Ritvik issue philosophical psychological historical and individual perspectives

Hare Krishna. So the question is, how can we see the current conflict that is going on from a Bhagavata perspective or spiritual perspective? Yes. This is currently raging in social media. And, I’ve been asked this question repeatedly.

And over the last month or so I’ve been reflecting on this. And so I’ll talk about this from four perspectives. First, a philosophical perspective. Then I’ll look at it from a psychological perspective. Then I’ll talk about it from a historical perspective in terms of how something similar has happened in other traditions also.

And then I’ll talk about it from an individual perspective of what we can do. Till now, most of the discussion has been at an institutional level with, a focus on trying to prove that, say, the ritwikks are wrong. I would like to take a broader perspective here. From a philosophical perspective, Krishna talks about the concept of Dharmasyaglani in the Bhagavad Gita. Dharmasyaglani is basically where dharma becomes disrupted.

And at that time, correction has to happen. So before we can understand this disruption of dharma, we need to understand what is dharma. So broadly, while the word dharma has many different meanings, so I’m right now talking about dharma in terms of the issue of, the role and position of the guru in the tradition. So dharma one meaning of the word dharma is harmonious belonging. That whichever larger unit we are a part of, we need to belong harmoniously to that.

And harmonious belonging is a two way street that we need to do our part in the larger whole, and the larger whole needs to do its part for us. So Krishna talks about we doing our part in to Arjuna asked that. That is the meaning of the word dharma over there. And fixing the larger whole is what Krishna talks about. And he said, So Dharma Seglani can be corrected in both ways.

Now in terms of the system of the spiritual master, the guru that is there, the the here the individual will be the disciple and the spiritual master is is the larger collector. That’s the guru system that is there. So the individual contributes. So if you apply this to the this particular model, if you apply to the guru system, then we have the disciple. And I’m putting the Guru here as a representative of the Guru system.

So the so the disciple, they is expected to offer respect and, obedience and worship. And the Guru is meant to give guidance, inspiration, mercy. And the Guru is expected to set an example of pure bhakti. And when both these are working together, then that’s where balance is there. That’s where the disciple also grows.

So now in the history of our movement, when Srila Prabhupada went to America, Srila Prabhupada was a exemplary guru and he was the only guru at that time. And what he did is extraordinary. Now after he departed, there were succ successor gurus who took up the role of guru ship following Prabhupada. How in the first decade, especially from ’77 to ’87, there was a lot of Dharmasya Gnaani. And as I said, Dharmasya Ghlani can happen in this context in both ways.

The disciple may not follow or the the disciple is not following, then disciple has to follow the standards, do the sadhana properly. But what can also happen is that sometimes the spiritual master may have some problems. So several of the spiritual leaders at that time, for various reasons, they had some moral challenges, they had some falls. And that shook and even shattered the faith of many devotees. Now when this happened, there was a lot of soul searching about what is to be done in such a situation.

So till then the idea was devotees have to follow, individuals have to be strict in their sadhana. But then those who were supposed to be representing Prabhupada and Krishna when they had false, then at that time there was a the Dharmasheglani at the level of the Guru. So there was an internal Guru reform in ISKCON. So what did Buddhist Guru reform do? Basically, post Prabhupada, if we consider 1977, ’80 ‘4 was probably the worst year in our movement’s history.

We had three big, spiritual masters having problems in falling and leaving. So at that time, basically after Srila Prabhupada’s departure, there had become in place something called a zoonal acharya system. Srila Prabhupada had appointed certain teachers, sir, some of his 11 some of his disciples as gurus. And when he appointed those disciples, basically, they became acharyas for particular zones. And everybody in that particular zone was expected to take initiation from that particular spiritual master only.

And International Society for Krishna Consciousness became divided into many zonal societies for Krishna consciousness. And these devotees became like super gurus. They became like a super GBC who had a widow power over the entire GBC, even above their own god brothers. So the guru reform that happened at that time, one of the main changes that happened is that the gurus may be gurus for their disciples, but the gurus are not gurus for their god brothers. So the gurus should not be sitting on a higher asana than their god brothers.

So the vote of the g b the GBC of the gurus and the non gurus both became equivalent. And basically, the understanding that after that, there are many other devotees who also took up the service of the gurus. So the Guru reform, what it did was, it the Guru’s position in relationship with the disciples of that particular Guru and relationship with others, That differentiation was made. And even for the disciples also, it is encouraged that it is not that you take guidance only from one guru. You take guidance from we are joining a tradition.

We take guidance from various people. And while this did significantly stop major problems, but still problems kept happening. Even after that, there was other spiritual masters who had issues. And then the second way to reform this that came was the rittvik moment. So when we talk about Dharmasya Ghlani, we could say that one is the disciple needs to fix themselves.

The other is the gurus need to fix themselves. So there was attempt made to fix the gurus, that the gurus were also accountable to the GBC. They so that certain amount of fixing of the guru system was done. But some devotees felt that this fixing is not working. And therefore, generally, whenever there is Dharmas Seglani, there are three things which we can do.

We can tolerate it. Okay. Things will change and improve on their own. We can mitigate it. Or we can emigrate from it.

We can just leave that system and go somewhere else. So the what the ritwik basically did was, they tried to emigrate out. So emigrate means that this thing, whole thing cannot be fixed itself. We’ll go out and we will create something new. So now when we create something new, what they said is that the problem is the object of faith and service, the spiritual master.

If that spiritual master has some problem and has some faults, then it can be very devastating for the disciple. So try to shift the object of faith to a place where that faith will never be disappointed or betrayed. So basically, they started saying that the rhetoric system was that Srila Prabhupada is the only guru And we serve Srila Prabhupada and Srila Prabhupada will deliver us. And everyone else is, representative of Srila Prabhupada. That’s the word, Srila Prabhupada.

They’re simply initiating on behalf of Srila Prabhupada. Now in our tradition, whenever there is Dharma Seglani, there are resources within the tradition to fix a situation. And there is Guru, Sadhu, and Shastra. So Guru, Sadhu, and Shastra are there. And all three need to be considered to decide what are the right measures to fix things.

And if we consider the broader tradition in Shastra, there is practically very little, no basis to the idea of a ritwik system being there continuously for a tradition. There are some occasions of some examples of some ritwik initiation here where the spiritual master may not be there and some through some is some mystical means some initiation can happen. But the the cornerstone of the tradition has always been a living guru training a living disciple. So basically, what happened is this is the normal system. So the ritwik said the guru alone is all that matters.

And sadhu and shastra are all also to be, seen through the guru, so guru is the supreme. And the Prabhupada’s words are made into the supreme words. Now based on sadhu and shastra, such system is very difficult to substantiate. It’s almost impossible. Now based on Prabhupada’s words, there is some attempt to substantiate the system and there has been a crossfire of, courts from this side and that side.

There I won’t get into that particular, battle of courts. But the broad point is that there is a emigration from the traditional system, which is the cornerstone of the Vedic tradition. It’s a personal relationship where the guru trains the disciple. And so when this is this didn’t happen, so the Ritwik’s, won a court case recently in Bangalore. And now, the current situation is that, is that this is being seen as not just a victory at a legal level, but also at a moral and spiritual level that the ritwik philosophy is right.

So, while it’s important to recognize that from a perspective Guru Sadhu Shastra, it’s it’s almost impossible to substantiate the ritwik system as an absolute system for all time in our tradition. At the same time, it’s not healthy to demonize the ritwik. Those who are following that, they are also following Shlapa Prabhupada, they are also worshipping Krishna. So this is where Dharmas Seglani, how is it to be addressed. And so that’s where I’ll go to the psychological level.

At a psychological level, when faith is there. Faith is a very precious, at the same time a very, fragile thing. So we always want to protect our faith. So what is happening is that currently that those who those who are ritwikks, at one level, there is a philosophical argument made for that. But along with that, to discredit the current guru system that is there in the moment, there is often a demonization of the present gurus.

Now demonizing the Gurus in the moment. And sometimes the past scandals are being brought about and, oh this happened, that happened. Some of them are true, some of them are exaggerated, some of them are distorted, some of them are concocted. But there’s a lot of, demonizing of the Gurus happening. Now it I would like to use here a military metaphor over here that why military metaphor?

Because Slapropad also said that it’s a war against Maya. And in the war, there are some people who may become generals, commanders, leaders. And sometimes even the leaders can get wounded. Sometimes the leaders may make strategic some of the military leaders can make strategic mistakes. And not if they get wounded, others get wounded by that.

And based on that, if somebody starts condemning, the leaders themselves and questioning their loyalty to the country, that would be horrendous. They were trying to serve the country, but maybe they got wounded. Maybe they made some decisions which turned out to be counterproductive. So saying that none of the Gurus have any standing because they have usurped Prabhupada’s position or that they have taken for themselves the credit that was meant only you know, that only meant for Prabhupada. And then highlighting their moral flaws or just concocting certain things.

This is, is a serious disservice to the broader tradition. Now at the same time, we can go to the other extreme, and we may demonize there can be demonizing the critics. The critics of the gurus or the critics of the guru system. Where he starts saying that those who are doing like this, they are all guru apradis and they are going to go to hell. Now when this happens, again, the problem is that there is a philosophical level of argumentation, but underlying that, there is a wounded heart.

There’s a insecure heart. That what is a safe and worthy object of faith for us. And unless that issue is addressed, the we will just be arguing at a surface level. The intelligence that we have been given, the human intelligence is powerful enough that it can go both ways. That we can we all have in our mind, there are certain conceptions.

The mind’s conceptions, we can use our intelligence to rectify those conceptions or to justify those conceptions. Now it’s up to us which one we are going to do. But when the mind has certain conceptions, those conceptions come not just at a rational level. They also come at an emotional level. So even now that if we are to correct the Dharma Seglani, there needs to be a deeper soul searching about how, the the system of Guru Shishya Parampara, which is a cornerstone of the Vedic tradition, can apply in today’s world.

Even now, is everything, hunky dory in the guru system right now? Not necessarily. That there are many devotees who feel that they never get guidance of their association with their spiritual master. There are times when the spiritual masters may give certain guidance which, which turns out to be, somewhat, unproductive or counterproductive also. Even if there are no moral flaws.

So the the point of the good disciple relationship is is a personal connection. So what would this imply? Unless we consider the faith faith cannot be legislated. Faith cannot be simply argued at a philosophical level based on court mining. That when there is vulnerability and insecurity of the faith, how can that faith be secured?

So there needs to be some deep deep soul searching about this. And that’s why rather than a philosophical level, we also need to look at a psychological level. We are not talking about psychoanalysing the motives of people because we can ascribe the worst motives to each side. And we can also consider that both sides may have noble motives. And both of the both sides are trying to search the Prabhupada, but there are serious differences.

So generally, at a psychological level, even there are differences of opinion, we may not be able to There are different levels. There is sometimes you may question someone’s judgement. That means you made a decision that was wrong. Sometimes you may question somebody’s ability. So for example, judgement means that, in a war, a general says let’s attack on that front.

And somebody says no, that is a mistake. So now the judge that the general may be a competent general, but there they made a judgement error. There’s judgement error, it’s bad. It’ll have consequences. But we can assume that, okay, this will learn from it.

Sometimes we question the ability of a person. I mean, you should not be the general self. You just don’t have the competence for that. That can be little more damaging. But if we go further and cons question the integrity of the person itself, then there is no chance for reconciliation.

So let us pray that neither side assumes the worst about the other side. Is it possible that there may be some people with those motives possible? But is it likely that everybody here is having those lowest motives in their side? Unlikely. So if you can give benefit of the doubt, Upanishu Nam Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, aversion to fault finding.

Then there’s a greater chance that, a solution to the Dharmasiglani can happen in a way that addresses the current needs while also is faithful to the tradition. So I have no magic wand by which I can use such a solution. But Srila Prabhupada himself says that when we are preaching, when we are sharing scriptural knowledge, there is scripture on one side and there is there are the interests of the audience on the other side. So he says realization means to present scripture in a way that is interesting for the audience. This intersection zone is the realization.

So we have the tradition of the Guru Sushya Parampara. We have the current concern about the audience concern, interest is what that either the there are some issues with the guru system. How is that to be addressed? So a lot of prayer and deliberation and soul searching is required. And it can be that the parent situation can become a deliberation for that to see how maybe the guru system can be more decentralized so that gurus and disciples can interact with each other more on regular basis.

Maybe Shiksha gurus need to be elevated more so that the Shiksha gurus can provide guidance. There are various ways in which this can be addressed, but that’s the point of a psychological level. Now from a historical level, something similar happened in the history of Christianity. We consider Christians, originally, they were the Catholic church, but the Catholic church split into Catholics and Protestants. And that is called the Christian Reformation.

And when this happened, there are many reasons for that, but one of them was primarily many people many, church leaders, Martin Luther, who was the leader of the Protestants, he lost faith in the ecclesiastical authority of the church, especially church leaders. There were popes who were supposed to be the highest risk authority. There were popes who were quite immoral. There were popes who had illicit affairs. They had children to the fear affairs, and the popes had the church would provide endowment for taking care of those children.

And the church was selling indulgences. But the idea is you pay some donation for building a church. And just by that donation, your relatives and friends who have passed through who are currently in hell will get transferred to heaven. So there’s a lot of corruption and there’s a loss of faith and authority. So what the protestants said is they had a sola scriptura.

Sola scriptura means, scripture alone is the authority. We don’t need the church to understand the scripture. We don’t need the church leaders. So by that, they started focusing on we everyone will read the Bible, everyone will understand the Bible on their own way. Now the result of that eventually was that the protestants broke away from the Catholics.

But then if everybody can read the Bible and everybody can understand their own way, now there are almost 55,000 denominations of protesters. Because different protesters started interpreting, you know, this is the interpretation. This is the interpretation. This is the interpretation. It led to a lot of fragmentation.

And it became quite vicious. There’s a hundred years of wars because Europe became divided. Say, Spain and Portugal and Italy mostly were protestants. France and Germany and England became sorry. The other Spain, Portugal actually were Catholics.

And France, Germany, England became Protestants. And there is a hundred year war between them. And each side started ascribing the worst motives. So post reformation when the when the Islamic invaders attack Europe. So there are countries that were they are ruled by a Catholic king and they are protestants in that country.

The protestants were also there as soldiers. So Martin Luther told the soldiers, this attack by the Muslims is actually God’s punishment for the Catholics. And therefore, you should not fight against them. And the soldiers many soldiers refused to fight and those kingdoms were overrun, churches were destroyed. And then eventually, when the Muslim innovators started coming and attacking the protestant countries, at that time, Martin Luther King stood.

And he said that, oh, no, no. Actually, these are not agents of God’s God’s retribution. These are agents of Satan to destroy our church. They fight against them. The point is that this infighting led not only to mutual violence and fighting can also lead to further other external enemies attacking and we becoming vulnerable and destroying ourselves.

So we do not have sola scriptura, but we can say what the ritwikks are doing is sola prabhupada. That prabhupada alone. And we don’t have anything else. So in our own tradition, there is Guru Sadhu Shastra. So historically, this infighting goes on.

Sanatana Dharma has many far bigger threats. And we are already spend huge amount of energy, a financial level time, and now emotional energy. This will only lead to further fragmentation. Now there are some attempts after hundreds of years to try to bring the two churches together, Protestant and Catholics. But it’s it’s a lot of historical wounds are there.

So hopefully, we can pray that this is the last says, Dhruva Maharaj in the fifth canto, he prays that, Sastirastu, may all living beings become peaceful. So that a cooler head prevails and we don’t repeat the the tragedies of history, wherein fighting leads to vicious animosity. And the last part I’ll talk about is at a individual level. So what can we as individuals do? Each one of us, those of us who are trying to practice Bhakti, those who come to the Krishna consciousness movement, we may think who is right, who is wrong.

Now more than that question of who is right and who is wrong, let’s focus on the question of what is right for me and what is wrong for me. So what is right for me is that I came here for Krishna consciousness. So how can I best cultivate Krishna consciousness? So is there some Dharma Seglani? It is there.

Is there something I can do to fix it right now? It’s unlikely just by getting caught in the crossfire of the argument. This person is saying this, this person is saying this. No. We will only get more distracted.

And our it is if not our faith, our convictions, our intelligence, they will all get, confused. So let us focus on individually cultivating Krishna consciousness, and we can pray if we have the responsibility of the role, if we have the interest. Then if some of us want to be involved in bringing about some resolution, there are some kind of understanding. Those of us who have that the position or the disposition, the guna and karma, we may be able to do something. But for most of us, it is best to focus on our Krishna consciousness.

This is the international society for Krishna consciousness. So it is for Krishna consciousness. It is not of Krishna consciousness. What What that means is it’s not that intrinsically there is Krishna consciousness over here. It is a place for cultivating Krishna consciousness.

So I’ll conclude with the last metaphor, the metaphor of mining. This comes in the seventh canto in Prahlad’s teachings. That just as under the ground there is gold, we have to dig to get to the gold. So similar the soul exists deep below at the core of our self, but we have to excavate it. So like that.

Now if somebody has come for mining gold. Now at the gold mining place, many other things might be happening. Some peep miners may fight fighting with each other. Some other things might be happening. If we have come there for mining gold, we focus on mining gold.

If we have the capacity to fix other fight, we can fix it. Otherwise, we get caught, we don’t get the gold over there. So, yes, Krishna consciousness is very much accessible and relishable for everyone even now. And that’s what we focus on. And if we do this, then we are playing our part in fulfilling the purpose of Srila Prabhupada to cultivate Krishna consciousness.

Now the exact way in the when we say larger system is meant to function, that is not something we can fix. But getting caught in that will unfix us, will distract us from our Krishna consciousness. So Srila Prabhupada says in seventh canto purport that one should keep, one’s intelligence in mind. One should always be steady, healthy and stout in mind and intelligence to differentiate the goal of life from a life full of problems. In life, there are many many problems and we can’t deal with all problems.

So what which dealing with which problem will help us to pursue the goal of life? Let us focus on that. And that is cultivating our individual cons Krishna consciousness. So I’ll summarize. I talked about four broad things.

That at a philosophical level, there is Dharmasya Gnaani. That means that the individual is not contributing, the whole is not contributing. In the case of the guru system, the there has been a attempt to fix things at a collective level. There was the guru reform in ISKCON, and it was successful to a significant degree. But some people not satisfied with that, and there is emigration to a new system that is a rhythmic system where essentially, Dharma Selana is being addressed by shifting the faith, the object of faith, to a safe level where there is no danger of disappointment or betrayal.

So at a psychological level, there is a wounded heart and there is a fragile faith. That is what needs to be addressed. So, now, when we are trying to address this, if we go out of the system of the Vedic scriptures, rejecting the idea of Guru Sadhu Shastra, which is the Gushi Shapanampara, that is not a health sustainable scripture solution. But we need to find out what is the solution that is faithful to scripture and addresses the concerns of the audience. That is where realization will come in.

And then I talk about it from historical perspective, how this kind of insecurity has been there in other traditions also the Christians. They split into Catholics and Protestants because the faith in the authority was eroded. And that led to vicious infighting and it led to disastrous vulnerability to external attacks also. So let us pray that we don’t go in that direction. Learn from history that the different in fighting can lead to far greater casualties and dangers for Sanatana Dharma.

And lastly, at individual level, we focus on what is it that we can do. We focus on our Krishna consciousness. We have come here to mind our own heart that we can reach Krishna. We focus on that and we pray that Swastirastu that the larger whole become fixed in a way that everybody can pursue Krishna consciousness in a more peaceful and fruitful way. Thank you very much.