What follows is another excellent post by "corboy" from 2004 in response to a thread about people leaving ISKCON.[
forum.culteducation.com]
corboy wrote:When an authentic Asian belief system is taken out of its cultural context and transmitted by a single, ambitious person to Westerners who have not been taught how to tell an authentic guru from a wannabe, problems arise.
Indians are well aware that one must test the authenticity of a guru. One teacher told us that there was a Sanskrit proverb that, in English reads:
'A greedy guru and an impatient disciple are both suspended over the pit of hell.'
But, when someone transmits a tradition outside its cultural context, what is the likelihood that the person will teach students that particular Sanskrit proverb?Sophistication in relation to the claims of gurus is just as important as teaching the Bhaghavad Gita.
Bhakti must be balanced with healthy skepticism/critical thinking otherwise, the practitioner will become emtionally and intellectually constricted, feeling blissful yet diminished as a human being.
Every old culture has its cautions and traditions of skepticism about clergy, along with equally ancient veneration of holy persons, places and things. In one part of Austria the farmers would say, 'Our pastor is a bum--except for his holy ordination.' (Meaning they had no respect for him as a man, but knew he could still administer valid sacraments)
In some parts of the Eastern Orthodox world, theres the proverb, 'Monks take the vows, but the laity keep them'---namely the lay people often live harder lives than monks and that without the laity, the monks could not survive.In his book
The Light at the Center: Context and Pretext of Modern Mysticism, Agehananda Bharati who was Austrian-born, a Sanskrit scholar, anthropologist, and a Sannyasi (renunciate) monk, wrote (in the mid-970s) that authentic Hindu monks and gurus did NOT prosyletize to non-Hindus, and confined their outreach to India.
The highest authorities in Hinduism did not concern themselves with non-Hindus, nor with the welfare of non-Hindus who were being harmed by charlatans who posed as the genuine article.
'What are the standards whereby the teachings can and must be checked? Very simple. For Vedanta-talk, primary Vedanta scripture, for Yoga-talk, primary yoga scripture, together with the consensus of learned primary-source based opinion. The Sanskrit orginals and their commentaries are the written standards; the first catagory of monks and Hindu scholars, the Hindu theologicans who operate in Sanskrit only, not in translations, and who do NOT seek universal acceptance for the teachings involved, these are the personal standards...
'these authorities do not learn English (Bharati wrote this in the mid-1970s, one wonders if this has changed or stayed the same)...the standard authorities, the learned monks and pandits, in India could not care less about the roaming swamis and their flock. The standard setters are elitist, often arrogant, and outspokenly against any form of prosyletization.*
*(moderator note--Which means that in the 1970s, when Bharati wrote , anyone who went outside of India to prosyletize non-Hindus, was not qualified to teach or transmit any authentic Hindu practice, because those qualified to do so would not have left India or targeted non-Hindus. )
Bharti continues 'In fact if some eager Hindus or occidentals do penetrate to their lofty abodes in the mathas of South India or the learned houses of Benares, these monastics and lay scholars try to ward them off, stall them, send them away. If they are finally cornered, they do not hold out any hopes for the transmission of the sacred lore to outsiders...and yet, if claims to teaching Yoga, Vedanta, and 'Hindu Philosophy' are made in India or abroad, it is only these haughty people who can tell if these claims are true. Such a confrontation, however does not come about. Or not yet. It is the critical scholars who will crack the code somer or later.'
(The Light at the Center pp 173-174)
Indians have a term for teachers who are not taken seriously by guru-savvy Indians, but who impress naive Westerners who dont know the difference between genuine Hinduism and distortions of Hinduism:
These are termed 'export gurus'--harking back to the old days when boatloads of inferior quality porcelain was shipped from China to Europe.
Both veneration and healthy skepticism have to be transmitted if a spiritual practice is to remain healthy in a new environment, far from its original home. The problem is, ambitious gurus are often mavericks and they dont take the care to teach skepticism along with veneration.***Another EXCELLENT sign is when a foreign teacher establishes a center in the West and then brings in other teachers who represent the tradition, ensuring that the Western students
learn the material from more than one person. And it will be an
especially good indicator if these Western students are encouraged to go to the country where the tradition is indigenous, then return to the Western center and bring their insights with them.The great teachers do not seek to monopolize their student's perspectives. They put thier personalities to serve the tradition and the welfare of their students, they dont make the tradition and students serve the teacher's personality.