Dealing with faultfinding mentality – 3 reflections
Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna! So, today morning, we are discussing about the pastime of Sati speaking before she decides to end the body that she has got from Daksha. And here she is telling that, Oh, Daksha, you are finding faults in someone who is faultless. And she is reproaching him for his fault-finding mentality, which is essentially he is considering Shiva to be uncultured.
That's what he said. You don't know the etiquette of cultured people by which you should respect a respectable person. And of course, that respectable person was he himself.
You didn't respect me? And therefore, you don't deserve a place among cultured people. And that's why he did not give any place in the sacrificial arena for him. So, she is talking about, you have found fault thus, and therefore, you have become condemned.
You have become reproachable. So, I'll talk about three points. First is, I'll talk about how the mind's tendency to see black eventually spreads by which we see the black even in the white.
I'll talk about the mental tendency of fault-finding. The second point I'll talk about is how even if we have, even if people are not faultless, we can find faults less. And lastly, I'll talk about how we can focus on people's potentials, not their problems.
So, the first point is that our mind is largely a creature of habit. And sometimes, when we live in a community, and we have certain abilities, we have certain skills, by which we can see that others are doing certain things wrong. So, when we have these skills, then we can see that this is black and this is white.
So, some people are colorblind. That means they just can't see certain colours. See, blindness is very evident.
Somebody is blind, they can't see anything. But colorblindness is not that evident. Sometimes, some people may have some colorblindness throughout their life, and maybe they decide to join the Air Force or something, and that time some test is done, that's when they come to know, I can't see this colour.
So, colorblindness is not so easily noticeable. So, everybody has certain blind spots. Blind spots means that we just can't see certain things.
And, some people, say, person A has a blind spot in something, and person B can see that very well, that particular colour very well. Then what happens? Those two people can create, they end up in tremendous conflict. So, the person who is colorblind, what's wrong? There's nothing wrong over here.
Everything is fine. And a person who has an acute colour sensation over there, hey, this is not meant to be of this colour, why you put this colour over here? Where have I put it? You'll notice it. So, I come across this a lot, because at least in the area of language, writing is my service, and I'm very conscious of words.
So, any place I go to, even if it be a temple or a seminar hall, I become a self-appointed proofreader. And then, every notice, every announcement, everything I see, I tend to find faults in it. Is there anything wrong over here? And, the worst part is that very few people have that kind of grammatical sense.
So, if I find out some fault, this doesn't make sense, this has to change like this. Then, the common response I get, everybody understands, why don't you understand? Because of that, it's very frustrating. I can see this is wrong.
It's wrong, but everybody understands it. What is the big deal? So, of course, sometimes, grammatical mistakes can be very seriously wrong. And, you have to point them out.
Once, I was an editor for a magazine for the local newsletter in Pune. And then, we had done a six-session course. So, we wrote a small article about it.
So, six-session course held in Pune. Somehow, something went wrong in typing, and instead of I in the six, somehow it got typed E. So, it became a six-session course held in Pune. So, just before, we were about to print the magazine, at that time, we noticed it.
Otherwise, it would be a big problem. So, of course, sometimes, faults can be serious. But, frequently, these faults are minor and they are understandable.
So, somebody who has a very strong linguistic sense, and somebody who has very little linguistic sense, then they can be very incompatible. So, now, if somebody has a strong linguistic sense, they can say, this is black, this is white. For somebody who doesn't have that sense, say, everything is white.
As long as it's communicated, it's communicated. What's the big deal? So, at one level, if somebody has a particular service, to see that this is black and this is white is important. But, the problem, I have talked, I also serve as an editor, and I have talked to devotees who are editors.
They've told me that they have to, especially when they are reading Prabhupada's books or reading Acharya's books, they have to consciously turn off their critical faculty, or at least tone it down. Because, otherwise, we can bring that everywhere. And then, say, one devotee is a Sanskrit scholar, and he told me that, after he learned Sanskrit, throughout the classes that he would hear, he would find fault with devotees' pronunciation of Sanskrit.
And he would find faults with the way, sometimes, if we don't know Sanskrit very well, we may oversimplify and misrepresent the meanings of words exactly. We arrive at a conclusion, but the analysis is not right to arrive at the conclusion. So, he said, after some time, he consciously realised that, I am not attending Bhagavatam class to evaluate Sanskrit.
I'm attending Bhagavatam class to purify myself, to get spiritual inspiration, to get spiritual understanding, to get spiritual reminders. So, what happens is that, there is black, there is white, and the capacity to discern that is important. But when that becomes our default disposition.
So, the capacity to find faults is a faculty. It's a capacity. And there are times when it needs to be used.
And not being able to use it is a problem. If we are making a big announcement somewhere, like, I was saying, publishing a magazine, and there, if you don't notice the mistake of words, it's a big problem. It's a resource, and there is a time when it is not only desirable, it's essential.
But, when that becomes our default disposition, when that becomes the sole way we look at things, then, it's a particular spectacle, which we need to use at times. And if we have been given that spectacle, it's a value, it's an asset. But if that becomes the spectacle, that becomes the glasses with which we see everything, and we see everyone, then it can become a problem.
So, we have to see black and white, but if we keep seeing the black, this is black, this is black, this is black, then even when there is white, we will look for the black in the white. So, the mind, whatever it does repeatedly, that becomes its default disposition. And, it is a, we have to be careful that we don't let that critical mentality become our default mentality.
Critical mentality is a resource, and it is a useful resource. In some situations, it's an indispensable resource. Some people at least have to have it.
But, we cannot, that cannot be the default mentality that we have. Then, we will not be able to connect with anyone. Whatever we will be able to connect, that connection will be for disconnection.
Because we will criticise, and we will alienate people. So, the more than whether people have faults or not, more than whether there are mistakes or not, that's the reality which we have to discuss. But, more than that, we have to see what is my attitude, what is my mentality, what is the disposition of my mind.
If I am becoming more and more of a fault finder, then that is a problem with my mentality. So, and especially this can happen even with philosophy. Sometimes when we are, we become, we understand the philosophy, then we can say, this is philosophically correct, this is philosophically wrong.
And it's important to understand that. At the same time, philosophy is a part of a person's defining identity. I work with Giriraj Maharaj sometimes and editing some of his books.
So, he's written a massive book on Prabhupada's battle to build the Juhu temple. It's almost like 800-900 page book. Beautifully written.
So, there he is telling that he had many interactions with Prabhupada. And Prabhupada was very strong in condemning Mayavadi philosophy. And when Prabhupada went to America for the first time, he stayed at Dr. Mishra's yoga studio.
And Dr. Mishra was a Mayavadi. And Prabhupada, so Prabhupada once told Giriraj Maharaj, Giriraj Maharaj told me that this was a revolution for me. He said that philosophically, we would argue like anything.
But culturally, we were friends. So, this capacity to differentiate between philosophy and culture, this is very important. And sometimes, we take the philosophy and make whatever philosophical position a person has into the whole identity of the person.
In today's world especially, when somebody says, oh, everything is one. We are all God. To call such people Mayavadis is actually to give them too much credit.
Actually, Mayavadis is a philosophy. And Shankaracharya was a serious philosopher. What modern what we call as Mayavadis, they are actually Neo-Mayavadis.
And they have got a very oversimplified idea of Mayavad, which is actually a caricature, which is not actually a Mayavad. And most people today, who say everything is one, they just read something somewhere, heard something somewhere, sounded nice to them, everything is one. So, actually speaking, if we start criticising and condemning them as Mayavadis, we simply alienate them.
Because they are not really Mayavadis. They just, that's something which they have heard and something which they have taken in themselves. So, if we are very critical, okay, this philosophy is wrong, this philosophy is wrong, this philosophy is wrong.
It's okay. We do have to differentiate. We do have to identify what is philosophically right and what is philosophically wrong.
But at many times, even when a person speaks a particular philosophical position, that is just a part, that is just a part of their understanding. And when we become too critical, then we can't see the white, even we can't see the white when there is prominently white and there is a little black. We zero only onto the black.
And that mentality is a big, big problem. When we start looking, a devotee is meant to see Krishna everywhere. Yomam pashyati sarvatra, Krishna says.
One who sees me everywhere. So, I'll come to this point in the end of the discussion also, but instead of seeing how Krishna is present everywhere, we may end up seeing how Krishna is absent everywhere. Even when a wonderful service is being done, this is not done right, this is not done right, this is not done right.
So, if we start seeing that, how Krishna is absent everywhere, then the biggest issue is that Krishna will become absent in our own hearts. Because we will not be Krishna conscious. We will be conscious of Krishna unconsciousness.
Yes, if something is not done right, it has to be seen, but that cannot be our default exposition. So, the tendency to see only the black. Initially, I see black, white, that is good.
But then I start seeing only the black. And then, I start focussing on the black, and then once my mind gets habituated to looking at the black, even when there is white, I'll see only the black. And that is the fault of the fault-finding mentality.
So, before doing any fault-finding, we need to find the fault of the fault-finding mentality. And the fault of the fault-finding mentality is that when that becomes a default mentality, we can't see good even when good is prominently present. So, any questions or comments about this, in this stage? Yes.
He's leading the team. He's seen his default mentality to see white everywhere, whereas the team members are not yet there in terms of… For the team members, it's like every decision doesn't make sense. So, how do we harmonise this tendency in a team? The decision is made by the… by one of the members of the team.
Leaders, especially, they have their tendency for fault-finding is almost nil. In fact, they see no fault even when the faults are present. But for the team members to digest that and move on when faults are apparent.
Okay, yeah. Good point. So, this leads to the second point, which I'm going to speak.
So, I'll speak that directly and then I'll address the question. The second point was, even if we have to find… even if people are not faultless, we can find faults less. Now, what does this mean? That while living in the world, there is definitely something which is right and something which is wrong.
So, once we understand that this is what needs to be done, this is how say, if somebody is driving a car and if they're driving on the wrong side of the road, we can't say that, I'll not find faults with them. We have to point it out. So, there are some places where pointing out what is wrong is essential.
Otherwise, the service will not be done. So, how do we point out faults? There are ways in which we can do it where the person doesn't feel pointed out or hurt. Say, for example, if, say, every time when I go to America and come back to India, whenever somebody is driving in a car, I always end up going to the wrong side of the car.
Because in America, we drive on one side, so the driver sits on one side, the person sits on the other side. We keep making mistakes. So, instead of saying, hey, you're driving on the wrong side of the road, we could just say that, in India, we drive on this side of the road.
In America, we drive on that side of the road. So, it's immediately understood. Basically, fault can be pointed out without pointing at the person.
When I said, even if people are not faultless, we can find faultless. That means, when we are finding out the fault, what are we pointing at? Say, if somebody has made a spelling mistake, I can say, you have spelled this word wrong. Or I can say, this word is spelled like this.
It's a small difference. But, when I write, and people review my writings, like I do it for others, others also do it for me. So, this difference can make a big difference.
So, if somebody says that, you, you, you are wandering all over the place. Your article is very incoherent. Now, I have found that, there are different devotees, and different senior devotees also review the articles, and different devotees have different ways of doing it.
So, just a small statement that, your article is all over the place. And this article is all over the place. The amount of hurt that you feel, is much much lesser.
This article is my article only. But, don't point it out, like that. So, there's a way in which, we can speak the truth, but we can speak the truth, in a way, that doesn't directly hurt the person.
Just because the truth is unpalatable, doesn't mean that it has to be spoken unpalatably. Sometimes, we may use, the truth is bitter. We may use that as an argument for speaking the truth bitterly.
The two are very different things. The truth is bitter, and speaking the truth bitterly are very different things. When I studied public speaking, one simple principle was that, if you see blank faces in the audience, don't ask, are you understanding? Nobody wants to admit it, because if I say, I'm not understanding, that means, I'm a fool.
Nobody wants to admit, I'm a fool. So, instead, ask, am I making myself clear? The essence is the same. But, instead of saying, is this understood? There are three things over here.
That, we point fault with the person, we point fault with the concept, and we point out some fault which we see. This is a subtle difference. Same point, are you understanding? Is this point clear? Or, am I making myself clear? In an interaction, I am there, the person is there, and in between the interaction is there.
Or, any particular service is there, that person is doing the service, the service is here, and I am here. So, what is our thrust? That can make a big difference. So, I know one reviewer who is very sensitive.
So, how they always give reviews is, I have a problem with this. Now, when they say, I have a problem, okay, you have a problem. But, then I read it, this is actually a problem here.
But, you don't feel threatened by that. So, basically, whenever something is done wrong, if we can find faults less, that doesn't mean we say that the bad is good. That would be untrue, and that can be a disservice.
So, it's just that, if we could do it in a less intrusive or threatening way, it can make a big difference. In the study of language, it is said that what you, if you are writing a sentence, what you speak at the end of the so, somebody is asking, how is this person doing? Now, if that person wants to give a positive review or a negative review, they can just speak the same words, but just subtly shift it. He had problems earlier, but he's fine now, but he's stable now.
He's stable now, but he had problems earlier. The same statement, same words also, but, oh, he's fine now, he's stable now. Oh, he had problems earlier.
So, the carry home message becomes positive or negative based on what is placed at the end. So, similarly, when there are some faults, and we do have to, sometimes we may be the persons who have to take responsibility for fixing the mess after it comes up. So, then naturally, we would like to fix it before the mess comes up.
And that's desirable. But, we could do it in a way that is less threatening. That's why Krishna says, Anudvegakaram Vakyam Satyam Priyahitam Jayat Swadhyayabdesanam Jayiva Vanmayam Tapa Uchyate So, Anudvegakaram Vakyam, speak in a way that doesn't hurt.
That doesn't hurt. That doesn't agitate people. Krishna is saying that speak truthfully.
But it's interesting, the first austerity of speech that he says is speak non-agitated. Because the tendency of the mind of most of us is to speak whatever comes in the mind. Some people speak to express their thoughts.
And some people speak to discover their thoughts. They speak I didn't mean to speak that. I shouldn't have spoken that.
How many of you have had the experience of slip of tongue? Almost all of us. Sometimes if it happens on the Vyasasana, it can be extremely embarrassing. I remember once I gave a class, not on the Vyasasana, but after that a devotee came after the class and he had a big smile on his face.
Your class was terrible. And he was smiling so happily. I said what happened? And he saw me bewildered and he said Oh, I meant terrific.
So, we can have slip of tongue and sometimes it can be easily corrected. But sometimes we may not even realise that the tongue has slipped. So, basically if we make it a intention that whatever I am going to speak let me try to speak it as less agitatingly as possible.
How can I do that? One way is by sometimes we feel this person has made such a mistake. I am going to put them in their place. So, before we put others in their place let's put ourselves in their place.
Let's put ourselves in their place means if somebody spoke this to me how would I feel about it? If somebody spoke this to me I have done this I am saying all this it is easy to speak and applying I also struggle. But whenever I have been able to ask this question to myself it makes me pause. And I may still speak the same thing, but I will speak it much more sensitively.
If somebody spoke this to me how would I feel about it? And it's always we can't be we can't actually be empathic. Even this is to take this further down we could say that if say we are senior and somebody is junior and then if somebody had spoken to this to me when I was 2 years old in Krishna Consciousness when I was 5 years old in Krishna Consciousness that can actually deepen the empathy. That means if I put myself not only in their place, from my place but I go to their place actually.
So, if somebody is seasoned say with respect to writing writing may not be relevant to all of you, but that's what is relevant to me. So, I have experience of this area. So, say somebody has already been, has written many articles and has published or let's take a speaking example.
Speaking might be easier for all of you. Say somebody has given hundreds of classes and then somebody points out faults with their class. That will still hurt but because they have given so many classes, they are confident that I can do this service nicely.
But that faults become easier to digest. Of course, the ego can come in the way and how dare you find faults with me. That can also happen.
But if that person is a little sober they don't feel insecure about the service itself. Yes, I am secure situated in the service and I can improve this, this, this. But suppose somebody has just given their first class and after that fault is pointed out.
Better I don't do this service only. So many mistakes happen. So, when somebody is taking the first tentative steps, say a baby is just learning to walk, a small child is learning to walk and then the mother instead of cheering Oh, how nicely walking.
Why are you not walking straight? Well, if you do that, the child will say, I will not walk only. So, we need to put ourselves in their place. Before we put others in their place, we have to put ourselves in their place.
And so this question, how would this sound to me? How would I feel if somebody spoke this to me? When I was 5 years old, 2 years old or when I was doing the service, that can actually create a greater amount of sensitivity. And addressing the point of say other devotee is not finding faults and we having to find faults. Yes, I think it's a, if we are responsible for a particular service, then we have to as a service point out that how will this work? Rather than saying that this will not work.
This will not work. How will this work if this happens? So, basically, instead of giving a judgement to people, we can point out, if this happens, how will you deal with this? Then what happens? Rather than people feeling that you are finding fault with me, they themselves take responsibility. They will come up with a solution or maybe they will come up with, okay, when it comes, we will do this, this, this or they may themselves abandon.
So, instead of putting ourselves, this, I am the judge and you are wrong, we include them in the team and say, okay, how would we deal with this happens? So, somebody is trying to discuss with somebody is trying to say, talk about logical reasons for the existence of God. Then, instead of saying that this argument, you can refute any atheist. You could say instead how would, if you had an atheistic friend, how would the atheistic friend respond to this argument? Then they may have some objection.
This argument doesn't make sense. This argument won't work. Then, rather than they attacking us or we attacking them, we become joint partners.
Okay, if this happens, how do we deal with it? So, that way, if we create a sense of inclusion, then, again, that's a way of finding faults less. Any questions or comments about this? No. Is it possible, I mean, does it have, like, investment to try to grow this kind of mentality and deal with the students and because of that, later stages, it becomes very difficult to handle something bad, something negative really comes.
Hmm. Because a person becomes used to accepting this kind of… That's a good question. So, if we become very used to others being very sensitive in correcting us, and then if we see somebody who is very direct and blunt in correcting, then it may become very difficult for us to deal with it.
Yes, that's true. We all will face difficult people in our lives. It's said that some people bring happiness wherever they go.
And some people bring happiness whenever they go. So, there are people who are very blunt fault finders. It's interesting, sometimes in English, the opposite words mean the same thing.
Normally, sharp and blunt are opposite. A knife is either sharp or blunt. A blunt speaker, a person who speaks bluntly and a person who speaks sharply, that means the same thing.
The words hurt us if they speak bluntly. Now, bluntly means what? Actually, it is they just speak things as they are. So, or at least as they see they are.
Now, we all need some amount of, as they say, a thick skin to withstand such people. But, just because we all need a thick skin doesn't mean that it is our duty to thicken other people's skin. To put it another way, all of us are meant to develop humility.
But, is it that if we go around insulting others, disrespecting others, criticising others and we tell them, I am helping you become humble. Well, nobody appointed you to create humility in everyone else. Isn't it? Our culture is Amanina Manadena.
So, we strive to develop sensitivity and of course, there will be difficult people who will not be sensitive. And then, working with such people is a challenge. I was at one temple in America and I was talking with some devotees over there.
And one devotee told about another prominent leader. He says, he is a wonderful person to admire from a distance. So, there is something in English called as condemning by faint praise.
If somebody offers us a prasad and then they ask, how was the prasad? It was edible. Now, prasad is delicious, edible. We are not criticising it, but it is a criticism.
It is severe criticism. So, when somebody says, they are a wonderful person to admire from a distance, that means essentially, they are not a very pleasant person to be close to them. So, it is condemning by faint praise.
So, there are some people who are difficult like that. And dealing with them is itself a challenge. So, at that time, we can see that Krishna also knows that dealing with this particular person is difficult.
And Krishna will appreciate that. So, when we have to do a service with somebody who is a difficult person, one way I console myself is that this is a or encourage myself is that, actually I am doing two services, not one. That means, I am doing this service and I am doing this service with this person.
So, doing it with this person is also a service. So, actually, if you see, when we are going through difficult situations, Krishna acknowledges that. Rukmini was serving Krishna wonderfully, but when Krishna gave a Parijat flower to Rukmini and then Satyamama demanded and Krishna gave a whole Parijat tree to Satyamama and after that when Krishna met Rukmini, Krishna expected Rukmini will demand something from him.
And Rukmini did not demand anything from him. Krishna became very pleased with that. And later on, Krishna appreciated that.
So, if somebody is doing something in a difficult situation, Krishna knows that. Now, we may say, this person is not difficult, but I find it difficult working with this person. That's also true.
Krishna also sees from our perspective. So, when there is some people with whom it's difficult to work, we all have our limits of tolerance. And if it's unbearably difficult, then we may say, I can't work with this person.
But if we can, it's a manageable difficulty, then we can see that that is also a way we are doing another service and we are getting purified by that. So, we do need to develop a thick skin. That is true.
But, that doesn't mean that that gives us a licence to be insensitive to others in the name of developing a thick skin, helping them to develop thick skin. There is a difference between what I need to tolerate and how I need to conduct myself. So, I was talking with one senior devotee, one sanyasi, and he was telling that he tries to follow this principle with yourself, be like Bhakta Siddhanta.
With others, be like Bhakta Vinod. That is, be strict with yourself, be accommodating, understanding with others. So, yes, we should try to develop a thick skin ourselves.
But with others, we try to be as understanding, as gentle, as sensitive as possible. So, the last point I'll speak now is that focus on people's potentials, not their problems. Krishna says that apaishunam, aversion to fault finding is a characteristic of the godly people.
Annalladi shunyam, the characteristic of a, he already said that actually don't see that he is free from the mentality to find faults with others. When Sri Prabhupada went to America, at that time, he, when he went to America, actually people had so many faults. In fact, let me put this another way, that when Prabhupada came back to India, the second time to Vrindavan, first he came in 1968, at that time he brought 2-3 disciples with him.
But 1970, when he came again, he brought a busload of disciples with him. Several buses, in fact. And it created a sensation in Vrindavan.
And like a hometown swami, he became globally successful. Vrindavan was proud of Prabhupada. And then in Vrindavan, a big programme was organised to honour Prabhupada.
And then the local municipality heads and everybody had come. And they had invited some Gaudiya leader also to come over. Now for them, Prabhupada was like a very junior devotee.
Initially, when, say, we come and somebody else comes 5 years, 10 years down the line, there's a big difference. But 20 years, 30 years down the line, a 5 year difference or even a 10 year difference is no big difference. So Prabhupada was not at all a noteworthy leader in Gaudiya Math.
And they were sannyasis and gurus. So some of them couldn't, they found it a little difficult to digest the fame of Prabhupada, the success of Prabhupada. And, like I said, condemning with faint praise.
So one of the godbrothers tried to do something like that. He said that oh, Bhaktivedant Swami has been successful in making so many lekshas and yavanas as devotees. All his life he was a businessman.
So as a businessman, he had to deal with all kinds of people who were of low class. And that's why he had a lot of experience. Now we were born in a Brahmin family.
We always, from childhood, youth we were sannyasis. And we always interacted with pure people. But it's still wonderful that Bhaktivedant Swami Maharaj has spread Krishna Consciousness all over the world and made all these lekshas and yavanas into devotees.
Now, here what he is saying, he was mixed with impure people and that's why he had a habit of mixing with impure people. So it's actually a criticism. But, the test of our purity is not just how we stay away from impure people.
But it's also how we inspire impure people to become pure. Both are tests of our purity. If somebody is in an epidemic hit area, then it's important for them to take the vaccine properly or take the immunisation properly so that they don't get infected.
And at one level you could say the potency of this medication or the potency of this doctor, the potency of this medical staff is that although they are in this infected area, they have not become infected. But, to not become infected is not the success of the medical staff. That is one level of success.
But a bigger level of success is that the medical staff is also able to give the medicine to those who are infected so that they also become cure of infection. So Prabhupada saw the impurity in people. But Prabhupada did not focus on that.
Prabhupada focused on the spiritual potency. The spark of spirituality that is there in people, that is what Prabhupada focused on. In fact, you see when he went to America and he went to the hippies, and you could say for the hippies the only regulative principle was to break all regulative principles.
Constantly, just a part of their life it was. But Prabhupada saw that they had some interest in Krishna. They had some interest in bhakti and he fanned that.
So whenever we are interacting with anyone, there are of course degrees, sometimes we may not have the purity or the potency to withstand some people's it's not that they are impure but it may be that it may contaminate us. So we have to know our limits. But still the point is when we look at someone, we look at their potential not look at the problem.
I'll conclude with one story. When I first went to America, one of the things that struck me was that how many people have pets, have dogs. And in many metropolitan cities in America especially among Caucasians Caucasians is Americans Europeans who came to America the number of in families the number of dogs is more than the number of children.
So especially it is the immigrants from the Middle East, from India from China who are growing, the population is growing but the American population is going down for various reasons. It's complicated but anyway, so people have a lot of dogs and I was surprised to find that even devotees have dogs. So I was quite taken aback by that.
And then I met one very senior devotee who is a very dedicated prominent leader in our movement and he has a big dog. So I was a little confused but then I interacted with him quite a bit and I talked with him. So then he told me that actually then I asked him why do you It is a difficult question to ask but I just asked him.
So he told me something very striking which realised how much off I was. He said that there are something called therapy dogs and so he said I have I have epilepsy, I get fits and there are dogs which are trained specifically and the dogs trace the person continuously then the dog senses when the person is going to get a fit and then the dog warns and the dog cushions the person so what happens is that if somebody's, the dog anticipates before the person that I am going to get a fit and he said once I was climbing up a steep stair and a dog, this dog caught my foot and didn't allow me to climb up I want to go and he was pulling, pulling pulling and then I didn't understand and I was angry with the dog but then suddenly I started going blank and then as I started falling, the dog cushioned the fall and the dog has a particular way of barking and the dog goes on the road and people are trained in such a way that the dog has a particular badge around them so if that dog starts barking loudly then what happens? any passerby who sees, they understand oh there is an emergency and they call they will call the ambulance for help so he said this dog has saved my life twice so now I had no idea that this kind of dog existed or so we may go into our own way and say dogs are actually dogs but the reality is often much much bigger than what we perceive it to be so I think I mentioned this in my last time also I didn't come here, after travelling across the world, I have understood I have come up with a definition of humility humility means to acknowledge the complexity of reality I have a particular framework and I approach with this, this is how it is and this is right, this is wrong but reality is much more complex than what I think it to be so yes, somebody has a dog, I don't know why they have it that's a problem for me but what is the potential, this devotee is doing so much service to Krishna, focus on the potential if somebody new is coming and that new person they may be so interested in bhakti, they may be practising bhakti they may be interested in bhakti but we might see something objectionable with them this person is going to this organisation this person is eating this kind of food this person is dressing in this kind of way this person is doing like this so now of course we have to protect our bhakti, but if there is a spiritual spark, we need to focus on that spiritual spark and once that spiritual spark is ignited then people can take up bhakti and march ahead in their spiritual life so that capacity to look for the good even in the bad, that actually is the defining quality of a compassionate creature otherwise we will be creatures but we will be judgemental creatures and we will not bring people to Krishna I'll just conclude this point with a particular reflection sometimes we feel that I have brought so many people to Krishna this person became a devotee because of me, this person became a devotee because of me this person became a devotee because of me but there is no count of how many people did not come to Krishna because of me the way I spoke, the way I acted the way I conducted myself how many people I alienated from Krishna so if we try to become a little more sensitive of that, look at many times we look at people's problems and we alienated them if we look at people's potential, we can help more and more people come closer to Krishna so I'll summarise I spoke three main points, I first spoke about how the capacity to see black and white is a strength, it is a resource which is desirable and even essential in certain situations but if that critical mentality instead of being a resource becomes our default mentality then we start seeing black everywhere even in the white instead of seeing how Krishna is present everywhere, we start looking at how Krishna is absent everywhere and then we start alienating people because of that so if we have to find fault, even if people are not faultless we can find faultless that I talked about how instead of saying the problem is with that person we can say look at the problem in the service or we can say that I have a problem with this, so the way we speak something can be less or more hurting or threatening for a person so we can speak the truth but speak it in a way that is less hurting and also rather than immediately speaking out our mind we can say how would I feel if somebody spoke this to me when I was at that person's level, that way we will bring some bricks on whatever we are going to speak instead of putting ourselves in their place instead of putting people in their place we first put ourselves in their place and instead of just finding out the problem in what people are doing we make them a partner with us or ourselves become a partner instead of saying this is not work how will we make this work if this goes wrong like this and lastly I talked about focus on people's potentials not their problems Prabhupada when he went to the west he could have seen so many faults in people but instead he focused on this interest in Krishna that they had and if you focus on that then we can attract many many more people to Krishna and we can encourage each other in our shared journey towards Krishna. Humility means to acknowledge the complexity of reality and not just make snap judgments based on our presumptions but to try to learn and give people the benefit of doubt by that way we can all encourage each other positively and move on towards Krishna Thank you very much are there any questions? Thank you very much for these two points that you mentioned about presenting the faults less and seeing the potential that they resonated with me.
I was reflecting why we are not why I am not like that I found two reasons within me one is we are usually critical and ruthless in our fault presentation with those whom we are very close to like either we should have spent lot of time with that person so initially when we meet a person we see the potential and so on but over a period of time we become extremely critical to or even when we grow in stature even from an institutional point of view you mentioned how Prabhupada you know he accepted all these hippies. If you look at our movement today the kind of people who walk into 26th second avenue, if they walk into our temple I don't think we even allow them to walk past the main gate. So is it that time spent with the person and to growth in stature are we becoming more closed? Thoughtful question so is it that we find faults with people because we have become very familiar with them, we spend lot of time with them and also because we have grown in our stature, say Scon has become an established movement so hippies we wouldn't allow them to enter into our premises also at times yeah I would say that it's not necessarily finding faults let's take a second point that there are different kinds of outreach for different kinds of people so there are certain standards which need to be followed in traditional places say I was with a devotee in America and he told me that he found it so strange that it was a girl who he was seeing, he introduced him to the temple but he said we came together to the temple but when we came we were told to sit separate he said I was completely lost over there what is going on, who is this, what is this just couldn't be there so if that is the culture of people then we can't bring that culture to the temple but we need a place where people can be who they are and still they can get introduced to Krishna in fact Prabhupada had a vision we have a temple in LA before that a church and they had churches have those what do they call them rows of seats pews, so they had those rows of pews and Prabhupada said keep that and Prabhupada also said that let people come in with their shoes and instead have the deities elsewhere, that's what they did initially but eventually they found that they needed space, bigger hall and that was the biggest hall, so they changed that but Prabhupada was quite accommodating for people like yesterday I said we bring people to Krishna and we bring Krishna to people and these two are distinct activities when we are bringing Krishna to people we can't force our terms on people and there has to be a safe zone where people can come and experience Krishna on their terms and afterwards we bring people to Krishna, that means we get them to a temple so yes, so if there are hippies we don't want them the way they are to come to our temples but that doesn't mean that they can't practise bhakti you may have to create certain forums where they can come so it's not, trying to have standards is not necessarily a fault finding mentality maintaining standards and pointing out those who are not following the standards but there has to be a space where people who are not yet ready to follow the standards can also experience bhakti so demarcating that is important and creating spaces for people according to their background when I was in America I had gone to a prominent church and they have three services every Sunday and every one of them is full in fact they have now created a they have so many people in their church that actually they have created CCTV and people sit in the parking lot in the car and from there they see the service so they have three services they have an English service then they have a Latin American service and Spanish service and then they have an English service for African Americans so there they have separate food for them they have a separate way of presenting using African American lore, using songs and stuff like that so they create within that same place presentation according to the culture of the people so I would say that contextualisation has to be done and second point of yes does familiarity breed contempt sometimes when we are too familiar with people it is true that what happens is we tend to we tend to presume that the person understands us when somebody is new we understand that I have to create trust in this person and we have to make sure that this person understands that I have a relationship with them and we develop a relationship after which we then make some corrective points but over a period of years we presume that the the relationship is already established but sometimes every relationship of ours it is we sometimes think it is like a fixed deposit I invested this much money and it is there every relationship is like actually capital invested in the stock market sometimes we can see the stock rates are going down and sometimes we may not even notice we think oh I have this much money I have 5 lakh rupees and we find out actually I have only 1 lakh rupees the stock rate has gone down sometimes we assume that I have a good relationship with this person but what is the value of the stock we don't know so we can't always be on our guard with every person, some people also we need to be comfortable and just relax with them but in general if something is if we are that close to that person then we also understand what are their vulnerable spots these are areas where this person is quite sensitive and if we have to speak something in that area then we need to be a little cautious about them so if we know people well then that also means that we know their sensitivities not that we think that I am so close that I don't have to care for the sensitivity but rather I become more especially careful with respect to their sensitivities otherwise it's not so much contempt we may still have respect for the person but there may not be sensitivity because we just take people for we don't take the person for granted that can also happen but we take the relationship for granted the same statement if I know if I speak to this person it will actually seriously impede my relationship but I presume nothing like this will happen in this relationship but it may not be like that it may not sometimes we may have to or not sometimes periodically we need to re-evaluate what is the stalk in this relationship how do I whenever difficulties come up in the relationship how does the other person respond does the person become like alienated from me does the person become very aggressive towards me does that indicate that the stalk is not as high as I thought of course to understanding the stalk in a relationship itself is a different class but I think if we become sensitive to that become attuned to at least thinking about that then we won't take the other person for granted I don't want to take the relationship for granted did I answer your question? last question is there any question about the class specifically? recently I was giving a class so I got the information that Uttara even after the death of Abhimanyu did not did not perform the sati as we understood because somehow or other in India although here sati committed evolution for a different reason but that has become like a continual thing for the Indian culture so I have a question regarding this like we see in the scripture like Uttara did not commit sati because Abhimanyu Parishad Maharaj was there alone next Matiri did not commit sati so that means it is understood that they should commit like sati so as a sensible person like I was just thinking that how can Vedic culture allow this that we do not create a facility for widows to live and give them a secure place whether they are encouraged or it is understood ok to be that place so I don't you can just plan like the culture of context yeah so was sati mandatory why did Vedic culture not create a facility for widows to be taken care of first thing is that Vedic culture was quite diverse that if you consider when Bhishma went to get the hand of Madri for the Kuru princes at that time the Madra king told him that in our tradition if a girl is to be given in marriage the boy has to give a bride price and Bhishma said yes I know about it and he had brought chariots of gifts to give now the bride price is actually completely opposite of the concept of dowry and Bhishma did not impose you should give dowry not that I give bride price he accepted that so actually there was a lot of diversity according to time place circumstance and their local cultures and they were also respected so sati was a part of not entirely Indian culture it was Brahminical culture it is among the dwijas sometimes the women would enter into the fire with the husband but it was never forced and as far as facility for widows is concerned I think in the Bhagavatam only it is said Mahabharata said that after the Kurukshetra war got over then Yudhisthira Maharaj actually his whole rehabilitation was the programme he had to look after the orphans and the widows so he created facilities for them so it is not that everybody had to go sati that was not at all true historically speaking the I would say three things happened that when Britain started ruling India when the Muslims came to India and they ruled India at one level they were very aggressive in desecrating temples and things like that but at another level they became a part of Indian culture and they realised that India is so big that we cannot administer it ourselves so there was a whole traditional system of landlords and people peasants working in the fields and they continued that system most of the times when the Europeans when the British came to India and they colonised India at that time they were even lesser in number and the diversity of India just was too much for them so they tried to see they realised that we have to respect the religious customs of India their religion is too strong a force some of them wanted to convert Indians but not all of them to Christianity but they wanted to we will respect the religious customs but what are the religious customs so that time they tried to impose a standardisation on India so for example they tried to make the Manusmriti the standard book now was Manusmriti the standard book and Prabhupada talks about Manusmriti he says we have to follow the rules of God and he used Manusmriti as an example but many of the injunctions in Manusmriti Prabhupada did not try to implement them within his columns so Manusmriti was never there was no one Smriti that was universal all over India Manu himself says that in time and place circumstances what he has said can be revised and Dharmashastra is a very broad genre there are different people had their different customs and different traditions and they were accepted so what happened is in trying to homogenise everything so they wanted to decide this is what we can accept this is what we will outlaw so one of the practises they outlawed was Sati and somehow the way things happened is maybe they didn't do some of the things more sensitively so when they said Sati cannot be done it's some India said how dare you interfere with our culture and then to some extent as far as statistics we don't have that much but there is a whole book written on Sati as a historical practise so according to statistics that are available in the 18th century, 19th century the number of Satis that happened were more than the 15th and 16th century because the British said no and then that created a sort of rebellion against it and then when a woman would go in for Sati she would be honoured and she would be celebrated and that created a pressure on other women that if I want to be other I have to also do like this and then some women rebelled against it so it became a very complicated mess it was not that Sati was a universal practise which every single woman had to do as you rightly pointed out in the Bhagavatam itself there are many cases where Sati is not done and whoever hasn't done Sati is not condemned at all for that matter so there is a tendency to try to reduce the complexity of the broad Vedic culture to homogeneity and that has led to certain evils being aggravated much more than what they are we are not denying that the evils were there there were times when Sati was forced and that is reprehensible but it was something which was done voluntarily and occasionally and there was facility for people to live even if it was not done now last point is that about this when certain practises might have been in the tradition we have to see that scripture has certain things which is prescriptive and certain things which is descriptive so that means scripture may on many occasions describe that this was how it was done at that time but just because something was done at that time that does not mean it has to be done like this right now there are descriptive sections of scripture which for example say during Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's time Haridas Thakur was not allowed to enter into Jagannath's temple that is descriptive, is that a prescriptive thing that nobody should be allowed that is simply describing how things were at that time so Sati is is it a prescription, none of the Acharyas have said like that, Bhakti Sahasrao did not say Prabhupada did not say so it was something which was done at that time and now it is not required it is not only not required it is not at all a prescription it is banned and we recognise that today it will be grievously misused so it is certain practises in the tradition which were there we first of all explain it in their context at that point we have to be clear this is not at all a descriptive, prescriptive thing it is simply descriptive of how things were at that time does it answer your question so thank you very much Kavithraj Srimad Bhagavatam Ki Shrila Prabhupada Ki Gaur Bhakt Bind Ki Gaur Premanand.