Hare Krishna
Posted by:
rrmoderator
()
Date: November 22, 2005 02:43AM
With a name like "Master Teacher" perhaps it's a waste of time to correct you, especially considering the condescending tone of your comments.
But the historical facts support the conclusion that ISKCON was a deeply destructive organization. ISKCON has admitted its history of horrific child abuse and paid a multi-million dollar settlement. And one its once prominent leaders was only recently released from prison.
ISKCON remains a controversial organization with a deeply troubled history. Many of the same leaders that were around during the "bad old days" are still in positions of power and influence.
You seem to be here as an ISKCON apologist.
Please understand that overwhelmingly, religious organizations are benign. Very few religious organizations become topics here because of that fact.
ISKCON has that distinction, of not being amongst the benign majority, but rather within the destricutive minority historically.
But the historical facts support the conclusion that ISKCON was a deeply destructive organization. ISKCON has admitted its history of horrific child abuse and paid a multi-million dollar settlement. And one its once prominent leaders was only recently released from prison.
ISKCON remains a controversial organization with a deeply troubled history. Many of the same leaders that were around during the "bad old days" are still in positions of power and influence.
You seem to be here as an ISKCON apologist.
Please understand that overwhelmingly, religious organizations are benign. Very few religious organizations become topics here because of that fact.
ISKCON has that distinction, of not being amongst the benign majority, but rather within the destricutive minority historically.
Hare Krishna
Posted by:
MasterTeacher
()
Date: November 23, 2005 02:27AM
You said it yourself:
I am not an ISKCON apologist. As I said, I am very much aware of the origanization's problems. But that's no reason to ignore its profound ontological and theological contributions. Because you seem to make your living from cult scaremongering, perhaps you have an interest in highlighting only the dark side of ISKCON.
There is a much more moderate and mature tone in ISKCON these days, both among the leadership and the membership. I happen to be a member of the only ISKCON temple with a boarding school where there were no cases of child abuse. I also fought tooth and nail for years against the heavy book-distrution and fund collection techniques.
You seem to think that all ISKCON members somehow condone what happened, or that there are no good people in ISKCON. Do you also think that we should all leave or boycott the organization because of a few leaders' mistakes? The jailed former leader, Kirtanandana Swami, was expelled from ISKCON years ago, and is not allowed to attend ISKCON services. Please get your facts straight.
You also completely ignore the main point in my message, namely that Gaudiya Vaisnavism's philosophical value far outweighs the inevitable social problems connected with its introduction into a foreign culture.
Quote
rrmoderator
But the historical facts support the conclusion that ISKCON [b:8c4f6c0ec8]was [/b:8c4f6c0ec8]a deeply destructive organization..... You seem to be here as an ISKCON apologist.
I am not an ISKCON apologist. As I said, I am very much aware of the origanization's problems. But that's no reason to ignore its profound ontological and theological contributions. Because you seem to make your living from cult scaremongering, perhaps you have an interest in highlighting only the dark side of ISKCON.
There is a much more moderate and mature tone in ISKCON these days, both among the leadership and the membership. I happen to be a member of the only ISKCON temple with a boarding school where there were no cases of child abuse. I also fought tooth and nail for years against the heavy book-distrution and fund collection techniques.
You seem to think that all ISKCON members somehow condone what happened, or that there are no good people in ISKCON. Do you also think that we should all leave or boycott the organization because of a few leaders' mistakes? The jailed former leader, Kirtanandana Swami, was expelled from ISKCON years ago, and is not allowed to attend ISKCON services. Please get your facts straight.
You also completely ignore the main point in my message, namely that Gaudiya Vaisnavism's philosophical value far outweighs the inevitable social problems connected with its introduction into a foreign culture.
Hare Krishna
Posted by:
rrmoderator
()
Date: November 23, 2005 08:06PM
Believe whatever you wish, but this message board is not for preaching.
See the rules you agreed to.
For anyone interested in ISKCON's deeply troubled history...
See [www.culteducation.com]
Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON, was often called a "cult leader."
The problems of the organization can be traced back to his teachings and leadership.
See the rules you agreed to.
For anyone interested in ISKCON's deeply troubled history...
See [www.culteducation.com]
Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON, was often called a "cult leader."
The problems of the organization can be traced back to his teachings and leadership.
Hare Krishna
Posted by:
rrmoderator
()
Date: November 27, 2005 08:34PM
Is "Master Teacher" David Hughes?
See [board.culteducation.com]
[www.esotericteaching.org]
New Talavan, (from the esoteric teaching website), is a Krishna farm in
Mississippi.
www.newtalavana.org/
"Master teacher" says Kirtanananda is in jail?
Besides the several references to Kirtanananda's release on the database, here is a link to the swami's website.
[www.kirtananandaswami.org]
This is the website for Sri Sri Radha Murlidara Temple in NYC.
Looks like Kirtanananda is doing well and has a following.
There are no references to ISKCON on their website, but Kirtanananda's
picture and name graces nearly all pages of it.
Similar to the David Hughes website.
The Hughes' website makes no mention of either ISKCON or Krishna, even though it advertises New Talavan as the address of its seminars.
See [board.culteducation.com]
[www.esotericteaching.org]
New Talavan, (from the esoteric teaching website), is a Krishna farm in
Mississippi.
www.newtalavana.org/
"Master teacher" says Kirtanananda is in jail?
Besides the several references to Kirtanananda's release on the database, here is a link to the swami's website.
[www.kirtananandaswami.org]
This is the website for Sri Sri Radha Murlidara Temple in NYC.
Looks like Kirtanananda is doing well and has a following.
There are no references to ISKCON on their website, but Kirtanananda's
picture and name graces nearly all pages of it.
Similar to the David Hughes website.
The Hughes' website makes no mention of either ISKCON or Krishna, even though it advertises New Talavan as the address of its seminars.
Hare Krishna
Posted by:
Eric Blair
()
Date: November 28, 2005 09:11AM
A great book that has alot of information on "Bhaktipada" is called [i:7298182bbd]Monkey on A Stick[/i:7298182bbd]. It probably would be hard to get at bookstores, but you could probably pick one up at a library or online. It is a must read for anyone who wants to know about the Hari-Krishnas
Hare Krishna
Posted by:
Vicarion
()
Date: November 29, 2005 04:06PM
Having spent a lot of years around "spiritual teachers" of various kinds, this "Master Teacher" dude needs a serious dose of reality, starting with his username on this board. No real "teacher" would ever call themself a "master". This character needs to be reminded that if he is truly a teacher, he is first and foremost a servant, and he should conduct himself as such.
Hare Krishna
Posted by:
Janus
()
Date: May 11, 2006 01:30PM
Today it has been ten years since my mother died. I was there beside her as her spirit left her sick and crippled old body, free at last.
It was not so when my father died, then I was some thousands of miles away, living the life of a celibate monk, living without sports cars, large bank accounts, gold watches and Armani suits, hardly recognizable at all from the person I had been. Oh how my friends and father had lamented how much I had lost, but I saw it differently, how much I had gained.
A month before I had visited my parents, I still remember my father screaming at me how I had been brainwashed as I chanted Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare, but his screams had no effect on me, nor his waving fists. Over the long years of childhood I'd gown used to his screaming, to his cussing, to his threats and to his viloence. I remember my friend Mike coming over in Fourth Grade and after witnessing my father chasing me around with a double barreled 12 gage shot gun had said to me, his eyes all wide with fear "George, this isn't normal!" I thought that what he said was the funniest thing because for me it was. There was only one thing about my father at this stage of my life that frightened me, that indeed filled me with terror. That was the fear that I would become like him.
A month later I was downstairs in the temple room when a devottee came down with the message for me to call mt brother and when I did that was when I learned that our father was dead. On that last day when he had been screaming at me I had pushed him away and he had fallen down, not understanding me at all he looked up from the ground cowering and screamed "No", thinking that I meant to stomp him or somethimg, who knows. I turned away and walked off in disgist, having nothing in my heart for him but conyempt. That was the last time that I ever saw him alive.
When my brother let me know that our mother had fallen and broken her neck and that our father, still unable to accept responsibility for his rages had had a heart attack and died after over exerting himself tearing apart the wall cabinets against which she had fallen I told the devottes that I'd be leaving the next day. The doidn't understand and one; Mother Padjavali actually said I was insane. To them parents or anyone who was against their participation in the Krsna Consciousness movement were "demons". In my parents case I could easily conceded that they were "half right." But my mother was pious (Prabhupada said) and although they didn't understand I knew that he would. My father was dead and my mother lay hovering near death with a broken neck in a hospital bed, my duty was clear and Prabhupada agreed "One could not be a good devotee if one failed to be a good son." A lot of the devotees got it all wrong, it wasn'[r about abandoning your loving relationships with others but about embracing them.
On my last day in ISKCON I asked my beloved teacher for a leave of abscence, just until my mother didn't need me to care for her anymore and he granted it and showered me with magnificient gifts, the chief of which was this:
I was just in time to slip a necklace of holy beads made from the mud of the Radha-kund into my fathers hand before they closed the coffin lid, that and to note a peculiarity about his appearance. My father had always had a full head of hair but now he was completely shaven. I asked the mortician later and what he told me was that he had just finished the job, removing the bit of hair at the back of his skull that my father had missed. Later in our home in the room where they had found him on the floor I noticed that on the nightstand there was a glass of water, some wilted flowers from the garden and some slices of apple, these and some pictures of Sru Sri Madhana Mohanna, the deities from the Vancouver temple that I had sent to him.
My father was demon, his father, his, his, the products of their conditioning, but my father died a devotee, my father stands a hundred feet tall. My mother lived for 19 more years and finally she passed away. I fel;t her spirit all around me on that morning, such a big spirit, so loving and so wonderful and thanks to Krsna free at last.
It was not so when my father died, then I was some thousands of miles away, living the life of a celibate monk, living without sports cars, large bank accounts, gold watches and Armani suits, hardly recognizable at all from the person I had been. Oh how my friends and father had lamented how much I had lost, but I saw it differently, how much I had gained.
A month before I had visited my parents, I still remember my father screaming at me how I had been brainwashed as I chanted Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare, but his screams had no effect on me, nor his waving fists. Over the long years of childhood I'd gown used to his screaming, to his cussing, to his threats and to his viloence. I remember my friend Mike coming over in Fourth Grade and after witnessing my father chasing me around with a double barreled 12 gage shot gun had said to me, his eyes all wide with fear "George, this isn't normal!" I thought that what he said was the funniest thing because for me it was. There was only one thing about my father at this stage of my life that frightened me, that indeed filled me with terror. That was the fear that I would become like him.
A month later I was downstairs in the temple room when a devottee came down with the message for me to call mt brother and when I did that was when I learned that our father was dead. On that last day when he had been screaming at me I had pushed him away and he had fallen down, not understanding me at all he looked up from the ground cowering and screamed "No", thinking that I meant to stomp him or somethimg, who knows. I turned away and walked off in disgist, having nothing in my heart for him but conyempt. That was the last time that I ever saw him alive.
When my brother let me know that our mother had fallen and broken her neck and that our father, still unable to accept responsibility for his rages had had a heart attack and died after over exerting himself tearing apart the wall cabinets against which she had fallen I told the devottes that I'd be leaving the next day. The doidn't understand and one; Mother Padjavali actually said I was insane. To them parents or anyone who was against their participation in the Krsna Consciousness movement were "demons". In my parents case I could easily conceded that they were "half right." But my mother was pious (Prabhupada said) and although they didn't understand I knew that he would. My father was dead and my mother lay hovering near death with a broken neck in a hospital bed, my duty was clear and Prabhupada agreed "One could not be a good devotee if one failed to be a good son." A lot of the devotees got it all wrong, it wasn'[r about abandoning your loving relationships with others but about embracing them.
On my last day in ISKCON I asked my beloved teacher for a leave of abscence, just until my mother didn't need me to care for her anymore and he granted it and showered me with magnificient gifts, the chief of which was this:
I was just in time to slip a necklace of holy beads made from the mud of the Radha-kund into my fathers hand before they closed the coffin lid, that and to note a peculiarity about his appearance. My father had always had a full head of hair but now he was completely shaven. I asked the mortician later and what he told me was that he had just finished the job, removing the bit of hair at the back of his skull that my father had missed. Later in our home in the room where they had found him on the floor I noticed that on the nightstand there was a glass of water, some wilted flowers from the garden and some slices of apple, these and some pictures of Sru Sri Madhana Mohanna, the deities from the Vancouver temple that I had sent to him.
My father was demon, his father, his, his, the products of their conditioning, but my father died a devotee, my father stands a hundred feet tall. My mother lived for 19 more years and finally she passed away. I fel;t her spirit all around me on that morning, such a big spirit, so loving and so wonderful and thanks to Krsna free at last.
Hare Krishna
Posted by:
Janus
()
Date: May 14, 2006 10:18PM
I can't help but thinking that had the devotees acted in accord with Srila Prabjupada's instructions that everything would have been allright. For example; when it was suggested to him that their were abusers of children in the movement; Srila Prabhupada said that they should be throe out, but that :"First they should be hung."
I left ISKCON about a year before Srila Prabhupada died, but even by then he was no longer in control of it, on the contrary. From what I've read and heard there is some pretty good cause for suspicion that he was in the end murdered, poisoned to death by his "disciples".
Prabhupada was a soft touch, one time he had thown Kirtanananda out and Kirtananada crawled up into his lap crying. He regarded us as his children, but it's like the old song where the woman finds a half-frozen poisonous snake and nurses it back to health only to be bitten and killed by it. Prabhupada knew that some of his disciles were snakes, for example when he was asked what Hansaduta wanted he replied that "Hansaduta wants me to die." That didn't stop him from elevating them to managerial positions. Srila Prabhupada wasn't a very good manager, he made a lot of mistakes for which a lot of innocent people suffered, but he did bring us Krsna consciousness. Was it worth it? No, I do not think so and I do not think that Srila Prabhupada would have thought so either. I think that had Srila Prabhupada known what was to become of his movement that before he ever lannded on the shores of America that he would have jumped overboard into the sea, but he didn't know.
It is said in the shastra that the spiritual master can appear to be a normal man, which means that he can be lame ot suffer from some other physical malady. He can also suffer from psdychological problems, or he can be simple hearted, simple minded. Srila Prabhupada was rather childlike, a product of a failed marriage and failed business, his only feeling of self worth issuing from his relationship with his spritual master who he'd met only twice...I helped to make his dreams come true as so many others did, at what a terrible expense. I don't consider it his fault however. "The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves."
But of course I would think this way, to me he was like a father and I loved him and those enterchanges between us always confirmed to me that he was both a kindly soul as well as a very magical person.
I left ISKCON about a year before Srila Prabhupada died, but even by then he was no longer in control of it, on the contrary. From what I've read and heard there is some pretty good cause for suspicion that he was in the end murdered, poisoned to death by his "disciples".
Prabhupada was a soft touch, one time he had thown Kirtanananda out and Kirtananada crawled up into his lap crying. He regarded us as his children, but it's like the old song where the woman finds a half-frozen poisonous snake and nurses it back to health only to be bitten and killed by it. Prabhupada knew that some of his disciles were snakes, for example when he was asked what Hansaduta wanted he replied that "Hansaduta wants me to die." That didn't stop him from elevating them to managerial positions. Srila Prabhupada wasn't a very good manager, he made a lot of mistakes for which a lot of innocent people suffered, but he did bring us Krsna consciousness. Was it worth it? No, I do not think so and I do not think that Srila Prabhupada would have thought so either. I think that had Srila Prabhupada known what was to become of his movement that before he ever lannded on the shores of America that he would have jumped overboard into the sea, but he didn't know.
It is said in the shastra that the spiritual master can appear to be a normal man, which means that he can be lame ot suffer from some other physical malady. He can also suffer from psdychological problems, or he can be simple hearted, simple minded. Srila Prabhupada was rather childlike, a product of a failed marriage and failed business, his only feeling of self worth issuing from his relationship with his spritual master who he'd met only twice...I helped to make his dreams come true as so many others did, at what a terrible expense. I don't consider it his fault however. "The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves."
But of course I would think this way, to me he was like a father and I loved him and those enterchanges between us always confirmed to me that he was both a kindly soul as well as a very magical person.
Hare Krishna
Posted by:
Jessica
()
Date: October 01, 2006 09:05AM
Haribol,
Love for Krishna is not forced upon anyone. Krishna Consciousness is far from a so-called cult and their beliefs are not forced upon anyone.'
Those who are unaware or who do not understand fear the unknown.
Knowledge is power, to know Krishna is to know all.
HARE KRISHNA
Love for Krishna is not forced upon anyone. Krishna Consciousness is far from a so-called cult and their beliefs are not forced upon anyone.'
Those who are unaware or who do not understand fear the unknown.
Knowledge is power, to know Krishna is to know all.
HARE KRISHNA
Hare Krishna
Posted by:
Jessica
()
Date: October 13, 2006 09:18PM
Haribol Bhakta Max,
I have only been on this forum a couple of times and may I give you a word of warning.
In reading offensive comments against Krishna or His pure devotees it is like being cut with a razor. I wont read any comments and if you read anything negative, please pray to Siddha and Krishna that you have read them and you are sorry you did.
Since finding Krishna and learning to know Him, I have purpose in my life where before it felt like I was stumbling through a life with no direction.
This forum is not a good place to be, am learning that. People brand us as being in a cult, where in reality, we have found the Truth.
Keep your faith dude,
Haribol
Jessica
I have only been on this forum a couple of times and may I give you a word of warning.
In reading offensive comments against Krishna or His pure devotees it is like being cut with a razor. I wont read any comments and if you read anything negative, please pray to Siddha and Krishna that you have read them and you are sorry you did.
Since finding Krishna and learning to know Him, I have purpose in my life where before it felt like I was stumbling through a life with no direction.
This forum is not a good place to be, am learning that. People brand us as being in a cult, where in reality, we have found the Truth.
Keep your faith dude,
Haribol
Jessica
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