Re:Attention To An Emergency

[Guest guest]

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

June 5, 2006

 

 

 

Dear New Vrindavan community and ISKCON family worldwide,

 

 

 

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupad.

 

My name

is Jason Friggens, and I have been living at New Vrindavan for a little more

than eight months now. I first met devotees last summer at the Rainbow

Gathering in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. First of

all, I

would like to offer gratitude to everyone who has played even the smallest

goal

in furthering the Krishna Consciousness movement. I cannot even begin to

fully

realize how crucial the message of this movement is for us fallen

conditioned

souls. Really, I am not qualified to talk about it, so please give me your

blessings that Krishna may enable me to better grasp its gravity and pass it

on

to others. There is nothing more important to humanity than this.

 

With this being said, I would like to bring your attention to an

emergency situation. It has to do with our culture, our everyday lifestyle.

As many of you know, we are living in a time when the “civilization” of this

world is madly chasing after sense gratification of all kinds, and so the

mainstream culture is now one of such insatiable, feverish consumerism that

it

blinds its members of the suffering being inflicted upon the earth and all

her

inhabitants in order to conveniently and efficiently support this system.

This

culture is so powerful that it has a strong hold even on ISKCON communities

such as New Vrindavan. I will now cite examples in hope that we will be

able

to better be a blessing to the whole world by reducing the suffering of

living

entities and avoid much negative collective karma.

 

Food is one of the most basic needs in community living. Today,

most of the world’s grains, fruits, and vegetables are grown by methods

using

machinery and chemicals that degrade the soil (the food’s food) and are

extremely toxic to the earth’s various natural systems and her inhabitants.

The food produced by these methods often look more appealing (bigger,

brighter

apples and lettuce with no trace of incest nibbling), but are generally less

tasty and nutritious, and even poisonous. After all, there is a reason why

insects and other “pests” avoid these foods. We should follow their example

for our own sake and that of the earth’s health.

 

Milk and other dairy products are also very central to Krishna

and

the devotees’ daily diets. Let us now ponder where this milk comes from.

At

New Vrindavan, we have been milking one cow for three years now. The vast

majority of the milk and other dairy products consumed by New Vrindavan

residents and visitors is bought on a weekly basis at Sam’s Club because of

the

low cost, but it has been shown that the reason Sam’s Club and its infamous

brother, Wal Mart corporation are able to sell at such low prices is because

of

their record of employee and resource exploitation worldwide. But this is a

small offshoot of the main point I’m trying to make here. Regardless of

where

the milk is bought, almost if not all commercial dairies treat their cows in

ways that would make many people lose their appetite for milk if they

witnessed

the process first hand. After a short life of being shot up with hormones

that

make their udders nearly burst to produce an unnaturally huge amount of

polluted milk, these matajis are then slaughtered for meat. This is the

milk

that we daily offer to Radha-Vrindavan Chandra. Even if these cows receive

spiritual benefit by merit of their milk being offered to the Deities,

wouldn’t

it be much more pleasing to the Lord and to our conscience to purchase cows

and

bulls to save them from these horrible dairy and meat industries and allow

them

to live better lives with us, giving them a chance to do service for

Radha-Vrindavan Chandra by plowing fields, pulling oxcarts, providing manure

(and milk in more natural quantities and flavors) in an atmosphere of love

and

respect?

 

Besides the chemicals and mistreatment that go into the food and

milk that we buy, there is also the compounding effect of the fossil fuels

(with all their ghastly related pollution, industry, corporations, and wars)

that go into transporting our food from distant places like California and

South America. Volumes could be written and have been written on the

subject

of the hellish effects of fossil fuels.

 

The next issue I will address is electricity. This is a

particularly poignant topic for me, being a native of West Virginia, since

electricity is produced almost exclusively from coal (the state of West

Virginia, in which New Vrindavan is located, is one of the top providers of

coal in the country). As a testimony, there is an all-pervasive and

constant

mechanical drone that can be heard at New Vrindavan 24 hours a day, 365 days

a

year, from a coal mine located on the next ridge over from the temple. The

coal mining industry, along with the power plants which burn the coal for

conversion into electricity, poison the land, water, air, and all the

earth’s

inhabitants with numerous deadly chemicals. And in parts of our very own

West

Virginia (yes, I know, Krishna’s West Virginia), which I witnessed

first-hand a

year ago, the most violent, diabolical form of mining is taking place- it’s

called Mountain Top Removal. In this method, after the timber is stripped

from

whole mountain ridges and sides, layer by layer of the mountains are blasted

away from the top to the bottom, thousands of vertical feet. The layers of

coal are extracted and the rest of the mountain is dumped into the valleys

(“valley fill”), permanently burying the streams with the huge layers of

rubble

that were once mountains. I visited a man in southern West Virginia last

summer who refused to sell the land that he and his family have lived on for

generations to a major coal company. The coal beneath his home was worth

600

million dollars to the coal barons. Over the past few years as land around

him

has been sold off, the view from his home has been transformed into

something

that superficially resembles part of the canyonlands of Utah or Arizona- a

promontory falling away to a horizon of vast wastelands- literally miles of

mountains vanishing before our eyes. Because of his stubbornness to sell

the

land, cronies of the coal company have committed over 100 acts of

intimidation

and vandalism to his family and property, including killing his dog and a

failed attempt on his own life. Things like this are happening all the

time.

And we rarely realize that as we wastefully consume all sorts of resources,

we

are individually playing a tiny part in creating this collective nightmare

which is causing so much suffering to so many living beings. Here at New

Vrindavan, we spend about ten thousand dollars a year just for the

electricity

needed to run an aerator for the sewage system and to pump water from the

stream below us up to a holding container.

 

There is a much more beautiful way of life than this. In light

of

the gloomy but real picture I have painted, I beg ISKCON in general, and New

Vrindavan in particular, to seriously begin to radically change the

direction

of its collective lifestyle towards sustainability and self-sufficiency. We

have the ability to grow our own food organically, milk our own cows, build

our

dwellings from local materials, and free ourselves from the dependency of

fossil fuels. We just need to desire it enough. All of these environmental

offences that I have been describing could be brought to almost nil within

our

community, if we dedicate ourselves to serving Krishna in this way. And

better

yet, with Krishna’s grace, we could be an example, inspiration, and agent of

change for countless others living in Kali’s age of industrialism and

consumerism. For our existing “farm communities”, I see no other sane

alternative. Srila Prabhupad understood this issue much more profoundly

than

myself, and that is why he gave so many implicit instructions on this

matter.

For there to be any semblance of a livable future for souls born on earth in

the coming generations, we must change. Given the knowledge of the horrible

consequences brought on by being addicted to this technological, industrial

culture of convenience and consumerism, along with the instructions of Srila

Prabhupad, what possible excuse could anyone offer to stop us from moving

toward sustainability and self-sufficiency with all speed? It may be true

that

for the devotee there is no reaction for activities performed in Krishna’s

service, but for the sake of sinners like me, I beg you to be an example and

an

agent of mercy. I, along with the majority of the world’s population, am

not a

devotee of the Lord, though I aspire to be. And until that glorious day

when I

become completely purified in devotional service by the mercy of Guru and

Krishna, I am to some extent bound by collective vikarmic activity in the

form

of countless gross crimes against the earth and her inhabitants simply by

existing within this Kali culture of degradation. Therefore, with the

belief

that the law of karma is real, I feel that I must warn others of this

emergency

situation. If this New Vrindavan community doesn’t soon wake from its

slumber

and promptly get on the fast track to simple, local, self-sufficient living,

then it is my duty to search for a community that is, for the benefit of my

own

spiritual life and that of others. Therefore, I would like to make a

general

inquiry to the ISKCON world at large: Does anyone know of any communities

out

there that are seriously working toward this lifestyle of self-sufficiency

who

might welcome me, in the scenario that I am not empowered to inspire New

Vrindavan to do so? You can reach me by e-mail at

jfriggens <jfriggens >. I beg for the opportunity

to

live in a community in harmony with the natural laws and to play a part in

enhancing this Golden Age of Kali for the benefit of the earth and all her

inhabitants, by the grace of Lord Caitanya and His associates. Please pray

for

New Vrindavan and grace me with your blessings. Hari Bol!

 

 

 

Your servant,

 

 

 

Jason Friggens

(Text PAMHO:11709808) -----

 

------- End of Forwarded Message ------

[Rukmini-Devi dasi 0]

New Vrndavan is not the only temple/devotee community using such products as huge coporation milk products.

 

What happened to Srila Prabhupada's plan that the temples would use milk from Iskcon's cows?