Guest guest Posted June 28, 2005 Report Share Posted June 28, 2005 Book Changes News Although it was decided by the BBT to reprint Srila Prabhupada's originalCaitanya-caritamrta Jayadvaita Swami and Dravida, the devotees who changedthe books, have managed to convince the BBT trustees to reverse theirdecision and print their changed edition instead.So many bad decisions have been made in ISKCON and the BBT simply becausedevotees are afraid to think. They feel they have to surrender to the gurus,the sannyasis and simply blindly accept what they say. But we should notblindly accept. We have to very carefully consider the proposals by referingto the teachings of Srila Prabhupada and by using the intelligence thatKrishna has given us.As far as book changes are concerned, Srila Prabhupada read his books on adaily basis and did not ask anyone to change them. Jayadvaita Swami wasthere, if Prabhupada wanted JAS to change the books he would have asked. Buthe did not ask. He did not want any of his books changed.We have a practical example with the Caitanya-caritamrta. I have heard froma devotee working in the BBT at the time Ramesvara (then the BBT manager)considered many of the paintings were not finished and he wanted to make somany changes in the text also. But Prabhupada forbade him from making anychanges at all. Ramesvara came to Srila Prabhupada many times requestingthat he be allowed to make changes and Prabhupada always forbade him.Ultimately Prabhupada refered to him as a demon for wanting to make so manychanges. So we know it for sure, Prabhupada forbade Ramesvara from makingany changes whatsoever to the Sri Caitanya-caritamrta. He was forbidden fromeven finishing paintings or adding new paintings.The following is a letter presented to the recent BBT meeting requestingthem to reprint Srila Prabhupada's original Sri Caitanya-caritamrta,IF YOU CHANGE THE AUTHORITY IS LOSTDear BBT TrusteesHare Krishna! Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to SrilaPrabhupada!CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE"As soon as you interpret or change the scripture, the scripture looses itsauthority. Then another man will come and interpret things in his own way.Another will come and then another and in this way the original purport ofthe scripture is lost." (Srila Prabhupada - Quest for Enlightenment - 6)I am very surprised that you have reversed your decision to print SrilaPrabhupada's original Sri Caitanya-caritamrta and now plan to print theedition with thousands of changes by Dravida.Surely by now you realize that a huge percentage of your market are notinterested in Prabhupada's books containing thousands of unknown,unauthorized changes.THE AUTHORITY OF PRABHUPADA'S BOOKSWe are in the very fortunate position of having the actual books written bySrila Prabhupada, the books he approved as being authorized, the booksPrabhupada gave his classes from daily and also read personally on a dailybasis. No other spiritual group can match this degree of authority. But ifthe BBT makes thousands of unknown changes and publish the changed booksthere is no longer any authority whatsoever.WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAS BEEN CHANGEDI spoke with Jayadvaita Swami in New York and he agreed that he has no ideawhatsoever what Dravida changed in Srila Prabhuapda's SriCaitanya-caritamrta. He says he knows the "categories" of the changes, butis unaware of the actual changes.There is no record of what was changed. Dravida simply sat down at NewGoverdhana Farm in Australia and changed what he felt needed changing. Hischanges were not checked by anyone, nor authorized by anyone. He was free tochange anything at all that he wanted to.And he has revealed that his ajenda, at least in part, was to bringPrabhupada's Sri Caitanya-caritamrta more in line with the currentunderstanding of Guru in ISKCON.SATISFYING PRABHUPADA AND ALL THE BBT CUSTOMERSJayadvaita Swami admitted if the BBT simply printed the books authorized bySrila Prabhupada ALL of the BBT customers would be happy. If you printPrabhupada's Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, all the BBT customers will be verysatisfied. The only people in the world--as far as I am aware--who areinterested in reading changed books are the book changers themselves. Only 2people. JAS and Dravida. Even Dravida says he prefers reading Prabhupada'soriginal Bhagavad-gita!JAS admitted if the BBT prints the original Cc. thousands of extra copieswill be sold.The only reason JAS put forward for not printing Prabhupada's original booksis that he "likes" the changed books. But that is bizarre because he has noidea what Dravida has changed in the Cc. He does not know any of thedetails.THE AMERICAN DISEASEChange, Srila Prabhupada, lamented many times, is the American disease.Change, change, and more change...."Why do you want to change the wheels? This is unnecessary. Don't do this.Keep the old system strong and if necessary, repair it. Don't change fromthis to that. That is your American disease. This is very serious that youalways want to change everything." (Srila Prabhupada letter to Bhakta dasaNovember 24, 1974.)There is no need for change in Srila Prabhupada's books. We have theperfect, authorized books of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta SwamiPrabhupada. We simply need to take advantage of them, print them anddistribute them.WHAT IS DRAVIDA'S QUALIFICATION?What is the qualification of Dravida which gives him the authority to changeanything at all in Prabhupada's Sri Caitanya-caritamrta with no checks andbalances? You BBT men have given him this authority. Why? There is no recordof what he has changed, even JAS has no idea what he has done to the book.Yet JAS is such a staunch supporter of Dravida's changed Cc. Without evenknowing what the changes are? That is not a very intelligent position totake. His mood is "I trust Dravida..."That is all right. But we are Prabhupada's disciples. We do not trustDravida, and we do not want to read Prabhupda's books with thousands ofunknown changes by Dravida. Such books are completely useless.HOW CAN WE TRUST DRAVIDA?As far as trusting Dravida and JAS how can we do that? I am sure you areaware of the BBT publication, "Hidden Glories of India" by Steven Rosen, aknown follower of Naryana Maharaja. I do not know if you have read thesection "Krishna Consciousness Goes West," but if you have you will knowthat we have a BBT book edited by JAS and Dravida which does not give creditto Srila Prabhupada for bringing Krishna consciousness to the Western world.It does not even mention Prabhupada until the last couple of paragraphs. Itgoes through so many "great souls" from the Gaudiya Matha who broughtKrishna consciousness to the West, it even glorifies Ms. Bowtel in Englandwho even today still offers a garland to a Pancha-Tattva picture... And whenit finally comes to mentioning Srila Prabhupada they say he was onlysuccessful because the US changed the immigration laws and Prabhupada wasable to stay in the US longer than the aforementioned great Gaudiya Mathasaints. In any case they say Prabhuapda was simply continuing the workstarted by the GM. The book gives no credit whatsoever to Srila Prabhupadafor bringing Krishna consciousness to the West. The whole book is a Hinduhodge-poge. A disgrace to the BBT and an affront to Srila Prabhupada. Andwho edited this book? Dravida and JAS.So this is proof 100% that we can not trust Dravida and JAS.JAS's "WARM, FUZZY FEELING"None of us, including JAS, know what Dravida has changed, all we have isJAS's "warm fuzzy feeling" that he trusts Dravida.So based on the warm fuzzy feeling only he has convinced you to print a bookthat you have no idea whatsoever what has been changed in from Prabhupada'soriginal. Such a book is completely useless and will not be accepted byanyone at all as authorative.What would you think if some Christian priest took the King James Bible andwent through it changing whatever he liked to bring it more in line with thecurrent teachings of the Christian church? He makes all the changes withoutconsulting anyone else at all and without anyone checking his work. Hepresents his book to the people who publish the "King James" Bible and says"print my King James Bible." Of course they will not do it and if they dothe whole Christian world will protest. The King James Bible is a standardand you can not change the standard. This is just what you have done in theBBT. You have given Dravida the Cc., he has made whatever changes he thinksare nice, and you have printed that completely unauthorized book withthousands of unknown changes in it, and you expect Prabhupada's disciples toaccept it?YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT HAS BEEN CHANGED IN THE Cc. Yet you arespending so much money to print a book which is completely unauthorized.SCRAP THE CHANGED PRINTINGBrahma Muhurta Prabhu has let me know that some printing of the inside pagesof the books has been started. My suggestion is that you scrap all theseinner pages and restart the project of printing Srila Prabhupada's originalCc.There is no point waiting money binding a book with thousands of changes byDravida...WHERE IS THE INTELLIGENCE IN THE BBT?Is there anyone with any intelligence in the BBT? Are you all just dancingdogs in the hands of JAS? Can any one of you see the craziness you areinvolved in here.This will go down in the history of Vaisnavism. You will never be forgottenfor this craziness. Just as Srila Prabhupada has warned over and over again,"Do not read the books of my Guru Maharaja published after 1936, mygodbrothers have changed them..." You are repeating history. You will godown in history as the men who tried to destroy Srila Prabhupada's books byintroducing so many unauthorized changes.So surely it would be better to go down in history as one fighting topreserve the original teachings of Srila Prabhupada?So my humble plea to the BBT trustees is that you please wake up and nolonger dance to the tune of JAS.In my conversion with JAS in NY he could not give any reason whatsoever toprint the changed Cc. In fact he agreed if we print Srila Prabhupada'soriginal Cc. ALL the BBTs customers will be happy and you will sellthousands of extra Cc. sets right away. But he wants to print the changedbooks, even though the only real supporters for the changed books in theuniverse are himself and Dravida. JAS admits he has no idea what changesDravida has made, he is simply working on a "warm fuzzy feeling" that hetrusts Dravida. And he does not care that his decision will cost the BBThundreds of thousands of dollars in sales.There are at thousands of devotees out there waiting to purchasePrabhuapada's original Cc now and there will be a very strong market forthe books for a long time. There is no one at all waiting to purchaseDravida's books and if you print it we will do a study of the changes andrestart the book changes campaign with full force.We have not been publically campaigning about the BBT's changes to SrilaPrabhupada's books in the past few years as we have had some success inworking cooperatively with the NA BBT. However, if you go ahead and printthis completely unauthorized edition of the Cc. simply based on JAS's "warmfuzzy" feelings for Dravida what option do you leave us?I am hoping for some sanity. Even if you have started printing the insidepages of the changed books scrap them. They are useless. Worse than useless.And communicate. If you would communicate with us these ideas before you doanything we can at least give some input before it is too late.Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!Your servantMadhudvisa dasaDear Brahma Muhurta PrabhuHare Krishna! Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to SrilaPrabhupada!You are hinting that I am arguing against removing real typographical errorsfrom the books. That is not true. Prabhupada wanted the books to be correct.Correct English, correct Sanskrit. In fact right now there is somedisagreement with Jayadvaita Swami. I would like to reprint the original TLCbut it needs a proof reading. There are many very obvious errors with theEnglish and the Sanskrit which need to be corrected and it needs diacriticalmarks. I believe the proof reading should be done and those correctionsmade. However the corrections have to be documented and there has to befootnotes in the book so the readers can see what has been corrected andwhy. Proof reading is not changing the books. It is simply correcting thereal English & Sanskrit errors. If it is printed in the book "sarva dhaxma"and I correct that to "sarva dharma" that is not changing, that is acorrection to an obvious error. Or if I add diacritical marks where thereare no diacritical marks in the original book, that is not changing thebook.As far as the cannons/canals as you have explained it you have establishedit is a transcription error. This type of "error" is in a differentcategory. It does not really need to be corrected. Because editors andtranslators do not know where to stop. They will keep on analyzing the bookmore and more minutely and find so many imaginary "errors" and correct themand in the process destroy the book. We know the original English books havean amazing spiritual potency. If you simply translate them "as they are"that potency will be retained, however, if you make thousands of changes inthe translation, you will loose the potency and the whole point will bemissed.Srila Prabhupada's original books are pure and potent. They perfectlytransmit the message of Krishna consciousness and pure devotional serviceand make devotees, we know that for sure. We do not know that they changedbooks have the same potency. That is the problem. This changing is not amundane thing. Prabhupada has forbidden changes and we should respect that.Our principle is that nothing can be changed.However, if Prabhupada clearly says "canals" on the dictation tape and if itwas done in a very open way, if the decision was made not by one person andif it was properly documented with a footnote in the book, such atranscription error could be corrected. But it should not be just changedwith no documentation in the book. There should be a footnote and a littledescription of why it was changed. Otherwise in the future we will hear adevotee reading the Krsna book on a tape and when we read our Krsna book wewill find it to be different.The point I am making is Prabhupada's point, "If you change, the authorityis lost."As far as Krsna Book is concerned there are so many changes. There have beenperhaps 4 different editions and the last one even all the pictures havebeen changed and replaced with hideous ones. Prabhupada would NEVER approveof this. So many things have been changed in Krsna book. Even whatPrabhupada has said on the dictation tapes has been changed by our greatscholars going back to Hriydananda's translation of the SB. So this is toomuch. The editors do not know where to stop. Prabhupada's words are prefect,Prabhupada's books are perfect. The editors want to make them more perfect,but they can not. They are destroying them instead.The problem is JAS's method of supporting this destruction of Prabhupada'sbooks is to find some bona fide correction and explain that and imply thatall the changes are bona fide corrections. However that is not at all thecase. In the case of BG JAS does not like Hayagriva's editing. And he hastried to remove Hayagriva's editing in so many places. But Prabhupada likesHayagriva's editing and it is Prabhupada's book. He has the right to choosethe editor. You know it very well, JAS has made thousands of changes to theGita which are not at all necessary. JAS has made so many changes that aresimply pedantic and not at all necessary. And it is all on his whimsicalauthority. No one has authorized the changes he made, no one even knew whatthe changes he made were. He made a list of changes to the translations onlyand presented that to the GBC but he changed the purports extensively alsoand the GBC were not provided with any information whatsoever on thesechanges. So they decided [only by one vote] to accept JAS's gita, WITHOUTKNOWING WHAT THE CHANGES WERE!!The thing is editors want to change. That is their business. ButPrabhupada's books as they are potent, pure and perfect. They do not need tobe changed to make devotees. But if you change them the potency can be veryeasily lost. The little apparent errors that you may find in the books donot destroy their potency and authority. But unauthorized and undocumentedchanges completely destroy Prabhupada's books.When reading the new Cc. or the new Gita we can not know if what we arereading is from the original book or from Dravida or JAS.We have to be realistic. Dravida and JAS are conditioned souls. They makemistakes, they cheat, they are illusioned and they have imperfect senses. Sothey have taken the great task of changing Prabhupada's books and, no matterhow sincere they are, their work is full of mistakes.JAS admits he has made many mistakes in the BG changes. This shows that theprocess in which the Bg. and Cc. have been changed is faulty. If there arecorrections to be made to Prabhupada's books it can not be left to one manby himself on a farm in Australia to make the decisions as to what should bechanged. And one man should never be given the authority to change whateverhe sees fit without any documentation of what he has changed and withoutanyone checking his work.Look at what you have done with the Cc. You have given it to Dravida. He hasby himself changed thousands and thousands of things, at least partiallywith the object of bringing Prabhupada's teachings in the Cc. more in linewith the teachings of today's ISKCON. He is the final authority. He makeshis changes and you print the book without even knowing what he has changed.This is so foolish that I do not even know why I have to explain it. Nospiritual organization would ever dream of printing one of their scriptureswhich has thousands of changes in it that they are completely unaware of.The BBT have accepted Dravida as the supreme authority, even higher thanPrabhupada, for he has in one case we know of and surely many, many othercases changed the words of Prabhupada to bring Prabhupada's teachings morein line with today's ISKCON.So you have accepted Dravida as your guru and by publishing Prabhupada'sbooks adjusted by Dravida you are trying to force all of us to acceptDravida as our guru. But we do not want Dravida as our guru. We havePrabhupada and we want to keep Prabhupada.So I would like you to consider this and admit that:1 - You do not know what Dravida has changed in the Cc.2 - Jayadvaita Swami does not know what Dravida has changed in the Cc.3 - Prabhupada forbade Ramesvara from making ANY changes to the Cc. on manyoccasions.4 - Dravida has no authorization from Srila Prabhupada to change the Cc.rather Prabhupada has forbidden changes to the Cc. specifically. Even morethan any other book.5 - The changed Cc. therefore has no authority. It has thousands of unknown,undocumented changes by Dravida.Therefore, even if you have started printing the changed Cc. the onlyresponsible decision to make is to scrap whatever has been done and restartprinting Prabhupada's original Cc.There is no need for any changes to Prabhupada's books and the principleshould be to not change anything. If you simply print the original booksPrabhupada's mission will go on and the world will become Krishnaconsciousness. If you change the books the authority and potency will belost and everything will be finished.Editors always want to change, that is their nature, your job as a managershould be to stop them from making changes.BBT should be a very simple organization. You have the films for theoriginal books. You keep them and send them to the printers every time youwant to reprint the books and you organize massive distribution ofPrabhupada's original books all over the world. That should be the subjectof the BBT meetings. How to distribute Prabhuapda's books all over theworld.Prabhupada's books are the books Prabhupada read himself on a daily basis.That will remain forever. You can change but those changed books have noauthority and will not be accepted by any thoughtful person in the future.If you had the choice of reading a Bible that Jesus Christ himself had readdaily and given all his classes from and completely approved of and a Biblethat had been adjusted to more correctly reflect the teachings of today'sChristian church what would you want to read? Of course if you areinterested in the teachings of Jesus you want to read the book he read.So there is no need for change. You can leave the cannons in the Krsna bookand that will not destroy the authority or potency. But if you change it tocanals without documenting that change in the book the authority is lost.This is not a sentimental issue. It is a very serious issue. If you printPrabhupada's original books the potency is there and Krishna and Prabhupadawill be pleased with your service and Krishna consciousness will spread allover the world. If you print the changed books the authority and potency isnot there, it is a complete affront to Srila Prabhupada who repeatedlyreferred to change as the "American Disease." It will not please Prabhupada,it will not please Krishna, and Krishna consciousness will not spread.Just look at how the ISKCON movement has been destroyed since 1983. Theappearance of JAS's Bogus Bg. People do not get the right idea about Krishnaconsciousness by reading his "revised and enlarged" Bg. It is a completelydifferent book to Prabhupada's gita, it is completely unauthorized,Prabhupada never asked JAS to "revise and enlarge" his Gita, it is acomplete offense to Srila Prabhupada and devotees are not becoming Krishnaconscious by reading it.If the BBT go back to printing Prabhupada's original books that will reviveSrila Prabhupada's ISKCON movement to it's former glory. Why not try it? Youhave spent over 20 years pushing changed books with no success. Why not trydistributing Prabhupada's original books on a grand scale and see whathappens? That is how Prabhupada spread the Hare Krishna movement all overthe world in the 70s. And Prabhupada's original books still have the potencyto do it again. If you just print them and distribute them in unlimitedquantities...Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!Your servantMadhudvisa dasaDear Brahma Muhurta PrabhuHare Krishna! Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to SrilaPrabhupada!It is not very inspiring to see your reply, "You have made so many pointsbut I do not have any time to consider them..." I fear that would be theonly response from the BBT meeting so what is the point of going?You are simply repeating the same old things and you are ignoring the pointsI have made that you have no answer for.We are not discussing Krsna book here, we are not discussing foreigntranslations, we are discussing specifically Srila Prabhupada's SriCaitanya-caritamrta.For this book more than others we have the specific orders issued by SrilaPrabhupada to Ramesvara not to change it at all on many occasions. Soultimately to make advancement in Krishna consciousness we have to pleasethe bona fide spiritual master. Srila Prabhupada is the author of the SriCaitanya-caritamrta and he repeatedly ordered that it not be changed. So ifyou fight for Prabhupada in this regard you will be pleasing SrilaPrabhupada and you will get his mercy. I can guarantee this.That is the first point. Prabhupada ordered Ramesvara not to change theCaitanya-caritamrta. It should not have gone any further than that. Weshould have accepted Prabhupada's instructions.The other critical point is Prabhupada's books are supposed to beauthorative. They are supposed to be like the lawbooks. The original booksare read by Prabhupada daily and approved by him. He did not authorize anychanges. If you change the books the authority is lost. What good is a lawbook if it is not endorsed by the government? What good is a lawbook thatwas endorsed by the government but someone has made thousands ofundocumented, unauthorized changes to? It is useless, it has no authorityand no one will accept it as bona fide.The situation surrounding the changes to the Cc. is outrageous. The changeswere made by one man in isolation. Everything is based on his decisions, andthere was no one to authorize or check any of the changes he made. There isno documentation of the changes, no one including even JAS is aware of whatwas changed. And further still Dravida has admitted that his motivationswere at least partially political. He has admitted to trying to adjust theCc. so it is more in harmony with the GBC's current ideas on the guru issue.On top of this we see that Dravida and JAS are not at all reliable editors.This has been proven by the BBTs "Hidden Glories of India" which was editedby both Dravida and JAS. That book is written by an open follower ofNarayana Maharaja and is completely inimical to Srila Prabhupada. Itminimizes Prabhuapda's position and gives him no credit whatsoever forbringing Krishna consciousness to the West. The credit, according to the BBTpublished book, goes to the Gaudiya Matha devotees who proceeded Prabhuapda.So this is solid evidence that Dravida and JAS do not understand theposition of Srila Prabhupada and are contaminated by the preaching ofPrabhupada's godbrothers.It is these issues you have to address:1 - Prabhupada ordered Rameswara many times not to change ANYTHING at all inthe Cc. Finally he called Ramesvara a demon for continuing to present ideasof changes to the Cc.2 - If you change the books the authority is lost3 - All the Cc. changes were made by one man who had complete freedom tochange anything at all without any checks and balances and without anydocumentation or authorization.4 - Dravida has admitted that his motivation for changing the Cc. is atleast partially political.5 - JAS and Dravida are not reliable editors and are contaminated byPrabhupada's envious godbrothers6. THERE IS A HUGE DEMAND FOR THE ORIGINAL Cc. Prabhupada's original Cc. isout of print. There are thousands of devotees out there who want it and whowill purchase it immediately it is available. We have seen this with Bg andKrsna Book. The initial sales are huge. It will be the same with the Cc. Soyou are guaranteed to sell thousands of sets of original Cc. the moment itis printed. THERE IS NO DEMAND FOR A CHANGED Cc.7. The original Cc. will satisfy all the BBT customers. There is no one whowill not purchase the original Cc., however most devotees will not want topurchase a changed Cc. So simply from a business point of view it is crazyto print the changed Cc. Anyone who would purchase a changed Cc. would bejust as happy, or more happy with the original Cc. and if you print theoriginal there will immediately be thousands of sales that you will nototherwise get.So the resulting changed Cc. has no authority. It is not approved by SrilaPrabhupada. It has thousands of undocumented changes made by one man withoutany system of checks and balances and without any documentation of thechanges and not only that but the editor is not at all reliable.Therefore to print this changed Cc. would be a great mistake.Even if the printing has started [and it may not have, printers always tellyou they have done more than they really have done] it should be scrappedand Srila Prabhupada's original Cc. should be printed.If you do not print the original Cc. my only option is to restart the bookchanges campaign with full force and put into motion a printing of SrilaPrabhupada's original Cc. outside of the BBT. As I said for some years thebook changes campaign has been suspended because we were getting reasonablecooperation from NA BBT. But this outrageous decision in relation to the Cc.seems to indicate that there is no interest within the BBT in printing theauthorized books of Srila Prabhupada. I hope you can reverse this decisionin this BBT meeting.There is no problem for the general devotee community to understand theissues I have brought up here. For them, from GBCs, to Temple Presidents toordinary devotees and the devotees outside ISKCON, all of them wantPrabhupada's original books. None of them are interested in books withthousands of unauthorized and undocumented changes by JAS and Dravida.I am at Radha Kalacandajis in Dallas and there is a group of ISKCONsannyasis here and I have asked 3 sannyasis so far and all of them arestrongly in favor of Prabhupada's original books. There is no supportanywhere for the changed books at all. I have thousands of letters fromdevotees over the years about the book changes issue. And the only letters Ihave supporting the book changes are from Dravida and JAS. That is theabsolute truth. There is no support whatsoever for these changed books.So if you can become convinced that the logical decision is to reprint theoriginal Cc. I would like you to please present this at the BBT meeting. Ifyou do not print the original Cc. the resulting book changes campaign willbe huge I can assure you of that. We have practically 100% support fromdevotees at all levels for reprinting Prabhupada's original books. And Iwill work on this with great energy and determination. And I am sure we willbe able to quickly print the entire Cc. outside the BBT. That way we willget the sales, no you.Please let me know what you think.Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!Your servantMadhudvisa dasa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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