Will the Real Hridayananda Stand Up?
BY: NAVA JAUVANA DAS
Nov 23, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, USA (SUN) — It is with caution that I enter the ongoing discussion about Hridayananda prabhu. (He is hardly a Goswami unless he qualifies under the "caste goswami" category for having been part of the Zonal Acarya scheme.)
For two years I contributed articles to the Sun and wrote my own blog to air my grievances with my ISKCON godbrothers. My last post was in April of this year, and since then my pen has been silent. I felt that I had said everything that I wanted to say and to repeat myself would not be therapeutic for me or anyone else.
I am of the opinion that while free speech is a basic right and more than that, a responsibility for an aspiring Vaisnava, nothing substantial will get sorted by these discussions. That is not to say these discussions are not valuable. They will leave an historical record for future generations and hopefully help them correct the severe mistakes made by our generation. And it may assist some contemporaries to work thru the confusion and deep disillusionment they experienced after years of service and loyalty to ISKCON. That in itself is very useful.
The reason I am cynical that anything will change in our lifetime is because I have seen firsthand the arrogance, manipulation and shamelessness of those who claim to represent Srila Prabhupada. I witnessed these as a brahmacari and as a householder under the management of various sannyasis (or soon-to-be sannyasis) during Srila Prabhupada's manifest lila. Then I saw the duplicity exponentially increase with the Zonal Acarya farce. I was even complicit with it for brief periods when I was, for example, private secretary to Ramesvar, for four months in 1979 during the height of the Zonal Acarya era. In that capacity I observed and attended discussions amongst the Zonals.
Since 1985 I have witnessed the pretense of ISKCON from a distance, as one of the many thousands of Srila Prabhupada's disciples who could no longer tolerate the tunnel vision or participate in the tyranny of the GBC. With sadness, anger and bewilderment I voluntarily left the company of devotees at that time. Not one of the top leaders, many of whom I knew personally, ever said a word of consolation to me or made an offer of spiritual assistance since the day I left.
It took me more than two decades to overcome my sense of betrayal and to reach a level of peaceful acceptance. Now I can honestly say that I no longer feel subjective emotion about my history in ISKCON. I see the current leaders as caricatures rather than spiritual authorities. And it is with a sense of both tragic and comic irony that I am following the current discussion of Hridayananda das here in the Sun.
Let me say that I am no fan of his. But neither do I find him any worse than the rest of us. Except in one important respect: that he had and continues to have the chutzpah and ambition to pretend to be qualified as a spiritual manager, a renunciant and spiritual master.
Anyone who has ever served with Hridayananda knows that he is a terrible manager, mismanaging every project given to him. Even he has acknowledged the same by voluntarily or being forced to resign (after destroying countless devotional lives) from most management roles.
As a GBC he has not shown even a tinge of remorse for the damage done by the disastrous guru policies, starting with the Zonal Acarya fiasco that he gleefully participated in. He still uses his "User ID" from those days, the ostentatious "Acharyadeva" (See Acharyadeva.com). Never a word of apology to the thousands of godbrothers and godsisters who lost their association with their spiritual master's mission due to the selfish and egomaniacal exercise of authority that he helped to spearhead back in 1978.
As a sannyasi, enough has been seen and recorded about Hridayananda das' weakness towards the fair sex that it would make any honest babaji or monk recoil. Hearsay or not, yes, he is human! So why call yourself a "goswami" and maintain the pretense? Is name and fame more important than sincerity?
As a spiritual master, I do not feel it is for any of us to judge him. He may or may not be qualified. As he writes (thru his pseudonym, Krishna das) this is his and his disciples' business. It's not for me to judge whether or not he can inspire anyone in their attempt to reconnect with the Supreme Lord. If he can, I pay him my respects a thousand times. If I needed a guru, I would look for someone of more unalloyed character for my 1/11th second jolt of spiritual shakti. But that is their business, not mine.
As for Krishna das and his defense of Hridayananda, this is good theatre. It goes to the core of everything that is wrong with Hridayananda das. First, his cowardliness in not coming out to defend himself, but in hiding behind a pseudonym. Srila Prabhupada told us the story of how the British during the last days of the Raj captured a Bengali journalist known for his seditious articles, by tracing his writing style. If Krishna das were a betting man, he would put money on the fact that he is none other than Hridayananda himself, ghostwriting his own defense.
Second, what is interesting about Krishna das' arguments, is that he does not refute the attacks made against Hridayananda, but attacks his attackers for committing subtle and gross offenses. The best defense is a good offense. Even in defending himself, Hridayananda prefers to offend others. By using a pseudonym and turning on his attackers, he further obfuscates the issues rather than taking responsibility for them.
Krishna das attacks Rocana for not being compassionate as a "personal friend and brother," by not approaching Hridayananda directly. The last time I personally met Hridayananda was in 2002. We both happened by chance to be visiting a common friend/godbrother in West Virginia at the same time. When I first arrived, I offered my obeisances to Hridayananda, simply out of etiquette. Rather than offer me his obeisances back, he kept sitting in his chair. He might have had reasons for that-- from medical to ecclesiastical-- but the fact is he showed me, his godbrother, no regard whatsoever. The only time he spoke to me during that visit was to ask me if I knew of a piano in the house. Perhaps if I had been a "charming" godsister, he might have shown me more interest.
So much for the "impudence" that Krishna das accuses Rocana of: Hridayananda is a master of the impertinent and the insult. To accuse the accuser of the same crime one is guilty of is the symptom of a bully. Look at the current Iranian regime to see how it's done on a state level. Or to Krishna das' defense of Hridayananda for the mellower version.
Of course, Hridayananda has no power over his godbrothers anymore. But the damage has already been done and as a leader, he has never taken even token responsibility for it. That, in my opinion, is his real falldown.
Hridayananda das has no concern for his godbrothers. I doubt he has any true friends amongst his godbrothers, except for a few sycophants and intimate enablers. I actually feel some pity for him. He is a brilliant man, a pious man and a man of great potential, but a pathetic one. He has created tragic isolation not only for himself as an "endangered species" (an original member of the Zonal Acarya club), but is also complicit in what happened in ISKCON to the thousands of sincere godbrothers and godsisters who have lost their association. I wonder what Krishna das has to say about that.
