Although Srila Prabhupada described devotee communities as the future of our movement, this is an area where we are somehow lagging. There are a few successful communities around the world, but in most cases, our communities are not exactly the most eloquent examples of prosperity. Often there are just a few dozen families struggling to make ends meet, or communities that work as tourist spots. We are somehow still a little far from the ideal of sustainable communities that Prabhupada was speaking about.

The idea of sustainable communities goes in the direction of something else that is important in spiritual life, that is stability. This is something important when we speak about developing the mode of goodness that is so important for our spiritual development. As long as we are dependent on the regular society for our basic maintenance, we will be intrinsically connected with all the crises it goes through. If on the other hand, we can produce the basics and just trade on the surpluses, our existence becomes much more stable. This is especially important when we speak about the long term.

One of the reasons for this lack of development in our communities is that although we have a good amount of Brahmanas, as well as good-natured devotees willing to work, we historically have a lack of good managers (Ksatriyas) and especially of pious Vaisyas.

Many of our communities fail because devotees move to the land, but can’t find occupations and thus can’t get enough resources to provide for their families. In this situation, many go back to the cities to work in offices or factories, while a few insist on the land, becoming impoverished individuals who are not a very inspiring example either.

With the exception of communities that can attract wealthy donors or communities that can attract a lot of visitors and thus thrive in the niche of spiritual tourism, we can practically see that most of our communities tend to be very poor, with idle devotees frequently falling into tama-guna.

The word “Vaisya” became a loaded word in our movement, usually associated with devotees with dubious moral standards doing unscrupulous business. To call someone a Vaisya in many places is almost an insult. This is however one of the reasons our communities don’t work. In the varnasrama system, the Vaisyas are the ones who produce wealth. Any society that doesn’t possess a sufficient number of Vaisyas will be very poor. We can see a practical example of it by examining the history of capitalist and communist countries. Although facing many moral and spiritual problems, capitalist societies tend to be wealthy, because they stimulate entrepreneurship, while communist societies restrict businesses and thus tend to be very poor. Of course, in the case of capitalist societies wealth tends to come at the price of decaying moral standards, but in our case, we have the opportunity to do something different thanks to the spiritual knowledge we try to practice.

When there are talented entrepreneurs, who can create businesses and systems to produce wealth and give jobs to the other devotees, efficiently employing the manpower and then distributing the generated wealth, it’s very easy to create communities, be it on farms or even in the cities. It can be eighter self-sustainable ecological communities or groups in the cities based on products or services, but without a source of jobs and wealth, no community will thrive.

It may be possible to create small asramas of Brahmacharis or Vanaprasthas living in the mountains with only Brahmanas, but when we speak about families (which imply women and children) material assets are necessary, and thus Vaisyas have a central role. Without them, devotees will end up going back to the cities. We have many examples of this.

Therefore, if you have a talent for creating businesses, employing people, and creating wealth, know that you are very necessary and important for our movement.