Jagat

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...

Rocana Das is an old friend of mine from Toronto and other places in Canada, where we were in Iskcon together. Our paths diverged many years ago, but we came into contact a few years ago, in the early days of the Internet, when he first started his Harekrsna.com website and a listserve group called Garuda. We engaged in some fairly civil debates there, but Rocana and I were generally on the opposite sides of issues. On the whole, Rocana cannot see past the fact that I don't seem to be a true "Prabhupadanuga" and indeed, though he made a pretense of politeness, he always managed to let it be known that he considered me to be a guru-tyagi and all that accompanies such a dreadful epithet. Anyway, I still visit his Sampradaya Sun website every few days, though to be honest, I am completely bored with Iskcon politics; I have little or no vested interest in that organization and find most of the issues, philosophical or political, to be irrelevant to me personally. Nevertheles...