Sannyasa, or Sans Us?
BY: TAMOHARADASA (ACBSP)
May 15, CALGARY, CANADA (SUN) — About a year ago, I wrote to HH Prahladananda Swami to receive an application for sannyasa. I received the application, but a vow of allegiance to the GBC was a main feature. I wrote back, saying that I couldn't sign such a vow, that I was dedicated to Prabhupada's Iskcon, not to some questionable GBC body.
In response, he has refused to reply to my inquiries, and apparently also in what I perceive as a mood of political censorship, did not print an offering on my part to the Vaisnava health ministry publication about speech and language development among Iskcon infants, etc. despite saying he would do so before he received my denial of the GBC body as a body worthy of vowing one's sannyasa to. I am an audiologist by profession, and have a degree also in speech and language pathology, so I am well qualified. His change of mind and refusal to reply to me spoke volumes.
Srila Prabhupada specifically told all of us brahmanas to take sannyasa in later years. Iskcon has perverted that natural varna-ashrama function to instead be a rare annointing of "cardinals", a fact in opposition to the natural Vaisnava system. Instead of thousands of renounced preachers, we have a handful of "special" persons, and sannyasis handling daily management affairs. Gour Keshava Maharajah pointed this discrepancy out on Dandavats, near the begining of that website, in response to my question about how to go about taking sannyasa, saying that eventually Iskcon will have to rectify this strange arrangement.
On behalf of the many senior devotees who have been instructed by Prabhupada to take sannyasa in their old age, I am wondering how Iskcon GBC justifies demanding a vow of loyalty to their arguably corrupt system instead of to Sri Krsna Mahaprabhu and Srila Prabhupada? Do they think that oppressing the truthful brahmanas will be good for their schemes?
