Should devotees read news?

From Gourav Shaw P:

What does this quote mean?

“One should avoid ordinary topics of novels and fiction, but there is no injunction that one should avoid hearing ordinary news.” (Srila Prabhupada, Teachings of Lord Chaitanya, Chp 12)

Again it is mentioned “that one should avoid hearing ordinary news.”
Many devotees also mentioned that there is no need of listening regular news,reading newspaper…..But we being student should know news to grow our GK which is necessity of any competitive examination now-a-days……..Please elaborate the topic….

Podcast:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
I had a follow up question Hare Krishna question from Gaurav Shol Prabhu what does Prabhupada’s statement that there is no injunction against hearing ordinary news means can devotees read the daily news? I have heard that many senior devotees say that there is no need to read news but then if your students have to study have general knowledge to appear for competitive exams then how can we acquire that knowledge? answer the quote from Shol Prabhupada which I quoted among my Prabhupada course in spiritual scientist site was that one should not one should avoid ordinary topics of novels and fiction but there is no injunction that one should avoid hearing ordinary news this is from teachings of Lord Chaitanya chapter 12 so the point here is that Shol Prabhupada is making a difference between within material literature also there is spiritual literature which is what we should primarily focus in reading but then there is material literature so at a broad level we differentiate between material and spiritual but apart from that differentiation there can be various levels of differentiation also because there can within material there are things which are useful and there are things which are less useful and within material also there is goodness, there is passion, there is ignorance so just the simplicity difference between spiritual and material it is not enough it is not adequate, it is important it is valid but it is not complete so within material knowledge there is, there are various kinds of knowledge so novels and fiction often these have these are just for entertainment often there is sex and violence and all such things in this quite a lot and they do not add anything to certainly they don’t have any spiritual value but even they do not have any material utility, so Prabhupada is saying that one should not read these things but then as far as hearing ordinary news is concerned then if we are living in this world for functional purposes we need to be aware of what’s happening in this world so it’s not, we don’t have to make a virtue out of ignorance of news the defining quality of a devotee is not that a devotee does not read news, it’s not that if say we don’t read the news for a month or six months or even a year that in and of itself is going to make us an advanced devotee there is no need to make ignorance of material things as a virtue, ignorance of material things as a virtue, so if we are in the world and we have to interact with the world then we will have to have some functional knowledge of the world so in general many just glancing through the headlines and nowadays if we are on computers, many computers many news, many news sites provide feed, daily feed they just give the headlines and being aware, just glancing through the headlines once a day, it is fairly good enough to have a broad idea of what is happening and then only if it is required we can read something so now the important point is to not let ourselves get distracted to not let our precious time get wasted so we have to be purposeful in what we do so many times people read newspaper or newspaper for the sake of entertainment ok let’s find out what’s happening here let’s find out what’s happening there and then they keep exploring exploring, exploring so things may seem interesting but it’s largely irrelevant for us so if so we have to be purposeful when I am reading if we are going to read news at first level, ok at a basic level I want to be aware at a basic level of current affairs, if there is a war somewhere, if there is a bomb blast somewhere, if there is a curfew somewhere, if there is a natural calamity somewhere, we need to know about these things, so we shouldn’t make ignorance into a virtue and having a quick glance at the headlines to be aware of what’s happening that is perfectly ok, in many ways it is desirable also, now beyond that, again the point is be purposeful, just like when we are walking on the road it’s not that we want to take in every sight which is there on the road but if we are going to walk on the road we have to be aware, ok this vehicle is coming this way, this is the road which is, this is the footpath this is the road and basically we have to be aware just as when we are walking on the road we have to be aware, similarly when we are walking in life journey we have to be aware about what’s happening in the world we are living in but this is at one level a preliminary awareness beyond that there is obsession with these things, often in the material in the worldly media people get obsessed by these things politics, sports movies, these are things which obsess people and they keep talking and chit-chatting about these things as devotees we don’t have to get caught in such chit-chat and that is very clear ग्रामने वार्ता ना शुनिवे, ग्रामने वार्ता ना कहिए हमें कथा ना शुनिवे, ग्रामने ग्रामने वार्ता ना कहिए, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu tells that don’t get caught in one day talks, so certainly there is no need for devotees to get involved in endless discussions about political fates of things or the predictions about who will be the world cup winner or things like that so obsession with the news is undesirable and that obsession happens if we get into the nitty-gritties too much, so beyond that now if there is a particular purpose say if we want general knowledge then does that mean that we have to read a lot of news to acquire general knowledge? No, first of all we can if we are going to give a particular kind of exam then we can find out what are the kind of questions that are asked for it and we can streamline our reading accordingly so whatever it is that we have to study, there are general knowledge books which help us to enhance the general knowledge that is required and if we want to prepare for say group discussions on general knowledge topics then quite often the headlines, the sports pages the movie pages, they are not what are going to help us, then we may read some serious columns, we may read some editorials so it depends on the purpose, so if we have a service which requires us to be aware of news then certainly reading the news purposefully is quite okay, it’s within the purview of our duty purview of our service and similarly Shri Prabhupada himself would read news and he would give scriptural commentary on news quite often and he would ask devotees to give spiritual perspective on news and that’s why Shri Prabhupada if you see his early VTGs, she wrote 1944 to 1955 roughly, when he wrote the pioneer year those VTGs, their starting points are practically nothing but newspaper articles and Prabhupada extensively quoting that in this newspaper this was said about Gandhiji and so for example in a particular newspaper it was said that it was Gandhiji’s birthday and Einstein or somebody else had said that we hope that we wish that instead of it being his 80th birthday it was just his 20th birthday and Prabhupada says yes wishes are sincere and everyone wants to live on forever and we want those whom we respect and love to live on forever but time’s arrow always keeps moving forward and then Prabhupada comes to the irreversibility of time and the temporality of material existence or even after independence when there was a lot of conflict and misery a newspaper editor wrote editor wrote that it seemed that in the will of providence there is there is no arrangement for peace and prosperity for India and Prabhupada took that and Prabhupada said this applies not only to India and not only to post-independence it applies to the very nature of material existence so Prabhupada was reading the news and then was giving scriptural commentary based on the news, scriptural commentary scriptural commentary and that’s what in the back to world modern magazine today also the Vedic observer column does but this requires a deep understanding of scripture and we have to develop Shastra Chakshu that means we need to see scripture internalize scripture so much and then we can afterwards see the world with the eyes of scripture and when we see the world with the eyes of scripture then we can communicate to people in their terms scriptural truth so for example if you just tell you are not the body or the soul then people may or may not understand it but then if you tell people that suppose if a robo say a computer if in the news there is an event of a robo defeating a chess champion and then that is an event and you know see the chess champion was just depressed after losing but the robo had no happiness in it so the robo may have done the activities which seem to be intelligent but there is no consciousness and the consciousness comes from the soul so then that will catch people’s attention so now this requires a deep rooted understanding of scripture and the capacity to see scriptural truths in worldly events this is not very easy to do and that’s why our primary study should be scripture and after we are deep rooted in scripture then we can try to see with Shastra Chakshu with the eyes of scripture into the world so now I have talked about three levels there is no need to make a virtue of ignorance if somebody does not have a service with the world and somebody is living as a nunciate in an ashram and the service is mostly like a pujari or service does not have much to do with people in the world then one may not need the news at all so it’s not but that in and of itself doesn’t have to be made into a virtue and that in and of itself does not lead to spiritual advancement so a basic level of awareness is quite okay then if somebody is having a particular service a particular duty a particular job or studies where one requires general knowledge surely one can study but be purposeful instead of just opening a newspaper or turning on a TV channel to find out if there is something interesting we should actually decide what is relevant to my study what is relevant and then study that, be purposeful that way we will not waste time in irrelevant things and thirdly if we are deeply rooted in scripture then we can also see through the eyes of scripture the contemporary events and help people whose minds are anyway caught in, so people’s minds are here and they are caught in the contemporary events and they find scripture incomprehensible so if we can show scriptural truths in the things that are in their mind already then they can connect with scripture better, so that is how scriptural truths can be communicated to people through spiritual commentary and contemporary events so in these three ways we can decide according to our time, place, circumstance and with the guidance of our seniors how much we can involve ourselves in news but overall our primary focus should be on Krishna Katha and certainly the endless gossiping and the excitement and the mania that comes with worldly events, that devotees should avoid Thank you, Hare Krishna