When too many spiritual apps sites and books confuse us about what to read or hear what to do?

Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Nowadays there are many apps, websites and books that are available for getting spiritual knowledge. So how to choose the best among them? Sometimes it feels as if they are becoming mispractice for us to concentrate.
It’s an important question. First is that, At our level, the basic principle and the practice of bhakti is that somehow or the other, we have to connect with Krishna. So, in whichever way we feel attracted to Krishna, that is perfectly fine.
So, there is a particular app, a particular website, a particular book that helps us connect with Krishna. That is good. Very good.
At the same time, we also need regular nourishment. That’s why Srila Prabhupada, who is our founder, his books, his writings, his lectures, we should have a stable program for hearing this. And along with hearing Srila Prabhupada’s lectures or reading his books, it is a part of Srila Prabhupada’s instruction itself.
He told his followers to write books. He told his followers to do classes. Srila Prabhupada, if he wanted, he could have had, in all the temples, just every morning, they could have had a little bhagavad-gita class.
After all, who is asking for Srila Prabhupada? But Prabhupada did not do that. He wanted even his young devotees to give classes. And he wanted others to attend his classes.
And by that, everybody learned more. So, the younger devotees learned to speak because they had to speak. And the other devotees, what did they learn? They learned the practical applications of the knowledge also.
So, there has always been, in our tradition, a written tradition and an oral tradition. And the oral tradition has always been far more extensive than the written tradition. In the past, if you consider, before Gutenberg in the West invented the printing press, books itself were very rare.
You know, we know that incident when Srinivasa Acharya wanted a copy of the Bhagavatam. He had to travel all the way from Puri to Bengal to get a copy of the Bhagavatam. So, books were very rare.
So, in the past, the written tradition was not so accessible. So, most of the spiritual culture and the spiritual knowledge was passed through the oral tradition. And every village would have some saint, some Goswami, some spiritual teachers.
And they would speak and people would learn. So, the oral tradition is extremely rare. And Prabhupada wanted that oral tradition to be continued.
Because we learn through the written tradition, but in general, it is Brahminical people who can apply themselves to read. Other people, they can read a little bit, but they can’t apply themselves consistently to read. It’s not that easy.
They can try, and we all should try as a service and as a treat for Prabhupada’s books. But we can’t deny the tradition. So, rather than seeing the form, now an app has come, now a website has come, now a book has come.
What we should see is, the same tradition is being continued in different ways. The principle is the same, the form is different. So, there are some devotees who like to read a lot of books.
And then they should read Prabhupada’s books. But along with that, they can decide, if I have this much time in a week to read books, this many hours I’ll read Prabhupada’s books, and this much time I’ll read other books. And sometimes if you’re doing a specific class, or learning a specific subject, we can have a balanced program for that.
It doesn’t have to be this or that. And similarly, rather than thinking of apps and websites as something distinct, or something innovative, something distracting, we can see the same principle. The same oral tradition is available through the online lectures that are available.
And many, many devotees all over the world are nourished by this. So, we have to find out nourishment, where we get it, and we should grow in our spirituality. And if it is becoming a distraction, then the best solution is twofold.
First is to have a standard commitment, and to leave some room for improvisation. That means, oh, this book has come up, that book has come up, oh, this new site has come up, oh, now a new WhatsApp group has formed. So all this is coming up, then we can decide, in a week, maybe I can say, I have seven hours, every day one hour I can assume, which I can spend on spiritual knowledge.
So I’ll decide out of this, in a week, four hours, I’m going to focus on one thing. Maybe I’m reading Bhagavatam right now, that’s what I’m going to read, four hours. And remaining two, three hours, whatever is there, I’ll say, okay, that I’ll read in other groups, I’ll visit this website, I’ll go here.
So that way, we don’t cut ourselves off from the inspiration that can come from many other sources. But at the same time, we don’t cut ourselves off from our main source of nourishment, that is Srila Prabhupada. So that way, by having room, having a commitment for some solid connection, and some room for improvisation, we can move forward without getting inordinately distracted.
So thank you very much. Srila Prabhupada ki… Jaya! Gaur Bhakta Vrindaki… Jaya! Jai Gaur Pramana!