Sensitivity in preaching amidst natural calamities

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Today we will discuss on the topic of sensitivity in responding to natural calamities. Whenever there are natural calamities, earthquakes or floods, tsunamis, things like this very tragically happen and they take a toll, huge or small, at that time, these raise serious questions about why do such things happen? Why do they wreak havoc in people’s lives? And at such times, it is important for us as devotees to know how to respond properly. I would like to first look at some Shastric examples of how adversities, whether they be natural calamities or other kind of distresses, how in the Shastra there is response to this.
And then we will discuss about how in today’s times we can respond and how certain responses can be appropriate and certain responses can actually be alienating. So now the specific reason that I am addressing this topic is because recently there was this catastrophic earthquake in Nepal and huge toll was taken by that. And after that, in one of my books, OMG, re-answering the questions, there was a question about what is the cause of earthquakes? And that concern was taken by some devotees and was circulated in WhatsApp.
And after that, some devotees expressed some concern whether when the whole world is offering support and condolence and consolation and trying to commiserate, whether our talking about philosophy or talking about how by the law of karma people are suffering their own dues, will this be appropriate or inappropriate? Will this come up as insensitive? So I’ll address this issue after looking at some of the Shastric examples of how adversities are dealt with. Now, if you look at the Bhagavatam, there are not many specific mentions of catastrophic events. But we see that one of the most prominent examples of shortages or what would come to us as natural calamities is in the fourth canto wherein when Pruthu Maharaj is the king, at that time there is a great drought in the kingdom and the citizens come to Pruthu Maharaj and ask him desperately for relief.
This is just as a forest fire burns logs in the fire. Similarly, the digestive fire is burning us from within and we are intolerably scorched by hunger. Now, what does Pruthu Maharaj do at this point? Does he say that, oh, it’s all your karma.
Nothing happens without any past karmic causes. So if this drought is there, it’s your karmic reaction. Suffer it.
Not at all. There is no reference to karma at all in his response to the situation. He immediately arranges for people’s re-education, relief.
He takes extraordinary measures to ensure that abandoned supplies come out from the earth and he rectifies the situation. So what he does is provide relief, not provide any justification for what is happening, that what is happening is itself right and we should just accept it passively. Not at all.
So now there are other forums where Pruthu Maharaj, especially after his glorious sacrifice, a series of sacrifices in which Lord Vishnu himself comes and blesses him. So after that, Pruthu Maharaj gives instructions to his citizens and those instructions contain moral as well as spiritual wisdom and that culminates in devotion service. But on this particular occasion, when there is a drought, there is no mention at all by Pruthu Maharaj that everything is happening because of karma.
So what does this mean? This essentially means that there is a time for education and then there is a time for rectification. That as a king under normal circumstances, he makes sure that there is an abundant forum and facility for the citizens to get spiritual education and that of course would include an understanding of karma, which was widespread and implicit in those times. But at the time of responding to adversity, he does not talk about karma.
He focusses primarily on talking about how one can go beyond the miseries of life by providing practical measures. He does not talk, actually he does. So he lets his actions speak and they speak louder than words in terms of providing relief to people.
Now if we move forward and to look at other similar situations. Before we move forward, let’s first understand one important point that whatever has happened in the past, which may have caused something in the present, we are meant to deal with people not based on whatever karma they may have done in the past life. We are meant to deal with them in a way that is appropriate based on the way they are acting in this life.
So that means that although from a philosophical perspective, it is true that if somewhere there’s a drought or a famine or earthquake, that’s because the people who are there are getting some result of some unknown karmic actions which they may have done in the past. But from this life’s point of view, they are innocent and they deserve help, they deserve relief and that’s what Pootha Maharaj gives. And similarly, we see this attitude of providing relief, not just trying to do some justification for what is happening, several times in the scripture.
Indeed, if we start rationalising whatever happens as having past life causes and don’t look at causes from this life and at the concept of whether it is right or wrong from this life’s point of view, then we would have no justice left at all in this world. Now the king’s responsibility, say when a person commits a crime, is not to blame the victim that because you did something in your past life, that’s why you got this reaction. No, the king’s responsibility is to check the circumstances of this life and if the criminal has committed a crime, then the criminal deserves punishment and the victim deserves compensation.
So the whole system of royal administration and justice which was there in those times, which is there very prominently as is depicted in the video of the Bhagavatam and both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, that is based on an understanding of ensuring justice in this life. So going further, we see that when some calamity occurs, at that time when a person is emotionally traumatised, what people need is emotional support at the very most. That is what they need the most and unless that emotional support is provided, we may well end up alienating the people if we try to give some philosophical education at that time.
So for example, if we look at a very dramatic example that just before the Mahabharata war, Krishna speaks to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita and in the Bhagavad Gita, he states that actually in all situations and happiness and distress, stay equipoised and further he states that amidst all situations, do not become attached and in fact Krishna specifically in the section of 13.8 to 12 when he talks about the characteristics of those in knowledge, he says that one should not be attached to one’s son’s putradaragraha deshu, aratir anabhiswangaha, do not be excessively attached to one’s son, wife or other family member, other relatives and he ate right after during the course of the Kurukshetra war when Abhimanyu dies, at that time Arjuna is devastated and Arjuna he scrambles in grief, falling on the ground when he hears about the death of Abhimanyu and then when he hears about how he was so unjustly, brutally slaughtered and at that time he just blazes and explodes at his brothers and other warriors and even at Krishna, he explodes at his brothers saying that now are your weapons just ornaments, couldn’t you protect my son and then he turns towards Krishna and he says to Krishna, Krishna you could have known this, why didn’t you tell me about this, I would have gone and rescued my son, why didn’t you have, why didn’t you tell me and again he crumbles down, now at this point does Krishna tell Arjuna that oh don’t be attached, don’t be, have you forgotten my instructions in the Bhagavad Gita, are you falling into maya, don’t you know that whatever happens happens by one’s own karma, he doesn’t talk about karma, Krishna’s tone is very sensitive and so is his giving, his speech is very very emotionally sensitive, emotionally nuanced and soothing, Krishna essentially consoles Arjuna, compassionately embraces him and he speaks soothing encouraging words and helps Arjuna pull himself together, so now is it that Krishna is compromising here in terms of speaking the philosophy, no, Krishna is exhibiting sensitivity, this essential sensitivity that needs to be exhibited so that there are basic relationships that are there, it’s not that Arjuna doesn’t know the philosophy, it’s not that Arjuna has forgotten or rejected the philosophy, it’s not that Arjuna has gone into maya, it’s just that at that particular time when the emotions are so strong, at that time one needs support and solace and unless one gets support and solace at that time, one will fall into, one will become emotionally alienated, that means that at different times again there are different responses that are required, there’s a time to educate and then there’s a time to commiserate, so now what essentially was the difference when Arjuna was grief-struck, was emotionally overwhelmed at the start of the Bhagavad Gita and at the start of the Kurukshetra war and when Arjuna was emotionally overwhelmed after the death of Abhimanyu, why did Krishna respond differently, both times we could say that Arjuna was emotionally overwhelmed, so why did Krishna speak philosophy at one particular time and speak basically words of consolation and empathy and sympathy and support at another time without going into any philosophical justification of what happened, because there is always the consideration of deshikala patra, at the start of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna’s crisis was not just emotional, certainly there were emotions that were overwhelming him, but along with the emotional crisis there was also an ethical crisis, he just didn’t know what to do at that time, his question was not why is this happening to me, his question was what am I supposed to do with your time, so although in both situations Arjuna was overwhelmed by grief, the circumstances if we look at them in the holistic way were substantially different and so that’s why the point which I’m making through this discussion is that we need to always respond appropriately according to time and place circumstance, our purpose is to help people come closer to God, not just come closer to God in a self-righteous sense that oh they are fallen and we want to bring them closer to God, but we want to bring them closer to God in a way that provides them relief, in a way that helps them deal emotionally and practically with the catastrophe that has come upon them, we see this further in many other situations in scripture, especially when there is a loss or when there’s great grief, the point is what response centres on what will help that person at that time, it’s not just on speaking the right thing, it’s not just getting it right, it is getting it across, the point is that we have to make sure that we are helping people and not adding to their hurt, so now coming to the current situation, say when natural calamities do occur and unfortunately they do occur with a terribly distressing frequency and now unfortunately we all in our own spiritual lives evolve and 10-12 years ago, I too would have focused much more on the philosophical aspect than the aspect of emotional sensitivity and appropriateness, so along when there was this devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean which caused devastation in Chennai, South India, Sri Lanka and several other places, at that time I wrote an article in response and in that article I compared how much are the number of animals that are slaughtered at that time in the slaughterhouses and then I said that as a retribution to this, that this sort of calamities are inevitable and basically this article which I wrote and I showed it to some senior devotees and actually after a long time, I published it also on my website at that time, but afterwards one senior devotee, he gave me a feedback, he said that the article’s reasoning is good but there is not a drop of compassion in this article, so I was shocked, my default egoist tendency was to defend myself and when we want to, we can always think of examples from scripture to try to justify what our point is, but then after that I actually met a devotee who was, who had gone for relief work after the tsunami and then I talked with him and then I read in the article about, I was just publishing back toward also later about how he went there to lead a sconce food for life initiative and he helped in, so abandoned food had come over there and the source, the in-charge over there, he told Maharaja Yogananda Sri Lanka and he said that what we need right now, food has come in abandoned quantity from various places, but what we need right now is trauma therapy, the people are in such a state of trauma that they just don’t know what their whole life has been devastated and their home is gone, their family is gone, they don’t know what is the purpose for which they are living, so what to do in such a situation, in such a situation, do you have some trauma therapy and Maharaja said yes and he said yes, we have the oldest trauma therapy methods and then he went there and started doing kirtans, soothing gentle kirtans he started doing and gradually people assembled over there, initially when he was chanting Hare Krishna Maha Mantra, people just couldn’t respond because they don’t know, they didn’t know something about Krishna and he asked one of the local devotees and he said, you know people know about Ram over here and this is the place where Lord Ram came and conquered, so then he started singing Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Ram and people started coming over there and he closed his eyes and he prayed to the Lord, please open the door and as the kirtans went on and on and on, people started singing and slowly and again the kirtan was not exuberant in terms of dancing and it was soothing, calming, solace, providing gentleness and then gradually people started clapping and started singing and after some time as he opened his eyes, he saw that yes, the light had come back in people’s eyes, although the devastation was very much a reality and the photos of that event which was published, that particular thing which was published, it was shown that in the background there was this devastation, the roads that were devastated, the houses that were devastated, that had wrecked, the trees that had fallen, all those things were there in the background, but still here there was this group of people who had found relief from the trauma in the holy name, so the point is that we can see the extent of accommodation, rather than just creating, first of all providing food and providing solace also in a way that people can relate with, if not Krishna’s names, then Ram’s names, whatever people can relate with, so the important point is that we need to help people and we need to help people in not just in ways that we think are right in terms of giving philosophical information, we need to help people in ways in which they feel helped, not that they feel crushed by or from further condemnation in the name of karma, so when I read about this article and then I considered my article which I had written earlier, this article had actually blocked tears in my eyes and I realised that although I myself use this approach, it is a grossly inadequate approach, especially when used at a time of calamities and to respond to calamities in the emotional trauma and horror that is there in the wake of the calamity, so now of course there is no one-size-fits-all formula and there can be situations when certain people may be able to, may the trauma may actually set them on existential quest and they may start thinking, questioning deeply what is the meaning of life and that can help them to understand how the Atma is eternal and how beyond our destructible body shells, there is a core that lives eternally and that core can find, that spiritual core can find shelter in God no matter how much our external shelters are devastated, so this is not something which can, this is something which has to be experienced and in the shelter of the holy name, this can be experienced at times, so the important point is that even when philosophy has to be presented, the philosophy needs to be presented in a way that helps people, that helps them understand what is, that helps them feel so nice and sheltered in the time of their devastation, so now the devotees from the Bhaktivedanta hospital may often go along with other teams to, along with support teams from other places to help in providing relief, so there are doctors who go and there are other people who from the call for life or other relief or relief forums associated with this conduct, they often go and offer help during disasters, so even in the Nepal tragedy, many devotees have gone and huge amount of support has been provided from various temples within India and elsewhere to help in, help people in dealing with this calamity, so now someone might at this point say that aren’t we losing an opportunity for providing philosophical education to people, we have to remember that it’s possible that we’re missing an opportunity, but what is much more possible is that we are, we may well be doing anti-breaching if we come off as opportunistic and insensitive and they’re having reports of how after the tsunami in South India and Sri Lanka, there were people who are devastated, their whole life is gone and their homes are gone, most of the family members are gone, the source of livelihood is often gone, the land has also been destroyed, their farmers or whatever, so everything is gone and they don’t know what to live for and at that time there have been some narratives of how some evangelical Christian organisations and their machineries went around to these devastated people telling that you just convert to Christianity you will, we will provide you relief, now we will provide you a home, we will provide you a job, we will provide you whatever is required, you just convert to Christianity and at that time this comes out as so distastefully opportunistic and you know profiting on someone’s misery to try to promote one’s own religion sounds terribly, it isn’t the sound, but it is also terribly insensitive, so now we see that in a different context, not in the religious context, but even in the non-religious context in the recent Nepal earthquake when India took the lead in offering support and this was promoted in the news quite a bit, then there was a response for some kind of outrage almost in the social media that India, the Indian government is using this as an occasion, as a forum for blaming people, as a forum for, as a forum for, sorry not blaming people, as a forum for, as an opportunity for promoting its own glory that oh yeah, we are all, India is offering, India is so good because India is offering so much humanitarian help to America, to Nepal, so this came off as distasteful again, so as devotees our goal, yes, we know based on our scriptures and also based on our experience that people if they come to Krishna and they get Krishna’s shelter, then they will get relief, they will get relief not just from specific natural calamities which they are undergoing right now, but from the calamity filled material existence itself, so that is the verdict of our scripture and to whatever extent we practise Krishna consciousness, that is the verdict of our experience also. At the same time, there is in this world a large number of people who have neither the same level of understanding of faith in scripture, nor do they have the experience that we have and therefore, in such a situation, if we come up as one, if we focus on simply telling people philosophically why it happened and trying to justify what happened, then we come off as not just insensitive and opportunistic, but also very self-congratulatory, that means that oh you are suffering and see we are also clever that we have all the explanations, we are also wise that we have all the explanations, so actually the point is especially at such times and even at other times, people don’t care how much you know, people know how much you care, so if there is an appropriate forum where there are people in the existential quest, at that time we can offer some philosophical answers, but in general when such calamities take place, the important thing is to offer support in whatever way we can and if we want to share some things with our non-devotee friends, then we can share whatever relief work the Krishna Consciousness Movement is doing and focus on that, otherwise we will alienate people because we are at a different level of intellectual understanding and personal spiritual experience as compared to what they are at and although our intention in sharing Krishna Conscious Wisdom may be to help others, even with that good intention, as it is said sometimes that path to hell is paved with good intention, so our good intention may not be good enough, may not turn out to be good enough and it may not help others, so in general based on my own learning experience with respect to the response to tsunamis almost 10-12 years ago, it is important that we be sensitive in responding to such situations and focus primarily on ensuring that we are helping people and whether it is helping in terms of ourselves contributing something, whether it is helping in terms of sharing what help the Krishna Consciousness Movement is providing in such things or on the special occasions when there are people on specific, people who have some specific questions, responding to it with appropriate philosophical explanations, so the point is not to provide the philosophical explanation, the point is to help people, support and solace and elevate them in whatever way is intelligible and acceptable for them and without this emotional sensitivity, we may end up alienating people rather than helping them, so philosophy is important but more important the philosophy is the purpose for which the philosophy is represented and it is the sensitivity, compassion of the heart that links with other people much more than the logicality of any particular philosophical explanation that is given, so it is important that we be careful in terms of how we are presenting Krishna’s message in a way that attracts people to Krishna, in the third canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam, it is stated that the duty of a wise person is to reassure people, to assure people about their safety by providing them the message of fearlessness, I am paraphrasing over here but essentially what it means is that by reassuring people that beyond the obstacles and reversals and adversities and catastrophes that happen at the material level, there is an indestructible spiritual level and there is a God who cares and who helps and even amidst the calamities that happen, God is there to help us, we see this in Krishna’s example that when Draupadi was being disrobed, at that time Krishna himself in a mystical way came as his inexhaustible saree but later after the Pandavas had been exiled and Krishna came to meet the Pandavas in the forest and at that time Draupadi asked you know how is it Krishna that all this happened and why could you not come, basically she did not phrase the question so bluntly but the question was implied and Krishna told how Krishna did not justify you know except my will is inconceivable, except my you know whatever has happened happens by your karma and except your own karma and Krishna doesn’t go into anything of that sort, Krishna in a very in a disarmingly humble way he says if I had known I would have ensured that the gambling match never took place, I would have convinced them to resist from the gambling match but unfortunately I was engaged elsewhere, Krishna tells how the wicked Shalva had attacked had attacked Dwarka and Krishna had to defend Dwarka in a war which extended for several days actually, so the point of the story is not that when calamities happen God is elsewhere engaged and that he doesn’t come to help but the point is that Krishna’s response to it is not giving any philosophical justification, Krishna’s response is that he offers some ways, he offers support, he tells Draupadi, yes, actually he is there with her by her side sharing her sorrow and then he assures her this injustice will be corrected and you will again be reinstated as a queen, the husband of king, as the wife of kings and he reassures her, he offers her emotional support and doesn’t go off on a philosophical tangent road, so similarly we do need to follow the example of Shastra and present scripture and its message appropriately, thank you.