By: HG Harikirtan Dasa

Daiva Varnashrama mission seminars were conducted for ISKCON Leads students from 17thApril to 19th April, 2019.

ISKCON Leads is the GBC initiative, India to train competent devotees in various aspects of leadership and thus create quality leaders to efficiently push forward the mission of spreading Krishna consciousness.

Daiva Varnashrama Dharma was chosen as one of important subjects. This was therefore presented to the last four batches of ISKCON leads students. This year a team consisting of HG Madhav prabhu, HG Ram Lakshman prabhu, HG Ananta tirtha prabhu, HG Shubhananda Hari prabhu and my humble self were facilitators.

This year the three-day seminars had three topics:

Each day we had discussions on what, why, and how aspects of the chosen subject.

First day- Introduction to Varnashrama Dharma and Building Varnashrama Communities.
I took an introductory session on what varnashrama dharma is about. HG Madhava Prabhu took the next session very expertly elucidating why we need to establish daiva varnashrama dharma through the words of Srila Prabhupada from a conversation from the book “Speaking on Varnashrama,” compiled by HG Hare Krishna devi dasi. HG Ramlakshman Prabhu gave a very informative power point presentation on activities of ISKCON Daiva Varnashrama Ministry (IDVM- India). In the last session, the students were divided into groups to discuss and to give presentation on ‘Steps to build varnashrama communities’.
Each session was embedded with a lot of interesting questions and answers.

Second day: Education is first! (to establish varnashrama)
After a session of introduction to varnashrama education, HG Madhav Prabhu gave a mind boggling interactive session on the ‘Critique on the modern education systems’. Later there was a wonderful series of presentations by different groups on ‘Steps to build Varnashrama communities’. Later facilitators gave their feedback on the presentation.

Third day: First is Food! (for developing varnashrama communities)
First session discussed why attaining self sufficiency in food plays an important role in building varnashrama communities.
HG Madhav prabhu gave a vivid explanation of Holistic agriculture techniques and also excerpts from Srila Prabhupada’s lecture clippings related to this topic were also played.
HG Anantatirtha prabhu gave an interesting thought provoking session on “Practical implementation of holistic agriculture techniques and importance of tradition village technologies.”
Later HG Ram Lakshman prabhu gave an engrossing presentation on ‘OM Sri Surabhi Campaign’.
Also a small session on “Get involved” was presented to encourage different existing preaching efforts like IYF, congregation preaching, padayatra, etc to support varnashrama mission; different avenues for individuals’ and preaching yatras to get involved in varnashrama mission were discussed.
A group photo was taken. And finally oral feed backs and written feed backs were sought. HG Shubhananda Hari prabhu was manning the book table and he distributed around sixty and more Varnashrama books. The program concluded with
HG Vamsivadana prabhu, the coordinator for ISKCON leads program giving vote of thanks.