Comments on: The Bhaktivedanta Memorial Home for Retired Sannyasis

By: Scott Wetherell

Scott Wetherell — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:50:01 +0000

I logged onto the Hing tonight because I wanted to laugh. I read a few articles in the past and enjoyed them. Tonight I dug a little deeper into the website to find something I hadn’t read before. It really stung to read this article. I had a lot of respect for the harmless, funny, witty approach that the website carried in general. I even thought it had a significant measure of value in what it provided, I pointed people towards a few of the articles, etc. This one crossed a line and I am simply disappointed that you couldn’t be a little more pensive regarding how specific attacks like this make many people feel. The website still has value in the laughs it provokes, but this one is offensive to me and my family and my friends. Couldn’t we all laugh at ourselves/institution together without gunning for specific attacks on personal disksa relationships? It was unnecessary, and it really bummed me out. Perhaps you have a personal relationship with someone who’s connected you in a significant way to Srila Prabhupada? I hope you do. It’s really not a laughing matter.

Trying to remain your well-wisher, Mr. Eric, whoever you are…

Scott Wetherell
Boston, MA

By: nitai-gauranga dasa

nitai-gauranga dasa — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 22:28:04 +0000

dear jaganat.
thank you for your honest and thought provoking response. i really appreciate it.
the topic of SdG is a confusing one for me, and i would like to affirm my position that i am not coming from a place of seeing him as a “pure devotee” (although that is such an undefined term, and generally means anyone who is practicing, and i stress the term practicing, which means not perfected, pure devotional service in the vein of Sri Rupa’s anyabhilasita sunyam verse of BRS. It also tends to connote a maha bhagavata in some cases, and so when someone says “pure devotee” it requires some questioning as to what they mean.) I am really coming from a place of one person who has a relationship with another person, albeit a relationship of love and respect. Recently, a sort of non-friendly ex iskcon person asked me about my relationship with SdG and asked me if it was “spiritual”. i felt he was prying and that he wanted to somehow tell me that it was not. it felt like a silly question to me, and i replied that he has been a very important person to me over the past decade and that despite the fact that i have been let down, that i didnt always appreciate his actions or his responses to those actions, i still have a great deal of admiration for him. therefore, i try to support him in any way that i can. i am not sure if that is spiritual. it feels spiritual, but it is not like tad viddhi pranipatena or anything at this point.
surely, i can understand how people can be upset. realistically it wasnt a small mistake, although i am not sure i would say that his devotion is tinged with “strong material” desires. it seems to me to be pretty normal material desires. to get through this life with a desire to serve guru and krsna, without making a mistake in terms of rules and regulations is extremely, extremely rare. most likely even those who we might think of as pristine pure have a skeleton or two in their closet.
but either way, yes, a mistake for sure. we both know this, and i know that SdG knows it, although i agree with you that he didn’t convey his regret in a flawless manner. i can say that i know that the whole ordeal pained him considerably, and it still does to this day.
what it comes down to in my mind is what i said in my second post, that thinking behavior to be the measure of a person is flawed and short sighted. there are a lot of people in this world that behave wonderfully externally, but are jerks when it comes down to it and wont really inspire us to be better devotees. all i can really ask for is inspiration. i think if we can appreciate a person for their intentions and their desire to be a devotee, we will be open to take that inspiration and we will be better devotees for it. i can say from my own personal experience that i have had considerable trouble in regards to rules and regs, and in the end i find that i am the same person that i was when i was a strict brahmacari, a person who has mixed intentions, mixed desires, a nothing special, mediocre person who really wants to get things right, but tends to fall short of the mark. behaviorally speaking though, i probably would look like two very different people if you put the me of 2001 next to the me of 2009. something in me endures, and something in everyone endures, despite where life takes them, and i think it behooves us all to try to get a deeper understanding of others rather than judge them by externals.
you may or may not agree with this, and that is fine. for now i just appreciate your openness with me, and so i thank you.
yours in friendship.
ngd

By: jaganat

jaganat — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:26:47 +0000

It is true. We do not know each other. But all of us are so similar in our psychology that probably we can get some help and counsel even from well wisher strangers.

I understand your reaction all the way up to the “f” word. But that does not mean it is mature. To me SdG is a devotee not my spiritual master. And you cannot pretend make others feel like you feel.

If you think he is a pure devotee (you have the right and I do not protest for that) you cannot expand your feelings to the rest of the world, specially when the pure devotion is apparently tinged with strong material inebrieties, such as reiterated sannyasi falldown.

You can explain it through the eyes of your love but the fact remains and there is a reaction for that, even if it is only being ridicule by others. Sannyasi means respect and adoration of all the other ashrams and at the same time strong reactions for falldown should be accepted with humbleness. To me, SdG wasn´t exactly repentant, he did not disclose it but it was discovered and he should´nt be clinging to his sannyasa ashram as he did disobeying the GBC.

All this said, it does not mean that SdG is bad, but his actions are being mocked by some sectors of society like in the present HING article. And finally to state the facts as I just did, does not mean “offensive”as some immature followers can interpret. It is just that they probably do not like it as does not fit their high expectations about a person.

Just like a person who falls in love, refuses to see the defects of the partner, until some hard facts and reactions prove it otherwise. Then, who is at fault? The person who was blindly refusing to see the truth out of “love”. But that is just extended egotism.

Me, My spiritual master, My life cannot be otherwise. They are perfect and when they are not am prepared to explain it in a 1000 ways except for the easy one. And I am prepared to slash anyone opposing my extended egotism conceptions. Because it is my life and I feel threatened.

Real love, does not feel threatened cause it has nothing to “defend”. You can love a person and still see all his/her defects. That is more mature stage of love, and you will cause the faultfinders to retreat by your mature manifestation of the love you feel for your spiritual master.

By: nitai-gauranga dasa

nitai-gauranga dasa — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:45:23 +0000

dear jaganat.
sure, the f#@* thing was probably out of line. it was out of the ordinary for me. sorry if you found that offensive. i mean, you can kill someone or cut their tongue out for blaspheming a vaishnava, but i am much too nice for anything like that.
the rest of it being offensive, hhmmm, i dont know. probably assumptive, certainly emotionally toned. i dont know. who decides what is offensive? there is no rule book, per se, and i think we are all left with the dilemma as to what to do when we feel slighted, or we feel that someone we know and love has been slighted. sometimes biting our tongues is the best. perhaps i should have. i dont know.
but i looked at what i wrote, and yes, the first post is probably offensive. i am sorry. but then again, the article didnt seem like any small thing to me.
the second post… i dont know. you stated that i was offensive in almost all of my paragraphs. well, that seems like an overstatement. which ones? how do you know they are offensive? id be curious to know how you figured such.
so, “the problem with me”, i dont know. i dont think you know me enough to know the problem with me. it all feels dismissive. like you can call me “offensive” and therefore shut me up. and thats fine i guess. i dont know you and you dont know me. ill be out of your life soon enough. in the end, knowing SdG, and knowing his sincere desire to be left alone or forgiven for the mistake he made some 7 years ago is what really drove me. he is really one of the kindest and gentlest people i have ever encountered, and it is hard to see jabs being made at him. put in my position, would you act much differently? what would you do? its really not so easy, and to label it as “offensive” just seems not so much like an explanation, but more of an attempt to explain it away.
to a greater or lesser degree, our spiritual lives are the deepest ways in which we make meaning of this world. we should be invested, deeply invested, and being invested opens us up to being hurt. that pain is hard to deal with and how we deal with it is extremely important. perhaps i was a little loud mouthed, and if i offended your sensibilities, i am sorry. i hope you can see some glimmer of sincerity in what i wrote and kindly forgive me.
yours,
ngd

By: jaganat

jaganat — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:15:20 +0000

problem with you NGdas is that you fall in the same \offenses\ you despise so vehemently. Now, if offenses can be done as you do in almost all your paragraphs, you lose half of your arguments. The other half is who decides when, how and to whom it is allright to be offensive.

By: nitai-gauranga dasa

nitai-gauranga dasa — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:26:30 +0000

Dear Mr. The Hing,

Why do i bother? i cant be sure. somehow i feel this thing in me, its pushing me, i cant seem to stop it? what to do?
perhaps i feel let down. i remember when the hing first came out and i remember thinking that a few of the articles were so spot on. i held a certain admiration for you. i revere humor, and wow, you were funny. in all seriousness, the hing put a smile on my face on a few otherwise gray days.
but at one point, i quit.
it was really your jabs at Satsvarupa Maharaja, whom, let it be known, gave me initiation, and despite the apparent mistakes the he has made still occupies a very special place in my heart. i would go so far to say that i love this man. and as i was in “the mix” of his most recent investigation, the reference to retired sannyasa jumped out at me. i knew what you meant immediately.
but what bothers me? why am i typing this right now. i have a paper due in two days that i should tend to. why?
i think i figured it out last night. although your humor seemed quite similar to mine at one point, i had to come to terms with the fact that you represent something, whether you know it or not, and perhaps you dont, that makes me quite sick.
as far as i can see it, its not like you missed a point of gaudiya vaishnavism, or spirituality in general, you missed THE point. the point being that spirituality, and especially gaudiya vaishnavism is not a behavioral system (bg 9.30, amongst others). your actions in accordance with rules and regulations, your being aligned with an in-group, your scatter-brained mumbling of mantras (16 times around, to be exact) amount to next to nothing. (and by you, i mean all of us who care). and its not that behavior doesnt matter, for it surely does, but morality is not static, and you can not make an assumption about the inner life, the inner workings, etc., of a person based on his behavior. it is utterly superficial and indicative of overall dullness.
what a low level of inquiry! how pathetic! considering the externals to be the measure of a man (or a woman).
still, to think of it behaviorally, we can set up a little game. since you are so quick to criticize, we can work it like this. you versus the person who covertly attempt to tear down. over 40 years of devotional service, much of it undeniably sincere, perhaps much of it quirky, but, hey, we all have to be human too, and in terms of following the rules, the rules, the rules, you can count your major slip ups on one hand. i will see you in 40 years at the finish line, smiling, handing you your last place trophy.
but comedy aside, i guess i just want you to know how much hope i had for you, and how much of a let down it was to find out that you are really one of them! you really walk hand in hand with them, those who have made being around ISKCON sickening at times, who consider the whole enterprise of the attainment of love of god to be understood through behaviorism, who assess others through their keen sense of finding fault, who want all to follow their path of mindless loyalism, so lifeless, so hollow and existentially thin.
although i consider myself to be a member of ISKCON, i must admit that i have found this attitude much too much (and ironically, one of the few that i found that was truly not afraid of their own freedom of thought was SDG, although there are others for sure). and it is all there, spelled out in your article, covered with with a thin, almost transparent veil of humor.
in the end, i can say that i am glad that i spoke thus. it got something out of me that has not found voice in a long time. i havent felt this spiritual in quite some time. and in adding my email address, i was hoping not for spam, but to invite honest dialogue if you felt so inclined. although perhaps unconsciously i was hoping for fan mail and love letters from free spirits who rejoiced in my attempts to stab the devil, in his form of an oppressive moral-monger, in the throat. that devil whom i saw as being represented so openly by you.
so feel free to write or feel free to make another one lined quip. either way i am breathing easier today.
yours,
nitai-gauranga dasa

By: thehing

thehing — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:02:09 +0000

My my, do you chant your rounds with that mouth?

Hope you get tons of spam from publishing your email address online.

Hugs & Kisses,

The Hing (RIP).

By: nitai-gauranga dasa

nitai-gauranga dasa — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 03:30:07 +0000

Dear author of this article,

this may be a little late in the game, and i am not sure who will read this. my name is nitai-gauranga dasa and i currently live in san francisco. i just read this article for the first time. it seems like there is some debate over whether or not this is offensive or not, and considering how to walk the line between being offensive and being bold in the name of making commentary that seems needed in the vaishnava society. i, personally, am all for humor, but like all people, i have a line, and this article certainly stepped over it. and so i feel myself on that line… be mindful of the dangers of vaishnava aparadha or be bold and say something that you feel is compelling, perhaps necessary.
Dear author, i will follow your lead. i will throw my trepidation to the wayside and be bold despite my fear of committing an offense to you, a supposed vaishnava. oh, i am telling myself no, but at the same time, i just can’t stop myself.
Dear author, Fuck You.
Yours in utmost sincerity,
Nitai-Gauranga dasa
ngdasa@gmail.com

By: Anonymous das

Anonymous das — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:01:42 +0000

What??? No golf course????

I mean really!!!

By: Devak

Devak — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:37:26 +0000

All I know is that Krsna has a great sense of humor. Just look at any devotee. There he is with funny ears sticking out from his head and a nose smack dab in the middle of his somber face. It that funny or what? Even a devotee as sincere as I am, has ears and other strange parts for sure.

I wear a dhoti and people at the market stare at me. They think I am funny but I don’t care. I worship Krsna and the devotees.

And Arjuna das, here you are actually reading The Hing? Huh? What’s that all about? Don’t you know that this is a site devoted to the doings of the devotees?

Devak…..pronounced day-vock