Breaking news: Hare Krishna guru too average looking

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Hare Krishna news tabloid the Sampradaya Sun has recently come out with a series of exposes on the shocking life of ISKCON guru Hridayananda das Goswami aka Dr. Howard J. Resnick (links below). According to the Sun’s reporters, the swami is wearing ordinary “karmi clothes” sometimes, and is not even wearing the sacred string around his shoulder or his wooden neck beads at times as well!

As inconsequential as this may sound to a normal person, to the Hare Krishnas at the Sampradaya Sun it is nothing less than a sign of the apocalypse. Unless you wear traditional Hindu Indian attire all of the time — you are clearly spiritually devolved, and even more clearly — you shouldn’t be accepted as any kind of authority on Hare Krishna. That makes perfect sense. After all “the clothes make the man,” and everyone should “judge a book by it’s cover.” These are spiritual principles advocated by the founder-acharya of ISKCON, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. In the following talk from July 1975, His Divine Grace reiterates his Divine Principles on the importance of external appearances.

Jamadagni: Then what does it mean to become disciple?

Prabhupada: Disciple, if you don’t like, give it up.

Jamadagni: We do like it.

Prabhupada: You have already given up.

Jamadagni: If we didn’t like it, we would not come here.

Prabhupada: No, no. You have already given up. My disciples do not keep so many hair.

Jamadagni: Many of your disciples do.

Prabhupada: No. I don’t accept that. You just this one circle, little. But those who are keeping big hairs, they are rejected from my disciples.

Jamadagni: All right. That is clearing some things up.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Jamadagni: This is what we want to know.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Jamadagni: Because then that is an unequivocal statement.

Prabhupada: No. This is, that you can, that anyone who is keeping hairs and not following the rules and regulations, they are rejected from second initiation.

Jamadagni: What if they are keeping hair but they are following the rules and regulations.

Prabhupada: Then let them follow. That’s a good life. But from external features he must be a Vaisnava.

Jamadagni: To get second initiation.

Kanupriya: Does that mean shaved head?

Prabhupada: Caitanya Mahaprabhu, when His students used to come without tilaka, so He refused to see his face. He refused to see his face. He said it is a crematory ground.

Jamadagni: Why is that?

Prabhupada: There is no “why.” If you accept it, accept. If you don’t accept, leave us, leave us. There is no “why.”

Jamadagni: Then that is…

Prabhupada: You are not following strictly. You cannot ask why.

Jamadagni: We could not ask why when we were following strictly either, Prabhupada. So I’m sorry that it has to be this way.

Prabhupada: No, our thing is that we have got some principles. If anyone cannot follow, then we don’t accept him.

Kanupriya: Then what do you do with the rest of the world, except for the few people who…

Prabhupada: So what I can do I am doing. Therefore you have no right to ask me. What is possible by me I am doing. And those who are able to follow, they are following. That’s all.

Jamadagni: But they cannot engage anyone else. How can you reach the intelligent class?

Prabhupada: So that is their business. That is not your business.

Jamadagni: We are trying to be disciples, so we considered it our business because we are sincerely trying.

Prabhupada: So why you are bothering me? You do your business.

Jamadagni: Because from you only…

Prabhupada: I do not accept you because you are keeping hairs.

Jamadagni: I did not know that.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Jamadagni: You never told me that in Hawaii.

Prabhupada: Now I say, I’ll repeat that anyone who is keeping long hairs, he is no more my disciple.

Jamadagni: All right.

Prabhupada: This is the first condition.

Kanupriya: Does that apply also for householder dharma, or is that simply for brahmacari dharma? Even you… I have pictures of you on the Bhagavatam when you did not have shaved head, with a mustache when you were doing your business as a householder. So does that apply to householders, or only to brahmacaris, that a householder must also keep a shaved head or is that…?

Prabhupada: At that time I was not initiated. You were seeing my picture, mustaches, at that time I was not initiated. Since I became initiated, I have shaven.

Prabhupada is sitting at far right in a place of honor after Bon Maharaj returned from his stay in England after trying to establish the Gaudiya Math there. Prabhupada was initiated in 1932. This photo was taken some time after that. Bon Maharaja left for England sometime after 1933 according to Sridhar Maharaj, he said: Then I was given sannyasa in October, 1930, and after installing footprints of Mahaprabhu one by one in various places, Prabhupad opened the Math in Madras, and we were left there and began preaching for three years or so. Then there was Vrndavan parikrama, circumambulation of the whole of Vrndavan. We joined that program, and then Sripad Bon Maharaj went to England for preaching.

Kanupriya: Well, in India where one can do business…

Prabhupada: I can… Why you are bringing this question? You ask, “Why you had mustaches?” I say when I had mustaches, at that time, I was not initiated. That answer is given. That’s all.

Jamadagni: Can I ask one more question, Prabhupada? What I would like to understand is why it is wrong to ask why? If I can just understand this, why it is wrong for us to ask you in a submissive way. We were humbly asking you these “whys,” not because we are trying to be intimidating or we were trying to rebel, but because we have sincerely tried to understand as your disciples.

Prabhupada: So you better ask my so many other disciples?

Kanupriya: They don’t have any answers.

Prabhupada: Then there is no answer. I cannot attend so many things.

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