What exactly is a retired sannyasi?
This is sort of about Satsvarupa’s most recent letter about his fall down and about GBC’s punishments for that fall down. They claim that “Satsvarupa dasa Goswami (SDG) will assume the status of retired sannyasi and retired disksa guru.” If you’re not familiar with it, go here.
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I have a friend who is a retired professor. He used to be a professor, but not anymore. He’s retired.
I guess this can apply to a retired diksa guru. He used to be a guru, but not anymore. He’s … retired. On second thought, that does sound weird. But I can at least wrap my head around it.
And while there are a bunch of ex-diksa gurus, as far as I know, only one retired diksa guru (SDG). I think there must be some important difference going on there, I’m just not sure what it is.
An ex-diksa guru’s disciples take shelter of another guru (or more than likely just leave). But a retired diksa guru’s disciples are still his disciples. They can take shelter of him as guru, even though he isn’t qualified to make more disciples. Sort of guru-lite, I guess.
This was all a little confusing until I tried to figure out what a “retired sannyasi” was. Then it got downright surreal.
Applying the same logic of “I used to be a sannyasi, but now I’m not… I’m retired” seems like it would work. There are many ex-sanyasis in ISKCON. But with SDG, he seems to still be a sannyasi (and thus not an ex-sannyasi). I guess I’m not really sure why or how or what they’re even trying to get at here.
What exactly does a “retired sannyasi” do? How does that work? Wouldn’t that just be… a householder… sort of? Typically, when a sannyasi falls down (and admits it), he either totally leaves Krishna consciousness, or (hopefully) sticks around, puts on white, gets married and becomes a normal and often fairly likable devotee.
But what the heck is going on here?
Is a retired sannyasi different from an ex-sannyasi? How? And more importantly, why? Is a retired sannyasi still to be called “maharaja”? Or do we call him “prabhu”? Do we bow down to him or just offer him the respects afforded any vaisnava? And if we are supposed to treat him like a sannyasi, what’s the point of being retired?
And another thing… concerning Satsvarupa das… Goswami/Prabhu (depending on the answers to my questions), what does this do to the validity of Srila Prabhupada Lilamrta? Will ISKCON still be recognizing this work as bona fide?
I remember when the devotee who wrote The Seventh Goswami (Biography on Bhaktivinoda Thakura) fell down (or left ISKCON, I can’t remember which). Immediately, we were urged to not read that book, even though, prior to the fall down/leaving, we were encouraged to read it. So, are we going to be urged not to read Lilamrta? Or is this fall down somehow not as bad as other fall downs? 
I’m not trying to be snarky, these really are honest questions. I think some guidelines on what to do when popular devotees fall down is in order. Since Satsvarupa admits to behavior not fitting of a sannyasi since 1978, does this nix nearly all of his bibliography? Are we still allowed to read it? Should it still be considered bona fide?
And lastly, will someone please tell me how we are supposed to know when someone is pure. Yes, I know, sastra will tell us, Krishna will tell us. But we mostly what we do is rely upon the GBC to help us. And, no offense, but… their track record isn’t all that great in this respect. So, what should I do?
Oh, and just a statement. In Krishna consciousness, we have a lot of rules. Most of us don’t follow all of them. Is there any way we could just be honest about that for once? I think we’d all be a lot happier.
