by Pranada dasi for Hare Krishna World newspaper
How can we revitalize and strengthen ISKCON? Devotees attending ISKCON’s first annual women’s conference, held in Los Angeles last December, came up with a solution that includes a mix of arithmetic, common sense, and realization of verses about the equality of all souls, and a few attributes like honesty and compassion. The conference gave attendees new hope for fulfilling Srila Prabhupada’s prophecies of ISKCON becoming a powerful worldwide movement for spreading Krsna consciousness. The conclusions of the seminar can provide a foundation for ending the negative propaganda and internal strife that tear at the fabric of the ISKCON family and weaken our potential for spreading Krsna consciousness.
The essence of the solution is simple: Put the heart (mom) back into the family (ISKCON), and the family will grow and galvanize. As the motherly abilities of women shine and gain respect, ISKCON leaders will better understand the needs of devotees and how to care for them. They’ll find that instead of valuing projects of people (and consequently losing members and support), they’ll have successful projects filled with happy, committed devotees. The genuine caring of women will extinguish the fire of anger, sadness, frustration, and hopelessness share by many who have left our association. Even one small step – putting women on the GBC – will bring balance and heart to high-level discussions.
The vision put forward by speakers at the women’s conference if of an ISKCON where men and women work side-by-side with redoubled strength to spread Krishna consciousness, an ISKCON where women and men perform responsible preaching services according to their abilities, propensities, and level of Krishna consciousness. The vision reveals and ISKCON that has broken through incorrect stereotypes and distorted philosophy to respect the integrity of women; and ISKCON where women give Bhagavatam class, lead kirtanas, serve on the GBC, initiated disciples; an ISKCON where women are no longer stifled and use their nature talents and abilities to give ISKCON unity, strength, and enthusiasm.
Give full participation to women, and we at once significantly increase our preaching force. Empower the women, and those who have left or resigned themselves to the status quo become enlivened to take part. We can practically double our strength overnight with this one strategy. What intelligent manager – spiritualist r materialist – wouldn’t be willing to pay what’s needed to get such a quick result?
Women have shown all over the world that they can be as intelligent and competent as men. Unless ISKCON acknowledges and values this reality, it will not gain the respect and participate of intelligent women or men.
Women bring to humanity a required element – heart. They also bring unity to the social structure. Krishna says in the first chapter of Bhagavad–gita that women are essential to the spiritual progress of society. As one half of the married couple, they support the preaching of the renunciants, an arrangement that would greatly benefit ISKCON today. How much further could ISKCON have progressed if we hadn’t ignored this important principle?
If we choose to ignore this common sense, and instead make women feel unwanted, devalued, and unempowered, then everyone loses. Women lose their inspiration, their hopes, their dreams of serving Krishna to their full potential. And ht whole society loses. When we stifle the women, children’s needs are unmet and they become unprotected, even abused. We los3 women’s natural contribution of nurturing balancing, and bonding the social structure. We reduce our effectiveness to resist negative forces from outside and even within SIKCON. We commit offenses, and our spiritual lives suffer. We lose the support of people who know you can judge a society by how it treats its women and children. And we don’t gain new members hen people can’t quite reconcile the philosophy of Krishna consciousness with what they see practical socially.
We’ve read and heard the point many times: all souls are equal. Even a newcomers will at once recognize this basic tenet of our philosophy. Yet, this has conflicted with ISKCON policy and unspoken laws.
We have too often heard scriptural verse about women quoted only to disparage them. How do we apply sastric statements about women? With full realization of all the imports of sastra, just as Srila Prabhupada showed us. Srila Prabhupada engaged women in all temple functions – offerings aratis, leading kirtans, giving Srimad–Bhagavatam class. He authorized the women’s participation at all lelves of managerial service, from temple president to GBC. And he wanted women to function as spiritual leaders and to initiate disciples (“all my sons and daughters”).
If we’re honest and compassionate, we’ll be happy to see to it that women devotees are offered the same facilities as men. We’ll want to see the spark of Krishna consciousness in our young girls fanned and encouraged. We’ll be happy to see girls growing up in the movement, thankful to be able to fully take part in Krishna consciousness. We’ll be impressed and encouraged to see highly intelligent women from all walks of life helping the movement, and relived to know that our godsisters feel protected and safe. We’ll see a decline in outside propaganda trying to make ISKCON looks like a cult, and we’ll feel the benefits of having a true spiritual family.
We’ll see the truth in Srila Prabhupada’ statement that girls are as good as boys in spreading Krishna consciousness movement. And we’ll grasp how brilliant he was to engage women in preaching, and how portent that is for our movement’s observers to see.
Pulling all the elements o the formula together, we gain the inspiration to reinstate women devotees to the position Srila Prabhupada gave them: valuable spiritual participants in a worldwide effort to bring people back to their constitutional position as servants o the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Krishna.
The women’s conference was more than a gather of like-minded people. I hope it will be seen as a momentous event that forever changed the position of women in ISKCON. I hope we can look back and see how well that change served ISKCON’s preaching and all devotees – men, women, and children.
As on sannyasi put it, “By putting forward the fact of this matter, the women are bringing the men back to Krishna consciousness, where we have strayed in this regard. We should thank the women for this.”
