Who are the real mayavadis?
Case study of His Holiness Giriraja Swami


IRM

Back To Prabhupada, Issue 25, Autumn 2009

Below we expose yet another supposedly “self-realised/as good-as-God” spiritual master speaking the usual contradictory gibberish when trying to attack Srila Prabhupada’s position as the diksa (initiating) guru of ISKCON. This time it is the turn of HH Giriraja Swami (“GRS”), another one of the GBC’s 70-odd voted-in “gurus”. Amongst other nonsense, GRS makes the ludicrous claim that accepting Srila Prabhupada as the diksa guru of ISKCON is the same as mayavada (impersonalist) philosophy. Yet, as we shall show using his own words, it is actually GRS who is preaching mayavada philosophy. All the quotes in the yellow tinted panels come from a lecture given by GRS on June 4th, 2009, glorifying HH Jayapataka Swami (“JPS”) at his “Vyasa-Puja” celebration.

100 false arguments

“And therefore, Sripada Jayapataka Swami Maharaja was so vehement in his opposition to the ritvik philosophy. We heard that, you know, probably a hundred arguments against ritvik-vada.”

Actually as anyone who goes to this weblink can verify for themselves that JPS only gives 100 already defeated false arguments!

Never authorised

“According to the ritviks, Srila Prabhupada never could have intended that the eleven people that he named to initiate, he never intended that they could actually keep the rules […] he knew that in the future they would have difficulty and therefore he never could have intended them to become gurus.”

We conclude the first 11 “gurus” were not authorised as diksa gurus based on the fact that such a diksa guru order was not given, not on speculating what Srila Prabhupada must have “intended” (“The Great Guru Hoax, Part 1”). We do not need to speculate what Srila Prabhupada “intended”. And GRS’s and ISKCON’s own premier authority, the now deceased Tamala Krishna Goswami (“TKG”), agrees:

“Actually, Prabhupada never appointed any gurus. He didn’t appoint eleven gurus. He appointed eleven ritviks. He never appointed them gurus. Myself and the other GBC have done the greatest disservice to this movement the last three years because we interpreted the appointment of ritviks as the appointment of gurus. After Prabhupada’s departure, what is the position of these eleven people? Obviously, Srila Prabhupada felt that of all the people, these people are particularly qualified. So it stands to reason that after Prabhupada’s departure, they would go on, if they so desired, to initiate.”
(HH Tamala Krishna Goswami, Topanga Canyon, 3/12/1980)

TKG makes it clear that Srila Prabhupada only appointed 11 ritviks (representatives) and he did not authorize them to become diksa gurus. Rather, the situation was that they would go on to become gurus only because “they so desired” to do so, not because Srila Prabhupada ordered them to do so.

Wrong premise

“So the idea that Prabhupada must have known that they would fall down and therefore he could not have recommended them to initiate disciples, the very premise is wrong. The very premise is wrong.”

Yes, the very premise is wrong because it comes from GRS’s fertile imagination. We do not claim Srila Prabhupada must have acted in a certain way based on speculating over his reasons for taking such an action. Rather, we simply follow what he actually ordered. For example, we accept his appointment of ritviks on July 9th, 1977, but since he gave no order for those ritviks to become diksa gurus we can not accept their authority as diksa gurus. TKG has also ably pointed out that Srila Prabhupada only appointed ritviks, and the decision of these ritviks to transmogrify into diksa gurus was theirs and theirs alone, and not based on any order from Srila Prabhupada to do so.

Srila Prabhupada is the link

“If one does not need a link, a personal link to the disciplic succession, if one can bypass the immediate link, then you could…one could bypass the next link and the next link and the next link and one approaches Krishna directly. But the actual [...] “One must surrender to the guru. “Tad viddhi pranipatena pariprasnena sevaya”. “Pranipat”, one must surrender to the guru. “Pariprasnena”, one asks questions, and “sevaya”, one renders service.”

a) Another fabricated, imagined argument from GRS. Srila Prabhupada is everyone’s personal link to the disciplic succession since he is the current link. Hence, the question of jumping over the current link, Srila Prabhupada, does not even arise. No one has been able to state via an order from Srila Prabhupada when, how and why Srila Prabhupada stopped being the current link.

b) Yes, one must surrender and inquire from the guru, but as we demonstrated on page 6, this instruction applies to the disciple, and hence if it required the guru to be physically present then GRS himself cannot surrender or ask questions to Srila Prabhupada. So he is contradicting himself as well.

Giriraja's imagination

“[...] without personally being accepted by Srila Prabhupada, one can imagine that one has been accepted by Srila Prabhupada, then one could imagine that one has been accepted by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura, or by Srila Rupa Goswami, by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu or by Krishna himself. The ritviks may have a picture of Srila Prabhupada and they may imagine that he’s accepted them. But how do they know? How do they know?”

The only imagination occurring here is coming from GRS whose fertile imagination fabricates what he claims we propose. Srila Prabhupada set up a system whereby his representatives would accept future ISKCON members on his behalf as his personally initiated disciples, without any involvement from himself:

Srila Prabhupada: “So without waiting for me, wherever you consider it is right... That will depend on discretion.”
Tamala Krsna: “On discretion.”
Srila Prabhupada: “Yes.”
Tamala Krsna: “That’s for first and second initiations.”
Srila Prabhupada: “Hm.”
(Appointment of Ritviks, Room Conversation, July 7th, 1977)

Two days later, this delegation was confirmed with the ritvik representatives having full power to accept disciples without Srila Prabhupada’s involvement:

“Now that Srila Prabhupada has named these representatives, Temple Presidents may henceforward send recommendation for first and second initiation to whichever of these eleven representatives are nearest their temple. After considering the recommendation, these representatives may accept the devotee as an initiated disciple of Srila Prabhupada by giving a spiritual name,”

(July 9th, 1977 directive to all GBCs and Temple Presidents)

Hence, we simply need to follow the system Srila Prabhupada gave for ISKCON, not GRS’s imagined ideas.

I have no guru!

“It’s… it’s a living relationship with a living person where he is there to give you instructions coming from Vyasa through disciplic succession, and you are there to render service to him, which he in turn offers through disciplic succession to Vyasa. There’s no room for imagination.”

GRS himself has no “living person” currently to give him instructions or to whom to render service. In fact, many of the disciples Srila Prabhupada initiated before November 1977 never met him or inquired from him. So GRS is basically arguing that he has no relationship with Srila Prabhupada, as it is all imagination.

I am full of mental speculation

“Once Prabhupada quoted a verse by Yamunacarya which was spoken by Rupa Goswami and Sanatana Goswami when they first met Caitanya Mahaprabhu and they asked to have Him as their master, living master. They said that when we have you as our living master we will feel completely pacified and we’ll be free from mental speculation. “

Since Srila Prabhupada’s disciples, including GRS and JPS, have not had any “living master” for at least the last 32 years, is GRS claiming they are full of mental speculation since no “living master” is there to pacify them?

Living contradiction

“In the old days, before the computer, before the airplane, gurus would have a small asrama and their disciples would live with them in their asrama and there would be regular daily instruction by the spiritual master and regular daily service to the spiritual master personally and directly. But…of course, it began with Nityananda Prabhu, the Nama Hatta. It was expanded by Bhaktivinoda Thakura where different preachers are assisting the fallen souls and as Malati Prabhu said, and it is so true, under Srila Prabhupada’s direction, Srila Jayapataka Swami Maharaja really elaborated the Nama Hatta program.”

Having just argued that the guru-disciple relationship must be a “living relationship with a living person where he is there to give you instructions”, GRS now offers a contrary proposition by stating that this was actually only the case in the “old days”. Rather, today, the guru does not need to give regular instruction to the disciple since he is now assisted by many other preachers.

Still universally acting

“Jayapataka Maharaja had asked Srila Prabhupada, “Is it true that the spiritual master will remain in the material world until all of his disciples are delivered?” And Srila Prabhupada replied, “Yes, it is true that the spiritual master will remain in the universe until all of his disciples are delivered, and therefore the disciples should be very careful not to commit any offense that will create an obstruction in their spiritual progress and thus oblige the spiritual master to have to come back again.””

So according to GRS, Srila Prabhupada is still in the universe, and has the ability to continue accepting service and inquiries from disciples, but somehow not the ability to accept new disciples, even though he specifically set up a ritvik representative system to do this, whilst authorising no successor gurus.

I am a mayavadi

“And there really is a connection between ritvik-vada and mayavada… So mayavada philosophy really cuts at the very root of the relationship between the disciple and the spiritual master. And ritvik-vada is similar. Ritvik-vada is similar.”

GRS states 3 times that “ritvik-vada” (repeating Srila Prabhupada’s order that he is the diksa guru of ISKCON) is similar to mayavada philosophy, because it supposedly “cuts at the very root of the relationship between the disciple and the spiritual master”. But by this definition, since it is Srila Prabhupada who is ISKCON’s spiritual master, the real mayavadis are persons such as GRS, who via their Guru Hoax are denying everyone a relationship with Srila Prabhupada as their spiritual master, by insisting that instead we have to accept GBC gurus such as himself and JPS as substitute replacements. They thus “cut at the very root” of this relationship.

Conclusion

We have again demonstrated the continued inability of anyone to speak on the subject of guru-tattva without offering a litany of contradictions, gibberish, and straw-man arguments (a straw-man argument is attacking a position - the “straw man” - not held by one’s opponent). The fact that it is impossible for anyone, even the guru hoaxers, their “God-realized” status notwithstanding, to speak sensibly, what to speak of correctly, whilst trying to defeat Srila Prabhupada’s position as the diksa guru of ISKCON, should alone convince any sane person of the irrefutability of Srila Prabhupada’s diksa guru status.


HH Giriraja Swami:

Imagined guru successor

Srila Prabhupada:

The current guru in reality

 

 

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