50 Books For the 50th Anniversary: A Follow-Up Memo
Hare Krsna, I have a few comments to make on the ten guidelines complied by Divyasimha for ISKCON's 50/50 campaign.
1. The "How to" which you have prescribed is very good for those wishing to do the street in the traditional ISKCON way. The challenge is how to engage the maybe 80% of congregation and ex-ashram members who are not on that level of sadana or maybe none at all! Otherwise we run the risk of making sankitana exclusive to the few.
2. I purposely left out any specific instructions in the "How to" on the back of the leaflet and on the website, apart from discussing distribution options with your local temple, because there are many devotees on different levels of sadana, and different methods of distribution may be prescibed accordingly.
3. Those who are not 100% fixed up can man book tables, and sponsor to give to friends, relatives and people at work. Sponsor for prisons, hospitals and hotels.
I would like to share one story from the UK about some nondevotees doing book distribution.
In Rochester, we have an ISKCON charity shop. Many charities raise funds in the UK by renting a shop and selling old clothing and other items donated by the public. Its traditional that people wanting to do something to help charities volunteer their time to help in these shops, and in Rochester they volunteers like this. They are not devotees and not even vegetarians or anything. During the Marathon, Mukunda put a book table outside the shop and had these volunteers man it. He had written on some cards a few lines about the different books so they could tell interested people. If anyone was more seriously interested they were to be directed to Mukunda. In this way books were going out and the volunteers were getting very happy! Soon many of the volunteers were manning the book table. The manager couldn't get them to stop!
This proves the point that anyone can be engaged in SKP, even non-devotees!
So I would leave it up to the local temples to prescribe how to do SKP according to the time, place and circumstance, otherwise we run the risk of discouraging the majority of our congregation devotees from taking part.
Your servant,
Titiksu dasa UK
