Prabhavishnu Swami's fall from sannyasa

Prabhavishnu Swami, a leading ISKCON sannyasi and guru, 60 years old, was recently caught in flagrante delicto with a woman, apparently a non-devotee, in Bangkok. Another tiresome episode that has ISKCON's critics jumping up and down with indignation, and many disciples crying in pain and disbelief.

Where are the pure devotees? they cry. All the gurus are false, they scream. ISKCON is full of fakers and misleaders, they say. Prabhavishnu himself has given a litany of excuses -- overwork, too much travel, etc. But they refuse to put their finger on the obvious.

Neither the ISKCON leadership nor their critics in the Prabhupadanuga camp have identified the real flaw, which is the sannyasa institution itself.

Sannyasa, like brahmacharya, is something of a cult trick. It is a leftover from the Mayavada influence on India that rejects the world, and therefore sees woman and sexuality as false. An organization like ISKCON demands uncompromising and absolute fidelity to the cause, and that absolute commitment is expressed in celibacy.

When a sannyasi "falls down," the institution's principal objective is to get the experienced, committed and selfless servant back into the groove -- making money and money-makers for the cause. This, it is argued, is correct because the good they do outweighs the bad.

Those in opposition to the current institution want to hold the so-called gurus and sannyasis to their standard of absolute celibacy because that is their only sure-fire externally verifiable measuring stick for determining who is a "pure devotee."

We say it is not a genuine measuring stick, but an artificial one that has been established for purely institutional reasons. Indeed, the whole institutional ethos is opposed to prema, because it makes dedication to the institution, an inherently impersonal entity, more important than personal relations. Dedication to the institution is seen as the path to perfection, but because it is an impersonal entity, that dedication ultimately cannot take one to the goal of prema.

Sannyasa serves an institutional purpose in the name of a transcendent ideal, but it is artificial. It therefore has only three possible outcomes -- falldown, isolation or hypocrisy, which is really a combination of the other two. As an institution deterioriates, hypocrisy becomes the norm and it is aided and abetted by other privileged leaders who are profiting personally from the status quo, and in all likelihood are counting the days until their own hypocrisy is exposed. One should not underestimate  a large, wealthy spiritual institution's capacity for hypocrisy.

And therefore, the verse Prabhupada loved to quote to show that the achievements of Mayavada are only temporary applies here too:

ye’nye’ravindākṣa vimukta-māninas
tvayy asta-bhāvād aviśuddha-buddhayaḥ |
āruhya kṛcchreṇa paraṁ padaṁ tataḥ
patanty adho’nādṛta-yuṣmad-aṅghrayaḥ ||

O Lotus-eyed One! Those others who falsely think themselves are liberated, who have no love for you, and whose intelligence is [thus] impure, may rise to the highest realms through intense austerities, but [eventually, inevitably] they fall down again due to ignoring your feet. [10.2.32]

This verse means that even those who are engaged in spiritual practices and tapasyā, whether they claim to worship a personal God or an impersonal God, if they have not attained prema, who do not attain rasa, find that all their relationships eventually deteriorate into impersonal I-It relations. Even the much touted personal relation with God turns into an I-It relationship. Because the God that exists in the temple or even in the mind is just a mental construct. Their sannyasa is simply a show for prolonging the self-deception of spiritual advancement.

Only in madhura-rasa sādhana can one truly come to a cultivation of I-Thou, which produces love that is then expanded outwards into the rest of one's life.

Prabhavishnu couldn't bear life without prema and so he sought solace in female companionship, which of course he mistook for sex desire. Unfortunately, it does not seem that the woman has a background in devotion, which means that this too is most likely to be short lived. I assume that he and his companion will tire of each other soon, he will come crawling back to ISKCON, receive his forgiveness and, once again, before long, be sitting on the vyasasana, glorifying pure devotional service. But he will not be any closer to prema, I fear, and the root causes of the problem -- in him and in ISKCON -- will remain.