Srila Prabhupada and the Vaisnava Tradition of Scriptural Commentary: Serving the Words of His Predecessors.
Gopiparanadhana Dasa
Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada was the founder and organiser of a large worldwide religious movement; that he developed it in just twelve years, all after his seventieth birthday, shows that he was not only practical, innovative and determined but also spiritually empowered. Although these are valid reasons to think highly of Srila Prabhupada, he always de-emphasised his own abilities, preferring to be judged on the more objective grounds of his bona fideallegiance to the teachings of the Vaisnava tradition he represented. He did not credit his preaching success to any special abilities of his own. As he once said, ‘I don’t claim that I am a pure devotee or perfect, but my only qualification is that I am trying to follow the instruction of the perfect.’[1] In any case, spiritual realisation is essentially a private matter, not open to objective evaluation. There are too many false saints who allow their disciples to fanatically advertise them as much greater than they really are. In the opinion of orthodox Vaisnavas, the saintliness of a person can be known only by someone just as saintly. To publicly establish spiritual authority, then, a teacher, rather than making an open spectacle of his intimate ecstasies, should simply speak philosophically on the basis of what previous authorities have said in scripture and on reputable commentaries of scripture. Srila Prabhupada wanted his own authority to be accepted according to how faithfully he lived up to that standard.
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