How much of traditional culture needs to be replicated to practice bhakti today?

Anwser Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so the question is that when we there is a big difference between vedic culture and modern culture or vedic society and modern society so how much of that do we need to replicate today for example, dressing is it necessary to wear sarees or is it something more that is traditional rather than religious yeah, it is true that there is a big difference between modern society and traditional vedic society at the same time the important thing is the purpose the purpose is that we want to grow spiritually we want to love Krishna, we want to attain Krishna so in principle it is not that Krishna is going to see which dress we are wearing Krishna sees what is the devotion that we have in our heart so there is a conversation of Srila Prabhupada with one poet Allen Ginsberg that was a new Indawala and Allen Ginsberg tells Prabhupada that actually Swamiji he wanted to help Prabhupada spread Krishna consciousness in America and he says Swamiji this Krishna consciousness is not spread very much as long as it looks very Hindu Prabhupada says what is Hindu? we are universal and he said no Prabhupada, your dress is Indian the food that you eat is Indian the mantra that you chant is Indian, so it all looks very Indian to Americans Prabhupada said no, it is not essential the dress, you can wear any dress and he says food, you can offer any food to Krishna and he can take that food and as far as the name of the mantra is concerned, Prabhupada says the principle is you chant the names of God you can chant the names of God according to your own tradition in your local language so this is the principle generally when you talk about culture what do you talk about? there is dress, language, food these are three main things which come in culture and Prabhupada says that we are completely open about these things this is in principle in practice, actually Prabhupada was quite specific actually Prabhupada taught even his western disciples to cook Indian food items he got his western disciples to wear the Indian Bengali dress or whatever you want to say, dhoti, kurta, sarees now with respect to language, he was quite flexible he did not really ask his disciples to learn Sanskrit, except for reciting verses in the morning in the class all of you did that today morning it was nice apart from that, Prabhupada was not insistent about Sanskrit, so in principle he was open to adaptation in all of this in practice, he was flexible about some things, he was a little more firm about some other things so with language, he did not insist that his disciples have to learn Sanskrit at all and then with respect to food we see the practical reality is that his devotees have learned Indian food items but now all different kinds of cuisines are also there which are offered to Krishna and we take food, that’s perfectly fine so with respect to dress, there is still some amount of indecision so every tradition needs some things which identifies it as a tradition so there are many who feel that the dhoti kurta or the saree this is the dress which will identify us as devotees as Hare Krishna devotees and so we should preserve it and there are others who feel that actually by identifying ourselves like this we will not be able to connect with people we will be like odd men out or odd women out and will not be able to connect with people so that’s why there is some discussion now the important thing is that the tradition also has, every tradition has certain sense of identity with it for example even now most catholic pastors when they are doing mass, they wear a particular dress so all the times have changed, they keep a particular dress usually on, that’s what they wear so without getting into the whole debate about whether something is religious or it is traditional religious means it has got something directly with the spiritual world or with Krishna or traditional means it is what is coming from the past that whole debate is not really very important the important thing is that every tradition we are a living tradition right now and every tradition requires some identity markers who are, like we wear the beads Kanti Mala we wear we all need some identity markers and whichever identity marker is suitable for us we may adopt that so it’s very unlikely that you know it’s almost impossible that in this contemporary, there will be a entry guard waiting, are you wearing a sari? not wearing, you cannot come inside nobody is going to do that no certain dresses may be encouraged, certain dresses may not be encouraged in general decency in dressing is important so as long as that is there a sari is a traditional Indian dress which Prabhupada introduced to his devotees and that’s why many devotees feel strongly that it should be preserved, similarly for Mandodhi Kurgas, it should be preserved and especially when we are doing direct deity worship at that time this traditional dress is to be worn other times which dress is to be worn that will ultimately be decided by the individual it’s not that by wearing a particular dress one automatically becomes spiritual or by not wearing it one cannot become spiritual but still for us in many ways the external affects the internal although the dress is external the external also affects the internal that if there is a particular dress which we associate with particular activity, say for example we wear sari when we go to the temple or we wear dhoti kurta when we go to the temple then whenever we start wearing dhoti kurta this is, now I am doing something special, now I am doing something sacred so I need to I need to behave properly, I need to conduct myself properly, so for many people we find that the external will be conducive to the internal so in that sense we cannot so there are two extremes one is the external just doesn’t matter only the internal matters and therefore don’t bother about the external the other extreme is to say that as long as the external is not there the internal cannot be there both are invalid the external is conducive to the internal so we can adapt it but in some cases if the external is not practical, external is counterproductive in some ways then it need not be worn Prabhupada is open about that even devotees sometimes they wear civil clothes, it’s not a problem for example, me also if we go to the middle east middle east they don’t allow us to go in this dress so when I go there I have to wear a shirt, pant and go that’s what is necessary everybody, even all senior preachers who go to the middle east, if that’s what is required it’s required it’s not a cardinal principle that can never be violated does that answer your question?