Prema Padmini dd: "Bureaucratic Attitude" kills the Movement
Prema Padmini dd, the "mother of Bhaktivrksa" writes in a recent diary entry:
The temple presidents and the heads of the brahmacari ashrams all have the same loving, humble mood as do the congregation. We did not perceive any bureaucratic attitude—fatal to the Bhakti-vriksha mood. They perceive themselves not as managers of temple properties and territories, but as servant-leaders of the devotees and potential devotees.Back at our quarters, we talked with Jaya Madhava Prabhu about his devotional life, starting from his brahmacari days with Srila Tamal Krishna Goswami’s Radha-Damodara Bus Party, to his late marriage. He told us about the mood of the American devotees during the time when Srila Prabhupada was still with us: Everyone was loving and caring when they welcomed people to the temples, as Srila Prabhupada had shown them; everyone was enthusiastic and determined to please His Divine Grace. But because they were ignorant of Vedic culture, they made many mistakes, which has caused a lot of distress to the devotees in America. After Srila Prabhupada’s disappearance and various gurus’ fall downs, the mood dissipated; now it needs to be revived.
We commented that Mathuradesh has that same original mood he described, because in our day-to-day lives we were guided by Srila Prabhupada’s books and books written about him, and were far away from distressing events; then Bhakti-vriksha made everything even better, creating an expanding Vaisnava community. This model can be replicated all over the world.
Bhaktivrksa is based on a network model. Notice that Prema Padmini says that "a bureaucratic attitude" (hierarchical organizational paradigm) is fatal to the Bhaktivrksa mood.
Here are two diagrams from my recent ebook On Leadership that demonstrate these two distinct paradigms - first, the hierarchical 'bureaucratic attitude" paradigm:
Unfortunately this model of organization gets imported from the surrounding society and imposed on the movement because (a) people think that as you get bigger you need a more "serious" and "grown-up" organizational model, and mixed in with that (b) this gives people the opportunity to centralize and exercise control, which is fatal to a volunteer movement ("the Bhaktivrksa mood").
Notice that mission does not feature prominently in the hierarchical paradigm. It is something superfluous. In practice this translates into a situation where the mission is used to inspire people to participate in this structure, rather than the structure being used to facilitate their participation in the mission.
And here, the Vedic culture "servant-leadership" paradigm:
The focus here is on your role and your contribution to the common mission (at the center of the diagram), not your position and your entitlement. It's about actual qualification (guna and karma) - how has Krishna empowered you to serve? What is your contribution to the mission?