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hare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare hare hare
rama hare rama rama
rama hare hare
Camp. Kisangani, DR Congo. Mob
00243813744835
All Glories to Sri Guru and Sri Gauranga!
Dear Jayapataka Swami, Gopal Krishna Maharaja,
Prabhavishnu Swami, Kavicandra
Swami, Prahladananda Swami and HG Praghosa Das,
Please accept my humble obeisances! All Glories to Srila
Prabhupada!
I expect you are all now very busy with your important GBC
services. But I
would like to apologise for not being able to attend the
Mayapur Festival
this year and get your association and the association of
all the Vaishnavas
and Their Lordships. I sincerely regret this but cannot
see any way round
it at this point as I explain below. I hope this will not
inconvenience you
in any way and that we can catch up on any administrative
things at a later
date or by E-mail.
Earlier in November 2009 I had regretfully decided to not
attend the Mayapur
Festival 2010 because I did not want to miss a good
opportunity to reopen
the ISKCON Zambia preaching which had been closed down in
the '80s. In
November 2009 I had met HG Shyamasundara das (ACBSP 1967)
at the Soho St
40th Anniversary Celebrations in London. As a mining
consultant for a huge
enterprise in Zambia (next to DR Congo) he encouraged me
to come from next
door DR Congo and with his assistance get things started
mid-Feb to March
2010. It seemed very hopeful for ISKCON so I made various
plans for an
extended tour in DR Congo ending up in Zambia in the south
of DRC. But as it
turns out now Shyamasundara's hopes have unfortunately
been more or less
shattered by harsh realities and there is little hope this
time of making
much progress in Zambia through his contacts. But as I
have now become
committed to the extended tour in DR Congo I do not feel
it will be good to
stop it. Besides I am visiting many new cities, doing
programmes and
starting small library centres. I am with my disciple Bal
Nitai Das from DR
Congo and his enthusiastic devotees.
A few days ago I woke up dreaming of our sannyasis and
devotees in very
surreal cramped quarters on a hillside somehow reminiscent
of Sudarshan
Prabhu's Aroghya Ashram at Svarupganj Mayapur on the
Navadwipa Mandal
Parikrama. Maybe I was imagining the building site at
Mayapur too. It was
blissful commaradie and I was reminded of you all and was
happy in your
association. So I wanted to write this and express my
feelings of impending
separation. But the only consolation is that I feel sure
that Srila
Prabhupada is at least a little pleased that we are trying
to distribute
his French Books and open up these new places to Krishna
consciousness.
We're also doing some radio and TV programmes wherever we
can. I heard on
Yadubara's new DVD series, "Following Srila Prabhupada"'s
(Memory Audio
Track) that in 1968(?)Srila Prabhupada used to spend hours
spinning a
globe and looking at different places. He must have looked
over DR Congo
also and many other places where we still have no devotees
or centres or
books in their languages. Tomorrow we have a programme at
the Kisangani
University here organised by the Professor of Philosophy
and Literature.
One devotee friend recently mentioned that he thought I
was purposel
avoiding "ISKCON politics" by going out to be a Hare
Krishna missionery in
the DR Congo. He may have been hinting that I was now
happy calling the shots
as a disciple-hungry guru. Of course on one level that may
be true as I am
not so patient, cool-headed or sharp enough to be a
qualified ISKCON
committee and team member. It's also true I am really
enjoying being a
missionery in a new place. But on another level I feel
that pioneering
preaching is itself upholding and highlighting the most
important ISKCON
political statement of all made by Srila Prabhupada in his
Aims and Objects
of ISKCON. ie:- "(a) To systematically propagate spiritual
knowledge to
society at large and to educate all peoples in the
techniques of spiritual
life." (b),(c)" etc.
Can we afford to minimise Srila Prabhupada's educational
non-sectarian
priority (a) above? Wasn't the example of expanding and
pioneering the
preaching the very thing which Srila Prabhupada gave us as
the Hare Krishna
Movement? So did he really later on want us to put a brake
on expanding to
"at least maintain" what he gave us? Excuse me please but
I feel that with
this mental laxitude step by step ISKCON will just get
more "Kamsaised"
into yet another defunct organised religion bogged down in
its own politics
trying ,(very sincerely ,of course), to just "at least
maintain". Shall we
now complacently sit "at home" and avoid the glaring fact
that billions of
living entities in human bodies on this planet still take
birth and die (
maybe in so called "foreign countries" or in the next
street) without having
ever once had the chance to come in contact with Krishna
consciousness even
in the form of a single "Hare Krishna" or a single book in
their own
language?
One administrative point is that as yet, as far as I know
there is no GBC for
DR Congo and Brazzavile Congo. I would be happy if HH
Kavicandra Swami could
be offered that responsibility and I will be glad to try
and arrange for his
periodical visits there. |
