When children don’t have intention to practice bhakti, does giving them devotional samskaras help?

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Transcript

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bring children to Krishna consciousness we may provide them with stimuli but children may not have the intelligence or the intention to practice bhakti so without that how can they come to bhakti yeah, ultimately it is the decision of every soul whether they want to serve Krishna or not and that is the decision which usually people take children take when they grow maybe they come to the teams or they go into adolescence or just come to youth at the time they may, before that they are to some extent their life is monitored and vastly guided by their parents so now the parents and devotees their responsibility is to provide as many stimuli for the children as possible so in general we can only do three things for other people anyone who we are trying to train our way we can provide knowledge, we can create facilities and we can set example knowledge, facilities example, these are three basic things we can do for others, after doing these then it is up to people whether they want to take it up or not so whether it is say devotee children and devotee parents trying to do the stimuli or whether we are going to schools and children are not devotees, parents are also not devotees but we are trying to do some stimuli, we can see how we can do these things and if we have done these things we have done our part and we needn’t have a very narrow definition of preaching now if we think of preaching only in terms of making people into maybe 16th round of devotees who follow the four principles and come for morning program or come for this or that whatever, that is a very narrow definition that is definitely a definition of serious devotee but rather than seeing the preaching as there is one cut-off point, those who are brought inside the cut-off point they are devotees those who are outside the cut-off point they are non-devotees rather than seeing it like that we can see the sharing of Krishna consciousness as expansions of concentric circles of increasing radiance so for example if some people some people will become very serious devotees but some people even if they become favorable to the practice of bhakti whereas earlier they would have been neutral or unfavorable that is also one level of preaching so Ravindra Saruprabhu has written an essay of how congregation preaching developed in our movement’s history.
Now congregation preaching is going everywhere to organization’s house for program that is such a standard thing that what is there to think about? But initially when the movement started the idea of becoming a devotee in America was that you join the temple you become a devotee means you move inside the temple even if somebody is married they move inside the temple that is you are a devotee so what they observed was that many of the hippies or people who were spiritual seekers in the western world and they became Srila Prabhupada’s very dedicated followers but then the Indians started coming to America. Most of the Indians had gone to America for material prosperity and they had no intention of joining the temple but still they wanted to have something to practice their culture. So initially the devotees who were preaching they tried to preach to the Indians to join the temple and the Indians were not at all interested and they thought that the Indians are not going to become devotees.
So they started neglecting them but then they found that although they were paying no attention to these Indians every Sunday they would keep coming keep coming, keep coming, keep coming and they were regular and they were helping. Initially when our movement was having a lot of money through book distribution we were not so worried about money but afterwards the Indians were the main patrons for the movement so at this point if the temple devotees had been asked are these Indians Hare Krishna’s they said no they are not Hare Krishna’s, they don’t stay in the temple but if the Indians had been asked which religious group do you identify with they would say Hare Krishna so that means we don’t consider them to be devotees but they consider them as devotees not necessarily our definition but over a period of time what happened is these are our people, they keep coming they keep contributing, they keep serving so they may not conform to a particular definition of bhakti of moving into the temple but they are practicing bhakti in their own way and they are committed at their level of practice so that was the idea that people can stay at their homes and they will practice bhakti and we should provide facilities to enable them to practice bhakti at their home that means conduct programs at their houses or close to their houses so that’s how actually the congregation preaching started before that the idea was if you are living in the temple you are a devotee if you are living outside the temple you have gone to maya that’s a simple definition the transcendental was reduced to the geographic so that we shouldn’t have that conception of bhakti that only if a person is a 16th rounder devotee then that person our preaching is successful preaching can happen at various levels and if we can help people to become more receptive towards Krishna, more favorable towards Krishna even if they don’t become devotees immediately when they become favorable that is also one level of preaching see when we have that agenda of conversion we use conversion normally for Christians who convert Indians but often we also have that you should become an insider when we have that agenda of conversion then we often have a adversarial attitude with the world the world is bad devotees are good and they have to come from the bad material world in the devotee community but we understand that this is a very narrow vision in the world there is sattva guna, there is rajo guna, there is tamoguna and sattvic people may not become devotees but in many ways they may be favorable to the practice of bhakti they may provide facilities for us so if unnecessarily we antagonize them anybody who is not a devotee is a demon and there are people in sattva guna who may be more sattvic than what we are isn’t it? we cannot call them demons so the thing is that we have to have these our philosophy itself has these colors shades of grey so when we talk about providing updeepan so children when they are provided samskaras in their childhood they may not necessarily intend to take up bhakti or they may not take up bhakti at that time but the samskaras will stay with them and eventually that will at least keep them favorable to bhakti in some cases later on when they experience the reality of material world they see how all the much glamorized pleasures there is not really much in that then they will come to Krishna at that time so what we can do is provide them positive impressions positive samskaras and then it’s up to them to choose and we shouldn’t worry about whether they are going to choose or not we should focus on whether we are giving the best possible stimuli to them or not the best possible stimuli doesn’t necessarily mean the most forceful stimuli you know because forceful can sometimes be a little best means that people feel yes this is this this bhakti makes sense these devotees are nice people I would like to be with them, I would like to be doing this so George Harrison in his book in that book Chant Hare Krishna he happened as an interview so George Harrison initially he you know after he started practicing, met Prabhupada he started practicing bhakti and he started making all his songs that he was composing were spiritual songs but then so at one time he was in Madison Avenue and he was expected to do a musical performance and there he started telling the audience Chant Hare Krishna and the audience started booing him and jeering him and you know it was all the critics started panning him and his whole popularity started catapulting down and then at that time to understand what it would be like, say there is a very important India Pakistan match, say the top cricketer in the world, say Virat Kohli becomes a devotee and then there is a very important India Pakistan cricket match say world cup final and Virat Kohli just gets out to zero and then after that India loses the match and then after that there is a press conference and Virat Kohli at that time says you know cricket is all temporary, it’s maya just Chant Hare Krishna we cannot imagine the amount of anti-preaching that will happen by that if a person is paid to be a cricketer that person has to take cricket seriously so that’s what happened George Harrison instead of providing people the entertainment that they were expecting he started preaching over there and then he met Shri Prabhupada and then he told Prabhupada you told me to make songs about Krishna and I am doing that but I am feeling that for every one person I am getting to Krishna I am sending 10 people away from Krishna so what should I do? so Prabhupada told him no use your intelligence use your intelligence and conduct yourself in such a way that people will be attracted towards Krishna so after that he stopped making all songs devotional he started making the other kind of songs which he was doing and within that may be one song he would make devotional or in some other songs he would bring in something devotional so he started doing it a little bit more toned down and then he said that so people started thinking that for him the Hare Krishna was a phase in his life he was involved in the Hare Krishna but now he is not involved so in that book he writes I was a plain clothes devotee plain clothes devotee means I never wash dhoti kurta but in plain clothes he has a devotional intention so he said that I have to be counted at the end of my life whether I want to be counted among the materialistic people or I want to be counted among the devotees I want to be counted among the devotees that’s what is the values that I aspire about so people who get the impressions even if they are not able to externally act on them immediately the values remain if we have presented it properly non fanatically so we don’t have to worry too much about whether people take up things or not we focus on whether we are presenting things properly or not and people will take up in their new course of time you see even with Prabhupada the potent pure devotee Mahabhag still for 40 years in India people didn’t take up so is that a failure of Prabhupada no it is a part of Krishna’s plan and the very example in fact the Prabhupada himself in India was not successful externally speaking indicates that we shouldn’t define success only in terms of we shouldn’t make preaching success as a statement about preacher’s purity now if somebody wanted to say Prabhupada was not successful that means Prabhupada was not a pure devotee somebody would say like that no but after 10 years he got so much success so we should focus simply on doing our own efforts and some preachers will be successful at some times some preachers will be successful at other times so we don’t have to bother too much about it we focus on trying to provide people Krishna in as accessible and appealing a way as possible and it’s up to people to take it up according to their time does this answer your question thank you very much