1. Letter from Jagadananda das (ACBSP) to Paramadvaiti Maharaja

October 2018

Dear Maharaj,

Thank you for your letter. I will not trouble you too much. I may be your friend, but I know I am not a very close friend. We do not belong to the same sampradaya and so you may find it inappropriate for me to offer advice, especially when it seemed from your letter to me that you were not enthusiastic about getting it.

I thought about it, however, and decided that to not say anything would be cowardly and not at all the act of a friend and well-wisher.

I have been communicating with Tripurari Maharaj and we seem to be in agreement and so he told me to go ahead and share my thoughts with you.

I don't think it is correct or believable that your current difficulties are the result of "politics against you." We had heard rumors before this latest event and I believe that where there is smoke there is fire, especially when there is a lot of it. When there are politics against you, it is not by playing politics that you win, especially not if your goal is bhakti.

It seems to me that you have developed an addictive behavior and denial is the worst possible strategy, either personally or publicly.

This in the year of "Me Too" so it is especially not a good idea to play that game. The lessons from the Catholic Church and ISKCON child abuse scandals should have been learned by now: the cover-up is worse than the crime. And, again I have to say, especially in the world of prema-bhakti.

I don't know if you followed the Kavanagh Supreme Court hearings, but they were a real eye-opener. It showed how privileged members of elite society are socialized in their youth to dominance behaviors -- abuse of power -- that would be totally unacceptable by anyone else. Excuses are made for such people. Excuses were made for the priests, and for all the others who fall down. Don't make excuses, it only makes things worse. It is all about power, not about prema.

People like Kavanagh don't just "get rid" of behaviors and attitudes, gross and subtle, that are a part of their birth and class inheritance. If there is to be any change of character it requires recognition, apologies and a plan to rectify the flaw. Those were all missing in Kavanagh, therefore we know what kind of person he really is, whatever image he may have created for himself.

It not only makes things worse externally, but it makes things worse internally also. You have been a hypocrite and now you want to increase your hypocrisy even more? That is not a particularly fruitful route for one's spiritual life. And even if you keep VRINDA together, you will pollute the whole endeavor by your hypocrisy. Like Kripalu.

The best people will not believe your denials. The weak-minded and foolish will accept them and continue to believe in you. But that will leave you with a society of less-intelligent people following a hypocrite, which makes them hypocrites also. You may as well thrown VRINDA into the sea if that is what you are planning. You criticize ISKCON for less. Don't let VRINDA follow that road.

You may distrust me because of my Sahajiya reputation, so you may be surprised by the solution I propose. It is in fact true that the main reason I became a Sahajiya is because I gave a lot of thought to the kind of predicament that is persistent where people take a lifelong vow of celibacy. But you are too old for marriage and any usual remedy.

You are a sannyasi, you took a vow of sannyas, sannyas is your dharma. It is too late to change dharmas. The flaw (in my view) is that you have not followed sannyas-dharma properly. Do as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu would have told you: get the hell away from the association of women and do some honest and intense bhajan -- until your death if necessary. Stop running around and planning this or that big project to preach Vaishnava dharma and change the world, etc. Your main job is to retrieve the force of purity.

It is time to retire and go into seclusion and chant the holy name and not come out until the devils of hypocrisy have been removed from your heart and your mind has been purified by genuine penitence and humility. You have senior responsible disciples like Padmanabh Maharaj and Atulananda who can take care of things in your absence. You disciples can come to India (or wherever you decide to do bhajan) to find you and you can preach to them with genuine humility on the basis of the realizations that come from bhajan.

Okay, well that is my opinion. I really don't know any other way for you to salvage your own spiritual life and your mission. I believe Tripurari Maharaj used the words "boil the milk of your own sadhana". This is exactly what I am saying also. Have no fear for your mission. Let the sincere work you have done blossom and give it divine force by working on your purity.

Forgive me for my impertinence in speaking so directly, for I am only a lowly worm in stool and you are a great preacher of the Holy Name. It is only out of love for Mahaprabhu's dharma, and for you and your disciples, that I have spoken in this way.

Jai Sri Radhe