Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #9 – Build Devotees, Not Temples
Dhanurdhara Swami February 24th, 2025
Recently I was inspired by an article by Bhakti Vijñāna Gosvāmī titled “How Not to Turn ISKCON Into a Religion.” My initial desire was to write a review for this week’s Monday Morning Greetings. I soon realized that to do it justice was beyond the scope of a post. His article was very comprehensive. I thought it was better to just share my own realizations on the same subject and leave a link to his article so my readers can read it in full.[1]
First, a short introduction to his piece. His article is a detailed analysis of what the philosopher Max Weber calls “the routinization of charisma” as applied to ISKCON. The “routinization of charisma” is when a charismatic spiritual movement seeks to preserve its legacy by making the structure and organization (the routinization) more important than its initial spiritual inspiration and objectives (its charisma). In his article he outlines carefully how this adversely affects the spiritual depth and enthusiasm of its members, the vision and quality of its leadership, and its relationship with other spiritual and religious sects.
The purpose of an institution is to carry its culture—what is right, real, and of value—into the future.[2] What I would like to discuss in this post, inspired by Mahārāja’s article, is how the institutionalization of a movement fails in moving its objective forward if not done very carefully. I will do that through a brief analysis of the concept of empowerment and then briefly discuss my own plan to temper the over-routinization of a movement.
I define empowerment as recognizing, encouraging, and facilitating a person’s abilities and then setting broad parameters describing where that person’s service is to function. I describe disempowerment as when the single focus of those in charge is not someone’s abilities and initiative but the parameters in which one is to serve. This often manifests in an emphasis on bureaucracy which inevitably leads to the imbalanced focus on the structure and organization of the institution over the empowerment and support of its people. In this way, by not sufficiently recognizing and encouraging its members, such bureaucracy discourages and disempowers them, and most unfortunately, especially those with the charisma and initiative to carry on its initial inspiration and objectives. The institution thus meant to carry forward its culture loses it.
When I look back at my life, I see how I have also fallen into this same prioritization of the structure of an institution over service to its members, especially at the beginning of my devotional career. I want to do something different now. I just see too many qualified people without the encouragement and support needed to reach their potential. In that regard I started The Yoga Maya Fund: Build Devotees, Not Temples —started with a kind donation by Yudhisthira dasa, the former long-time secretary of Śrīla Tamal Krishna Mahārāja. It is not that I have anything against building temples. They also perform an important function in serving and expanding the bhakti movement. I just see exorbitant amounts of money spent on so many temples, when a miniscule amount could allow us to accomplish so much more by supporting qualified people who have the potential to share the path of bhakti with others.
This year I was able to bring four such devotees to India, two from South America and two from the Middle East. They are all dedicated to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mission and gifted in sharing it with others. They could not, however, afford to come to the holy dhāma to get the inspiration they needed to achieve their full potential. With a little help, they made the trip, and they left India with renewed vigor to serve the mission of Śrī Caitanya. It was more than worth it to sponsor their pilgrimage.
“How Not to Turn ISKCON Into a Religion” is a comprehensive analysis of the challenges ISKCON faces in preserving the purity of and fidelity to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s original vision. Bhakti Vijñāna Gosvāmī concludes with a description of “things that can and should be done if we want to establish bhakti as the science of God and ISKCON as an international educational institution dedicated to teaching this great science.” I was much inspired by his article and within the confines of just a weekly post now share my own limited inspiration after reading it. I think we all should do our part according to our capacity to understand Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mission so his revolutionary movement never degrades into just another disempowering ‘religion.”
Build devotees, not temples!
[1] https://articles.goswami.ru/en
[2] Joseph T. O’Connell’s article on the subject, “Movement or Mission”—https://gaudiyadiscussions.gaudiya.com/topic_1446.html
- Monday Morning Greetings
- Comments(0)