The living bhakti tradition – a museum or a garden?
[Talk at Institute for Applied Spiritual Technology, Washington DC, USA]
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Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
I spoke on the theme of the living bhakti bhakti tradition is a garden not a museum so I talked about, started with how Krishna descends to provide a pathway by which people can love him and ultimately attain him so tradition is an integral part of human society even science which began by rejecting tradition has created tradition of its own now science is provided, caters for our external needs in terms of providing control over externals but the internal mind is going wild today and religion is resurgent in today’s world because religion is helping people address their inner needs for calmness for meaning, for purpose now when people, when atheists or skeptics criticize religion as being outdated, unscientific irrational they have a museum idea of religion it’s a cartoonized version of religion where they say that you people are just outdated but religion is meant to address people’s eternal needs and people’s felt needs and this because it’s like a garden which nourishes the heart and people feel their heart being nourished that’s why, even if the world says that this is unscientific or whatever, people keep practicing this is supreme science and insiders also may get caught in this museum idea of religion where they may start thinking that oh, if you don’t follow this if you don’t believe this, then you are a deviant so that kind of, when we hold on to externals when we take things which are peripheral and make them as central then we become fanatical so, the essence of the bhakti tradition is what? is raising our consciousness it’s like, the bottom of the mountain is material consciousness, top of the mountain is social consciousness.
There can be different paths up the mountain, but the important thing is to rise up the mountain and for this journey what is the bhakti tradition offers us a very clear, beautiful revelation of God’s all attractiveness it also offers a very well charted out path for moving towards Krishna and the bhakti tradition is essentially a link of the hearts the teachers love Krishna and they inspire the students to love Krishna, the students love Krishna they become teachers and they inspire others to love Krishna so, in this tradition of love there, when we practice bhakti, if we operate with the museum understanding, we may become too judgmental about others, and we may alienate others so, those with the museum understanding of bhakti they become religious nuts they don’t relish spiritual fruits then the I concluded we are talking about the garden understanding of bhakti in the garden understanding, the idea is that the heart is to be cultivated so that love is developed and just as the same plant for cultivating in different environments will require different conditions appropriately similarly the practices that we have the specifics can vary depending on whether they are nourishing the heart or they are suppressing the heart so, Prabhupada was so dynamic that even if the temple the external was not there, but the purpose of the temple was served so, unless a traditional temple is built what is the use of having a temple, that is the museum understanding but if Krishna is glorified then everything is wonderful that is the garden understanding and then I talked about Prabhupada’s expertise, the point is not just to get it right, but to get it across so, he said, Vaikuntha is like the bliss of Vaikuntha is like an ocean of LSD and Prabhupada’s accommodating people according to their culture to practice bhakti, that is all an example of his resourcefulness and when Prabhupada says that I got the legacy of my spiritual master that legacy was not in terms of external property or resources, it was in terms of the internal desire to love Krishna and to inspire others to love Krishna and that is a legacy that each one of us can inherit and we can enrich our hearts and we can enrich the hearts of others thank you very much Hare Krishna