When different devotees quote Srila Prabhupada’s different quotes to support their positions, how can we know what he would have wanted?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
the question is that sometimes different devotees may go to different aspects of Sri Prabhupada to try to substantiate their points and because Prabhupada did this so we can do this or Prabhupada said this so we can do it and sometimes it becomes very difficult to determine what actually Prabhupada would have wanted and how do we know that whether we are faithfully following Sri Prabhupada or not so with respect to what I am asking, Prabhupada himself has made different statements at different times, so how exactly can we know that we are following Sri Prabhupada’s way so one thing to understand is that rather than thinking of following thinking of the parampara as one single line we can think of it as a circle within which there are various lines that can be drawn that means it’s not that Prabhupada wanted only one thing to be done, there are multiple things Prabhupada wanted and as long as they are broadly in the framework of what Sri Prabhupada had wanted that is perfectly ok one important point is that coat hunting is a favorite intellectual pastime of polemic scorned devotees polemic means those who like debates that Prabhupada said this Prabhupada said this so many words you just have to show such strong debates and then the end result of it is that lot of time gets wasted and important, no no time gets wasted not in the sense that we should not study Prabhupada’s book, point which I am making is that the adversarial spirit leads to a lot of unnecessary animosity so yes we need to look at what Prabhupada has said but also we have to understand the cultural context in which Prabhupada existed so I will give a simple example of how small differences can get unnecessarily aggravated and then if there is maturity they can resolve so just a few months ago there was this election so I was asked this question on my website, should devotees vote in the election or not so then that national election that went there so now I am working with this controversy of the vote so he said this is a very important topic so then I gave a talk about theme of our voting elections is a social responsibility of devotees then I explained one now I am not going into specific reasoning all that talk has been transcripted there on my website and then it was it was transmitted, it has got thousands of several thousand views and then apparently one of Bhaktirikas Maharaj’s disciples sent it to Bhaktirikas Maharaj and then Bhaktirikas Maharaj said this is nonsense now our social responsibility is to establish Varanasi it is to establish Varanasi and to say that it is a vote election is a social responsibility it just shows how far this devotee has gone from understanding of Prabhupada’s mission and now what happened is now when some of Bhaktirikas Maharaj’s disciples and followers they saw that they came back and Maharaj was quite reasoned Maharaj was not angry, Maharaj knows me personally I have done a lot of editing services for him I have discussed many things also so he spoke in a quite objective analytical strong speech but then several of his disciples came and wrote hyper critical comments on my YouTube video on my website and somehow if we think we are philosophically right often we tend to think our philosophical rightness gives us the right to abandon human courtesy also so it is very critical and then on top of that what happened in order to just create more views they put both the videos next to each other so Chaitanya Charan voting is a social responsibility Bhaktirikas Swamy voting is not a social responsibility so like that Dabdali newspaper you had a point and counter point so then some of the devotees who follow me on website there is one devotee in America who hears all my lectures he got so angry he went and wrote a heavy comment on Bhaktirikas Maharaj’s video that sort of decreased the anger of Bhaktirikas Maharaj’s disciples finally I decided this has become too much so I called the Bhaktirikas Maharaj to remove those videos from there there is no need to create a controversy then I wrote a letter to Bhaktirikas Maharaj along with explaining and then the next day Bhaktirikas Maharaj called me and I told him I had no idea there was such a controversy and then he said yes I was just giving a class somebody asked me this question and I gave the answer and he said I did not think very seriously about it and there is no need for a controversy at all and then we had a nice almost 45 minutes to talk on the phone and then we thought how to resolve the controversy and finally Maharaj said I will myself make a video and then you put it along with your video so then Maharaj spoke Maharaj said actually Maharaj was very reasonable he approached me directly he said that Chetan Charan called me and said that this has become a controversy he said that actually I don’t see anything wrong if Vaishnavas have differences of opinion when both are quoting Shastra and both are trying to understand the will of Puru Sadhu Shastra on points where there is nothing specifically stated explicitly stated so he said that there is nothing wrong he said that our movement will be more intellectually vibrant when devotees can say that I disagree so he said I know Chetan Charan is a thoughtful, learned Vaishnava and he has argued his own way and I have been my argument devotees can decide on their own and he said if Chetan Charan hypothetically said he will never say this, but if he said that admit it is alright then I won’t say I disagree he will say he is wrong I guess so the point which he is making is there are certain core principles which are unchanging and with respect to those core principles there is rightness and wrongness but with respect to things where there is no way if Prabhupada has made two statements going this way and that way also so actually I talked before this happened, I talked to Bhakti Samyukh Maharaj Bhakti Samyukh Maharaj also went very strongly that we should vote in elections so now Bhakti Kashyap Maharaj had made the point in his video that we will get karma for whatever we do so that for example if we vote for a particular government and then say that government allows confederate to go on then we will get the karma then in my response I had made the point I was respectful to him but then I was also making scriptural point I said that our scriptures also tell us that inaction is also an action so if by just casting one vote there is a possibility that a government can come in which can stop cow slaughter then by not doing that also we will get karma so by no means these are situations which are delicate and when there is nothing clear whether this is right or this is right then he said that we can have differences of opinion and we should be able to have the discourse in a respectful manner so my point is that often senior devotees have differences I am not a senior devotee when he put those two together I said that your idea of having excitement in the devotee community is good it should be between equals it should be between two sanyasis, two gurus you cannot have it between a brahmachari and a sanyasi it will sound offensive so Maharashtra clarified that some devotees wrote to Chetan Chahar and said how dare you perversely oppose bhakti kashyap so he said he did not oppose me, I opposed him because his video came first, mine came second so Maharaj was very candid about the whole thing so the point which I am making is that often young devotees they make too much of a difference among senior devotees they make that difference to be much bigger than what it needs to be so overall then I wrote that when I said voting is a social responsibility for young devotees so what Maharaj understood is that he focused on the word responsibility that means that you have to do it my point was I said it is a social responsibility not a spiritual responsibility spiritual responsibility is something which we have to do but social responsibility devotees may or may not do it responsibly so if they feel inspired they can vote if they don’t feel inspired they need not vote so I said I am not saying that we have to do something I am saying that there are some devotees who are saying that we should not vote at all so I just wanted to create intellectual room for those devotees who by their own volition felt inspired to vote and those who feel inspired to vote it’s not that they are deviating from Prabhupada’s teachings so for those who want to vote for those who don’t want to vote Prabhupada’s house is big enough to accommodate both so overall it resolved very amicably the point which I am making over here is that there are core principles on which we cannot have difference voting but on those points where there are where Acharya Gupta has made multiple statements then there will always be multiple positions and we cannot expect everybody to agree and we should not consider disagreement to be to be a disaster we should not make disagreement into disaster also by unnecessarily raising the temperature of the confrontation keep things calm and discuss respectfully and you go your way, I do mine so it is not that Prabhupada’s house is only one land Prabhupada’s house is like an umbrella and as long as what our devotees do is overall within the ambit of Prabhupada’s instructions that is good so in general in our early stages of spiritual life we follow our devotee, follow our devotee authority our spiritual master and other type of authorities and overall we develop our our intellectual capacity our thinking ability and by that we understand ok this is according to Prabhupada’s teachings how things are being done and overall we will be able to think ourselves and also be able to understand things now we may not feel comfortable in some things like for example now I am working quite closely with Bhakti Samaj Maharaj so now Bhakti Samaj Maharaj, he told me Radha Maharaj asked him, Bhakti Samaj Maharaj asked Prabhupada Maharaj, but you know Radha Maharaj doesn’t feel pretty like I said so then Radha Maharaj was sometimes being criticized for the mid-day meal for the scornful to be committed so Radha Maharaj asked him Bhakti Samaj Maharaj told me about this so he said that you know, he asked me what is my opinion about this so Bhakti Samaj Maharaj said, Maharaj I understand the need for this in today’s society and as a PR measure as a measure for increasing the value, the appeal of the scorn in our community so I understand this and if somebody does that I have no objection but I would prefer not to do it so Radha Maharaj was completely okay so then I talked to Bhakti Samaj Maharaj and I told him, Maharaj I feel that the scornful to be doing this and Maharaj did not insist that you know, why are you opposing he said yes, that’s understandable I gave him my reasons why I felt like that and he accepted the reasons were valid but that is not the only way the scorn has to go it can go in another way so in Chowpatty, mid-day meal is in a big way there in fact it’s founded over there you know, Radhakrishna Puri is there but Bengal doesn’t have that Pune doesn’t have that but Kolkata has that that is up to the inspiration and inspiration and understanding of the individual and it doesn’t have to think that it’s not that say Bhakti Samaj Maharaj is not doing that he’s not deviating from his spiritual path these are issues on which devotees can have differences over and they should be able to live with those differences and then they should be able to move on in their life there are, I’ll conclude this answer at one point, all of us in our spiritual life have to choose our battles we have to choose our battles so what are the areas which I want to focus my energy on and I want to make a substantial contribution and there may be things also which you feel are wrong but do I have the power to change them and am I really certain that they are wrong if I am not, better let me not spend my energy on that let me put my energy in in doing practical things so actually that way somehow I’ll understand so the whole point is that whenever some spiritual masters have some differences actually or some senior devotees have some differences at their level usually there is not much animosity they understand but at a younger level there is unnecessarily more differences so at one time there were two spiritual masters who had some differences over now this happened in Russia there is one family so the husband and wife were initiated by these two spiritual masters so what happened is the husband told his wife that your spiritual master is related to Prabhupada so reject him and take me as your spiritual master so generally we if there is some conflict especially there is some difference of opinion on things on which Prabhupada’s will is not absolutely clear then rather if we don’t have much direct TX take in that debate keep a distance from it and if we have something that is TX take then better meet some senior devotees and get a much better understanding and overall choose your way there are controversies you know it’s called Kalpataru so in this Kalpataru if you want respect which other organizations will be there you just come into the room and everybody goes down with you you will get more respect than anyone else anywhere else you often get more money you get more money than anyone else if you want power you can get more power than anyone else disciples give their life and so it’s a Kalpataru if you want controversy you can get more controversy in the material world and in ISKCON if you want Krishna you will get Krishna also so everybody focus on I have come here to get Krishna so let me just focus on try to do my bhakti and get Krishna and try to share Krishna with others