To ask guidance from visiting devotees and to not follow it – is that offensive?

Answer Podcast

Yeah, so some new people are coming and they are strongly told, give up meditating and you cannot practice bhakti, you cannot go to bhakti yoga all the time. Is that a message good? See, the main focus in bhakti is to inspire people to connect with Krishna. And the more they connect with Krishna, the more they get the higher effects of bhakti, the more they will automatically give up the vices, including meditating.

So focusing excessively on what we should not do. In general, that is not a very good strategy. There is an atheist in Gag, Gag is a cheap joke against Christianity.

They say that, in the beginning was the world and the world was known. So the Bible started, in the beginning was the world and the world was God. But they say, in the beginning was the world and the world was known.

So this is a very negative conception of religion people have. Religion means, no, you can’t do that, no, you can’t do that, no, you can’t do that. That is not our focus.

That should not be, Prabhupada did not present Krishna consciousness that way. No, people who were, whose only regulatory principle was breaking all the guidelines. That is what it is like.

And Prabhupada is a kind of child of Krishna. And actually speaking, you know, the first batch, after they do initiation, the next morning when they came for the morning program, Prabhupada said, you have to follow the regulatory principles. They did not even know what they were getting into.

It’s a simple thing. Do we ever see any advertisement that first begins with the price? No. The price of this product, $100,000.

Do you want to purchase it? Nobody begins an advertisement like that. First we tell, okay, this is so good, this will make you feel like this, this will do this for you, this will do like this for you. And then, actually most advertisements don’t even tell the price.

After we get interested in it, then we find, oh, it’s so expensive. Then we ask a customer, can I take it or not? But, you know, in them, an advertisement focuses on what is good for you, what it is going to contribute to your life. Similarly, not in a, advertisements are often associated with a commercial sense, but not in a commercial sense, but in the sense of sharing.

When we are sharing Krishna Consciousness, if we emphasize, oh, you have to follow this, you have to follow that, you have to follow that, then it’s like the first thing we are telling people is the price that you are going to pay. No, first thing we should do is we should show them the product. No, we should tell them about Krishna Bhakti, and we should give them experiences of our Krishna Bhakti’s joy.

And then once they start experiencing the higher dose of Krishna Bhakti, automatically at the dinner of night, they will give up the other things. So, actually somehow with respect to meat-eating, as devotees, we become extremely judgmental. We become extremely judgmental and we look down and scorn people who eat meat.

But in today’s culture, meat-eating is just a part of people’s life. So, it’s not that they are consciously violent or brutal towards animals. It’s just that that’s the way they grew up.

So, and is there something which they have been eating throughout their life for a long, long, or for many years, and for them to give it up, meat-eating time. So, our focus should be on encouraging them to practice Bhakti as much as possible. So, I was just in Brisbane just a few months, one week ago.

So, there one devotee, devotee couple there become devotees. So, they were from Bengal. And there were many people, the Shakta Varsha was the head meat-eater.

So, she had to come to the temple, the Mataji, because she was making garlands for the devotees. So, a bunch of devotees came and asked, do you eat meat? She said, yes. She didn’t say anything.

She said, yeah, yes, she said. So, that devotee just took the garland from her hand and threw it away. Now, don’t touch the garland, there are vulnerabilities.

She just went back crying from there. Somehow, despite that, she is still a devotee. That’s her sincerity.

That’s her dedication. So, when people go to serve Krishna, yes, we have our standards. But we can’t impose our standards on those who are not aware of those standards.

Our spirituality is meant to make us more understanding, not more judgmental. That means, more understanding means, that although we are practicing bhakti right now, we have been practicing for many years, we also have so many anarthas which we are battling with at our level. Now, we may not be battling with anarthas immediately.

But, you need the same maya which is tempting us and trapping us at a particular level. We may have greed of a particular kind, we may have pride of a particular level. The same maya that is troubling and trapping us at a particular level, that same maya is troubling and trapping other people at another level.

Even at that level, may be much lower than what we are at. But the principle is the same. And just as at our level, for us to give up our anarthas is not easy, similarly for others at their level, to give up their anarthas is not easy.

Now, if our senior devotees start to become judgmental with us. Now, if somebody told me that as long as you are proud of the kind of classes you give, you should not preach at all. Only when you can remember constantly that you are simply an instrument of Krishna, only then you should preach.

I don’t know if ever in my life I was able to preach. Yes, I have my ego, I admit it. But then I try to control my ego.

I try to preach. So just as our seniors at our level, they give us room to practice bhakti along with whatever anarthas we have. So our anarthas may not be that gross.

Others may have worse anarthas, but that is simply their level. We need to give people room to practice bhakti and recognize that they are fighting battles which may seem insignificant for us. But for them, they are difficult battles to fight.

So our bhakti, it should make us more understanding of the struggles that others are going through. Not more judgmental of how fallen they are. They can’t even give up this temptation.

So if we are becoming more and more judgmental, then the main reason for that is we are centered on us and how pure I am. We are not centered on Krishna and how I can best serve Krishna. So if that is happening, then if some devotees are being targeted like that, we can go and be told solely, you are pitying, you are pitying.

And we can tell them that you didn’t associate with those who are telling you like that. Associate with others. And those who encourage you in your bhakti, and then you move onwards in the spiritual path.

Okay? Did I answer your question? How can we certainly guide them? Can we certainly talk about mediating? Okay, can we certainly talk about mediating? Generally speaking, there are, during the course of our philosophy, if we get the bhakti naksha pose or something like that, at one particular point, we can talk about the individual skills. But we don’t have to target them. It’s not that if we are talking about no mediating and throughout the class we are looking at them.

Is this mentioned yet? We do have to tell the sandals. We don’t have to hide the sandals. But that is not the first thing that we should tell.

And that is not the thing that we should beat them with. We tell the sandals and leave it to them. Whether they want to practice it or not.

Or how long they want to take to practice it, that’s up to them. We encourage them and give them a path to come close to Krishna. And whatever pace they want to come, they accept.

Thank you very much.