An outrageous waste of money!
An interesting e-mail arrived in my inbox today. Here’s an excerpt:
Srila Gurudeva [Bhakti Tirtha Swami] was a pure devotee of the Lord and he desired to have his pushpa Samadhi in Gitanagari. The words of a pure devotee WILL come true. When Srila Prabhupada was on the ship Jaladuta on the way to the US, he was able to visualize devotees, temples and preaching centers. He knew it was only Kala or time that was separating the visualization and the actual manifestation. Similarly, the Pushpa Samadhi in Gitanagari is already a part of the transcendental plan of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and will certainly manifest in due time.
The total projected cost of the Pushpa Samadhi in Gitanagari Dhama is around $100,000.00. So far we have firm commitments and actual contributions of around $50,000.00. So we are on the half way mark as I type this report. We still have the other half to accomplish. My realization is that the Lakshmi has already been arranged by Srila Gurudeva and we his children have to just develop the right conciousness to collect the Lakshmi.
A few years ago, a short time after I moved to Gita-nagari, I was at a small gathering of Hare Krishna devotees. Some of them were disciples of Srila Prabhupada and long-time members of the Gita-nagari community. I was excited about having moved there, and expressed my desire to have regular Harinam sankirtan parties in the surrounding area. They thought my desire was nice, but unrealistic.
I was told that the Gita-nagari community was largely despised by locals many miles around, mostly because they had incurred so many debts from the local businesses. One devotee there explained that the Gita-nagari community had taken advantage of the services of numerous businesses when they did not have the money or the intention to pay. News spreads in small towns, and over time the communities became resentful of the residents of Gita-nagari. I was told that anyone going out on Harinam would be risking their life because of the widespread disgust felt by the locals towards the Gita-nagari community.
As I became more active in the Gita-nagari community, I hoped to find ways to repair this relationship, but no other devotees I talked with about it seemed to care. I remember almost two years ago when we were making preparations for our little Rathayatra festival, there was some trouble renting chairs and/or tables. One person in charge explained that they owed money to all of the rental shops, and that none of the rental businesses would provide anything unless they were paid in advance. Although the Rathayatra was just a few weeks away, there was practically no money in the Rathayatra fund, so we couldn’t reserve rental chairs until donations came in. Some months later I heard that the same situation was true of the fuel oil suppliers. It was apparent from my discussions with former officials there that they had the same problem with many types of local services.
I remember how when it came to pay Gita-nagari’s share of the ISKCON child abuse lawsuit settlement; the community worked to raise about $35,000 in an auction, selling all sorts stuff, including total junk, valuable farm machinery, and historically significant farm equipment that had been abandoned since Gita-nagari’s more agricultural days. That event must also have left the locals with a bitter resentment, as it was obvious that the community had some money from this massive liquidation, but it didn’t go to pay the debts. I doubt anyone told them that the money was to pay the former gurukulis who had been raped and beaten there.
There’s also the fact that the temple administration needs money enough that they’ve been selling the rights to hay from the dhama to a Menonite farmer who uses it to feed cows and other animals destined for slaughter. That’s a story of its own.
When I was elected to the Gita-nagari community board, my first concern was how to pay the debts and repair Gita-nagari’s relationship with the broader community. When I asked the treasurer about the issue, she seemed a little offended and told me that they were paying what they could, but there was very little money. When I talked to a community board member (not a BTS disciple) from the previous year about it, he told me that the financial books were a farce and that the temple management would never allow me to see them.
Somehow I doubt that this situation has changed much in the past year. Yet they’re attempting to raise $100,000 to deify their so-called guru and reportedly have already collected half that in pledges and donations. (I wonder how much they’re going to spend to build the museum that Bhakti Tirtha wanted dedicated to him.) I guess the Bhakti Tirtha disciples at Gita-nagari really don’t care about how the local community feels about them. It’s no wonder that every time a sign for the community gets put up at the end of the driveway it gets vandalized within a short time. Last time I drove by it appeard that the driveway was marked by a red t-shirt tied to a stake instead of a pretty Hare Krishna temple sign.
Apparently this was Bhakti Tirtha’s desire.
You are right, prabhu, that is a lot of money. But I don’t doubt that they will raise it. When it comes to these things, somehow they find the money. For other things, they don’t.
Hare Krishna,
One small point, who is stopping you raising funds for Gita Nagari? This samadhi fund raising is being managed by a devotee based in New Jersey, with donors from around the world. Nothing is stopping you from holding a similar fund raiser for other projects. This project is not taking any resources away from Gita Nagari temple, what is your issue?
It seems it would be better to engage your passions in something productive instead of constant fault finding in everyone else’s endeavors. Bhakti Tirtha Maharaj may not be your guru, thats fine, but it doesn’t mean he is not anyone elses guru. You may not have a desire to, or see the point in honoring guru properly, but please don’t impose that on everyone else.
If you care so much about the child abuse cases in ISKCON then please try to help, this kind of rant is of absolutly no help. I am a 2nd generation ISKCON member, members of my family have been abused, close friends have been abused, and I can tell you for sure that this is not the way to help. If you ask them you will find that HH Bhakti Tirtha Maharaj has been one of the main sources of help for them.
Have you ever actually spoken to the gurukulis you are trying to help? There is a large gathering of Gurukulis happening in New Vrindavan soon (kulimela), I suggest you go there and speak to them, find out how you can actually be of help. Please let us know what they say.
I don’t mean to be rude, so please forgive my tone, just a little tired of this broken record.
Nanda Sunu dasa
i cringe when i read stuff like this…what a mockery of the Holy Name…i wonder about those locals, those “karmis” and all the negative associations they must have in their minds about the incomparable mercy of sharing one’s life with the joy of Radha-Govinda’s music.
we are the karmis…or worse than karmis…because we have received the one thing worth having in this world, above all other gifts, the Holy Name, and look what we have done with this treasure… i cringe because i know something about country life and country folk…i know about april in the country…about the wind blowing steadily for days and weeks…little rain…the earth chapped…or twenty inches of snow bringing out the curmudgeon in the community…april in the country very often is about grousing and grumbling everwhere…but concealing a satisfaction about the way things are…april is the wry, ironic language of the hardware store because really we all like to pretend… but we know we need the moisture for our fields… and i know april in the country and catching myself looking at the bare tree line for that first reddish flush…or seeing the first eruption of a willow down in the valley…or finding myself testing the ground underfoot as i walk to the root cellar in the dark…how much give is there ?…how long before it its time to start spading the garden ?…when will i start tracking mud into the house ?…
in the country its easy to find yourself leaning forward all through the year, always waiting on the next season…getting through your life as though yu were walking into a stiff wind…like real devotees in authentic spiritual lives…pitched forward into the gale of time with Krsna in our hearts…i am so ashamed to read about yur experience…about all that trust and good will that country folk everywhere always extend to their neighbors and that i feel sure was there in the beginning of the relationship…because i know someting about april and country folk…and then to think what we have done with it…much more precious than money… we have stolen that too…but most of all we have stolen trust, good will, and from their struggle to make a living and feed their families in a harsh environment where every nail and every quart of oil must count…
and then we have the audacity to speak of gurus ? of enlightened teachers…? …of holy books…of the most refined tradition and knowledge and practice for the soul anywhere on earth…? who are we fooling ? certainly no one at the local hardware store…and certainly not Krsna…where is our love for God in all this ? Where is our love for our Guru, our community, our families, our neighbors, ourselves…for the banner of Lord Caitanya’s mission ?
all lies…lies with a huge dose of delusional superiority…or contempt for the most basic principles of human decency and respect…never mind the over all effort at Krsna Conciousness…if one cant even uphold ones name and sacred honor within ones own community…why even bother with teaching from Srimad B. or the Gita ?…i am so ashamed…but not surprised at all… do yu really think anyone at Gita Nagari …especially Gurus…will really ever see Krsna in their next life time while there is still somewhere in that same hardware store i can imagine so vividly…boxed dusty receipts in some dark basement corner made out to the Hare Krsna’s for services and products that were delivered a long time ago…but never been paid for and probably will never be paid for in this lifetime ?
the farse of this movement, of presuming to teach other people how to live properly, with brain washed devotees and their delinquent gurus whom they worship as good as God…if it wasn’t so damn tragic it would be enough material to open ten new franchises of monty python movies.
arjuna
great blog…
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