuse can be on a child. There is really a lot of denial going on. And when people told me I was like "chicken little" -- claiming the sky is falling, well sorry, the sky REALLY has been falling, and some of it is worse than what I reported in public, because some of it is too nasty to repeat in public. 

The good news is, more people are waking up to all this of many fronts. Not only in ISKCON circles, but even among Church offenders, offending celebrities, offending sports coaches -- and so on, are all getting exposed more nowadays. The bad news is, much of this is way too little and way too late to really give many victims a lot of closure, and feeling like they can turn the page and start fresh. 

A lot of damage like this simply cannot be easily repaired. One gurukula victim told me, the thing I pray to Krishna for the most is -- to leave this body -- and never, ever, ever have any memories of what happened to me here. I pretty much feel the same way. ys pd  

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PADA: Yeah I heard this a thousand times. OK ten thousand times. "Well prabhu, don't bother me with all these problems, I have to chant my rounds." Good! And what is the purpose of chanting our rounds? "My dear Lord, please engage me in Your service." 

And what happens when the need of the hour, and the "service" our society is seriously confronted with is -- to protect the women, children, the sanctity of the sannyasa order, and to contain abusers and their protectors, and other practical issues? Sorry, too busy "chanting" to engage in the "service" that is needed. This is really just shifting the responsibility of defending victims over to, the people who have the least ability to fix it, namely -- the vulnerable and victims themselves. No wonder our society got down to --"the victims have bad karma," which was launched in earnest after 1997. 

Right, the victims have the bad karma of expecting these "chanters" to give them protection. Srila Prabhupada says -- when dharma is not defended, and thus adharma becomes prominent, the society will collapse. And that is a practical fact. Meanwhile, a good number of these "chanters" around here were later on drinking beer, smoking pot, watching football, and -- worse. 

I visited the house of three former "big samkirtan book distributors" here in Berkeley, they were all drinking beer and watching football. What was the use of all their chanting? ys pd

angel108b@yahoo.com

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Haribolananda: So these caste brahmanas were so obsessed by their bodily concept of birth, so much so, that they were prepared to do anything abominable even to the point of killing a personality like Bhaktisiddhanta. Similarly, this bodily conception of physical guru has driven a certain group within Srila Prabhupada's ISKCON society to accept so many abominable things, like child abuse, rape, and even murder. 

Now, it appears that evidence is being presented that some of them were responsible for Srila Prabhupada's untimely death. All glories to His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada, who lives forever in His Divine instructions.