​Why should we avoid speaking points just because they are unpopular?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, is there any reason why we should avoid speaking points just because they are unpopular in today’s world? See, there are three points of view. There is avoidance, there is presentation and there is emphasis. So, when we are saying simply that we do not have to emphasize those three points.
We do not have to go out of our way to highlight this. It is not an essential message. The intelligence level of women is not an essential message of the Bhagavad Gita.
That is not an essential message of the Bhagavad Gita at all. So, I am not saying that we have to hide the point or we have to deny the point. I am simply saying that that is not something which you have to emphasize.
And as far as presenting points which are not popular to people, see, there is no virtue in unnecessary confrontation. It is not that just for the sake of fighting. I give the example of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself.
He did not oppose the caste system. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he was so accommodating that he embraced people who were non-Brahmin. But Chaitanya Mahaprabhu when he was in Kashi, he was staying there.
At that time, Kashi was stronghold of Brahmin, Brahminical culture. So, he stayed at the house of, there were two devotees of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. There was Tapana Mishra and there was Chandrashekhar Acharya.
Chandrashekhar Acharya was not a Brahmin. So, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu stayed in the house of Chandrashekhar Acharya. But every day he would go to the house of Tapana Mishra to take prasada.
Now, can you imagine a Sanyasi staying in a Rajata’s house? Naturally, they will feel that you should take prasada at my house. But Chaitanya Mahaprabhu went every day to the house of Tapana Mishra to take prasada. Why? Because at that time, the social idea was so strong that a Sanyasi should take prasada only at the house of Brahmin.
And if Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had not done that, if he had taken the prasada at the house of Chandrashekhar Acharya, he would have been criticized so much for that, that people would not have heard his message. So, you don’t even have a basic standard of purity. They would not have understood that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is talking from a transcendental point of view.
Oh, he has an exalted consciousness, that’s why he is taking prasada only. They would have said, you don’t have any basic understanding of purity. So, what can you speak about Shastra? So, now that is a misconception.
And Chaitanya Mahaprabhu decided that is not a misconception, I want to address. So, he focused on, you know, telling them about, talking with the impersonalists about the siddhanta of what is the actual teaching of Vedanta. So, it is a misconception is a misconception.
Whether it is a Vedic misconception, whether a misconception present in traditional India coming from misinterpretation of the Vedas or whether it is a misconception coming from contemporary society from West, a misconception is a misconception. And which misconception we have to battle that is up to us to decide according to time and circumstances. So, in today’s world, we have to decide what is most important for us.
And there are different creatures who may feel different things are more important. And that is fine because different people are attracted to different aspects of the world. But it should not be merely that just because somebody is presenting some side and not presenting some points and not emphasizing other points that does not mean that they are compromising or that they are waffling or that they are not faithful to the Upadhyay.
It is a matter of strategy. And what strategy who wants to use for sharing Krishna’s message that will vary according to time and circumstances. So, we have to keep the essential message intact and according to time and circumstances present that.
So, as far as certain statements about women are concerned in the Bhagavatam whether they should be removed or they should be kept that’s a whole different discussion. I won’t get into that right now. But the principle is that now they are not the central message of the Bhagavatam.
And if something is taking people away from the central message, then we have to decide whether it is worth it. Whether it is worth it for something which is not important for us. We make people lose that which is important for them and that which is important for us sharing Krishna’s message.
So, this idea of the simplistic idea of faithfulness to Prabhupada in terms of keeping everything as it is that can actually end up being violence to Prabhupada. It can end up alienating people from Prabhupada unnecessarily. Now see Prabhupada he was very very practical.
Prabhupada did not flinch from a fight when it was necessary. But Prabhupada decided what was important and focused on that. Prabhupada was focusing on how can I share Krishna’s message with others.
If Prabhupada had stuck to rigid standards of everything, you know he would not even have been able to stay among the hippies. There are people whose only regulative principle is to break all regulative principles. And here there is a Mahabhagavata staying with them.
How could Prabhupada have done that? So, Prabhupada showed us how to be resourceful, how to be dynamic in taking Krishna into people’s hearts. And we have to follow that example and take Krishna into people’s hearts. And while doing that what is to be highlighted, what is to be downplayed, what is to be explained properly, all that is a matter of strategy.
So, there is no virtue in unnecessary confrontation. And what is not important in the Mahabhagavata doesn’t have to be made unnecessarily important and by that we alienate people. See at one level we say that ultimately we have to chant Hare Krishna, we have to remember Krishna, we have to practice bhakti.
But then after saying that we bring in so many hundreds of other things which actually distract people’s mind from focusing on Krishna. So, is it said anywhere in scripture that unless you accept that women have a particular intelligence level you cannot go back to Godhead? Where is it said? And again our epistemology is Guru, Sadhu, Shastra. Now, Prabhupada has said a particular statement about the intelligence level of women.
Where is it said by Sadhus? Where is it said in Shastra? Where is it said? I have not found any statement in Shastra talking directly about the intelligence level of women. There is some statement in Manusmruti, but Manusmruti right at its beginning itself says that all the law codes of Dharma are according to time-place circumstances. So, according to time-place circumstances, the principle of Dharma remains but the practices change according to time-place.
So, we have to make sure that we represent our tradition properly. And our tradition means to teach the message of Guru, Sadhu, Shastra. Not just that we take the message of Guru and neglect Sadhu and Shastra and just make one small issue into a big issue and alienate hundreds and thousands of potential devotees because of that.
That is we are committing violence to the tradition by that. We think that I am being faithful to Prabhupada, but we are actually alienating people from Prabhupada by that. So, I am not in any way by here licensing anybody can speak anything and everything is all right, we just have it popular.
There is no virtue in being unpopular. That is my only point. We don’t think that by being unpopular we are being faithful.
That is not the point. The point is faithful means faithful to the purpose of Krishna and that is to attract people to Krishna. Sometimes for that purpose, we have to speak things which will be unpopular.
But being unpopular is not a sign of being faithful. So, we have to speak that which will attract people to Krishna. And sometimes we also have to speak something which people will be provoked by.
That is fine. But whether that is needed and at what time it is needed, it is not right at the beginning. I will conclude with one point.
I was in Brisbane last year. I will conclude this class from here at this point. I was in Brisbane this year only and I gave a seminar on cultivating non-judgmental attitude.
And then after that, one Mataji came, she and her husband, they were telling that they were from a Shakta family and Shakta family, people eat meat. So, she said, but she was a very pious lady in terms of going to temple. So, she came to the temple for the first time and she saw that some Matajis were doing garlands, making garlands.
So, she also sat down and started making garlands. And then at that time, some senior devotee came there and just in front of everyone asked her, do you eat meat? And now she just didn’t know. She just stunk there, she said.
She nodded. She nodded. Then that senior devotee just grabbed the garland from her hand, hurled it on the ground, says, you cannot even touch the garland that is to be offered to the Lord.
Now, she was shattered, just went away crying from there, tears in her eyes. And then it is her sincerity that she still met some devotees and those devotees were a little more sensitive, little more mature. And then she started practicing bhakti and now she is a serious initiated devotee.
But she said that became so, it was so difficult for her to take that. Now, it is true that if somebody is eating meat, they cannot make garlands for the Lord. But that is not the way to tell people.
Now, I may say, I was faithful, I was uncompromising. Well, you are being uncompromising, but you are being violent. So, there is no virtue in speaking the truth in a way that alienates people from the truth.
To speak the truth, that same senior devotee could have called her privately and asked her and then she could have explained more gently. But sometimes in the name of faithfulness, we make our claim for faithfulness into a license for insensitivity. We make our claim for faithfulness into a license for insensitivity.
Even if you consider a doctor. Okay, I will cut again. Okay, really the last point now.
So, if there is a doctor, and the doctor is treating a patient. And if we know that that patient has got some past complications, and they have got the past complications, if I give this medicine, if I do this treatment, that is going to aggravate, that is going to cause too much pain. So, you know, if suppose I have to take blood, somebody has to take blood from my body, but there is already a wound on this hand.
And if I deliberately put the injection over there to take the blood, I may say I am doing my duty, I am taking the blood. But why do you have to take from there? You can take from the other hand. So, it is a doctor, when they have to take blood or they have to do surgery, they have to cause pain.
But a doctor has a moral responsibility, moral and professional responsibility to cause as less pain as possible. The doctor cannot say, you know, I have to put the injection, so I will put the injection. If you had a wound, that is your problem.
A doctor cannot say that. So, similarly, people today have certain emotional wounds. So, if people are very aggressive about certain ideas, or certain hypersensitivity about certain ideas, if we are truly doctors, it is our responsibility to present Bhakti in as painless a way as possible.
There will have to be pain. But if there is some past complication in a patient, it is a doctor’s responsibility to know the case study of the patient, to know the case is true, and make sure that doctor doesn’t cause more than necessary pain to the patient. So, similarly, if people today have certain misconceptions, and they become very agitated when they hear about certain things, then it is our responsibility to know that.
And we have to present Bhakti in a way that doesn’t cause unnecessary pain to the patient. Certain pain is necessary. Surgery itself will require pain.
Injection will require pain. But there is necessary pain and there is unnecessary pain. And making sure that we don’t inflict unnecessary pain is a doctor’s responsibility.
So, if we think of whatever conceptions people have, I am going to present Shastra as it is. That is like a person saying, I have to take blood, I will take blood, whatever wound the person has, it doesn’t matter. Now, a responsible medical person has to see the patient and accordingly administer the needle.
So, like that, if people have certain misconceptions, now, if the doctor says, oh, you have got a wound, I will not do the surgery. That is wrong. The doctor has to do the surgery.
That has to be necessary pain. And if we say, I will never speak anything that is going to hurt people. That is wrong.
But even when surgery is done, first case history is studied, anesthesia is given, then the treatment is done, then the surgery is done and after that pain medicine is given. So, we may have to speak things that are going to challenge people, that are going to hurt people, that are going to agitate people. But all that has to be done after we have created a basic platform of trust.
Just like a doctor, even when a doctor does surgery, they give anesthesia before, they give pain medicines afterwards. Now, if a doctor does surgery without anesthesia, that will be violence. So, if we take things from scripture, which are very difficult for people to understand, and it is directly presented, we are like doctors who are deliberately doing surgery without anesthesia.
So, we are being unnecessarily violent. So, there is unnecessary pain and there is necessary pain. And it is our responsibility to make the necessary pain as less as possible, not in the name of necessity maximize the pain.
That is all that I mean when I say that we should not highlight the statements of Prabhupada or statements in scripture, which are likely to alienate people or agitate people. Not saying that we have to conceal or reject those statements. It is just that we have to be responsible doctors who do surgery while causing as less pain as possible.
Thank you very much.