By Praghosa dasa

The morning session started with Prahladananda Swami presenting his paper “Duties of GBC and Guru in ISKCON”

This paper challenged the audience to reflect on whether the guru in ISKCON is properly situated under the authority of the GBC. And if there is not proper alignment on this point then how to rectify it and if it isn’t rectified what is the fallout likely to be?

[link to PAS’s paper]

After the presentation of the paper the plenary group broke up into 6 smaller groups who further discussed the details of the paper. After an hour those groups came back and presented the results of their discussions to the plenary group.

As a result of this process the ELM have drafted a proposal to the GBC body requesting them to research this subject with the ultimate aim of producing a definitive paper on this issue.

Next item on the agenda was “A Strategy for ISKCON Europe” this was a topic that has been discussed at the previous two ELM’s and Sivarama Maharaja presented that the more we can co-operate on a continental level the better it will be for all of us. This co-operation would not involve any centralisation of funds or management but rather it would entail sharing of experience, skills and expertise. It would also involve making sure that our official statements etc., are consistent and that we don’t embarrass each other now that European borders are more and more becoming non existent.

One example of such co-operation over the last while have been the collective efforts of the European yatras in helping France and Germany.

Other items discussed on the second day were the potential closure of the European CPO office and what could be done to keep it up and running, much progress was made on this but a final conclusion is still pending.

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