On the weekend of August 13th and 14th, Ratha Yatra is scheduled to take place in Vancouver, British Columbia. This Ratha Yatra has been taking place for many decades, and has operated on a very similar format since the 1970's, at the same location each year. The Festival of India is held in Stanley Park, at Second Beach, which is probably the single best location in the City of Vancouver for hosting an event such as this. The Ratha Yatra carts of Their Lordships are pulled down one of the most scenic and popular avenues in the City, along a beautiful stretch of beach.
Part of the program that has been in place practically since the very beginning is that the day before Ratha Yatra, there is a Saturday opening event. Madhuha das and his Festival of India crew come in and set-up all their tents, exhibits and the main stage, and there is a program and kirtan the day before the Ratha procession.
The festival location is well populated, being adjacent to the beach, with walkways surrounding the area. It is also adjacent to the largest city park in all of North America. The reader should take all this into consideration in terms of the preaching potential, as we describe the changes to this year's Saturday Ratha weekend event.
Based on the authorization of one or more of the three co-GBC's in charge of Vancouver – Gopala Krishna Swami, Bhakti Marg Swami and Hari Vilasa dasa – this year's Saturday kirtan event is aiming for a nonsectarian mood in order to attract more corporate sponsors. The event is being held on the Ratha Yatra festival grounds, but is not being billed as part of the ISKCON Ratha Yatra. Instead, it is being called Kirtan Vancouver, promoted via a separate website: KirtanVancouver.com.
Following is the message being promoted on the KirtanVancouver.com website:
What is Kirtan?
::Kirtan & Yoga::
"Kirtan is an important aspect of yoga. Just as a cake is incomplete without sugar – so too is yoga incomplete without kirtan. And, as with any practice – it's always better to experience it completely and in whole – not just in part. This kirtan or chanting helps one to connect with themselves and something higher – helping focus the mind and achieve the true harmony between mind, body and spirit and creating a balance we can but dream of.
Kirtan is not religious chanting, nor is it repeating just one word over and over again. It is part of the Yoga of Sound – in which you produce sound waves and follow them with your awareness – think Ommm! This vibration helps focus your mind and raise your consciousness. Add in some amazing instruments, your friends and imagine what a whole kirtan can accomplish.
By singing and participating in kirtan, you are able to withdraw yourself from the body and your external environment and focus on something higher, something more peaceful. Just as in a yogic pose – this detachment helps to complete the pose and achieve balance. Participating in kirtan with or without yoga frees the mind and brings the much sought after feeling of freedom from the daily grind.
:: Say the words ::
:: Repeat :: Faster :: Louder ::
:: Experience the freedom ::
:: It's the heart, not the Art ::
Although kirtan involves music; the art of kirtan is not about what your musical ability is – it's all about what ‘s in your heart. Everyone can participate; everyone can feel that connection with the self and something higher, which we all seek. That is the purpose behind kirtan; to take us out of our heads and into our hearts.
Not only does this make us feel better, stress free and lively – it promotes this healing, the higher awareness in our community by bringing together people from all walks of life to come and move forward together."
As will be obvious to anyone who reads Srila Prabhupada's books, this presentation of kirtan is asiddhantic, mayavadic, voidist, New Age nonsense, nothing more. It is an outright offense to the Holy Name. Srila Prabhupada would not stand for such a bogus representation of kirtan for one minute.
Those who are allowing this event to take place in conjunction with Lord Jagannatha's Ratha Yatra, and who condone handing over the temple's usual spiritual program to a group of so-called kirtanyas and yogis are themselves guilty of offenses to the Holy Name. That includes Gopala Krishna Swami, who is currently in Vancouver, and obviously has knowledge of what's being planned for the Ratha Yatra. It also includes the Temple President and GBC-in-waiting, Akrura dasa, whose company, Hari Stones, is co-sponsoring the event. But responsibility for this must also be placed on the performers themselves, and on those responsible for facilitating them.
All devotees who plan to attend this event should be forewarned that they are putting their spiritual lives at significant risk. The asiddhantic, impersonalist approach being heralded by Kirtan Vancouver isn't remotely inline with Srila Prabhupada's instructions, but is instead diametrically opposed to them. All his followers should know that and act accordingly by avoiding this event, and by dealing very circumspectly with all those who associate themselves with it.
After reading the website description of "kirtan", the reader will not be at all surprised to scroll down the homepage of KirtanVancouver.com to find a picture of this year's Master of Ceremonies, Jeffrey Armstrong. For whatever reason, the temple authorities, obviously with GBC approval, have chosen this personality to host the Ratha Yatra Saturday kirtan event.
Once a disciple of Srila Prabhupada's named Jamadagni das, he now goes by his karmi name, Jeffrey Armstrong, or as Kavindra Rishi, a name bestowed by the replacement guru he took up with after leaving Srila Prabhupada's service. Jamadagni has the dubious distinction of being one of the few personalities who ever exchanged in a heated argument with Srila Prabhupada, in Los Angeles in 1975. (See Talks with the Sampradaya Acarya) He was summarily dismissed by Srila Prabhupada, and left Prabhupada's mission at that point. His personal journey since then has basically been one of self-promotion, developing his own notoriety and distinction as what can best be described as a New Age guru.
By making a visit to Jeffrey's website -- JeffreyArmstrong.com, the reader will get a good sense of his focus and personality. He has authored various New Age books, writes poetry and gives workshops, focused in large part on Tantric sex, yoga and astrology.
Grooming and promoting himself as a New Age sex therapist, Jeffrey's "mystical poetry" is a collection of sahajiya-like musings, many dripping with lusty sexual connotation. Take, for example, his audio poem, Oh Dark Mistress (mp3), or consider the lyrics of this poem, "Your Love is My Drug" (mp3):
Your love is my drug, come on darling
Your love is my drug, shoot me up.
Give me a hug. Open your lips and give me a smack.
You've hooked me now, there's no going back.
Drifting down your river of bliss
Fill my mouth with your opium kiss.
Blow into me your fragrant fumes
Intoxicate me with your perfumes
Sweep me away again and again
Inject your sweetness into my vein
And take me to your lotus land
Slow my pulse, contract, expand.
Enclose me in your dreamy fiction.
You are my pusher, my addiction.
You are my favorite drug of choice
Your touch, your smile, your lips, your voice
Fill my heart with excitation
You are my favorite intoxication.
© Jeffrey Armstrong
(Transcribed from the audio; punctuation is our own)
Now, how does a person who is promoting this sort of gross sexual trash on his website manage to get top billing as Master of Ceremonies for the ISKCON Vancouver Saturday kirtan event to inaugurate Lord Jagannatha's annual Ratha Yatra? This would seem to be a great mystery, and a very disturbing element of the upcoming Ratha festival this year.
Not only has this individual adopted a different spiritual name than the one Srila Prabhupada gave him, but he left Prabhupada and never looked back. To my knowledge, he is rarely if ever seen at the temple, although he's been in the Vancouver area for years. It's hard to imagine that he walked into the temple one day, and asked to participate in the Saturday kirtan program. It's also hard to imagine that local temple leaders sought him out of their own volition to host the kirtan event. When we connect the dots, however, we begin to see how it is that Jeffrey might have found his way onto the Vancouver Ratha Saturday kirtan stage.
Approximately one year ago, Radhanath Swami was here in the Vancouver area, making a stop on his never-ending book promotion tour. He was hosted at the Fall Harvest Festival held by members of the Saranagati devotee community, where he has a number of supporters, followers and disciples. Although he reportedly had a very tight schedule and little time to associate with his godbrothers, who are actually participating in Krsna consciousness, or with his disciples or the local devotees, Radhanath managed to find nearly a whole day to be driven the several hours from Saranagati back into Vancouver, so he could spend a long afternoon visiting with Jeffrey Armstrong.
At the time there was a fair bit of talk about this, because there were so many devotees at Saranagati who were known to be hankering for the Swami's association. But rather than give them his time and attention, Radhanath was off for a long chat with Jeffrey. This was a private get-together, and they obviously had a lot to discuss. Both are intent on promoting themselves into a similar market, and we can easily imagine what they talked about.
I don't think it's any coincidence that at the very next Ratha Yatra, Jeffrey Armstrong appears as top billing MC for the kirtan event. Radhanath is likely the puppeteer, pulling the strings through Hari Vilas and the local Temple President, Akrura das (a disciple of Gopala Krishna Swami), to give Jeffrey Armstrong this opportunity to promote himself.
Like Radhanath, Jeffrey is an unabashed self-promoter. He uses every opportunity to get his name and face out there, and to build up his business. You can be sure that he's simply looking at the Vancouver Ratha kirtan venue as another way to do that: to get new local customers in his door to buy his books, take his workshops, and otherwise part with their money, spreading his fame in the local market.
We know there is a strong alliance between Radhanath Swami and Hari Vilasa. Radhanath is essentially the resident guru for Hari Vilasa's Hindu temple scene in Seattle. Seattle has also thrown away many of the traditional activities associated with Srila Prabhupada's standard Ratha Yatra, opting instead for a bogus "Vedic culture and Interfaith" version. The Seattle temple program regularly incorporates demigod worship and activities like sacred circle dances and chanting songs from all the religions. Seattle has published numerous promotional fliers for dual programs, currently in vogue in ISKCON, like Diwali and Govardhan Puja. In Seattle's case, the Hindu festival often gets top billing over and above the Vaisnava festival Srila Prabhupada introduced. One year, Hari Vilasa put out a poster for the tandem Gaura Purnima/Holi Festival, in which Lord Caitanya was featured with a small picture and small type near the bottom of the page, while the Holi festival Hindu cultural activities were prominently featured at the top.
We recently wrote in the Sun about how Hari Vilas has teamed up with Radhanath to support the Swami's "preaching" at events in which Lord Krsna and Krsna consciousness must be played down. At such "mainstream preaching events", devotees are admonished not to appear in dhotis and tilak, or say 'haribol'. (See Radhanatha Swami's "Preaching Strategies"). Radhanath has his "web-sevites" beating the bushes for every possible opportunity for the Swami to promote himself and bury the 'dirt' about his pastimes in the search engines. Jeffrey Armstrong, meanwhile, is moving in the other direction. Having left Krsna and Srila Prabhupada years ago, he's now trying to work his way back into the devotee community to increase his own market share.
Another connection between Radhanath and Jeffrey is that they share a publisher -- Mandala Publishing of San Rafael, California. Among the many books and CD's being sold at JeffreyArmstrong.com, one of the few places you'll find any mention of Krsna consciousness is in a small book he wrote about Madhvacarya, in which he depicts Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu as being simply a sect – 'the Caitanya sect, branching from Madhvacarya'. No mention of chanting the Hare Krsna maha-mantra or the writings of Srila Prabhupada, of course. The closest Jeffrey comes to Bhagavad-gita As It Is is in the offensive name he's given one of his webpages: Blogavad-gita.
So again, how is it that this personality was chosen and permitted to be the host of the Ratha Yatra Saturday kirtan program? Consider the tremendous potential of the Vancouver City Ratha preaching venue, and how many other options there are for MC's who are Srila Prabhupada disciples and staunch promoters of Prabhupada's mood and message. But instead, the Vancouver temple authorities have chosen Jeffrey Armstrong, Tantric sex counselor, lusty poet, and impersonalist.
Jeffrey will be joined on the stage next Saturday by singer Karnamrita dasi, who often performs at venues like this one, e.g., Bhakti Fest and other get-togethers with the New Age so-called kirtanyas and professional reciters of watered-down philosophy. She is joined by an Indian dance troupe, and an individual named DJ "E.V." from fusion music group A-slam, who "will be spinning a mix of Kirtan and World Music Beats".
But what benefit is there to Krsna consciousness in all this? I personally don't see any. I only see that this is another sign of the direction this movement is going – a symptom of the cancerous disease that is killing Srila Prabhupada's wonderful spiritual movement.
We have no hope of being saved by the local GBC's, Gopala Krishna Swami, Bhakti Marg Swami and Hari Vilasa dasa, who have a history of doing little to nothing to solve problems faced by the temple community. Hari Vilasa is very likely one of the influences that caused this Saturday kirtan event to manifest. Gopala Krishna Swami is always too busy to get his hands dirty dealing with 'little problems' like this. And Bhakti Marg Swami? When he's not walking endlessly through the countryside, these days he's busy trying to be a rock star like Indradyumna, ingratiating himself with the younger generation and making a complete ass of himself. (Go to 2:20 in the tape below)
I feel very saddened by this whole situation. I can only implore the devotees to make better decisions about what they support in their local ISKCON communities, and try to keep them informed via the Sampradaya Sun. We must learn to see the truth by applying the philosophy Srila Prabhupada has given us, or all is lost.
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