© 2000 VNN

EDITORIAL
April 11, 2000   VNN5834   Related VNN StoriesComment on this story
The Institution Of Giving

BY GOVINDA DASI

EDITORIAL, Apr 11 (VNN) — I read once in one of these scientific research magazines that a study showed scents [a person is frequently exposed to in his first 5 to 10 years of existence] will remain with him throughout life. It will trigger feelings of comfort and contentment in that person every time he comes across those scents. I thought with horror of the beggar children of Calcutta, grinning into adulthood at odors of exhaust fumes or worse, but then I thought of our own children: Ah, thank God these are brought up in the safety of offered incenses and fresh flowers.

“We have learned perhaps the bitterest of lessons by naively flying into institutional sanctuary.”

Equipped to respond to love, children naturally take in everything proposed them, until they find some (actually most) propositions are not embedded with love. Being the substance desirable relationships are made of, love is a given in the untainted beginning of a life experience and all children will, like a new plant bending towards the sun, turn to their guardians for confirmations of this pleasant, axiomatic truth. But lack of true love, eventually marrying the dynamics of a desirable relationship, leaves in its place only the theory of its potential and assurances of its possibilities. Thus, the comfort one draws throughout life from scents perceived in the beginning of life, like incense, markers, peanut butter or even exhaust fumes further confirms the soul's innate knowledge that the thing which one searches for, love, yes, it exists, and in love alone one will trust. The distortions forced on that knowledge by the environment is only temporary, if misleading.

Ex-students of Iskcon schools are seeking compensation in the form of money for past wrongs they suffered in the institution. They have suffered early in life what many of us, in our mature years, hastily avoid to think it could have happened to ourselves, what to speak it happened to our own children. The ex-students know however they will never be compensated by money, no matter the amount; they want the society to reassure them that, yes, decency exists, and that they are objects of affection, even if this was denied them in their forming years. They ask, by the way of justice, for the volunteer movement of love. May they be showered with it profusely this time.

When made public, the knowledge of abuse of children in Iskcon's schools raised indignation among honest men and women everywhere. We have all known more or less of different anomalies in our society, but it only took to know of one of such Gurukula experiences, really, to turn indignation into support of a law suit. And many of us perhaps heard more then one such accounts, each known story like an iron fist tightening and squeezing shock and shame out of our hearts. Collectively we all agree such tragedy should never have happened; personally I believe this unfortunate event can teach us several lessons but one in particular should be significant to a society that professes love and trust as supreme. That lesson, so simple, is on how in the face of the undesirable our own motives must be honestly revised.

How often many of us felt we cannot go any lower, not another feature of the material energy can surprise us for we have seen it all, right here in our superior society. What is that makes things go so bizarrely wrong with us? We separate ourselves in factions to more or less intently embrace explanations of choice but bewilderment is with us now tenacious as confidence was with us dearly when we first joined. Not subjected to any superficial grasp, truth has slipped out of our unguarded comprehension even as we desperately surrender to any kind of comprehension: how is it that so many not Krsna Conscious activities interwove in the every day life of Iskcon? Moreover, we are told there is no possibility of Krsna Consciousness outside of Iskcon, so what do we, simple but hard working devotees, do, where do we go?

Go back, urges the heart, to the one significant question: how much of the truth are we really willing to know?

To search for truth is to aspire for the assurement of love, a substance that -as Srila Jiva Goswami revealed ? moves in a crooked way, being thus unpredictable, uncontainable. Yet it belongs solidly to the heart, certain as the reality it is. "You were born in nectar, you were born to taste nectar. You must not allow yourselves to be satisfied by anything but nectar" urged Srila Sridhara Maharaja.

By definition love is only possible in relation to others than one's self; it is fluid, giving. Without giving, there is no love, only its false countenance, maya. Without love there is no giving, only exploitation, falsehood, untruth.

Krsna was the recipient of His Devotee's love but He would not know it fully wasn't for His taking the form of Lord Caitanya. As the Topmost Devotee, Lord Caitanya experienced something which He could not contain but rather madly distributed in waves that flooded low and high grounds.

The furor with which Lord Caitanya's waters of love overflowed the world was compared with the power of a tremendous waterfall. It would have crushed the world but it was tamed into the soft, deep lake of His followers' teachings, particularly that of the six Goswamis. From this lake the whole world comes and drinks insatiably. But never stagnant, the current must go on, sometimes on the surface, sometimes underground, hidden from superficial eyes. It is this current we are urged to search after and drink deeply from.

There are the schools of the spiritual master, Gurukula, where parents can send their children to prepare for a life of progressive thinking and joyous living, and there are the schools of cheating where Putana's envoys, disguised as teachers, thrive on the crushed buds-of-faith of innocent children. We believed we joined a movement of nectar where our faith could finally blossom in grace, and where in its schools our children would be guarded against exploitation, becoming in their turn, givers of nectar themselves.

We have learned perhaps the bitterest of lessons by naively flying into institutional sanctuary.

The current that first grabbed us from empty institutions (which we gladly left behind to join with those of the same feathers) was the current of the heart. We have lost perspective of the current's movements when allowed the original pull of the heart settle for the less substantial colors of mere religious and social-political challenges. We have created for ourselves a society where our activities are thought spiritual' by simple wishing while, debated as even civil, these activities are in reality the very things which rapidly distances us from anything spiritual.

A serious revision of the heart's motive alone will save our prospects if we choose to keep those prospects invested in the society. Indeed, failing to deliver as a spiritual society, ours, lets face it, as a mundane institution is a pretty lousy one.

It is said that Srila Prabhupada made the following comment when the official papers of a registered Iskcon was brought to him: "But it is only papers. The moment this institution ceases to serve its purpose, these papers could be torn and the institution dismissed.' Said it just as quoted, with different words, or not said at all, the point is, his meaning is indisputable.

It is well known that in Indian social-cultural relations rubber-stamping carries little meaning in contrast with the culture's weight on reputation-based word, a feature rooted in the culture's spirituality. On the other hand, western tradition is condemned by Bhaktisidhanta Saraswati Thakura to "be crushed" simply because of its base in ignorance. Srila Bhaktisidhanta is said to have registered Gaudiya Math in papers only to comply with the British rule of the time, rule which was seen by the sadhus as foolish western mentality. In traditional India, trust (a stressful gamble in modern India, true, but nevertheless reminiscent of a more glorious epoch) is the safeguard by which all institutions serve their purposes. Chance has it that, like Indian, other cultures around the world, learn the way out of chaos by the resource of the heart, being thus less vulnerable to the appearances of institutions.

I remember twelve years ago as a new immigrant in America, I was sent out on sankirtana at traffic lights. Not knowing I needed one, I approached drivers without an official solicitor ID pinned to my chest, for what I was repeatedly turned down with suspicion. My friend, also an immigrant but more experienced, would laugh with me at the outdated ID of a third person she produced from the bottom of her bag, which nevertheless was good enough for me to successfully distribute books for the rest of the day without a wink of suspicion from donors. We laughed at the irony of the situation; at the astonishing firmness with which this culture has come to rely on form, sometimes at the edge of risking the very purpose form is meant to serve: substance. Raised in a culture where the security thought provided by formal institutions simply isn't available at demand, we thought ourselves, on that day at the lights, in a little advantageous position over those we were soliciting from. We knew we were good, known to them or not, but they were only satisfied after looking at a false ID.

So in light of the knowledge of the true nature of things we, in our own private institution, have grown sure of our capacity of deposing trust in the mundane in favor of what we think is spiritual. And because technology is here to assist us we take to teach the world with such professional pride that we cannot help but be content with ourselves for spreading our mechanics so efficiently.

But inside our own walls we must now widen our eyes and cautiously watch our children closely. Why? Because in place of acquiring the knowledge on how to recognize substance, we have chosen to become experts in committing without giving, thus successfully creating a society which is not only useless for the purpose it was set out to serve, but which have grown dangerous in more than one way.

Shouldn't it be ironic, or symptomatic then that to the very core of the crusade for justice for the abused the most abusive of expressions again attaches itself?

One cannot but wonder what sort of evil could have caused it that on the very auspicious day of Lord Nityananda's appearance celebration Vaisnavas were forced upon with a message of hatred. On this year's appearance day of Lord Nityananda someone sent to many through the Internet a message suggesting 'please hate the Gaudiya Math because due to them only the abuse of children was possible in Iskcon'. What does one say to that if one's heart has gone entirely to the children robbed of love in the nurseries of our society, but has as well been captured by Srila Prabhupada's very worthy godbrothers' love? One cannot but say that Iskcon established misleading propaganda (now turned blind eye) against Vaisnavas is the cause of its own misfortune down to its most innocent member.

Resistance in let the substance of the heart flow indiscriminately is our society's exclusive brand of self-abuse. This self inflicted abuse we rather deny in the infatuation of our grand buildings' facades and its massive front doors which we cut to make our society more official' and so truly infallible for all. We organize, investigate, issue out resolutions, debate on our orders, disagree on just about everything but never, never do we make eye contact with the truth because such choice would simply expose the blunder that our faith is, and /that/ we know because we feel it in our hearts. But the front doors of institutionalization are burst open and the one element with the astonishing power to keep us firmly together in one gigantic, if defeated belief is: The institution is our mission even as we reject all chances of understanding what our mission should be about.

We are all permanently students, and the urgent lesson for the class of Srila Prabhupada's registered-in-papers society is that it has never been so close to having those papers torn.

A virtuous cause it is to glorify our savior, but who will call that honor upon himself alone when the full extent of our savior's glory is only known in the spiritual sphere? Indeed, as part of the Absolute Truth the glory of the Devotee is not subject to our grasp, it lets itself be partially known through his causeless grace. The undeliverers, the fallible soldiers however, will attempt to smuggle beyond the check-point of our hearts the half-facts that our savior's glory is all in the act of saving us. All other glorious features of him are second, third, or fourth to that!

And so it has come to be an institution of ours that our savior's mission is what we want it to be, never mind how narrow our perspective is. "The whole world" for the next "then thousand years', we say, we might as well glorify geography and mathematics. Who are we housing beyond those massive front doors if even from a distance we cannot accommodate our very well-wishers?

To be sure, there is one thing we have got right in our society. We proclaim our founder great. Just how great he is, is best known in other quarters but still we have survived only by the power of his greatness.

One aspect of his mission thus is still to save. This time what is there to save is his mission - from our very deviant selves!

Related VNN StoriesComment on this storyContact VNN about this storySend this story to a friend
How useful is the information in this article? Not Somewhat Very -

This story URL: http://www.vnn.org/editorials/ET0004/ET11-5834.html
The Suncruiser | | Prabhupada Festival Cance...

NEWS DESK | EDITORIALS | TOP
Surf the Web on