The cause of fanaticism is not excessive devotion but inadequate devotion

[Phone class to everydaychant.com online sanga]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
fanaticism is not excessive devotion but inadequate devotion and I talked about how different religions followers may say that let other religious followers be destroyed and this happens because people are having their religion without philosophy so religion without philosophy if you just feel good then it becomes sentimentalism oh everyone is right let them do whatever they want but what about atheists if they are right everyone else is wrong and then there is religion without philosophy can also become fanaticism where my way is the only way now there are statements of that nature of follow this way only but they are meant to create focus just as a doctor may tell a patient that just forget everything else that you have learned just take my treatment so there are statements which are statements of focusing should not be made into absolute truths just like when the Puranas say in the Puranas the lord says that I don’t reside in Vaikuntha or in the yogi’s heart I stay in I reside where the kirtans are performed the point of that is not objective universal philosophical truth the point is the accessibility of the lord that is being stressed over there so like that understanding philosophy means understanding scripture in context and in the light of its overall purpose which is to raise human consciousness but when people are fanatical they gravitate towards the section of scripture which we justify their fanaticism so in scripture there are exclusive statements this is the only way there are pluralistic statements different people follow in different ways let them follow and inclusive way they will all follow their path and then ultimately come to our path so depending on the kind of leaders that are there for a tradition they will they will depend on the mentality of the leaders they may emphasize their exclusive pluralist or inclusive statements and when the exclusive statements are emphasized then the god that people seem to be so fanatically devoted to that god is not actually the god which is of scriptural revelation that is the god of the projection of the human ego that is the god who hates the people whom I like whom I hate who likes the people whom I like and this is pseudo god it is not actually the god of scripture or god of revelation and so therefore religion is meant for god, god is not meant for religion if you understand that god is bigger than the religion that we are practicing to come to him then we will see that that same god can make himself approachable to other religions this is what Thakur says that if we see other people doing their religious practices diligently we should feel increased appreciation for the lord’s compassion that he manifests in this different form and also we should increase our appreciation for the manifestation with which we are familiar by Prabhupada when we heard Muslims reciting the namaz he was happy and he didn’t want to be sectarian they are worshipping god in their way let us worship in our way so if our own faith is not strong then seeing others faith brings insecurity and then we respond to that insecurity by trying to destroy other people’s faith or destroy the basis of other people’s faith but if our faith is strong then seeing others faith actually makes us more faithful to our tradition and at the same time respectful to other traditions and the cause of fanaticism is not religion per se it is the modes of passion and ignorance so to say that to be ultra politically correct and say Islamic state is not Islam that is wrong because Islamic state is based on Islamic texts only but it is on a particular reading of Islamic texts where all the exclusive statements are highlighted but to go to the other extreme and say that Islam is Islamic state that means all Muslims are fanatical that is totally wrong also because Muslims are also in goodness, passion and ignorance and people in goodness can connect with people in other people in goodness whichever tradition they may belong to so when people in passion or ignorance whatever be they will just find some reason to be violent because violence is bred in their mentality itself so they may find religion, they may find race caste, class nationality whatever reason and they will fight so the solution to religious violence is actually purification, purification means elevation of the human consciousness from the lower modes of rajas and tamas to sattva and to chinda sattva and that will happen if we practice our religion, our bhakti yoga nicely and we encourage others to practice their practices properly nicely and at a practical level we discuss that that there is a threat because of religious fanaticism today in this world and that Islam is especially vulnerable to this because in most of the religions the martial and the intellectual centers of power were separated but in Islam Muhammad was both the teacher and the fighter and although individual Muslims are pious and they are often pious and they see Islam as a means to go closer to God at a social level many Islamic leaders they follow Muhammad’s martial example and therefore they see Islam as a tool to political power not so much as a means to God and therefore at a level of shastra and shastra shastra means weapons to rectify people who do wrong and shastra is to educate people so that they don’t do wrong so shastra is required weapons are required to curb the threat of terrorism at a physical level but for a transformation shastra is required shastra means proper understanding of scripture by which people are encouraged to rise to the mode of goodness and lastly I concluded that there is a world of difference between the Bhagavad Gita although it seems to also call for violence and say Islamic rationalizations of violence firstly the Bhagavad Gita doesn’t contain a single verse about war strategies and it contains only a barely a dozen verses about the war after discovering the setting so the Bhagavad Gita’s call is not for violence it is called for duty and in the context Arjuna’s duty happens to be fighting but that is incidental that is not essential and that’s why there is so many generations of spiritual teachers who have got inspiration and were written and commented in the Gita none of them have called for violence based on the Gita they have all called for dharmic living and secondly we see that it is not that Krishna is promoting Arjuna to fight rather Krishna himself and Arjuna and the Pandavas they have tried everything possible to avoid the war everything humanly possible and everything divinely possible God himself went and tried to avoid it but Duryodhana by his obstinacy made the war inevitable and lastly the Bhagavad Gita the Kshatriya warfare was between equals who are equipped and alert whereas terrorists when they fight they are fighting against their trained trained fighters attacking civilians who are unequal to them who are unequipped and who are unalert so it is the grossest form of brutality and Tamaguna it is like Ashwathama’s killing sleeping warriors and that is verily condemned in the in the eyes of Vedic scriptures so we as devotees we understand that the practice of bhakti will enable us to become more enriched internally more satisfied internally and when there is an agitated mind it creates agitated world when there is a peaceful mind a peaceful mind will contribute to creating a peaceful world so thank you very much are there any questions or comments