Hare Krsna, Please accept my most humble obeisance.
I pray to Krsna very humbly to give me all necessary knowledge to render some help here so that an early devotee is not diverted back into Maya.
I begin with appreciating the humility in question and not the question in question on ISKCON or its Gurus.
I see this as a very natural situation which some devotees may experience in the beginning due to all dualities in this material world. If we remove the context reference of this news from this question - then it becomes a very pure truth seeking approach and not a question on ISKCON movement and its credibility.
I see a very empathetic view of this devotee and the question is why did Krsna not help him when he was again sinking into Maya.
Recommendation for all of us is that if the scientific process of sincerely chanting minimum 16 round per day of the Maha mantra & four regulative principals are followed then the consciousness is cleared of all sins and propensities to commit sin.
So the absolute answer to your question is that:
If this is process is not followed then Maya again pulls us back into life full of lust.
I guess, this person was still not purified and was feeding is body not his soul due to lack of sincerity in following the recommended process.
Having followed the recommended practice, one realises that "he/she is not this body" but a soul. As long as this realization is absent all of us continue to feed the body and its senses and forget to feed the soul.
A soul needs and needs only love.
The most natural propensity of a soul is to enjoy.
This enjoyment comes from love which is transcendental and not in this material world.
This love is completely different from lust.
Love is supreme, eternal and transcendental & the Ultimate and between all souls and Krsna.
Lust is between the bewildered soul considering himself as this body and this material world.
When this soul comes in contact with material nature and is contaminated and filled with false ego and is bewildered to consider himself/ herself a body. Further agony and pain comes when the bewildered soul in a body starts living in two principal moods - either an enjoyer or controller.
Material enjoyment leads to lust, greed and anger. Same way when we are not able to control the material world around us we become unhappy or angry and uncontrolled.
Once this realization comes all fame, insult becomes imaterial since this is in reference to this body which is mortal.
Soul is eternal and travels on - depending upon Karma and wishes to enjoy the material body. Changing many bodies and keep coming back into this or other worlds
I pray to Krsna to bless you to keep your fixity of purpose to go back to Him by following the recommended process.
There is plenty to learn and one lifetime is very less to clean all our past sins and to go back to Krsna in Goloka.
The mood and mode of a pure devotee is to surrender our heart, false ego and feel the ecstasy of serving the ultimate and his pure devotees. Offering all our efforts and results to krsna and living a lifestyle completely dependent on the mercy of Krsna who is the ultimate creater, maintainer and enjoyer.
I beg forgiveness from all realized devotees and request them to please enlighten me further in case my understanding is not correct.
Jagadatma das > Dinesh KumarAugust 10, 2011 at 10:51am
Dear Dinesh prabhu and all devotees Hare Krsna, your replies are very good. I thought that I must add something more and that it is important to understand. By chanting and following principles one becomes of good character and peaceful. Then many people come to you asking please bless me and saying oh you are such a great devotee. Then we can become proud thinking that I am a great devotee and become bewildered by false presteige and the praise of others. This pride thinking I AM GREAT blinds us and we fail to offer respect to others and commit aparadhas to the vaisnavas. Then our bhakti is finished by the mad elephant offence. Slowly like the waning of the moon all our taste for bhakti drys up and we are left with only an external appearence of being a devotee but inside empty. Then maya attacks with full force and we are finished. Lust and material desires are compared to dust on the mirror of mind and heart and can be easily remooved by the chanting of the Holy Names HARE KRSNA! But aparadha is a much more serious impediment and very difficult to remoove. Even your chanting with this aparadha will be ineffective and you will fall down from your high position. So we should remember this and never take any praise and credit for our self. We should always give credit to our gurudev and Krsna and remain as their humle servant. Hare Krsna
Dinesh Kumar > Jagadatma dasAugust 10, 2011 at 10:41pm
Hare Krsna Prabhuji, Thank you very much. Indeed very true and very likely that a false pride may creep in. Humility at all times is very very important. Complete surrender is the key to shed the false ego that I am this body. All false pride is attached to this body. I am anxiously waiting to hear from Radhika mataji i hope she comes back reads this discussion and is again connected to Krsna.
Harekrsna to all.dandavat.preeching is easier than implementation(GURU ALWAYS imlements the instructions first and then make preeching for people) .As per my knowledge he tried to change people wt evr the reason may be there,bt he nvr tried to control his senses through devotional service.we should not cal evry person as guru,if we do like that there is no devotee in this world,only guru(s). y i am saying is wen i went for book distibution ,i used to say some few words abt the kc ,that doesnt mean i am like guru.My intention is different ,at any cost i should sale sp book(s).
Sudheendra S > krishnaveni paidiAugust 6, 2011 at 9:16pm
Very true mataji. I was reading the book The Journey Home by HH Radhanath Swami Maharaj and he was mentiong something similar to this. Maharaj before he came to the shelter of Prabhupad was searching for the perfect path to follow and dedicate his life and one such person he met was a Zen master. He was very strict with his students. He would beat them with a stick even if they moved their bodies while meditating. But he had a illicit relation with one of his female student. So, maharaj writes there that preaching can not be effective unless we practice what we preach. The Zen master was very strict with his students but not with himself. This person whom mataji is talking about is also like that one.
Once a devotee said Srila Prabhupad that he is amazed to see devotees leaving practicing KC. To which Srila Prabhupada replied that we should be amazed to see some one stay back than to see how many go away from KC. Because in kaliyuga, it is just not possible to practice the path of bhakti very easily.
From seeing such examples that you quoted, I personally try to learn lesson that Maya can attack us anywhere. Its not that now we are chanting, singing, leading kirtan, preaching, giving SB class, we will be freed from Maya. Maya is everywhere. I was hearing a wonderful statement in a SB class recently. Maya always attach at the right time and on the weakest point. A true devotee or a aspiring devotee of Krishna should try to give up sense enjoyment by his own will and not by force. Even though if we try to do something because we want to be recognized as a senior devotee and be respected and glorified... then we are only pampering our false ego. There is no devotion in it.
Krishna is a loving father and has given COMPLETE free will to all living entities. It is up to US how we are going to use this free will. We have no right what so ever to blame Lord for we misusing the free will given.
Dear devotee, no one in ISKCon is forced to accept anyone as a bonafide guru. Neither does ISKCon say that the persons who are presenting themseves as a guru are bonafide gurus. That has to be decided by YOU! and if later on that person prooves to be not bonafide the only person to blame is YOU. ISKCon trys to regulate the standard for being a guru but it is only an external atempt. We cannot see who is a pure devotee by external appearances alone. So if they appear to be following and you appear to be following we cannot object if YOU want to accept them as your guru. It is your responsibility alone. ISKCon recomends you take your time and very carefully study a devotee you feel is completely pure. We never say that the person with a no objection to be guru approval is a completely liberated soul. Shastra says you should not accept a guru on the basis of eclesiastical convention which means just because a person is 'authorised' by an institution. So if you follow like a flock of sheep , just to fit in with your freinds, to have a guru to ware on a badge and as a matter of fashion, putting on a show you will be cheated. By the mercy of Krsna you get guru and by the mercy of guru you get Krsna.
Krsna is the Supreme Lord and He knows all about you in every detail of every birth. As the supersoul He witnessed your every act. He knows exacily what you deserve. Only the greatest arogant fools think that He is making a mistake or He is a mean, harsh and unmerciful god who does not care or give protection to His devotee. What nonsense rascal writes such things! ? If a person chanting the Holy Name of the Lord just once, even if he is the greatedt sinner in the universe, inconceivably he will be saved. You do not know the glory of Krsna.
Try to understand. The mailman delivers you the letter containing money. The money is sent by your father. The mailman takes some trouble to regularly bring you this letter and you are happy to see the mailman. But the money was not the property of the mailman, he has no money he is just delivering it from your father . He has a job in the postal department and he has no such wealth it never delongs to him. In fact he is a very poor person but he does his service he does not take anything from the letters and claim its his. Unfortunately the nailman in your area has some bad character. So bad he lost his job. But don't worry a new mailman will come with your letter full of money from your father.
So in the example, the mailman is the guru who delivers you knowledge about Krsna and devotional service. This knowledge comes through the parampara which here is compared to the postal department. The good qualification of the mailman is that he delivers the mail AS IT IS. As long as he follows the rules of the post office he can do this job and if theres any deviation he can be replaced. So we may have received knowledge from a person who later fell down but there is no loss. You just go on serving Krsna and hearing from the more advanced the Mailmen and you will increase your wealth of bhakti. We don't give up on Krsna. Hare Krsna
Ashish Sharma > Jagadatma dasAugust 5, 2011 at 1:10pm
Hare Krishna !!
Srila Prabhupad ki Jai !!
Hare Krishna Jagadatma Prabhu, PAMHO !!
Such a beautiful reply with such a nice example. You really clarified in once all the doubts.
We always try to find fault and thus deviate from our main goal of life i.e. going back home back to godhead. There are so many better things we get to know from ISKCON but one or two mistakes makes our faith shakable. We should understand MAYA DEVI who is the servant of KRISHNA takes examination of all the devotees from time to time, KRISHNA HAS GIVEN HER THIS POWER, so as to see that only the eleigible devotees get the tickets for Bhagwad Dham. Upon seeing some degraded devotees if our faith fumbles then it means we are also trapped my Maya Devi. So let us just serve KRISHNA and recieve knowledge from Bonafide authorities all the time, nothing more is required from us.
May KRISHNA showers his mercy upon all of us & I pray that we all together be in Bhagwad Dham doing Kirtan, serve MERCIFUL LORD, Have Prasad, see & take part in Lila performed by KRISHNA!!
Replies
Hare Krsna, Please accept my most humble obeisance.
I pray to Krsna very humbly to give me all necessary knowledge to render some help here so that an early devotee is not diverted back into Maya.
I begin with appreciating the humility in question and not the question in question on ISKCON or its Gurus.
I see this as a very natural situation which some devotees may experience in the beginning due to all dualities in this material world. If we remove the context reference of this news from this question - then it becomes a very pure truth seeking approach and not a question on ISKCON movement and its credibility.
I see a very empathetic view of this devotee and the question is why did Krsna not help him when he was again sinking into Maya.
Recommendation for all of us is that if the scientific process of sincerely chanting minimum 16 round per day of the Maha mantra & four regulative principals are followed then the consciousness is cleared of all sins and propensities to commit sin.
So the absolute answer to your question is that:
If this is process is not followed then Maya again pulls us back into life full of lust.
I guess, this person was still not purified and was feeding is body not his soul due to lack of sincerity in following the recommended process.
Having followed the recommended practice, one realises that "he/she is not this body" but a soul. As long as this realization is absent all of us continue to feed the body and its senses and forget to feed the soul.
A soul needs and needs only love.
The most natural propensity of a soul is to enjoy.
This enjoyment comes from love which is transcendental and not in this material world.
This love is completely different from lust.
Love is supreme, eternal and transcendental & the Ultimate and between all souls and Krsna.
Lust is between the bewildered soul considering himself as this body and this material world.
When this soul comes in contact with material nature and is contaminated and filled with false ego and is bewildered to consider himself/ herself a body. Further agony and pain comes when the bewildered soul in a body starts living in two principal moods - either an enjoyer or controller.
Material enjoyment leads to lust, greed and anger. Same way when we are not able to control the material world around us we become unhappy or angry and uncontrolled.
Once this realization comes all fame, insult becomes imaterial since this is in reference to this body which is mortal.
Soul is eternal and travels on - depending upon Karma and wishes to enjoy the material body. Changing many bodies and keep coming back into this or other worlds
I pray to Krsna to bless you to keep your fixity of purpose to go back to Him by following the recommended process.
There is plenty to learn and one lifetime is very less to clean all our past sins and to go back to Krsna in Goloka.
The mood and mode of a pure devotee is to surrender our heart, false ego and feel the ecstasy of serving the ultimate and his pure devotees. Offering all our efforts and results to krsna and living a lifestyle completely dependent on the mercy of Krsna who is the ultimate creater, maintainer and enjoyer.
I beg forgiveness from all realized devotees and request them to please enlighten me further in case my understanding is not correct.
Hare Krsna !
Dear Dinesh prabhu and all devotees Hare Krsna, your replies are very good. I thought that I must add something more and that it is important to understand. By chanting and following principles one becomes of good character and peaceful. Then many people come to you asking please bless me and saying oh you are such a great devotee. Then we can become proud thinking that I am a great devotee and become bewildered by false presteige and the praise of others. This pride thinking I AM GREAT blinds us and we fail to offer respect to others and commit aparadhas to the vaisnavas. Then our bhakti is finished by the mad elephant offence. Slowly like the waning of the moon all our taste for bhakti drys up and we are left with only an external appearence of being a devotee but inside empty. Then maya attacks with full force and we are finished. Lust and material desires are compared to dust on the mirror of mind and heart and can be easily remooved by the chanting of the Holy Names HARE KRSNA! But aparadha is a much more serious impediment and very difficult to remoove. Even your chanting with this aparadha will be ineffective and you will fall down from your high position. So we should remember this and never take any praise and credit for our self. We should always give credit to our gurudev and Krsna and remain as their humle servant. Hare Krsna
Hare Krsna Prabhuji, Thank you very much. Indeed very true and very likely that a false pride may creep in. Humility at all times is very very important. Complete surrender is the key to shed the false ego that I am this body. All false pride is attached to this body. I am anxiously waiting to hear from Radhika mataji i hope she comes back reads this discussion and is again connected to Krsna.
your servant
dinesh
ur servant
krishnaveni
Very true mataji. I was reading the book The Journey Home by HH Radhanath Swami Maharaj and he was mentiong something similar to this. Maharaj before he came to the shelter of Prabhupad was searching for the perfect path to follow and dedicate his life and one such person he met was a Zen master. He was very strict with his students. He would beat them with a stick even if they moved their bodies while meditating. But he had a illicit relation with one of his female student. So, maharaj writes there that preaching can not be effective unless we practice what we preach. The Zen master was very strict with his students but not with himself. This person whom mataji is talking about is also like that one.
Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna.
Once a devotee said Srila Prabhupad that he is amazed to see devotees leaving practicing KC. To which Srila Prabhupada replied that we should be amazed to see some one stay back than to see how many go away from KC. Because in kaliyuga, it is just not possible to practice the path of bhakti very easily.
From seeing such examples that you quoted, I personally try to learn lesson that Maya can attack us anywhere. Its not that now we are chanting, singing, leading kirtan, preaching, giving SB class, we will be freed from Maya. Maya is everywhere. I was hearing a wonderful statement in a SB class recently. Maya always attach at the right time and on the weakest point. A true devotee or a aspiring devotee of Krishna should try to give up sense enjoyment by his own will and not by force. Even though if we try to do something because we want to be recognized as a senior devotee and be respected and glorified... then we are only pampering our false ego. There is no devotion in it.
Krishna is a loving father and has given COMPLETE free will to all living entities. It is up to US how we are going to use this free will. We have no right what so ever to blame Lord for we misusing the free will given.
Hari Bol!!!
Dear devotee, no one in ISKCon is forced to accept anyone as a bonafide guru. Neither does ISKCon say that the persons who are presenting themseves as a guru are bonafide gurus. That has to be decided by YOU! and if later on that person prooves to be not bonafide the only person to blame is YOU. ISKCon trys to regulate the standard for being a guru but it is only an external atempt. We cannot see who is a pure devotee by external appearances alone. So if they appear to be following and you appear to be following we cannot object if YOU want to accept them as your guru. It is your responsibility alone. ISKCon recomends you take your time and very carefully study a devotee you feel is completely pure. We never say that the person with a no objection to be guru approval is a completely liberated soul. Shastra says you should not accept a guru on the basis of eclesiastical convention which means just because a person is 'authorised' by an institution. So if you follow like a flock of sheep , just to fit in with your freinds, to have a guru to ware on a badge and as a matter of fashion, putting on a show you will be cheated. By the mercy of Krsna you get guru and by the mercy of guru you get Krsna.
Krsna is the Supreme Lord and He knows all about you in every detail of every birth. As the supersoul He witnessed your every act. He knows exacily what you deserve. Only the greatest arogant fools think that He is making a mistake or He is a mean, harsh and unmerciful god who does not care or give protection to His devotee. What nonsense rascal writes such things! ? If a person chanting the Holy Name of the Lord just once, even if he is the greatedt sinner in the universe, inconceivably he will be saved. You do not know the glory of Krsna.
Try to understand. The mailman delivers you the letter containing money. The money is sent by your father. The mailman takes some trouble to regularly bring you this letter and you are happy to see the mailman. But the money was not the property of the mailman, he has no money he is just delivering it from your father . He has a job in the postal department and he has no such wealth it never delongs to him. In fact he is a very poor person but he does his service he does not take anything from the letters and claim its his. Unfortunately the nailman in your area has some bad character. So bad he lost his job. But don't worry a new mailman will come with your letter full of money from your father.
So in the example, the mailman is the guru who delivers you knowledge about Krsna and devotional service. This knowledge comes through the parampara which here is compared to the postal department. The good qualification of the mailman is that he delivers the mail AS IT IS. As long as he follows the rules of the post office he can do this job and if theres any deviation he can be replaced. So we may have received knowledge from a person who later fell down but there is no loss. You just go on serving Krsna and hearing from the more advanced the Mailmen and you will increase your wealth of bhakti. We don't give up on Krsna. Hare Krsna
Hare Krishna !!
Srila Prabhupad ki Jai !!
Hare Krishna Jagadatma Prabhu, PAMHO !!
Such a beautiful reply with such a nice example. You really clarified in once all the doubts.
We always try to find fault and thus deviate from our main goal of life i.e. going back home back to godhead. There are so many better things we get to know from ISKCON but one or two mistakes makes our faith shakable. We should understand MAYA DEVI who is the servant of KRISHNA takes examination of all the devotees from time to time, KRISHNA HAS GIVEN HER THIS POWER, so as to see that only the eleigible devotees get the tickets for Bhagwad Dham. Upon seeing some degraded devotees if our faith fumbles then it means we are also trapped my Maya Devi. So let us just serve KRISHNA and recieve knowledge from Bonafide authorities all the time, nothing more is required from us.
May KRISHNA showers his mercy upon all of us & I pray that we all together be in Bhagwad Dham doing Kirtan, serve MERCIFUL LORD, Have Prasad, see & take part in Lila performed by KRISHNA!!
HARI BOL.
Who was the senior devotee who did this?