The Luxuries of Sannyasa
BY: ROCANA DASA
Aug 23, 2010 — CANADA (SUN) — We're commenting today on sannyasis in ISKCON and in particular, on the fact that many of them have gone in the opposite direction from the standards of their asrama. Some of our ISKCON sannyasis have become the richest and most powerful personalities in the society. How they justify maintaining independent wealth is an interesting question. Their wealth gives them the ability to do whatever they feel like doing in terms of traveling or acquiring property and assets, and they apparently don't have to justify any of that to the ISKCON Sannyasa Ministry or the GBC.
When asked by the rank and file devotees to justify their activities, many have the audacity to point to Srila Prabhupada and say well, Srila Prabhupada had some bank accounts and Srila Prabhupada controlled the movement, and Srila Prabhupada would fly first class on occasion, and when he stayed at the temples they gave him nice facility, and picked him up in a luxurious car. Of course what Srila Prabhupada did in his lila period as a Sampradaya Acarya, executing the mission given to him by Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu to spread Krsna Consciousness throughout the world, is a very different matter than how our ISKCON sannyasis should conduct themselves.
Srila Prabhupada was totally fixed in the concept of nirbandha krsna sambandhe, using everything in Krsna's service. And the fact of the matter is, compared to most of the super-rich swamis of today, Srila Prabhupada's lifestyle and his bank account, or whatever you want to point to in order to justify the present lifestyles, was very modest in comparison.
Srila Prabhupada would often state in his lectures that great personalities can do anything they want, whether it be Lord Shiva or some other transcendental personality, but our job is not to imitate them – our job is to follow them. If you're not such a great advanced personality, then your business is to follow what they have to say, which is non-different than sastra. And many previous Acaryas have set the standard for sannyasa in this regard.
If we look at Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu's lila, a number of the great personalities who participated, such as Rupa and Sanatana Goswami, Raghunatha das Goswami, and Ramananda Raya were multi-millionaires prior to joining Lord Caitanya's lila. Some of them were wealthy beyond anyone's comprehension. They had the opportunity to enjoy a life of complete luxury, yet they gave all this up to live as true mendicants and set the standard for those following in our sampradaya, especially in the renounced order.
Srila Prabhupada himself was a wealthy businessman at one point in his life, and he gave that up to become a sannyasi. He lived in the renounced order for years prior to coming to the West. And Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati lived a very austere life as a sannyasi, despite the fact that he was born into the family of Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur, who was a highly respected magistrate. For many years Srila Bhaktivinoda lived a comfortable lifestyle, which he also gave up.
But regardless of what the great Sampradaya Acaryas did, as individuals our business is not to imitate them, or to use their activities as an excuse to succumb to our own material desires for fame and fortune. Many of those who have taken sannyasa in ISKCON under Srila Prabhupada have demonstrated the opposite of the acaryas described above. Most of them were impoverished before they came to ISKCON, and that was their material standard prior to taking sannyasa. But upon accepting the renounced order, over time they became very wealthy, especially after Srila Prabhupada departed and they anointed themselves as great acaryas. They began to accumulate money and followers, and lived a lavish lifestyle. Enjoying the high life, they completely ignored the dictates of sastra and the preaching of Srila Prabhupada, and as a result, they have not only become contaminated by false prestige and wealth, they have also wasted untold millions in resources that should and could have been used in Krsna's service, to further Srila Prabhupada's mission.
The amount of money that has been squandered, wasted, and misappropriated by sannyasis over the last 30 years in ISKCON is just inconceivable. And we're not simply talking about the most obvious examples of extravagance, like those demonstrated by the Zonal Acaryas. Most of them have now come and gone, and we have a new echelon of super-swami millionaires in their place. Even if we look at the second or third tier sannyasis, who are less obvious examples, we still find swamis who have accumulated large sums of money and then squandered it.
Right here in Canada, for instance, we have supplied the movement with a few swamis, although none of them are permanents residents in Canada anymore. HH Bhakti Raghava Swami and HH Ganapati Swami, for example, were not leaders during Srila Prabhupada's lila period, but they took sannyasa. Neither were high profile sannyasis, but in both cases, they accumulated and wasted large sums of money. I last saw Ganapati Swami in Lawrence, Kansas several years ago. He was traveling around with some brahmacaries in his motor home, and in that motor home he was carrying $80,000 cash. He later squandered a lot of money by buying a property that was virtually useless. He was cheated, and the money was wasted.
Bhakti Raghava Swami, who's now in India, came back to Canada for a short spell to preach in his prabhu-datta-desa in eastern Canada. I'm told that he got cheated out of a great deal of money in the infamous Internet 'Nigerian scam'. He actually went to Nigeria and was almost murdered there by the cheaters, of course losing all the money. And here he is, going around talking about varnasrama, when he knows full well that in the varnasrama system, sannyasis do the opposite of what he was doing. They don't go around with big bank accounts and lots of money.
We have written in the past about several of the scandals associated with ISKCON sannyasis and money, but over all these years, we have yet to see a single instance where one of these sannyasis offers a public accounting of their failures: they do not apologize, they don't explain the details of their financial dealings, like how much money was lost, and by exactly what means; they don't give any philosophical explanation of how as a sannyasi, they came to be involved in handling money, property, etc. And until such honest disclosures are made, we can only assume that the individuals are not remediated, and are not willing to use their personal experiences to preach to the devotees, helping them to avoid making similar mistakes. For that reason, the stories of their illicit activities tend to have a very long afterlife.
We should also point out that scandals involving swamis and losses of large sums of money is not just 'old news' – it is an ongoing problem in ISKCON. In fact, new rumors are circulating that HH Bhakti Caru Swami just lost in the neighborhood of $9 million dollars when a real estate deal here in Canada went sideways.
In the case of a number of swamis who got entangled and lost great sums of money, one of the problems was that they were brought up from a young age in the movement, having done a lot of service as brahmacaries, but they did not have any training whatsoever on how to take care of money. Even in their service prior to taking sannyasa, they weren't in any management position, so they didn't have any idea how to handle money, or invest it, even on behalf of Krsna.
Srila Prabhupada, on the other hand, had the experience prior to taking sannyasa of being in family life. He was very expert at handling money and understood the importance of money. He knew how to keep track of it and properly invest it in Krsna's service, which he did, and showed us by example. He kept track of every penny, making sure none of it was spent foolishly. How many of us do that today?
Aside from the two Canadian examples mentioned above, we could go on and on about all the waste that has taken place amongst ISKCON's sannyasa asrama. We have often addressed the subject of Hridayananda, Satsvarupa and the other Zonal Acaryas, and the amount of money that these people have accumulated then squandered is beyond belief. But still there is no policy whatsoever for dealing with it. Although the GBC tried to implement a policy wherein the swamis would be accountable to them for their actions and their funding, that oversight is obviously not functioning, or is itself corrupt.
Wealthy swamis are still making money, acquiring and saving their own money, and even lending money at interest to the temples and devotees. While they enjoy their tax-free status, how they handle their money on behalf of the many incorporated non-profit's is anybody's guess. I'm sure the government officials of whatever country they're residing in would love to know how they're spending their money. Swamis who have gone to Ivy League schools to get degrees couldn't have done so without money. It costs a tremendous amount of money to go to Harvard or Oxford. And of the devotees who have used Krsna's funds to accumulate such material degrees, or have taken advantage of the facility provided by ISKCON due to their status, which enabled them to get their degrees, how many are now giving back to ISKCON the salaries they earn as lawyers or professors or academic writers?
Another aspect of the new swami persona that has become the norm in ISKCON, and is therefore setting the standard for generations to come – perhaps for hundreds of years in the future -- is that the swamis are taking all sorts of administrative and managerial posts. The varnasrama principle is that they should retire so they can dedicate their lives to studying sastra and engaging in spiritual activities, but this is not the case. Even though Srila Prabhupada himself set-up ISKCON in such a way that he had the maximum amount of time for writing his books and engaging in preaching work, many of today's swamis do not follow this example.
This is one of the reasons Srila Prabhupada established the GBC -- so he wouldn't have to do all these administrative duties. He could hand some of them off to his young disciples. Many of them were sannyasis, and they shouldered some of the administrative burden for Srila Prabhupada. But even though Srila Prabhupada set the example at his age, and those once-young swamis are now close to the same age that Srila Prabhupada was back then, still they are clinging to their administrative posts, wasting all sorts of personal time engaging in management activities when they could pass these responsibilities on to others. In fact, they have all the power and resources necessary to easily dedicate themselves to just preaching, writing, chanting, etc., which is what sannyasis are supposed to do.
The sannyasis are supposed to divest themselves of all their entanglements, and dedicate their lives solely and wholly to spiritual pursuits, without any care of maintaining themselves. This was the whole idea of taking the renounced order, especially in India, where a sannyasi could go anywhere, not having to deal with accumulating and managing money. The sannyasis could just go to the householders, who would give them whatever they needed to eat and a place to sleep. But this principle has been completely reversed in ISKCON. If devotees want some facility to render service they have to go to the sannyasis, who are the ones handing out the facility, the money, and the permission. They are the ones who have the say in what a person could or should be doing within the institution. And it seems that none of these sannyasis are retiring; they're clinging to their power, they're clinging to their money, and Maya and Krsna are the only ones who can take it away from them. They won't voluntarily, on the strength of sastra or on the strength of their own desire to make spiritual advancement, give these attachments up because that's what they are – attachments.
The rest of the devotee community is essentially left to suffer the results of this accumulation and concentration of money, power and facility in the hands of sannyasis. The GBC is composed mostly of sannyasis, and they are now advancing in age, so why is it that this phenomena is taking place? They're not even doing a very good job at what they do. They're essentially taking the position of kshatriyas, who have the propensity to do administrative work. The kshatriyas are to be judged by the brahmans and by the citizens, based on how well they take care of those entrusted to them. And the ones that they're supposed to protect first and foremost are the women, the children, the brahmans, and the cows. And in all those categories, the ISKCON managers are not taking care. We've had so many scandals to prove this is a fact. And even though they're not doing their jobs as administrators, as kshatriyas in management, they hold onto their power. And they continue to squander their money.
Harikesa Swami walked off with millions of dollars, Bhagavan walked off with millions of dollars, and there are so many other examples. Satsvarupa and Jayapataka Swami have spent untold sums of money on their health, trying to manage disease and illness, but this is not at all the example set by Srila Prabhupada. When he was visited by ill health, he did exactly the opposite.
And even though it was money that brought so many past ISKCON sannyasis down, the swamis of today are still enthusiastically following in their footsteps, making the very same mistakes. They have not only ruined the whole concept of varnasrama and set a very bad example in general, but they're also destroying their own Krsna Consciousness and causing a great deal of envy among other members of the society. Yet no one is talking about it, no one is doing anything about it.
Although the GBC themselves are saying that the sannyasis and the gurus are under the jurisdiction of the GBC – the ultimate managing authority – still the GBC are doing nothing about this problem. It's a very deep-seated problem -- one of the most serious challenges ISKCON has to face. But face it they must, if they want to please Srila Prabhupada and Krsna.
So what can be done? As Srila Prabhupada says, these things are going on.
