Ahimsa hridayananda biography of michael

One of ISKCON's senior acharyas, Hridayananda Dasa Goswami, who has been teaching at the prestigious Berkeley Theological Union for many years, is  promoting a movement within the movement called "Krishna West." His proposal has met with controversy, especially since the GBC at its annual Mayapur meetings effectively "quarantined" him. Rank and file members of the movement have been commenting copiously on the meaning of Hridayananda's proposals, which primarily center around issues of the distinctive Hare Krishna dress, showing that he has definitely struck a nerve.

Hridayananda vehemently protests that he remains true to the teachings of Srila Prabhupada without compromise and that he is using the issue of dress to make Krishna consciousness more palatable to a wider range of people whose prejudices are awakened by strange appearances. In other words, he claims that he is using the dress issue as a kind of subterfuge to bypass people's bias in order to preach pure Krishna bhakti. Nevertheless, though he presents his proposals in this way, his arguments clearly go beyond dress: they subvert the very concept of "Vedic culture" that the founder of ISKCON promoted in his disciples, almost completely marginalizing its very Indianness or the meaning and significance of its

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