Will some future event dramatically increase the number of devotees in the world?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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We see there is a huge gulf between devotees and non devotees and will in the foreseeable future some changes may be astrological changes or say building of the TOEP will that decrease the gulf or will it increase the number of non devotees becoming devotees can we say that in the foreseeable future there is going to be a big change that is the question there are two different things over here one is that what we as individuals can do the other is that what are the big changes that are going to happen going back to the boating metaphor in the boat the person can keep rowing sometimes the wind might be in the same direction and the boat can just zoom forward sometimes the wind might be in opposite direction and the boat will be almost blocked despite the best effort the boat might move in the opposite direction so all that is in the hands of the rower is to keep rowing but is not just to keep rowing but also to try to sense which direction is the wind flowing here and then for those who are rowers catching the right wind is also very important if they catch the right wind their efforts get augmented so similarly for all of us when we are trying to ourselves practice bhakti and share bhakti and we see the difference between the devotional way of living between devotees and non devotees what we can do at our level is keep trying to share keep trying to share bhakti keep trying to practice and share with others and beyond that there are within bhakti different people can have different sources of inspiration some devotees may feel that if you just build this temple then the outreach can expand enormously some devotees may say that if you just distribute more books then people will become more some devotees may say actually we need to customize instead of building one big temple we need many small centers and many people will come locally at the small centers so now is it that within the practice of bhakti there can be many definitions of success so ultimately its sharing Krishna with others but what are the ways in which you share Krishna that can vary some devotees may say that if you just build your homes and temples according to Vastu and then you do things then auspiciousness will come different people will have different ideas and there is that room for individuality and diversity within spirituality now it can well be that at certain times certain definitions of success may become much more prominent than others so if different devotees will strive in different ways and if something becomes more effective than others then more people will start doing that say if you look at the history of our movement when Sri Prabhupada came to the west at that time he did not particularly studied American social cultural history he just came at a particular time and he tried to reach out to whoever he could but by circumstance gradually he came to the counter culture and they were the most receptive for him and that’s how he took it up so he looked at the context and saw these were the people who were the most receptive and his movement focused on the counter culture but when he came to India there was no counter culture nobody was wanting to leave their homes and the counter culture means people had already left everything Prabhupada says in a lecture that people at that time he says to the American disciples they had already done Sarva Dharmaan Paritra I taught them Mamekam Sharanam Vracham so they had already given up their duty to their family even their career, their education their society, even their hygiene everything but Sri Prabhupada taught them so Prabhupada you could say that wind of the counter culture Prabhupada caught that wind and then he took everyone along but when he went to India there was no counter culture so Prabhupada at that time there was the wind of you could say nationalism cultural nationalism we Indians have been ruled by foreigners for so long but now those foreigners are taking up our culture how great our culture is how great our nation is so most of the people who came to Sri Prabhupada in the 1970s none of them were really interested in becoming committed foreigners so Prabhupada recognized that cultural nationalism our culture and our nation is so great that these foreigners are taking up so they wanted some visible manifestations of the greatness of our culture and our nation so Prabhupada channeled that and Prabhupada started the life membership program for getting people to support building big temples so the idea is that this is the wind that is there, how do you channel that so they were not ready to become say committed sadhakas so then Prabhupada accommodated them now if you see today most of our movement is neither the counter culture nor say life patterns today the whole need is that society is becoming more fragmented people are more mentally disturbed there is loneliness so most people come to spirituality for a sense of community and belonging most people who come to spirituality are not visionaries how to change the world most people who come to Krishna consciousness there is some amount of cultural nationalism but that is not the primary motive so then our movement is adopting that so we are focusing more and more on expanding the community having community support, community care the temple becomes more a centre for community to congregate and to connect so then whatever is the wind that is moving we need to catch that wind so we could say in the 60s it was the counter culture wind in America in the 70s it was the cultural nationalism wind that Prabhupada caught in India from the 80s onwards it was mostly Indians and it is more of the spirituality as community kind of wind that is being caught but now if you see there are different winds that are coming also that is one is yoga is very big so somebody would be catching the yoga wind and so people come to practice yoga and then they get bhakti yoga there is the environmentalism wind which is also there so green environmental consciousness is there we can have eco-friendly communities that is a wind that some people are catching there is also a wind of mindfulness that we want to process our emotions better become more aware most people today if you tell them you are not the body they are not interested it is too abstract and philosophical if you tell them you are not your mind oh really? explain to me how? so use mindfulness to share spirituality there are four broad things there are winds which are flowing there is yoga, there is environmentalism, there is mindfulness and there is veganism so in India people still think vegetarianism is old fashion to become modern means to become non-veg but in the west to become vegan is cool so what is happening some people are using vegetarian cooking vegetarian cooking kind of classes so we have to see which wind is there and we try to catch that wind thank you very much