Srila Prabhupada on Social Welfare Activities
BY: BASU GHOSH DAS
Nov 11, 2011 — BARODA, INDIA (SUN) — The following is a response to Vasudev Prabhu's comments on my "food versus prasad" article that appeared on this website last month. Vasudev Prabhu (a respected friend of mine who resides at Mayapur) wrote:
"Prabhu, I would share your concern with the midday meal concept if those performing it were doing so at the expense of direct preaching or book distribution. But as the main devotees engaged in midday meal distribution happen to be today's world leaders in Srila Prabhupada book distribution, I cannot possibly fault them for ALSO caring for the destitute, even if what they feed them isn't Deity standard prasadam."
"In this context, I find the social welfare argument in danger of being called unfair faultfinding, especially as the persons concerned happen to be top preachers whose personal character and dedication to Srila Prabhupada has been long standing. Don't you find these considerations crucial to the debate?"
Fact is that your argument diverts the issue. The issue is that Srila Prabhupada very clearly, on many occasions, DID NOT APPROVE of ISKCON engaging in social welfare activities.
My contention in this regard is based on Prabhupada's direct instructions from his letters, purports in the Bhagavatam, conversations, etc.
Here is what Srila Prabhupada wrote/said that makes your argument untenable: The following is excerpted from Srila Prabhupada's letter to Gurudasa, May 13, 1972, Honolulu:
"Spiritual education and food, that is proper. Simply supplying food is nonsense. Spiritual education means just to inject in their ears about our philosophy, externally they chant beads, wear tilak, without any discrimination of Hindu or Muslim or anything."
Excerpted from Srila Prabhupada's lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam 6.1.55 @ London, August 13, 1975:
"This misconception is going on. Everyone asks us that, "Krishna consciousness movement, why not serve the suffering humanity?" They say always. And what you can do? You are... Simply like a madman you are thinking that you can serve the humanity. You cannot serve the humanity. You have no such power. What you can do? The example was... I was giving that if you want to give help a suffering in disease man, and bring some nice doctor, medical man to help him and bring some nice medicine, that is good work, but does it mean that it is guaranteed that he will be cured? No. Therefore you cannot do anything. You may think like that. Or you may act like that. But unless the Supreme Person sanctions, you cannot do anything. One is sure to suffer the material pangs of life. Nobody can stop it. So therefore we should not try. It will be automatically tried."
Kindly note that Srila Prabhupada used the very strong word "madman" here! If that's not condemnation, what is?!
Prabhu, with all due respect, I reject the logic that you have presented herein above: that because some of ISKCON's leaders encourage book distribution (admittedly), that activity justifies marshalling vast resources and manpower for social welfare/humanitarian activities. It is consequentialist logic, not in concurrence with Prabhupada's instructions.
What I think is – and this is the point that Jayadvaita Maharaj made in his "food for death" lectures at Radhadesh ten years ago, and Bhakti Vikas Swami recently made in a lecture (to a very small group of disciples at "tiny" Salem, Tamil Nadu, temple) – that our leaders are "guilty" of "mission drift" – veering away from Srila Prabhupada's instructions, to satisfy modern mundane society's obsession with so-called "humanitarian" activities.
Those activities are like "blowing on a boil", which may provide temporary relief to the suffering material body, but DOES NOT BENEFIT THE SOUL.
Srila Prabhupada and our purva-acharyas desired para upakar – the highest welfare activity of delivering the process by which a human being may obtain moksha, the liberation of the soul (atma) from the punarapi jananam punarapi maranam, repetition of birth and death conundrum.
"Humanitarian activities" DO NOT DELIVER moksha. Elevated sannyasis who have renounced sense gratification and family life should know this.
From the very same lecture at London quoted above (it appears earlier in the lecture, immediately before the above quote):
"Therefore many sannyasis, they give up the brahma satyam jagan mithya.
I mean to... Mayavadi sannyasi. Again they fall down in this mithya
jagat. They come for political work, they come for social work,
daridra-narayana-seva and this and that. That's all. Because they are
not pure. If jagat is mithya, why you again so much anxious for
serving the jagat? This misconception is going on."
Prabhu, Srila Prabhupada – not Basu Ghosh das, Jayadvaita Swami or Bhakti Vikas Swami - says "this misconception is going on"! The bottom line here is that Prabhupada clearly condemns humanitarian social welfare work – meaning hospitals, schools (where mundane, modern education is taught – the "slaughterhouse of the mind") and poor feeding as "mundane"! "jagat" is the Samskrita word for "material [mundane] world".
Those of us who are pointing this out are "philosophical whistleblowers".
Your argument is that humanitarian activities that ISKCON sannyasis spend their time, energy, and "powers of attraction" (charisma) promoting are "OK", because they also promote book distribution, when Prabhupada said that "this misconception is going on" and that they are "madmen"! This is contradictory at best.
The fact is that the "mission drift" that seems to have overcome some of ISKCON's leaders is a cause of "great concern" to the ISKCON institution that I hope the ISKCON authorities will take suitable action to correct in the near future. Because what's going on is clearly in contradiction with Prabhupada's teachings, as pointed out herein above.
In fact, I've understand that there is indeed concern about this at the "top level", but we'll have to be patient in seeing corrective action being taken "due to circumstances".
Prabhu, there are many other such quotes, evidence from Srila Prabhupada's teachings, that Prabhupada was opposed to his ISKCON institution being used to engage in social welfare/ humanitarian activities. They are not being reproduced here to keep the length of this article to a minimum.
As it is written in the Sri Chaitanya-caritamrita, Adi Lila 1.106:
"mitam cha saaram cha vacho hi vaagmitaa"
"Essential truth spoken concisely is true eloquence."
You also wrote:
"I've always had the understanding that Prasadam, perhaps like the Holy Name, can be of several levels of purity/potency. Preachers, householders, and travellers, sometimes find themselves in situations that force one to quickly or awkwardly offer food that may be "unofferable" to a Temple Deity. The devotee may also not be initiated, but would you say that such food simply remains bhoga? Is it not some sort of prasadam, in proportion perhaps with the sincerity in which it was offered?"
Prabhu, my contention is simple. For preaching "the mission of Prabhupada and Mahaprabhu", one can immediately offer suitable foodstuffs within the mind and it becomes prasadam! But mundane altruism, which Prabhupada clearly condemned, entailing hiring of servants to cook and then distribute to "the poor", without the aim of preaching to the recipients, is "nonsense", as Prabhupada himself wrote to Gurudas. The excerpt from that letter appears above, and that clearly shows what Srila Prabhupada's opinion was.
As the evidence shows, the MDM being run here in India, and the "Humanitarian activities" being highlighted on the website of a prominent leader of ISKCON, are exactly the type of "nonsense" Prabhupada wrote and spoke about, so long back that it seems that some of our senior godbrothers either forgot, are ignorant of, or just don't care!
