Back To Prabhupada, Issue 26, Winter 2009/10
n Parts 1 and 2 of our HH Sivarama Swami (“SRS”) special series of nonsense (see BTP 23 and page 15 of this issue), we highlighted this leading ISKCON GBC voted-in guru declaring that:
1) ISKCON gurus essentially operate as “ritvik” priests, but should nonetheless be worshipped as saksad-hari, or as good-as-God.
2) One should find a “present day” guru in ISKCON, although such a guru will be a non-realized conditioned soul who may possibly fall down and leave Krishna consciousness altogether, or else will be the cause of a deviation (apasampradaya).
Below we see SRS continuing his nonsense theme that one should still accept a guru, even if he is bad:
“Now the devotee continues to say, this is the second question, he says, “Sadly for some reason or another I cannot make my spiritual master my worshipful Deity and source of my life.” [...] However, I would start off that the principle has to be accepted and is important, and by investing faith in that principle that actually one can really go a long way to achieving what this verse describes one way or another. By that I mean a policeman may be not nice looking, gruff, not a nice person, but when he tells you to stop at the red light then you stop at the red light. He doesn’t have to be a good guy for you to do that. Why? Because he’s representing a principle and it’s a principle that you follow. […] The same thing with spiritual master.”
(HH Sivarama Swami, Podcast, December 2nd, 2009)
Reporter: "But the bad gurus..."
Srila Prabhupada: "And what is a “bad” guru?"
Reporter: "A bad guru just wants some money or some fame."
Srila Prabhupada: "Well, if he is bad, how can he become a guru? [Laughter.] How can iron become gold? Actually, a guru cannot be bad, for if someone is bad, he cannot be a guru. You cannot say “bad guru.” That is a contradiction. What you have to do is simply try to understand what a genuine guru is. [...] A guru cannot be bad. There is no question of a bad guru [...] Guru means “genuine guru.”"
(Srila Prabhupada interview with The Times, London, The Science of Self-Realization)
Hence, the guru must always be “good”. Furthermore, someone is not a policeman simply by putting on a uniform that makes him look like a policeman. He must be authorized. Is SRS authorized? It is the burden of the policeman to show he is authorized. It is not the burden of the citizen, when ordered by someone, to prove that the person is not a policeman. SRS has not stated how he has been authorized by Srila Prabhupada. Rather, he has admitted he was authorized via his own initiative of applying to get the necessary number of votes from the GBC, due to being asked to become a guru by a young girl:
“At this time I also was asked to take up the role of initiating spiritual master. I didn’t consider that this would be very conducive to my personal spiritual life and I was satisfied for others to do that service and that I would stay in the role of sannyasi, a preacher, siksa guru, GBC, and probably it was at Gaurangi’s* repeated prompting that ultimately I began to think seriously of that service and took it up.”
(HH Sivarama Swami, Podcast, October 4th, 2006)
*at the time a young female devotee, and now a disciple.
Srila Prabhupada:
Genuine guru - no nonsense |
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