October 2004
The Cape Town weekend retreat was a great idea to refocus the entire devotional community. Expertly organized by the grhastha couple Dhruva das and Parijata dasi, we all headed down the coast two hours, where a modest seaside resort became the yatra’s rented headquarters. Fifty devotees attended for three days of Krishna Conscious camaraderie. More devotees came just for the day, Saturday or Sunday.
A great way to escape the city, the retreat also enabled devotees to share with each other in a relaxed atmosphere. Besides the mainstays of kirtan, prasada, and seminars, there were also recreational activities designed to bring devotees together. Communal sessions were held in the meeting hall, while the beachlands facilitated contemplative wanderings and japa walks.
My seminars addressed the need to apply Krishna Consciousness in our daily life with a cool head and sincere heart. Also, Saturday was the disappearance day of Raghunatha das Goswami, Raghunath Bhatta Goswami, and Krsnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, so I spoke of them and their extraordinary contributions.
In other seminar sessions, I directly addressed the problems and needs of the devotional community. On a whiteboard I listed the assets or advantages of the Cape Town yatra, and then the liabilities or negatives.
The advantages included an outstanding location, a spacious building, impressive achievements in previous years, and a supportive congregation willing to pay off an outstanding debt. Although these working grhastas were certainly not responsible for this debt of approx 90,000 USD, nevertheless without bitterness they banded together to tackle it. I told them I hadn’t seen such a noble, positive attitude anywhere else in the world. Often, when financial problems somehow arise, the congregation becomes cynical: “Why throw good money after bad money; no matter who's in charge, the financial problems will remain.” But the Cape Town grhasthas responded with admirable tolerance and devotion. I was deeply impressed.
Liabilities especially had arisen in the outreach programmes — all sagging as compared to recent golden years. The previous temple president was quite talented and industrious, and he had expertly attracted many competent persons. But after his transferral to important service in the USA, the book distribution plummeted, and the once booming student clubs at the universities were declining in membership. Moreover, ISKCON Cape Town’s financial bread and butter programme — university prasada catering — was ailing. In reaction to the present leadership vacuum, several key devotees were set to head overseas. And last but not least, there was no proper arrangement for receiving and cultivating guests.
I pointed out that Cape Town ISKCON had an identity crisis: did they have a temple or preaching centre? A temple has as its main focus gorgeous Deity worship. Certainly a successful temple reaches out to its city with vigorous preaching; yet if the Deity worship is substandard, the temple has failed in a core purpose. A preaching centre, however, completely focuses on dynamic outreach and cultivation — Deity worship may not even be there at all. I recommended that the devotees decide exactly what was Cape Town.
Finally I pointed out that the devotees living in the building should not see it primarily as their home -- where they were automatically entitled to live, if they so desired. Rather, they should mainly see the building as a reception and cultivation centre for guests. That means for the proper servicing of these guests, some staff or hosts resided in the building. Devotees should have the attitude that they are living in the building for the sake of the guests.
After ventilating all the key issues, I left the ball in their lap. Later, devotees said that if any one of the local devotees had brought up any one of these points, a grand battle would have erupted. Some weeks after the retreat, I received a nice letter from a devotee who had attended: “All the devotees greatly appreciate the way Maharaja made us really think about what it is that we are doing. So that we don't just do it for the sake of doing it, or because that's what we are told to do, but that we try to understand the reality of devotional practice and how to apply it practically in our lives. This has always been a great challenge for me, and I still feel that I need to develop this way of thinking.”
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Besides Cape Town (see photos) and Durban, while I was in South Africa, I also visited Lenasia and Pretoria — both adjoining Johannesburg. The Lenasia temple is in the former Indian-only sector of apartheid days. True to its locale, its congregation is almost completely Indian. Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, has a very active preaching center in the embassy and educational section of the city. (see photos) The enthusiastic congregation of both Indians and Africans is led by Syamasundara das, a householder who by day is the corporate division head of Daimler-Chrysler in South Africa (the auto-industry conglomerate of Chrysler and Mercedes Benz). A selfless, humble yet dynamic devotee, Syamasundara is a model householder and ISKCON leader, who is seeking to reach all South Africans with the message of Lord Caitanya.
Before departing the Johannesburg Airport, down-under bound, I stopped off at a devotee’s preaching centre and home in the formerly notorious Soweto ghetto. (See photos) During apartheid days, Soweto was the largest African “township”--as the old regime called such forced concentration areas. By law then, each Soweto house had to have an adjoining corridor on its side wide enough for a military tank to squeeze through, so that in case of any African uprisings, the army could not only control the streets but also get in between the houses, to root out rebels. Nowadays those corridors alongside the houses have gardens or garages in their place. After lunch prasada at Mahaprabhu’s house, Bhakta Carlos and I left Soweto for the Jo-berg airport and the 20 hours or so traveling time to Christchurch, New Zealand.