(Still) Supporting the Zonal Acaryas
BY: ROCANA DASA
Dec 02, CANADA (SUN) — In a number of his recent articles here on the Sun, Yuga Avatar das has given readers an opportunity to experience a taste of the mentality, personality, arguments and rhetoric that epitomize the Zonal Acarya system. The Zonal Acaryas would not have been able to take over the movement, and then stay in existence and control for almost 10 years, had it not been for devotees like Yuga Avatar. In fact, the Zonal Acaryas opened a window of opportunity for devotees like him, and this helped to enable their control over Srila Prabhupada's movement.
In Srila Prabhupada's original system, many of the Zonal Acarya sycophants would not have been able to work their way into important position within the movement if they had to rely own their own prowess and abilities. But if one gave the Zonal Acaryas enough adoration, glorification and loyalty, and supported them to the degree that Yuga Avatar still does, then they would enjoy the opportunity proffered to them in return.
Those who weren’t willing to do play the game included many of the original Temple Presidents and leaders, who helped bring about much of the success enjoyed during Srila Prabhupada’s lila period. If they weren’t willing to kowtow to the Zonal Acaryas in the way that Yuga Avatar demonstrates, they were unceremoniously and very cruelly ejected from their positions, and this was a great loss to the movement.
Addressing Kurma dasa, Yuga Avatar writes that he personally never heard Tamal Krishna Goswami claim that he was a Rtvik, and this is true. One can read the transcript of the comments Tamal Krishna made at Topanga Canyon, which is now available online. These comments were made at a point in time when Tamal Krishna was being reprimanded by the GBC, and while he was in the company of devotees who were against the Zonal Acaryas. So Tamal Krishna was really trying to hedge his bets. He didn’t know at the time which way the pendulum was going to swing. There was an undercurrent of discontent among everyone, including the second echelon leaders. When Tamal Krishna attended this meeting, his zone was being attacked, and part of it had just been taken away by the other Zonal Acaryas.
Tamal Krishna was infamous for coming up with ideas, plans and proposals about how the movement should be run, even these were often contrary to the general mood and opinions of the other Zonal Acaryas. Yuga Avatar explains the kind of mood that was being promoted, primarily by Ramesvara, Bhagavan, and some of the other gung-ho, passionate Zonal Acaryas who were focused on book distribution. At the time, book distribution was the big motivator. If you were really into doing the books, that meant you were ready to do anything and everything on the basis of distributing books. At the time, Ramesvara was in charge of the BBT, which he handled like it was his own little company. When sales of the books were up, it mean that he got to handle a lot of money.
Tamal Krishna, on the other hand, was promoting an idea that did not have book distribution at the center. He wanted to force all the householders to move out of the temple, toning down the so-called "Sankirtana mood" to create a better public image of the devotees. His zone at that time included the St. Louis and Chicago temples. Sivarama Swami was in charge of Chicago at the time, and he and the leader of St. Louis were politicking and complaining, putting pressure on Ramesvara to do something about Tamal Krishna. So Ramesvara pulled a little coup and got Tamal Krishna out of these temples, thereby cutting his zone down being primarily just Texas and Fiji. Having just lost face and power, Tamal Krishna was motivated to make the statements he did at the Topanga meeting, wherein he basically admitted that Srila Prabhupada hadn’t appointed them to be gurus -- all the did was appoint the “rtviks” in his July 9th Letter. Tamal Krishna gave his impression of what happened in an earlier meeting with Srila Prabhupada, in May, when they were discussing the whole guru issue and how it was going to be handled. The Zonals had planned how to take advantage of the situation, and it was obvious they would be appointed as diksas, if anyone was. So basically, Tamal Krishna admitted that they came up with the whole Zonal Acarya system, and it wasn’t Srila Prabhupada’s idea. They eventually had to admit, after 10 years of trying to implement and maintain their Zonal Acarya system, that it had just been their mental concoction.
So going back to the Yuga Avatar issue, we know that most of the Zonal Acaryas had in their ranks personalities like Yuga Avatar. We’ve recently been informed by a few other writers here in the Sun as to their opinions of what Yuga Avatar was like back then, and what he’s like now, and these characterizations jiva with the persona I've identified as being typical of the cookie-cutter Zonal Acarya supporter types.
I’m not sure where these other personalities are today, who were at one-time loyal supporters of the Zonal Acaryas. I wonder how many of them have evolved, and how many have remained die-hards, like Yuga Avatar, who seems to be fixed on the 'good old glory days'. This mood is reminiscent of the old soldiers, who went to war in their youth and had a few years of glory, and of course misery. For some, these pastimes dominated their mentality for the rest of their lives. Every chance they got, they went down to the Veteran's club or the Legion to associate with people like themselves, talking constantly about what it was like back then… all the hell and the misery is screened out, while the good times and victories are glorified.
Yuga Avatar's writing style is also very reminiscent of how the Zonal Acaryas would package their philosophy and mentality, which they couched within an endless stream of Krsna conscious jargon. They had a whole mental rolodex of all sorts of sayings they could instantly recite, many of which Yuga Avatar weaves into his writings.
In many of his narratives, Yuga Avatar is really describing what one can actually say is mode of passion. He’s claiming that this was Srila Prabhupada’s mood, that’s it what makes Srila Prabhupada unique. He suggests that this mood exemplifies ISKCON, and it's what Srila Prabhupada introduced… this warrior, gung-ho, let’s go out and distribute books by hook or by crook and, no-holds barred… that’s what gets results and that’s what we should be doing! But of course, that wasn’t Srila Prabhupada’s program at all. It was the leaders’ program, and they worked hard at convincing everyone, including themselves, that this was really what Srila Prabhupada wanted. But this was not Srila Prabhupada’s idea of what Krsna consciousness is.
We know by sastra, and by listening to Srila Prabhupada, that he what he actually wanted and first introduced was pure devotional service. Devotional service in the mode of passion is a step down from that. In his lectures and in the way he instructed his leaders, he made clear what he wanted, and what would have been best for ISKCON. And if we’d following his instruction, if we had been capable of doing that, then we could have maintained what was there when Srila Prabhupada was with us physically.
Of course, ISKCON claims that the movement is ever-expanding, but compared to when Srila Prabhupada was here, nearly all the North American and European temples have shrunk. They haven’t been maintained at all. Most of the leaders went off to pioneer new territories like Eastern Europe, India, and Russia, which was easy compared to preaching in North American and maintaining the temples there, which would have required being in the mode of goodness.
Yuga Avatar doesn't acknowledge that, of course. His remarks are consistent with the mood of a chum-chum of the Zonal Acaryas. It's like he's still riding the Zonal Acarya train. One carriage in that train is first class, and that's where the Zonal Acaryas traveled, where they were waited on hand and foot. The persons who waited on them were like the servant of the King, who lives on an equal level with the king. So they enjoyed a level of important and opulence and distinction that they couldn’t and wouldn’t have gotten unless the Zonal Acaryas stayed in power. Of course, the Zonal Acaryas weren't able to keep up their program, which is also indicative of the fact that they were in the mode of passion. They were victims of maya, and Yuga Avatar is a victim, although he won’t admit it. He won’t come to grips with the fact that his activities back then contributed to the downfall of ISKCON, and actually contributed to the downfall of his good friends, the Zonal Acaryas, who gave ISKCON a bad reputation with the general public, as hustlers and cheaters.
There are many devotees who fit this same description, including many who served Bhaktipada at New Vrindavan. To this day, the less mature among them are still unable to admit that what they thought was devotional service to a pure devotee, was actually something quite different. I’m not Krsna, and I certainly can’t be sure how Krsna viewed the situation there at New Vrindaban, or what kinds of credits the devotees will get who engaged in certain activities on the order of Kirtanananda. But we can safely assume that many of these individuals never guessed at the time that by age 50 or 60, their future would not look so bright. Rather, they probably anticipated that in their later years, they'd be very nicely situated in some ideal community, with a position of respect, enjoying some of the fruits of their labours. Unfortunately, many find today that they’re not in such a situation. Most of what they worked so hard for has disintegrated and disappeared, and this is due to the fact that their formula, their methodologies, were imperfect, at best.
So the results speak for themselves. And people who won’t analyze their own life using sastra and hearing from Srila Prabhupada may never understand their mistakes, or learn from them. Yuga Avatar, however, is proposing that it was a big mistake to bring down the Zonal Acarya system. He doesn't admit that it was the Zonal's themselves who fell down or did things wrong, or that the whole philosophy behind the Zonal Acarya System was wrong. No, he suggests it was because some radicals or rebels pulled them down, which is ludicrous and ridiculous.
So that's basically my perspective on all the writings coming from Yuga Avatar das. As always, I’m willing to publish writings like this, which I really want the readers to understand. Yuga Avatar is like someone who’s suspended in time… sort of like a Zonal Acarya dinosaur. People are always picking up dinosaur bones and putting them in museums, where people can go look at them and see what it was like, way back when. Similarly, Yuga Avatar is offering this opportunity for us to experience what it was like back then, during the Zonal Acarya period. People like Yuga Avatar had a lot of power, and they were brow-beating and harassing the devotees on behalf of the Zonal Acaryas. They were very busy organizing the temples and the zones around the mood that he’s now giving us a little sample of. And I personally experienced this mood on many occasions.
In many ways, the Zonal Acaryas were very like Mafioso bosses. The dons would have their henchmen, and Yuga Avatar reminds me of these personalities. Every zone had one, and there were all different varieties. I know this, in part, because of the time I spent in London during my devotional career in ISKCON. I was in charge of all the Sankirtana activities there, which Jayatirtha had centralized, as many of the Zonal Acaryas had. I had a $250,000/month budget I had to bring in the door in order to keep all these grandiose schemes of Jayatirtha's operating and expanding. At the time we were at war, so to speak, with Bhagavan, so there was nothing cooperative going on. I have to admit that as the so-called Sankirtana leader, I was expected to pick-up on and trade techniques with my peers, as we tried to figure out how to bring in all that money. And our activities certainly weren't restricted to just distributing books. The mood from the top was, basically, 'anything goes'. We were selling ridiculous albums made by devotees, but with the names of famous people mentioned conveniently on the back. We were selling deleted (loss leader) albums, and anything and everything we could put in the hands of the devotees we sent out as salesman.
Of course, it didn’t last. All the money we collected in England went to buy the Caitanya College at Croome Court, which later became known as “Goon Court,” when the devotees had to sell it because it was impractical and couldn’t be maintained. In fact, we almost lost the Manor because when George Harrison heard about this Caitanya College, he said well now you’ve got a bigger and better place, why not give the Manor back to me so I can give it away to some other group?
So all in all, it was a fiasco. Bhagavan wasted all his money on some fantastic villa outside of Paris, and that was lost too. Tamal Krishna had his own fiasco. He bought some big piece of land… a ranch or farm, in Oklahoma, and that was lost, too. Of course, this part of ISKCON history is never told by personalities like Yuga Avatar das. People like him have conveniently deleted such historical realities from their memory, what to speak of the ISKCON institution itself. They never talk about the fiascos, lawsuits, huge crazy scenes, and the loss of millions of dollars of Srila Prabhupada's assets, all due to our activities in the mode of passion. Yet we find Yuga Avatar promoting just that sort of passionate scenario, saying this is a good thing. But it wasn’t a good thing. If it was, Krsna would have maintained it. The fact that He took it all away from us should be a lesson.
These lessons should awaken us to the reality that need to be studying the Sampradaya Acarya’s real mood, which he made abundantly clear in his writings, classes, conversations and letters. He clear explained for us what works, what’s successful, and what he wanted, but it seems very few devotees, at least amongst the ISKCON leadership, are studying Srila Prabhupada from this perspective. Few devotees are really seeing him as the Sampradaya Acarya, although we should be. We should all be his devoted servants, looking to him for the answers to all the problems, and for our direction in the future. We don’t need GBC committees and meetings, and all this input from conditioned souls about how things could be done. We should just study Srila Prabhupada and try our best to implement his ideas.
Our ISKCON leaders never talk about the fact that many, if not most of Srila Prabhupada's ideas were never implemented perfectly or even correctly - not even during his lila period. So many of us were immature, neophyte, gung-ho types who contaminated everything. Even some of the programs Srila Prabhupada ostensibly approved of back then may have been initiated because he had little choice at the time. He had to just take whatever Krsna gave him and utilize it, while at the same time preaching what the real, pure program is. I'm sure he hoped that someday, everyone would mature and go back and listen to what he had to say, and do what we should be doing today. That didn't happen following his departure because immediately after, the Zonal Acaryas took over. And their mentality is still present today.
With little exception, each guru, each GBC, each sannyasi has their ideas, their own style, their own mood and perspective, and few seem to think it important to compare or check these with Srila Prabhupada’s own. Fewer still are able to surrender to doing things Srila Prabhupada’s way, regardless of their own particular propensities. The Zonal Acaryas really demonstrated this dynamic. Besides getting all the power, position and prestige they got, they were also hungry for the opportunity to pursue their own personal ideas, which Srila Prabhupada had virtually forced them to give up. This happened to Kirtanananda, Jayatirtha, and so many others. Really, all the Zonal Acaryas were the same in this regard. Above and beyond all the benefits, they wanted to assert their own persona. In the back of their minds, they had never really surrendered to Srila Prabhupada. They had just temporarily shelved their own plans and ideas until there was an opportunity to get them back out again, which was part of their overall plan with the Zonal Acarya system.
Srila Prabhupada says it's very simple to be a guru - just do exactly what the previous Acaryas want you to do. Find out what their direction and desires are, and act accordingly. As Srila Prabhupada said, he embraced and understood what Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati wanted. Of course, our philosophy exemplifies the concept and principle of personalism and obviously, we have to expect that there's going to be a degree of individualism, a flavour and a mood of the person who is trying to preach and follow in the footsteps of the previous Acaryas. We know that Srila Prabhupada’s movement was different that Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati's, but overall, if you study the way Srila Prabhupada preached, his preaching techniques and his mood was almost identical to Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur’s. They both got phenomenal results on account of doing like that, so why should we not follow their formula as closely as possible?
Perhaps an even more vivid example of personalism is the difference between Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati. Externally, even though they were father and son, one might think they were on opposite sides of the spectrum from one another. But their mood on how to spread Krsna consciousness was very, very similar, if not exactly the same. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur understood and glorified Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur, and always tried to implement his vision.
What some devotees would like to have us to believe today -- including Yuga Avatar in his writings -- is that the visions and ideas that came from the Zonal Acaryas were worthy of the same kind of emulation. They would like us to believe that we should all be trying to preserve or re-invigorate the mood and vision of the Zonal Acaryas, but this is abject foolish. If you look today at the lieutenants of the Zonal Acaryas, the ones who took over from them, who had been second in command or were favoured students and disciples, you'll see that most of them embrace the very same ideas that their Zonal Acarya kings did. They have borrowed their techniques from the Zonal Acarya rather than taking up techniques from Srila Prabhupada, the Sampradaya Acarya.
So I invite our readers to look at the personalities leading ISKCON today from this perspective. We must get back to looking at Srila Prabhupada as the Sampradaya Acarya, understanding and accepting him in that rarified position. We must understand that his visions and ideas were not properly implemented, even during his lila period, and this reality has to be openly discussed and studied in ISKCON. Srila Prabhupada left us plenty of material in his writings, and it’s all there to be discovered. We should put our full efforts there, instead of floundering around, making so many mistakes, following imitators rather than the real thing.
