by Devaki dd

Chowpatty is becoming more and more an example for ideal community development within ISKCON. However, sometimes it is not easy to convince senior devotees of the value of the much discussed and glorified Counselor System. And without full and active support from senior devotees it is rather difficult to put into practise. Often we hear the opinion, "the Bhakti-vriksha Program does the same thing." Some devotees conclude, therefore: "No need for any new systems!"

There are basic differences between these two programs; it is not that one is better than the other. If we analyze them more deeply we discover that they have fundamentally different goals, and that there is plenty of room for both programs to run side by side in a yatra.

Mumbai–Friday, 25 May 2007

by Vijaya Venugopala das and Prema Padmini dd

On our way to Russia we stopped at the Juhu temple. We met Braja Hari Prabhu, Mukunda Madhava Prabhu, and other senior devotees. We were happy and excited to learn that they had heard from other Indian temples, during a Regional Governing Body meeting at Ujjain, about the great impact Bhakti-vriksha preaching had on their activities. Among others, the temples in New Delhi, Hyderabad, Tirupati, and Kolkata where mentioned–places where we had conducted seminars earlier and where Bhakti-vriksha groups were developing nicely.

One temple president had described how book distribution tripled within one year after starting Bhakti-vriksha preaching! At Juhu temple it was decided to involve the congregation to a larger extent than had been done in the past. We had explained how to do this by structuring all activities around Bhakti-vriksha. Convinced, they requested us to visit on our return from Russia, so we could meet the most active congregation and Youth Forum members.

comment by Kripamoya das, to a
previous comment by Vaisnavi Rani dd

Thanks to Vaisnavi Rani for her observations about group development.

Often, when we form a group of interested new persons with the distinct hope of establishing a branch of ISKCON, we may conceive of what takes place during the time of the group meetings as being the way relationships are developed amongst the new members. That through kirtan and class they will bond together and become Vaisnava friends. To a certain extent that is true, and through discussions and communal singing new people can reveal themselves and get to know others. And of course, over prasadam many friendship-forming conversations can and do take place.

The beauty of the inclusion of the 'ice-breaker' in the standard Bhakti-vriksha format is that it allows even more time per session for the members to open up and express themselves in ways that help to develop friendships. That is why the ice-breaker is an integral part of the regular group meeting.

Hearing that HH Jayapataka Maharaja, our guru-maharaja, had arrived, we rushed out and saw him getting out of a car, being greeted by Angira Muni Prabhu. Seeing us, he beckoned, and asked how we found the weather compared to the Arabian Gulf (a sweltering 45 degrees Celsius). We told him about the Russian devotees' enthusiastic response to our Bhakti-vriksha seminars, and when he went for prasadam—he had not eaten the whole day—we returned to the hall.

Now was a play about Chand Kazi and Nrsimhadeva appearing in his dream. The costumes were excellent, as was the acting. Soon HH Jayapataka Maharaja entered and spoke about his recent travels, including seventy-five initiations in Mathuradesh and the Nrsimha-caturdasi festival in Mayapur. He also spoke about Bhakti-vriksha and our visit to Russia.

It is exciting and enlivening for me to know that Her Grace Prema Padmini Devi Dasi has written a book entitled Free to Preach. Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s instructed every human to glorify Lord Krishna; I keenly desire that this instruction be fulfilled. There are so many men and women in the grihastha asrama, as students or living at home, who can perform significant preaching to further Lord Caitanya’s sankirtan movement, but many of these devotees have not yet fulfilled their potential. It’s a tremendous revolution in Krishna consciousness when devotees are so inspired to feel “free to preach”—besides carrying out their household chores and other occupational duties; it can help to quickly change the world we live in.

Sita-pati Prabhu comments in his blog atmayogi.com on Prema Padmini Mataji's last diary-issue, where she writes about devotees during a seminar near Moscow:

The temple presidents and the heads of the brahmacari ashrams all have the same loving, humble mood as do the congregation. We did not perceive any bureaucratic attitude—fatal to the Bhakti-vriksha mood.

This "bureaucratic attitude" is an expression of the organizational structure prevalent in much of today's ISKCON, as analyzed by Sita-pati in his e-book On Leadership. It's fatal for the "Bhakti-vriksha mood," and very limitedly useful for a growing organization based on volunteer service and contributions.

by Vijaya Venugopala dasa and Prema Padmini dd

To Moscow (Friday, 27 April 2007)

The night flight to Dubai, in transit to Moscow, arrived at one o’clock in the morning. The “Quiet Lounge” was full, so our night’s rest would have to be in one of the normal chairs. My husband stretched out on the floor, while I rested on the chairs. Of course it was a fitful sleep, though others seemed to sleep blissfully undisturbed by the announcements, lights, and continuous flow of chattering passengers. After making a few phone calls and some purchases in the Duty Free complex, we boarded the plane.

We played hide-and-seek with a cute Russian boy in the row ahead of us; he was shuttling between his mother and father, smiling a lot. For lunch we had some of the ample Ekadasi prasadam packed by Nitya Yogini Mataji. The methi parathas made by Paresh Krishna Prabhu’s mother were kept for emergency use in Russia—they stayed delicious for the entire two weeks!

By Sri Radha Govinda dasi

Sri Radha Govinda dasi: The Penang Yatra, under the guidance of you and your husband, Isana Gauranga Prabhu, developed a remarkable experiment with Bhakti-vriksha. Would you like to tell us something regarding your involvement and experience?

Gaura Gopi dd: My husband did most of the work. We just had a Wednesday Bhakti-vriksha meeting at our house. We invited neighbors and friends; this was the one Bhakti-vriksha I was directly involved in. The experience was very nice—it brought in quite a few people and made a few devotees from Bhakti-vriksha, some even aspiring for initiation.

Small groups really work. Devotees are not shy and it helps them connect, as some of us make good friends—more than just formally coming to the center.

Sri Radha Govinda dasi: As a wife and mother, how did this project affect your life and your relationship with your husband? Did you get to see less of him? Or, in what way did it influence your family life?

A friend raised the following points, which I found stimulating. I address them here, inviting others to share their doubts, views, experiences, insights and prescriptions.

"My observation of BV [Bhakti-vriksha] and trying to implement it, is that it is often a separate initiative from the temple and its bag of programs. It becomes another program that has to compete for mindshare and resources, rather than becoming the new strategic organizational structure for the yatra . . . It requires cutting back on programs and building the cellular focus as the basis for everything."

I find this meditation intriguing and urgent for the long-term vision of how our movement should develop.

Historically, ISKCON in the West started small. I am not referring specifically to Srila Prabhupada's (an army of one) landing and gaining a foothold in the United States. I am thinking of the dynamics of the first few temples: small and intimate, family-like, and which after a short span of a few months would "multiply": a few devotees from one center would pack their bags and move to another city to start a new temple.

by Kaunteya Das

It is with great pleasure that I again meet my friend Jambavan, at his first visit to Mayapur. I was with him in Spain a month ago, when he invited me and my wife to give a communication and relation-building seminar in Nueva Vrajamandala, the farm—a couple of hours from Madrid—that is home to Sri Sri Radha Govinda Candra, Gaura Nitai and Laksmi Nrisimhadeva.

Jambavan, a disciple of HH Hanumat Presaka Maharaja, is serving as the Temple Manager there. With remarkable courage and effort he and his family (including three children: one nine-year old, one three, and one only four months of age) embarked on their first trip to India. I take the opportunity to ask a few questions. Sitting in an office of the Long Building he exudes an air of serenity, tolerance and unshakable patience.

From Sitapati's blog Network centric preaching.

This "book" consists of a series of articles published by Sitapati prabhu on his web site urbanmissionary.info.

He explains the vedic sankhya system, which uses the three gunas (modes of nature) as basic unit of analysis. Complex phenomena like the human mind and social systems can be explained by analyzing the interaction of these modes.

As seasons change throughout the year, there are cosmic cycles affecting the whole universe. During these cycles the predominance and interaction of the modes of nature change, affecting our consciousness, the way how the mind works, and therefore how the whole of human society works. Attempts to organize society and to influence human behavior and consciousness (preaching) have to take these circumstances into account in order to be successful.

I found many ideas that have been drifting around in my mind as vague concepts explained in these articles, and his examination of the Bhakti-vriksha program in this context, why it works extremely well in some places but not in others, appears very relevant to me.

I urge all of you who actually think about what you're doing to take the time to read & digest these articles - and don't hold back with your opinion! This isn't a finished product; Sitapati himself says he's still working on the presentation, and I'm sure he will appreciate your comments.

Even if you can get a successful Loft program going, the 10,000 year golden age will be over before you manage to make everyone Krishna Conscious.

The reason is that once you max your Loft out (like in Wellington where they have regularly 35 + guests a night for yoga), you can only scale linearly. What’s next - open another Loft? Duplicate the resource requirement? Linear expansion will not make the world’s 6 billion people Krishna Conscious in 100,000 years.

Once you max out the Loft, or whatever your front line preaching program is called, in order to get the kind of gains needed to scale effectively you have to take it to the next level: you have to implement an exponentially scaling solution. That’s cellular networking with the Loft as a hub. That’s why the Bhakti Vrksa idea is so important. It doesn’t work yet*, but we will find the way.

During this year's Congregational Awards Night
in Sri Mayapur (Nitai Paramananda Pr. in the blue shirt)

During this year’s Gaura Purnima festival in Sri Dham Mayapur, I had the good fortune to speak with Nitai Paramananda dasa and his wife Mayapur-lila devi dasi. These devotees received an award by the Congregational Development Ministry. They are leading Bhakti-vriksha groups in Croatia.

Amrita Gopala dasi:  Bhakti-vriksha is the wave of the future in terms of expanding the Hare Krishna movement. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Nitai Paramananda dasa:  I absolutely agree. Bhakti-vriksha is an official ISKCON program. The main factor to consider is training devotees to become Bhakti-vriksha leaders. People must be trained to care for others. The core of Bhakti-virksha preaching is relationships, and that sets it apart from other programs. When a new person comes to hear krsna-kotha, they may ask questions of the speaker, but a personal relationship may not necessarily develop. But when someone takes up Bhakti-vriksha, he should be prepared to meet people where they are. Everyone comes together once a week, and also there is the opportunity to meet group members during the week. People will start to open up. There’s a statement that guides us: “People don’t care how much we know unless they see how much we care.” Actually, new devotees must feel secure, and Bhakti-vriksha leaders must take an active interest in all aspects of the new devotees’ lives.

This is not going to be the most systematic of articles, but you might find something interesting, in relation to the dynamic of establishing systematic congregational development in a Yatra (and perhaps something about South American geography).

Yesterday evening my wife, Sri Radhe, and I arrived back in La Paz (do you remember that there has been a Congregational Educational Festival here, back in October 2005?). The (previous) plan was to go from Peru to Chile, but then, despite waiting for almost two months, the visa for my wife never materialized. I didn't feel to leave my wife alone in the middle of South America and therefore changed plan and itinerary: from Cusco (yes, the ex-capital of the Inca Empire), we moved to Puno (yes, the main harbor on the Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world), for the Sunday Programs there (the weekly morning “Hare Krishna Hour” at a local TV and the Sunday Program in the home-temple of Prahladesvara Prabhu).

Sahadeva Prabhu, disciple of HH Bhakti Raghava Swami Maharaja and Temple President in Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India, wrote the following words on the Bhakti-vriksha system. With his permission I share them here.

I have been watching the Bhakti-vriksha program's success in various places. This time during the ICC (ISKCON’s Indian Continental Committee) meetings the topic surfaced. In the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, there is a considerable increase in our congregation with this program.

This is undoubtedly a revolution in ISKCON preaching. Kindly keep up your good work. In fact in my personal opinion, since the founding of ISKCON, this is one of the most important developments, in the sense that it is the stage of applied book distribution. Last decade has seen a phenomenal increase in congregational devotees with this program, and this has brought about stability in and expansion of ISKCON preaching around the globe. Sometimes it takes a while to figure things out, and it took us a while to come to the Bhakti-vriksha program. It will pave the way for that 10,000 years legacy, so mercifully left by Srila Prabhupada.

Your servant, Sahadeva dasa.

From Kaunteya das.

Caitanya Mahaprabhu in Sri Mayapur, Gaura Purnima 2005

"We have to transplant bhakti into the hearts of others," said Her Grace Prema Padmini devi dasi this year during the Congregational Development Seminar in Sri Mayapur Dham. She highlighted the most important qualities a Bhakti-vriksha leader has to develop, speaking her long-time experience in congregational preaching in Mathuradhesh (Middle East). She is convinced that the Bhakti-vriksha program is so powerful that those who practice it properly are able to develop all of the necessary qualifications. "All of these qualities are assembled around one crucial point: service attitude," Prema Padmini Mataji told the audience of seventy international devotees. That’s why in the Bhakti-vriksha program the leader of the group is called Servant-leader. The service attitude is a base from which the other qualities build up. Prema Padmini Mataji explained the leadership qualities as follows:

Iksvaku and Vrndavana Nandini at a group meeting.

My name is Vrndavana Nandini dd. I am currently doing a degree in Forensic Science in Perth, Australia, at Curtin University of Technology. Coming from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where preaching activities are at its peak, I try to implement some of the Bhakti-vriksha concepts in forming a devotional group here in Perth with university students and some friends who have graduated from university, basically the educated class of people.

Considering the laid-back nature of Perth, most of us tend to get sucked into the mood of this town and eventually loose taste for the dynamic preaching mood. This is especially true for young devotees, what to speak of those who are not devotees. There is a need, therefore, for strategic planning and preaching in order to get people off their comfort zones.

During the Congregational Educational Festival the devotees from Bolivia presented the second edition of the Spanish Bhakti-vriksha Manual to the Minister for Congregational Development, HH Jayapataka Swami Maharaja. The book has a new, original cover (the windows in an urban setting reveal various devotional activities and meetings going on inside the rooms) and it includes appendixes, present in the English version but not in the first Spanish edition. More Spanish speaking devotees will gain a deeper, more systematic understanding of the Bhakti-vriksha dynamics through this book.

Hari Sankirtan Das, President of the National Council of ISKCON Bolivia, Bhakti-vriksha promoter and responsible for the new production (as well as the previous edition), hands over the book to HH Jayapataka Swami Maharaja. On Hari Sankirtan's right: his wife Mahojjvala Prema Devi Dasi, in charge of the main preaching center in La Paz, the "Centro de Estudios Vedicos" and assistant secretary of the Executive Committee of the National Council, and his daughter, Vrajesvari Vijaya Devi Dasi, studying as a doctor and voting member of the National Council (elected at the festival as representative of the youths). Also in the picture, three Congregational Development Ministry staff; from left to right: Sarva Sakti Devi Dasi, who originally translated the Bhakti-vriksha Manual from English to Spanish, Divya Priya Devi Dasi, in charge of communications, and Seva Swarupa Das, General Manager (and sponsor of the printing).

By Kaunteya das.

(This article ends here.)

Today I was asked by a Godbrother, a Bhakti-vriksha preacher somewhere on the planet:

"Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear" by Vincent van Gogh - after he cut off his own ear after an altercation with Paul Gauguin. Many believe van Gogh suffered from schizophrenia.

"Prabhuji I need your help! We have two devotees who would like to be members of [a Bhakti-vriksha group], but they suffer from schizophrenia".

According to Bhakti Vriksa Manual, persons who are mentaly ill cannot be members of [Bhakti-vriksha groups]. Does that mean that they can't be under any condition or they can if they take medication and keep their illness under control. Please respond as quickly as you can, because it is very important."

CP-Newsletter October 2005

Understanding the 'Tree of Devotion'

(Continued from the last issue.)

If the leader exhibits a strong sense of service-mindedness, this will automatically rub off on the other members as well and soon they will take great joy in rendering services and offer to do more and more voluntarily. But if the leader grudges his services and tries to impose the service on others as a burden to be shared, then it will have a negative reaction and people will actually start to shirk work.

Spirit of Equality

It is not necessary that the Bhakti-vriksha group should be homogenous in its composition. Different class groups, ages, and sexes in the group can make them understand how everyone is equal as devotees before Krishna.