Jagat

Almost two hundred years ago the Queen of Manipur married the King of the neighbouring state of Tripura. The King was an exalted Vaishnava. He came to Vrindavan and built a temple for the people of his kingdom. It was named Tripura-kunja. After the marriage, the Queen of Manipur said to him, "You have your kunja, but I don't have my own. I also want to have my kunja. When my people will come to Vrindavan, where will they stay? Where will they meet?" The king replied, " My dear, your wish will be fulfilled. Nearby Tripura-kunja we will have your Kunja, the Manipuri-rani-kunj." The place was named Rani-kunja. Rani means Queen. Therein the deities of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Giriraj Govardhan and Sri Sri Radha-Vrajamohan were duly installed. In this way a nice temple was established there. The Arati was first offered at Tripura-kunja and then at Rani-kunja. The Queen lived for a long time in a room near the Deities'room and performed her bhajan there. ...

Killing for Krishna: The Danger of Deranged Devotion by Henry Doktorski III. 660 pages, soft cover, 9 x 6 x 1.5 inches, 2.5 lbs . PO Box 893343, Temecula CA 92589. (Facebook) Kirtanananda Swami's as yet unfinished samadhi on the Parikrama Marg in Panigaon (Vrindavan, 2018) In November 1973, I was living in Dallas while Dayananda Das Adhikary was temple president. During that time, the Bal Yogi “Guru Maharaj Ji,” was the current rage, attracting disciples at a rate that made ISKCON’s growth look tepid. A big convocation had been arranged at the Houston Astrodome for his followers, and the ISKCON temples from Texas and beyond sent numerous book distributors to the location in the hope of selling Prabhupada literature. One of our Dallas Gurukul teachers had heard a statement of Srila Prabhupada about Guru Maharajji, in all likelihood “The so-called, pseudo guru, false guru, he should be killed.” ( London, August 5, 1973 ) He made the big mistake of getting into an argument wi...

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 ...

There are many examples of the kind of Prabhupadanuga closed-mindedness and fanaticism that make me despair for the future of the Krishna consciousness movement. One especially good and consistent source of examples is provided by the Sampradaya Sun website, which never fails to find an opportunity to make a great display of its devotion to Srila Prabhupada at the cost of sensible rational thought. They can spend endless hours and spill countless gallons of ink discussing the flaws of the ISKCON gurus and the doctrine of the "Sampradaya acharya," but the territory no one dares to enter is that where Srila Prabhupada and his teachings are called into question. In this respect I have two particular examples I would like to bring up; one is recent, the other two years old. I will discuss the recent on first, the second one afterwards, even though in terms of writing, the latter issue came to my attention first and was in the process of inspiring comment when the more recent in...

In Patiala and Delhi, I had a TV in my room and so I checked out what was going on in the 24-hour news cycle world. There were two major scandals in the last couple of weeks involving Indian sadhus, gurus and what-have-you, whom they call by the generic name "babas". At least they seem to have given up the term "God-men" which was a longstanding favorite of theirs I particularly hate. (I seem to be wrong about that.) There was even a little juicy video to play over and over again, what to speak of other clips of the babas dancing ecstatically. One TV station even played that up by juxtaposing the dancing guru with a belly dancer to make him look even more idiotic. The anchor man very sincerely said, "We are doing this as a public service as so many people put their faith in babas and they need to know who is genuine and who is not." Then Baba Ramdeva went on record in calling for the death penalty (!) for bogus babas, saying they are giving g...