North American Temple Presidents MEETINGS 2014 – PART II
BADRINARAYAN REVIEW OF WORLD WIDE ISKCON
The sun never sets on ISKCON.
ISKCONIndia,
TOVP (desire of previous acharyas), Srila Prabhupada's burning focus, one of his unfulfilled missions.
Pune: new Vedic cultural center, classes, guest house, temple, the President of India came to inaugurate the temple, stayed for two and a half hours although he had scheduled a half hour for this engagement. Everything is built to top standards, there are apartment buildings ringing the temple site, which are already filled w/devotee families, Srila Prabhupada said "build a school to attract rich men's sons." Their school now has 900 students, 70 teachers and lunch prasad catered by Govinda's--all devotee curriculum.
Delhi has 27 preaching centers,
Chennai temple is in Golden Beach upscale area; they expected 10k to attend opening, but 25k showed up;
In Kolkata at Srila Prabupada’s birth place, the jackfruit tree is still there, it is now owned by ISKCON,after 45 years of trying to get it.
International Leadership Sanga in Mayapur, where experts from around the world giving seminars on every topic you've always wanted to know about.
SOUITH AMERICA
Brazilian Retreat Center: with a guest house, yoga seminars, ayurveda, advertising in tourist magazines in Europe, In Recife they've renamed one of the parks after Srila Prabhupada; In Peru, built their own beautiful temple; RathaYatra in Mexico City, goes right through their version of Central Park; RathaYatra in Panama City, Ratnabhusana prabhu goes down from LA to put it on.
NORTH AMERICA: book distribution is the best in 30 years; Srila Prabhupada said,"The general public is innocent but sorely misled." At ISKCON Silicon Valley, even the dogs have packs on with books in it distributing them. Motel Gita: the Bhagavad Gitas fly out of the drawers while the bibles have been in there the last 40 years. 190K Gitas distributed to date(in the last 5 years).
Stats: The Gideon bibles: printed in 196 languages, every second 2 a bible goes out with 85M distributed to date.
NYC, 5th Ave RathaYatragoing on every year for the past 40 years.
CHICAGO KRISHNA HOUSE: They rented a place next to a college campus, a devotee couple stays there, makes the prasadam, devotees can live there, they have morning and evening program, and they are cultivating first class college students. This program is modeled after the preaching houses in India, and they are making so many devotees.
MUSIC, YOGA, REGIONAL FESTIVALS going on where devotees set up a pandal, serve prasadam, do bhajans, so many young people are there at these festivals waiting for something to do.
KRISHNA HOUSEGainesville. They are mentioned right in the UF magazine for fundraising because their alumni remember prasadam lunches.
IN the UK the Queen came to opening of Avanti Krsna school, as they were recitingtrnad api sunichena, they were translating for her, and describing that these are the qualities we teach and imbibe, and she replied "well wouldn't that be just grand.”
Years ago while she was having her sculpture done,she was given a Bhagavad Gita to read (the sculptor was a friend of George Harrison, who gave him the book and told him to give it to the Queen while she was sitting still for hours while the artist worked) which she read daily for three hours, and after it was over she asked if she could keep the book.
Their huge barn/goshalla is built to exceedingly high Leeds standards
Their Janmastami festivals are world famous: the Lila Walk displays cut outs of Krsna’s pastimes lifesized spread out throughout the area, ; They put cow coin banks from Hong Kong displaying“caring for Krishna's cows” in homes all over, when you drop in a one pound coin, it moos, so the children are insisting on a donation into the bank all the time; they’ve made a beautiful flower garden in memory of George Harrison; they orchestrated a Diwali program w/the prime minster at #10 downing street,including a big picture of Radha Gokulananda, and the Prime Minister’s wife fell in love with it and asked if she could keep it, and she took it up to the family quarters.
Radhanatha Swami spoke to the Board of Directors of the Bank of England and the heads of the House of Commons; he said that if you look at the nations with the highest GNP, you will find the highest level of distress: divorce, suicide, etc. So,some places are starting a new standard of “gross national happiness”
RUSSIAN RETREAT: over 4k devotees in a huge tent, by the Crimean Sea. Murmansk, above the arctic circle: there is a temple there, the devotees started a prasadam bakery which is supporting the whole temple. (When Srila Prabhupada saw all the people lined up to see Lenin's tomb, he said "do you know why they are all lined up? To make sure he's dead". )
“ I have my plan, you have your plan, Krsna has His plan.” The government demolished the temple in Moscow in 2004: because of all the suffering of these devotees, a man came forward who was so upset by theinjustice done to the devotees, he funded the purchase of two buildings for their temple, and they have a magnificent design to build there, in a good prestigious location.
TURKEY, Govinda's in Istanbul, new Turkish books,
In ITALY they do a Festival of India, they seat 400 inside the tent, complete with a petting cow, they move all week and put it onevery weekend.
CHINA, ‘mission possible’, Tamal Krishna Goswami was sent by Srila Prabhupada to China, he went incognito; Gopiparanadana prabhu met with the top Confucian scholar. When he met Gopi, he was so charmed, the man had been a vegetarian living on barley water and tofu, and Gopi fed him gulabs, samosas. He met the head Abbot of a Buddhist monastery who told him they hide in the mountains, w/ 2,000 monks. They invited the devotes up there, the devotees explained the mantra, chanting, and giving this to others, and the monk said “you are doing the real business for the people.”
RathaYatra in Hong Kong in the shopping district side, thousands of people come. The devotees there lead by Satyanarayan das signed the contract for the ASB, thanks to that contact with the Confucian scholar, who convinced the government this was a worthy book and is now printed in Mandarin and Chinese
BANGLADESH, 80% a Muslim country. There are 200 devotees on site in the temple in Dacca. The temple’s only condition is that they cannot be from Muslim families. There are over 1K people at the Sunday feast, they are very respectful. RathaYatra goes down the main street, past the national mosque. In CHITTAGONG, land has been donated on the hill for a future temple .
KIEV. 500-800 people coming to every Sunday feast. Changing bodies website, questionanaire, selling gitas along with reply about next body.
AUSTRALIA: traveling kitchen, GOVINDAS, they set up a pandal tent in back of the kitchen with full sitting area and beautifully decorated. They have raised $1M to date by doing this.
AFRICA two years ago they opened a BBT oficce there, and are now printing in Zulu and another native language; 6 different brahmacari parties are crisscrossing the continent distributing the books. They do programs in universities and colleges, RathaYatra in Soweto now. Botswanawhich is just above South Africa has a new temple.
Myanmar BURMA: strong Buddhist country, in the city there is a lane just for buddhist monks, there are toll bridges and toll roads, and the monks go through for free, when the devotees want to go on the roads, they just rub their shaved head and get sent free, (The monks can even get on the planes first); Of the 40M in population, 6M of them are Buddhist monks. But there are Vaishnava devotees there, one university student found Srila Prabhupada’s book on the shelf of his father who received it from a friend who'd gone to the US. In the book was a card, fill in this card get a free book, so unlikely as it was, he filled it out, six months later he came home one day and sitting in his kitchen was Bhakti Vikasha Swami, he had received his name from the card, he got a 24 hr. visa, then taught him all about Krsna Consciousness, and from that one day, the whole country opened up. This devotee has translated Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam and got them printed. NOTE: Two weeks after they were printed, the whole of Burma opened up when An Sung Souchee was freed.
In Burma there are old temples being donated to the devotees in different cities, and they are doing deity worship with the original deities and in some we add new deities too.
TOVP SUNANDA DAS
The grand opening has been pushed back to around 2020 due to the extensive nature of the dome construction, which should take another two years. Construction is moving forward at a steady pace, working continuously 24 hrs a day.
They received a letter from the Planning and Design Bureau New Delhi, stating that there is no concern about dome strength based on their research of all plans.
SinceMay temples have donated $291K, online received $53K, BBT remittance was $239K, Ambarish Prabhu gave $1.5M. But this reflects only 800 individual donors.
Regarding NA fundraising : What works, what doesn't:
Tables at festivals: NO
VIP presenters, that worked well; Temple President involvement, also works;
Fundraising at unrelated events doesn't work, because the people come for entertainment or a cultural show and are not prepared to donate anything.
About $30M more is needed to complete the temple.
CHILD PROTECTION OFFICE NA LILASUKHA DD
Progress is being made. After spending years in reactive mode we are now going into proactive mode.
Majority of the calls she receives go into consultation rather than becoming a CPO case.
RE: compliance: theoffice has a list of about 260 files of complaints, 89 on file are adjudicated;
She recommends every temple check w/CPO office when a new devotee comes in to see if there is a case against him. Check in before they arrive if you know they're coming.
Temples should all have active teams at their centers; doing screening and doing regular education in the community
It's $21 to run someone thru Lexis Nexus. It's a good policy to make it a blanket requirement to run a background on everyone who moves to your temple and the person coming should pay it.
RE: Supervision of children at temples: keep up a sign and remind parents about the rules.
Review Panel member training March 28-30, 2014, to review cases, and determine how the accused will be allowed to function in our society once case is adjudicated.
They are launching a FB page and are updating files to better serve the temples
AHIMSA MILK TUKARAM DAS
He was asking the temples to consider some of the realities of taking commercial milk and dairy products. Keep in mind that the meat and milk industry are one. The dairies send their cows for slaughter at about five years old.
Srila Prabhupada says one cup of milk a day is all that's required, and so he suggests that no commercial dairy should be bought, no sour cream, cheese, ice cream, ricotta cheese, etc etc etc
So if all we can do is less harm it is better than doing more harm.
He is asking ISKCON to think about a transition plan....
CHICAGO TEMPLE REPORT
They have gone back to basics since 2010 with regular harinama, prasad distribution , book distribution,
Their book distribution scores keep going up every year, and they were over 25K in 2013
They currently have 6 university programs which bring alot of students to evening programs. They call it the "Discover Yourself Course." They even got a class at the university titled "Marketing the Krsna Conscious Way" which instills moral values over just trying towork hard and make money.
Theuniversity programs include lectures regularly, they have also attracted international students and a year ago they opened a Krishna House, and it is big hit. Students there pay rent andthat helps pay for the house. They have 16 Bhakti Vrksha programs. These are all around Illinois and in WI also. They include a Russian group, and are also in the Spanish speaking community, as well as many groups of Indian families.
Devotee care is emphasized, they have over 16 brahmacaris intemple. There are now 18 grhasta families around the temple, they help w/services alot. The brahmacaris go out, and the grhastas cover the temple services. This has helped in reviving deity standards. They also used the services of Jayananada das, NA Deity minister, to evaluate and increase their deity worship.
Krishna Lunch: they sell packed hot meals. They started with Illinois Institute of Technology two days a week; now going five days a week, and have expanded over at Northwestern University. They’ve noticed how this program helps in converting people to vegetarian.
It is all arranged through their Bhakti Yoga club. Basically they went to the university and said the service contract people don't provide the food they need, (blessed vegetarian) and then the university agreed. This arrangement even overrode the complaints of the service contract vendors.
They are even given two indoors spots in the cold months and now incoming freshmen orientation includes it in the top things the new students must do.
In this way,students get to know about the temple programs
COLUMBUS TEMPLE PREMAVILAS DAS
In 1969 Srila Prabhupada did a program there at OHIO State University and 2000 students attended, Srila Prabhupada stayed there awhile and dictated hundreds of letters and he initiated two devotees there. Until 1984 the devotees had a pizza restaurant and alot of preaching programs. in 1990 Malati prabhu moved to Columbusand for 11 years she ran a woman's training ashram there. At one point there were 23 women living there. Many devotees came through that program. In 2001 she moved on, and Prema Vilasa das has been there andhelping to run things since.
There are about 200 congregation members now and when he started there were none.
They are doing: Bhakti Vrksa programs, book distribution, weekly harinama in the summers, shiksha programs (a tool of congregation development ministry), and a theater preaching program (a young Indian man who had grown up in the US, read Srila Prabhupada’s books, and came to the temple and said he would like to do some service for Srila Prabhupada; he had a movie theatre with 7 screens, and now he advertises a temple program w/prasadam and a movie and there are many new families coming from it. This program has a mailing list of 18k people; he uses all his screens to advertise the Bhagavad Gita study programs)
At Ohio State University there are; 7 major festivals throughout the year: An Asian festival, international festival, a community festival, their Jagannath RathYatra is a part of the Italian parade, and harinams.
There is a daily Bhagavad Gita teleconference in the a.m. with about 15 participants, and in the evening they read Srimad Bhagavatam together.
They have 4 Bhakti Vrkshas with 15 devotees each ; In Columbus 15 new members join IKCON through initiation each year.
Their devotees go to yatras in India yearly. They do 50 Home Visits per year, whenever a new person comes to their temple, the devotees invite themselves over, w/prasadam, and in that way they get to know them better.
Siksha Program: road map for new devotees, gives a sense of accomplishment andmobility, 55 new people took oaths in 2013. They use a banner in the temple to explain it and people become interested through this.
T he Bhakti Yoga Club: 80 students attend weekly, 95% are western, some are now doing committed service in the temple; includes cooking workshops with a book table .
They've paid off their mortgage, renovated all the rooms, they offer 4 new outfits every year;