25th February 2016, Mayapur, India
By Romapada Das
On the second day of the ISKCON Leadership Sanga, Praghosa Das, the GBC Chairman presented several quotes of how Srila Prabhupada’s appearance was predicted in many scriptures and spiritual masters. Titled, ‘The greatest story ever told’, his presentation pointed out the five steps Srila Prabhupada had taken to make his institution more effective:
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Founding ISKCON
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Accepting the honorific title ‘Prabhupada’
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Establishing his role as the ‘Founder Acharya’
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Creating the GBC
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Setting up Mayapur as ISKCON’s world headquarters
Praghosh Das appealed to the delegates to become a part of the ISKCON 50-50 project which is an initiative to ask every ISKCON devotee to distribute 50 books in the year 2016.
“Our central challenge is to cooperate together to spread the Krishna consciousness movement,” he concluded.
Bhakticharu Swami delivered a talk on the importance of ISKCON as an institution that Prabhupada established to secure the movement for future generations. “Srila Prabhupada is not only the Founder Acharya of ISKCON, but also the Acharya for all devotees for all times,” he said. “Everyone in ISKCON has to serve as subservient servants of Prabhupada. That is why the institution he established is so important.”
Gopal Bhatta Das and Pancharatna Das made a presentation on a global exercise they were undertaking on consolidating the ISKCON brand. “We have created a brand with the accumulation of all the actions, words and interactions we have had all these years,” explained Gopal Bhatta Das. “We have had some positive branding and some challenging ones. But there is a lot of the world out there that does not know us.”
Gopala Bhatta Das explained that Prabhupada had been consistently thinking of branding ISKCON in many different ways. “While branding ISKCON, we should not forget the basic seven principles given by Prabhupada. They form our core branding element. For the global branding exercise, we will launch after we seek input from all of you today, we have to go back to our sources: the words of Prabhupada.”
After the plenary sessions, delegates rushed to attend the seminar sessions which were running in parallel in 12 different venues.
THINK 50! Act 50!