The Monk’s Padcast 16 with Jayadvaita Swami – Writing for Krishna

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Thank you Maharaj for joining today, for sparing your time. Today I was planning we could discuss on the topic of writing in Bhakti Yoga, writing for Krishna and broadly in my personal spiritual journey you have been the biggest inspiration for me for writing and I and I’m 2000 I think 2002 or three you had come to Pune when I was there and I had published some articles in Times of India and you saw those articles I showed them to you you’re so happy and then I asked how I could improve the articles so how I could improve my writing skills and you gave me a list of books that I could read but at that time Amazon and all this was not so active so I I was wondering how would get the books and then you came to America and through Govinda Prabhu and through Bhima Prabhu and to several other devotees you actually bought several books and send them to me I was amazed by your your concern and your eagerness that that I learned to write and that has been a enduring inspiration for me and I remember in one of your writing seminars you mentioned that Prabhupada told you that learn learn editing and teach it to others so so you you’ve seen that writing is an important service in our tradition for us to continue so I would like to discuss today about… Actually continue your prescribed duty and train others that’s what he said. Continue prescribed duty okay so okay this one Raju so so I when I travel across especially in India now there are a lot of young devotees who are joining or college graduates and quite well educated and they like to they want to write the blogosphere has actually opened a whole new universe for writing for devotees so I wanted to discuss about how devotees could do that and broadly there are three aspects to writing one is the inspiration to write then there is the skills to write and then there is the forum forums where devotees can write so I thought we could discuss these three things so if somebody wants to write Maharaj what should be the inspiration why one should write because there are so many other services that can be also be done main inspiration is that that we’ve heard shravanam kirtanam Prabhupada said because I was in he told how he was how he his spiritual master remarked this boy likes to hear and probably said because I was enthusiastic about hearing shravanam now I’m enthusiastic about kirtanam so okay chanting or preaching so that’s the first thing enthusiasm isn’t artificial it comes from following the regulative principles chanting Hare Krishna reading the books serving then by these things we get natural enthusiasm for all of our activities otherwise it won’t be there it won’t be genuine enthusiasm won’t won’t arise but if we follow them these things will come then by hearing we become enthusiastic that this subject matter is so nice I want to share this I want to distribute this this understanding that’s that should be the main and I want to serve my spiritual master wants this message distributed so I should try to please him I should try to serve him that’s the main thing it’s not for name and fame it’s not for other things but to please Krishna please the spiritual master and benefit others yes in general there is some reservation on as when it comes to writing when kirtanam many devotees are encouraged to speak and share about Krishna but quite often it comes to writing many people feel that writing almost become it becomes like there are already Prabhupada’s books why do you want to write more and speaking is encouraged we can play Prabhupada’s lectures we don’t need anyone else to speak by that argument we can play probably don’t you don’t we’ll just play recordings of Prabhupada that’s not a good argument okay so the tradition is as a living tradition it has to continue and Prabhupada wanted it he said all of my just my students I want all of my students to write he said what is this back to Godhead for that’s one of the purposes so that the the devotees will will write and he said write your realization he said it doesn’t matter two lines four lines every day write something okay which is also standard writing advice from the writing gurus the mundane writing gurus that you write writers right so do you feel in some ways writing has been under emphasized as compared to so many other services this is a very direct instruction every day write something but there’s so many there’s no point for me to comment on what’s overemphasized what’s under emphasized that’s a management matter but but Prabhupada wanted us to write that’s all yes Maharaj and generally when if devotees do some services sorry to interrupt but uh look at what he did Prabhupada said do as I do so Prabhupada wrote he did everything he he chanted he he cooked he and he wrote books yeah and he encouraged his followers to write books satsvarupa Maharaj he published that book readings in Vedic literature Prabhupada encouraged that Swoop Damodar Maharaj Krishna the supreme scientist Prabhupada encouraged that and so he wanted to go on Maharaj how did you start your writing or journey or your literary service was that something interested in your pre-devotional days also no not so much oh so how did you begin this service well Prabhupada said right I started writing articles for back to godhead oh that is in the 1970s itself or yeah okay early 1970s and generally in the secular world when people form some people want to write often they form some kind of writer’s guild where there is a like-minded association and people can read each other’s writings and that encourages everyone so are there any uh are there any ways like that that devotees can get encouragement for writing that you know within the devotee world I don’t really know of any okay and uh so when devotees start writing the one now presently a lot of ISKCON is based in India and in some ways Indian many of the Indians who are coming to our movement are also more from engineering background more from a STEM background so how important is it to to actually learn the skills of writing and spend a significant amount of time in that because as compared to other services writing often seems to be like a time intensive service and that often makes devotees apprehensive about the level of commitment required everything’s time intensive deity worship is time intensive kirtan is time intensive japa is time intensive everything’s time intensive but as far as you know learning writing skills and so on not everyone will do that some will be more enthusiastic for puja some will be more enthusiastic for book distribution some will be more enthusiastic for management some will be more enthusiastic for writing so the pujari people will attend the pujari courses the manager meant people will attend the management courses according to one’s interest and enthusiasm so when Prabhupada said that every day write something was he could he also have been mentioning more about a personal journal if every day if that’s a standard instruction for all devotees was he talking about for outreach or what one more for it might be everybody said that writing helps when you write then you have to think about the subject matter so it helps clarify your thoughts so for that reason also might be published or not published but it helps your realization your understanding yes and so you’re saying that those who do not all devotees might become writers who actually do writing as a major service but those who do then they should get some training as a it’s up to them they may just write without any formal training or anything just write their realizations and maybe depend on editors to polish it up but if one is serious about writing then there’s much to be said for learning the ins and outs of it learning the craft yes so you have conducted editing courses also are there any particular ways that a particular resources that you would recommend for writing for if devotees want to learn yeah there’s their books I think you have the list strunk and white is high on the list Williams answers on writing well yeah there’s some the the writers art by I think James J Kilpatrick yeah the practical stylist by Sheridan Baker is useful undergraduate text and there are more of course some of them tell more about the technical side of writing some focus on different areas those are some of the books I’ve found useful yes and so when how useful do you feel our online writing tools like say Grammarly or something like that which do who Freddie Grammarly I haven’t used Grammarly I get the idea of it it may be useful for letter writers and report writers and things like that they’re not really a substitute for understanding the basic rules of grammar and a lot of people you know they’re businessmen and so on they don’t have to learn the basic rules of grammar they can use Grammarly and and you know clean up their act that way but for those who are serious about writing depending on Grammarly is probably a bad idea oh okay it will become like a crutch which will prevent one’s own development yeah you don’t really know what the rules are you don’t know why Grammarly is telling you what it’s telling you I assume you don’t know I don’t know how much information it gives you but yeah it becomes a crutch you should learn you should learn at least some of what the people who programmed Grammarly know and not depend on Grammarly to know it for you especially since there’s a lot of things that Grammarly can’t doesn’t know and can’t teach you and if you haven’t mastered the basics you’re not going to go on to those things yes manage and so now the the forums for writing of course in Prabhupada’s there he wanted devotees to write for BTG so you have also you are also an editor for BTG for many years somehow there is the BTG doesn’t have a huge circulation and that’s that there’s not so much you could say a visible sense of success associated writing for BTG in the devotee community when I wrote my first article for BTG I was elated because not just because it is a published but also because there was a serious editorial review process and the article actually got improved I learned about writing but the two things one is to get published in BTG requires a lot of effort because of the quite a serious editorial review process on the other hand after going through all that effort there is not much appreciation or utilization of that resource so how everybody needs some kind of encouragement some kind of you could say sense of satisfaction that I made a worthwhile contribution and say if that if a devotee spends that same time distributing books or doing some other service that is quite often appreciated more in the community so how do devotees it’s not just appreciation when Prabhupada was distributing his Bhagavatams there wasn’t so much appreciation his back-to-godhead he was distributing and it wasn’t you know it didn’t make a big splash in the world but he did it even about speaking he said if no one comes we’ll speak to the four walls so it’s not just for getting the you know the happiness of being published and and having people see our article from one point of view if we’re beginning writers good that it’s published in a small place so that not so many people see our shortcomings you know start in a small publication and then build up there’s that argument to be made but the real thing is we don’t care or we’re not dependent on that naturally we care but it may be big it may be small but let me do something and your Indian BGG has a wider circulation so the particularly devotees in India can contribute to the Indian magazine and be more widely circulated yes you were the pioneer for having BGG published in English again but in India separately what was your vision for that well the Prabhupada wanted it and it wasn’t being done there was a magazine at that time was being published in India it was very erratic it was hardly there was no schedule it was kind of a rag the quality of the publication was you know the paper and the layout and everything was was unprofessional to say the least the translation that was being done and for the India edition was quite poor like they translated one of my articles where I talked about South South America and it was translated America kduction oh my god okay so it leave left a lot to be desired so we thought that we should do something more that would bring greater credit to to the movement that to to the BBT yes much yeah but that’s a different languages is one thing but we have now English BGG in international English BGG in India so you felt that it would be more accessible to Indians if it is published in India or more opportunity for Indian writers or what there was no program for distributing the the American BTG in India and it was cost prohibitive if I recall let me think about that was it yeah it was cost prohibitive already quite a glossy and expensive publication and then to import it the logistics would have been prohibitive and the cost would have been prohibitive it made much more sense to print the same magazine in India so that’s what we did I’ve seen for many Indian right devotees BTG India becomes a more accessible step for writing yeah I should say by the way so wasn’t that I did that it was some you just your purple working with me the two of us you know we spent months spinning the numbers and looking at different alternative ways to do things and making plans so on my own I wouldn’t have been able to do anything but it was a team teamwork between you to super bow and I and me yes yeah I additional was he’s also very inspired even now he’s constantly coming up with plans about how to move it forward yeah I think you talked with his own is not that Maharaj and I don’t know marriage ask you this trouble was it yes that’s right I told Mars that I needed someone I was looking for someone he said I’ve got the man for you yeah actually there is and if I consider when I started writing in 2003 now in 2020 we have lot more writers many devotees have started writing and many right on their own blogs some submit to BTG so broadly now discussing with the forums now BTG was very at least from what I’ve heard BTG was very vibrant and very widely appreciated as well as distributed within the devotee community and by the devotee community somehow that has not happening now was there any historical reason for that well in the in the beginning back to Godhead was basically all we had we hardly had any there were really no books so back to Godhead was the only show in town oh that was that was a big thing then once books started being published proper but emphasized book distribution so devotees became more enthusiastic about big books and BTG became less important for them so that was was part of it there there were other reasons also I think the editorial content at various times was not particularly stimulating and now of course it’s a whole different game because you have the internet which has changed the entire publishing landscape so needs to be revisited and back to Godhead needs to be revisited we have to ask ourselves what we want to do now or so it seems to me although there has been some talking for several years that e-publishing will kill the physical publishing of books but still that is going on although e-publishing is also increasing but books are also being printed books haven’t been adversely affected by the internet but periodicals is a different story oh okay periodicals have been challenged by the internet some of them have folded big important magazines like Newsweek have just folded others have changed their frequency others have done other things but the internet represents a serious challenge to periodicals is it because some have gone on to the internet and become either hybrid publications internet come print or some have gone entirely online so there there are different kinds of options yeah so is it because books have a more enduring value so people would like to keep books in physical copy the libraries and periodicals don’t have that much value well periodical is something that you get periodically a book yeah something basically you you read it and and you’ve read it and maybe you keep it to refer to so a book is not really challenged by the internet but suppose you’re for example a news magazine by the time you get your magazine the news is is old because you got you got the same news every day or you know every updated every every hour or something so why do I need a print publication to bring me that news for example or anything periodical period the idea of a periodical is that it periodically communicates with you there’s a back-and-forth between the there’s a there’s a relationship with the reader that where there’s an event periodically but if you have the internet then you can speed up that sequence you can change the economics of it you can make it becomes it can be multimedia so the things things are different that’s not to say that there are aren’t some magazines that that will work in print but there there’s a significant environmental difference now because of the internet yeah so although the content of BTG is not really anything periodical it is it is perennial but still the the dynamics of periodicals will apply because simply because in that format well that and I don’t know that back to God that is meant to be just perennial content or whether it should be relevant to things that are happening in the world you know there’s a corona virus going on at the moment do we just present perennial content or do we have something to say about the coronavirus as a Vedic observer was a column that was quite dealing with current issues so that is somehow it’s not there was it earlier every month every issue is a fixed column because now it has become more erratic sometimes they’re sometimes not there when I was editor it was regular okay and you had fixed writers or that was no we we we had a you know writers that we reached out to and writers who regularly contributed but it wasn’t assigned that these are the writers for that page and it belongs to them you used to get adequate contributions always for the Vedic observer because that was the challenge now I discuss it Nagaraj Prabhu but he said I’ll be happy to have it but we don’t get enough articles well I don’t want to stick my nose in yeah but at that time you used to get at that time you used to get enough articles yes okay I’m with difficulty it wasn’t always easy getting articles and some of them were better than others but you know we went when prospecting for them and we’ve managed to have something every issue yes I think so I think we did yeah so now this Vedic observer genre I was very attracted to that and I’ve also talked with other devotees about it who are also like to write in this genre now with at least with respect to BTG currently I wrote an article in the corona virus but they said the earliest we can publish it will be in Jan Feb issue of next year so that’s just because of the logistics of how long it takes for the issue to get published and was it like that at your time also it normally you would plan eight to ten months in advance eight to ten months but there there is a time lag if you’re a monthly magazine then you’re there there are there’s a leg because it takes so much time to this much time to review the article there’s much time to edit it this much time to design it and fit it into the magazine it depends on your resources if you’re more resourceful you can speed up that process you’re less resourceful you can and that takes time to print and it takes time to mail it so just printing and mailing takes up a fair amount of time so Tuesday’s news won’t appear in Thursday’s monthly magazine so you so that is that is a challenge and that’s another reason why the internet again is so significant you can write it on Tuesday and publish it Tuesday night so these are some of the considerations otherwise you have to project a little bit you know that for example there’s going to be a general election and so in X number of months so you don’t wait for the election day to write the article you you work backwards and you project that if I write it now it can be published at such-and-such date or if you’re like a horticulture magazine you know that I have to plant these flowers now so that I can write the article about it and it can be published in such-and-such month when those now with respect to the Vedic observer kind of articles to some extent our philosophy if the mainstream intellectual discourse is not so I mean there’s a lot of distance between our philosophy and the mainstream intellectual discourse that when this coronavirus came up this crisis I saw an article in New York Times it was titled the moral meaning of the plague and it was it was one of the more introspective articles it talked about how we need to become more compassionate and look for a deeper meaning in life and learn to become more sensitive the environment now I took that as my cue and I wrote an article and I was now of course spirituality as it is appealing to the mainstream ethos is quite non-specific in the sense that we don’t talk anything about like a specific soul or a specific divinity it’s more of a generic sorry that’s not a rule of the game that’s up to you yeah no but the way spirituality is presented in the mainstream media that’s what they do because that’s what they do yes yeah so now if we want to so then I wrote this article and of course it’s going to get published in BTG but I was checking whether so I mentioned something about the spiritual essence within us about the soul and then how we could become channels of compassion for for the divine and just because of those references I send it to Times of India and several other papers and they did write a lot of things on coronavirus but I find that the more if we try to bring our philosophy it’s almost as if the mainstream outlets that we become disqualified for them but and if you if you just give more of goodness wisdom then are we really giving giving means are we really representing our tradition so that becomes attention when you submit to particular publications you then you want to know what their editorial policy is how how much latitude you have and and all of that and then you look for how you can say as much as you can within that if you consider them it worthwhile also you may say well they’re so narrow I don’t even want to write for them that they won’t let me say anything or but if you go the other way and say all right it’s worth it then you say all right how do I say as much as I can within the parameters so so you are okay also if as devotees we write something which is not really having much of Krishna conscious content in it I’m not very enthusiastic about it because everybody everybody and his uncle can write about the need to be more compassionate the need to be charitable to our neighbors the need to be thoughtful and introspective everybody can write about that there’s no need for us we have something more more to say so if you can say more that’s that’s better otherwise maybe it’s part of a strategy you know you write something generic and your name becomes a little known and then in other places you can publish and you can say more you know that’s a tactical sort of a question but personally I would feel that if if I don’t go beyond just moral platitudes and accepted wisdom I’d feel I wasn’t contributing anything if that’s all I did yeah I also feel the same way and now nowadays there is a genre of writing where we use the epics for for drawing human lessons so for example 10 lessons from the Ramayana and these are not this in devotional lessons there are more like self-improvement lessons or management lessons so basically spirituality when it is presented as in the genre of how does it add value to my life in my terms then there is a lot of forum for that but when we try to present it’s more of pragmatic spirituality rather than philosophical spirituality and our presentation of pleasure it is quite philosophical so it is a challenge how we can get into the mainstream mainstream publishing either it’s newspapers or other or books or whatever so any of course it’s easier for you in India because you bug about Gita is not exactly a foreign you know so it’s it’s a central text bhagavad-gita Mahabharata Ramayana these are not marginal texts by any means yes so you have have an advantage and you have a public that’s more receptive to something that’s traditionally you know that they’re that their parents and grandparents new and perhaps even taught them so it’s not that even despite all the advancement technologically and you know the social changes in India and all of that still when you talk about Krishna when you talk about Ram people are mindful that all right this is something of substance from my culture at least that much and some people will think that this is divine divine subject matter I should hear more of this so you have a piety in India despite everything which gives you an advantage and greater greater scope in India but then again you know there are audiences that are very closed to that sort of thing to a direct message my general sense is that we have a message to broadcast and we should broadcast it and that’s why we have our own publications that’s why we go places and and speak what it is that we have to say the that’s what Prabhupada did he you know not everybody you know more people would have been receptive if he’d been writing mundane nonsense but probably was writing on a higher level for a more fortunate audience and they might take it or not take it probably said sometimes a little bit of a pure thing is better than heaps of adulterated things and he gave the example of one sweet walla in Kolkata who was famous their sweets were all made in key and it’s more expensive but if you want the best quality sweets that’s where you go and therefore they had a reputation and a big clientele you know there’d be a line a queue going all the way around the corner because they they were giving the real thing so other people you know they’re they’re happy they get sweets cooked in Dalda and it’s cheap so they’re they’re satisfied but if you want sweets cooked in ghee you go there so that’s our business we’re not the market commodity we have something of greater value and if you want that greater value thing and this is the place yeah probably said a little bit of a pure thing is worth heaps of adulterated things and there are those who are will be attracted to that who are tired of the platitudes part tired of hearing that we should be more compassionate we should be more self-motivated we should be more positive in our outlook they’re sick of all that they want to hear something substantial and if we don’t say it then what’s the use of us in the Bible Jesus told his followers you’re the salt of the earth if the salt loses its taste then what use is it so basically he was saying you know go out there and tell it like it is another time he said that don’t hide your candle under a basket so we saw that that’s what Prabhupada did he just came out and said it and he gave the example one time that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu went to Varanasi and he said that actually the story was that very early 1967-68 there was a World’s Fair in Montreal Canada and so the devotees there asked Jadurani if she could send some paintings for a presentation there and Prabhupada was there in New York and she asked Prabhupada what painting should I send and at that time she was working on a painting of Varahadeva said you can send that one she said Swamiji I don’t think they’ll understand word bore Prabhupada said they may understand or not understand he said you can send it then he gave the example that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu went to Varanasi and he said that I have these very valuable fruits and I’m prepared to distribute them at a very cheap cost and if no one buys them then I’ll take them back so but everybody bought them okay that means to some extent now the reach of our out of our writing will also depend on the reach of our movement because if we are depending primarily on our own forums for reaching out to people because it’s our message then if is if ISKCON is big then BTG reach also becomes big if ISKCON is not that big then BTG also becomes small and also the other way that the the strength of your writing also represents an opportunity to extend the reach of your movement if you have something that people you know get find enlightening or get excited about then you can extend the reach of your movement with your writing yeah so yes we’re the the mundane errs will not be so enthusiastic to distribute our message they’re they’re in profit calculation how much money will will it bring in through advertising or what other way they’re their business they’re businessmen so if you’re writing fits in with their business okay otherwise not whereas on our own business is not the consideration we have a message to spread so that gives us certainly greater scope for saying what we want and then we have we have a work for a distribution force that most publishers would envy you know how many publishers have armies of people who go out every day begging people to to read their literature so it’s really that they can be all they have to wait for somebody to wander into a bookstore and look through all the shelves and see their book and think well I guess I could look like an interesting book and all of that they would love to have what we have armies of people who say take this book so we should just use our strength and not be hmm sorry that we’re not something else not to say that we shouldn’t be in the bookstores and be in other channels other venues but we have an amazing amazingly powerful machine for distributing literature in India particularly so we should be happy about that and yet use it to the fullest my during Prabhupada’s times they wanted the issue ever come up whether BBT would publish other authors books or not because right now BBT is quite ambivalent about that published other authors books published satsruti marja’s readings in Vedic literature it published serpe dominar marja’s Krishna the supreme scientist at problems requests so the question did come up the question was asked and answered oh but now there seems to be some reservation for that that’s I can’t say anything about it it’s up to that may be how how things are going on I don’t really know but in terms of Prabhupada’s direction he wanted his disciples to write and he wanted BBT to publish writings by others he criticized our parent institution from which bhakti satanta sarsha teeth aqua is institution that he saw their book table and it was like nothing since 1943 you know nothing new but you know as if time it stopped when their groom Raj disappeared so probably didn’t he criticized that okay so it shouldn’t be frozen probably leaves and and then that’s the end of the world there’s plenty of opportunity for new literature the Goswamis wrote so many books and then followers of the Goswamis wrote so many books and then their followers wrote so many books that’s not meant to stop yeah and for the BBT to publish writings by devotees is perfectly legitimate but probably didn’t want to pay he was against royalties and all of that he wanted the books published written and published as devotional service not as business okay that’s true now devotees say we have in India some full-time devotees but in the rest of ISKCON we don’t have that many temple resident the full-time devotees and then we have devotees who are grahasthas so now for full-time devotees it’s possible but often there are a lot of other institutional services which come up that doesn’t leave a lot of time for writing for grahasthas to actually earn a living through writing writing exclusively and bhakti I have not seen many people who have been able to do that so it’s usually going to become like writing is going to be one additional service that you do apart from that’s good just like kirtan it’s not meant to be a means of earning a livelihood people do it they earn their livelihood they support their families by kirtan by bhagavad-gita but probably criticizes that that kirtan bhagavad-gita should be done for the glorification of Krishna not for as I said filling the belly so if the writers write for the sake of glorifying Krishna and they make their money elsewhere that’s fine yeah I would especially in a country like India where there’s a lot of competition you know it writing itself is time intensive earning a livelihood also is not that easy it also requires a lot of time so then so many things require a lot of time but people find time for the things that they want to do or that they find meaningful it’s not that there’s no time it’s that the time is spent in other pursuits there’s a Roman writer Seneca he said life is amply long for one who orders it properly okay that’s that’s nice now just so with respect to four hours for publishing now now genres of writing when you talk about the Vedic observer to some extent if you have to write about certain issues then we need to know about those issues I was just recently discussing the Vedic observer column with one devotee and he was telling about how there’s a there was a review of a movie in BTG and the author in that review itself said that I have not watched this movie and as devotees you don’t watch the watch movies and then they wrote the review so now that is itself for most readers it is a credibility destroyer is you sure so how much should a devotee study or stay in touch with current affairs or current events in the world so that we can comment in a balanced way toward it on it my general view would be not much otherwise you start you already said people don’t have much time and if they start spending their time in the newspapers and the you know researching this and researching that we’re just staying in touch with what’s going on in the world their time will be still less plus it’ll be polluted by all mundane topics so I don’t generally recommend that I also wouldn’t recommend pretending to know about something you don’t know anything about that’s not wise either but there are other ways of writing sometimes you may look into a topic you said this topic is something we really want to say something about and you do your research and you you you get into it because you you think here’s an opportunity to where I can really say something and I to say that I need to know something about it something particular but just a sort of a general open the floodgates and let the news pour in to my mind my mind is already suffering enough it’s already polluted enough that won’t help me but there are other ways of writing even about present things you don’t have to write about the statistics of the coronavirus or something you could write about the impact that it had on on your neighbor some personal story some experience that that you had it doesn’t have to be that you you read the newspapers thoroughly and you know all the ins and outs of coronavirus policy and how the virus works and all of that kind of stuff there are other other ways to do it and there are journalists who’ve been exceedingly successful in just that way they don’t write about things they don’t know about they they write from their experience and that that can be very rich also devotees have their own personal areas of knowledge you’re a doctor you’re an engineer you’re a lawyer you’re a this you’re that you’re already expert so right from your expertise not that you have to be a general news hound or general news consumer there’s a writer what’s his name a tool go on day who’s a surgeon and this Indian surgeon in America and who’s done very very well he’s written very engaging books just about his what he finds in his profession books on cancer and other subjects quite good quite yeah materially you know the metaphysical content is another thing but he writes well and he writes from his experience it’s not that he goes looking through the newspapers to see what might be an interesting topic to write about he’s already in an interesting world there’s so much to write about in his profession but it’s not that you have to be a doctor you could be doing embroidery you know you know a grandmother doing embroidery and there’s a whole culture around that and there’s a whole you know all sorts of things that you can say about that it’s not that you have to be a neurosurgeon or a nuclear scientist or you know something sexy so many ordinary things are are interesting if you’re a monk you’ve got a completely fascinating world you’ve got a completely fascinating world totally different from what everybody else is doing what is going on there yeah right about that how the world how does the world look to a monk how does the world look look to a brahmachari to it you know a person who’s aspiring to make spiritual progress in Kali Yuga in Bombay that’s a whole you know there’s there’s a British writer who’s made more than there people who write from their travel experiences and it doesn’t have to be the Himalayas and you know all of that they go to interest you to places where they find something interesting it might be an out-of-the-way ordinary kind of place it might be a village there’s so much that you can write about just have to keep your eyes open and and you’re be thinking about it there’s so much that it happens sometimes you may go to some place where you think something interesting is gonna happen you attend a meeting you you attend a conference you see what kind of nonsense there’s they’re speaking there and you write about that the writer Tom Wolfe who’s celebrated American writer got sort of his his prominent public career got launched when he went to a conference to a an exhibition of cars that’s hot you know sort of souped up hot rod zoom zoom cars and he wrote an article about that that week that went as we would say now it went viral you know it came to prominence and it started him on a huge career you know no research in the looking through newspapers and stuff like that that’s also by the way secondhand news it’s nothing you really know about all you know about is what people said about it firsthand news is so much more interesting something from your personal experience something from your from your own life just to give an example our Rasa Raj Prabhu wrote an article for BGG many many years ago not a science article although he’s a scientist he wrote an article about the procession of the deity in his in the South Indian town that he was that he grew up in and his mother bringing out offerings and you know it was wonderful article because it was all from his his personal experience so you don’t need to read you know to immerse yourself in the news or in mundane topics and doing that has it can be bad for your health oh okay and that’s your writing also especially since there’s a lot of bad writing out there you start writing the way everybody else writes in certain types of publications and it’s not really the best writings it’s you know something less than less than great you say in general in the in the news world the writing yeah not that good it may or may not be sometimes it’s very good depending on the publication and the individual writer but you know you may not learn that that it’s not like the greatest greatest writers in history have been writing for the writing today for the Times of India there’s there’s better people you know even if we’re interested in you know mundane writing there’s there’s people who are amazing that’s just materially speaking the newspapers so that’s that’s a you know sort of a small concern but the main thing is it’s grammy kata and then your mind starts is filled with these topics of this interesting thing and that interesting thing this weird thing this thing for me to think about and we forget Krishna so what’s the use but when there’s something again there’s some particular topic you research that you make something but that’s different but just to consume the newspaper every day and it’s part of my service you know why you’re reading newspaper an hour and a half well it’s it’s part of my service purple that’s that becomes Maya okay yeah when I was I used to write quite a few articles for Vedic observer earlier some of my books are also compilation of those articles but I find that you require a lot of study of the contemporary subjects and then there is not much spirituality that we can actually bring in and what the spirituality we bring in is often quite predictable that you’re not the body or the soul and rise to this you’re the bodily conception so then it becomes somewhat stereotypical also yeah when you write from your personal experience it’s a whole different story and people are interested in people I’m ink started a magazine people magazine because they found out that people are interested in people some of the best writers there that they just write about people that interesting people they’ve met which doesn’t have to be a celebrity it can just be a person who’s interesting for one reason or another or an encounter that was interesting for one reason or another as devotees we are not written much in this genre isn’t it much the personal through personal experience well I don’t know but but we can be yeah I like this point about second-hand firsthand news yeah after all most of the comments we will issues will comment on people have already read about them just giving some new perspective but first-hand news yes and sometimes you can just take sort of the cream off the top you don’t need to know the details you don’t need to know all the ins and outs of something all you need to know is just enough to provide you a launch pad essentially for the topic you want to talk about probably did that you know he talked about matter and antimatter and you know dealt with the article for about a paragraph and a half and then he was off and running on the stream of bog with him and part of Akita so you know that’s another approach and again you want to do it in such a way that it doesn’t seem disconnected or artificial there’s an art to it but that’s you know another there are different ways to do things that’s another way even that’s part of your personal experience you know that we’re surrounded by the news right now I find that the easiest way to get most of the news is just wait for people to tell you because everyone else is talking about the news so you’ll get it that way somebody says what do you think about X you say I don’t know what it what is X I hadn’t heard about it they tell you what X is and now you’re filled in instead of you know an hour to read the newspaper and look for something and you don’t even know necessarily what it is all you know is what they think it is and that itself can be the topic I met this person who was scared to death of okay so in genres of writing this brings his experiential writing and in our tradition how much is fiction writing being a part and how much could devotees get into that genre of writing well again for me to talk about percentages or there has been fiction sets route Mars has written some fiction he’s written some fables for children he’s written some other fiction it’s been done I’m trying to think of other fictions I don’t hear I’ve heard of people saying I’m writing I’m gonna write this write that fiction I haven’t seen much and I haven’t seen much fiction but mostly I didn’t see profit encouraged fiction either but if a writer is expert and can convey Krishna consciousness through fiction that may be successful yes man now with respect to fiction we have some like tamal Krishnamurthy wrote the story that’s right so now that is in some ways and I have talked with some devotees who want to get into fiction they said that quote told me some about some fiction writer so they say that if you are using fit if you want to make an argument or you want to preach something use nonfiction if you are if you’re using fiction it is meant primary for telling a story if you’re that explicit you know this is like it is almost like a conversion story then it seems to be to do utilitarian so talk to me no talk were which is really just a framework for the philosophy it’s it’s not like plot intensive by any means yeah so you know that can be done so now for example CS Lewis wrote the tales of Narnia and though it can be entirely read and enjoyed as just a fiction but then there is also a lot of Christian symbolism in it and now that would require a lot of effort to write if some devotees get into that and so that means the book can be read at multiple levels as just ordinary entertainment or as some spiritual edification what would your thoughts of for a devotee to write like that first let them become good writers CS Lewis is enormously capable as a writer people want to get started on fiction fiction is hard and fiction it’s hard because there’s incredible fiction writers out there the fiction writers available on the market or some of them are terrifyingly good why should I read your fiction rather than their fiction so if you want to get into fiction you can but my advice would be first learn the basics learn how to write good English sentences learn how to express yourself clearly and succinctly learn how to say something of substance learn the basics of the craft and then at some point if you want to venture into fiction then that will be your your choice but not to know you know how to do the basic things but being keen to get into fiction may not be the it wouldn’t be the path I’d recommend so we don’t and when we have a particular purpose for writing so we don’t necessarily have to follow the standards of pure fiction so what kind of copper has done it so we could just use a fictional setting as a tool for conveying our message in a more interesting way also okay and now this may be particular to Indian setting we as a moment because we have attracted more people from the STEM fields more engineering and medicine so there is a younger generation now most of them are not intrinsically good at writing and some of them are but not many often those who go into the field of humanities in India it’s called arts they are they learn more about writing and literature so for our devotees to learn writing itself takes a lot of effort so in a sense some of them may just write and express themselves as well as they can and depend on editors to refine what they’ve written that’s also possible yes my main thing is to have something to say if you don’t have anything to say it doesn’t matter how good a writer you are and if you have something to say just like Prabhupada said you know the neighbors somehow express themselves in the time of need even if they don’t speak the language now Prabhupada from a material point of view his English is not the King’s English but he had something urgent to say so he he said it and then you know later editors came and so on otherwise Prabhupada’s original Bhagavatam you know sometimes the type is upside down the grammar grammarly would would have a picnic with you know with it spelling and so many things but shrinvanti gayanti grananti sadhana it’s perfect so when devotees write at that time is it that is it important for a devotee to be instructed by some senior devotee to write or we can take Prabhupada’s instructions as standing instructions for everyone and then any devotee can start writing because now I say there is in sense any devotee can start their own blog and they can start publishing then they can start a whatsapp group or they can write on their Facebook so it does everybody can say that they have the adhikar to write just because they are devotees or should we wait for yeah I think everybody certainly has what would you say yeah everyone has a you know your right to speak you have a right to write it doesn’t require GBC authorization but you know if you want to take on a serious project then you may just as Kaviraj Goswami did for Chaitanya Charitamrita sought the blessings of the Lord he sought the blessings of the senior devotees so for that sort of a serious undertaking you you this is the path chalked out by our chariots they do seek blessings and authority but it’s not that you know before I can write anything like before I start a blog I have to you know she’s at least the zonal secretary to get a station you know on your own enthusiasm there is that authorization from probably we should all right so yeah and then accept criticism also devotees read it and say you know it was good but then you take that on board you see what how you can improve yes there is in writing the art and the craft so I’ve seen that many devotees especially now with the blogosphere open anybody can just write anything so many devotees feel that the whole process of receiving criticism and going through the laborious process of improving my writing it just to it just to tiresome so if like for example I encourage you what is right for BTG but they feel that there’s such a long editorial process and instead of and then instead of that I just write on my my blogosphere and so it seems that the effort there is to some extent that’s also go ahead yeah greater emphasis on self-expression for many devotees in writing this is what I explained this is how I write you take it or leave it well there’s there’s different fora for your personal journal you don’t need any kind of training just spill spill your heart out onto the page for the internet a lot of places it really doesn’t matter how expert you are not that it doesn’t matter but it’s not the most important thing how whether you punctuate properly whether you’re how good or bad your spelling is whether your grammar is up to scratch how well you express yourself it’s the you have something to say it’s it’s of substance it matters and people get it so and it’s not you know the blogs and the internet it’s not it’s made of vapor anyway you know it comes and it goes so your your exciting blog post is history after three days it’s gone so it’s not that that craft and skill and all of that are essential they’ll help I certainly when I read something on the internet if it’s well written if it’s spelled right if it’s punctuated properly if the author’s is clear and succinct that makes an impression on me and when he’s sloppy and incoherent uh-huh I may just say forget it just on that alone the idea is whatever he wants to say I don’t know what it is and I don’t think I’ll ever know what it is so it’s hopeless so there’s something to be said for those skills everywhere but there’s also something to be said for just you know you speak English or you speak Hindi or you speak whatever you speak and you have something to say say it that that’s also there and don’t wait 10 you probably himself he didn’t wait to become perfect in his use of English before he wrote stream in Bogota he had something urgent to say he said it so as an editor I talked about his art and craft of writing so the craft is more like the mechanical just skills which can be learned and the art is maybe more once personal expression of one style so in your personal writing now I saw that there are two distinct styles here when you wrote your VTG articles VTG editorials there is you could say like a delicious thing in those articles where you make points in a very sharp and punchy kind of way and then then your book on vanity karma that has a more that is quite a different tone so was this something which you consciously adopted for each purpose and how did you develop these distinct tones for writing well it has to do with the subject matter at hand obviously if you’re writing about one of the world’s most serious philosophical works you’re not going to be breezy and offhand and in my book though I you know I use sarcasm I use you know sort of a full range of where I usually express myself but but it is a serious book and it’s a serious subject and I’m conscious of that other things may be less grave or that call for a different voice you know when you when you speak at it when you give an announcement of the Sunday feast or you give an ordinary Bhagavatam class that’s different from when you give a eulogy at a funeral as the occasion may may ask of you okay so about humanity karma I like the whole book I liked it especially the introduction where you position yourself you know how does a you are not trying to discover hidden hidden Vaishnava within the teachings of of the Ecclesiast so that particular approach that basically it is more like a Vaishnava how a Vaishnava would read the book of the Ecclesiast was that approach something which organically came for you as you kept reading it or that was the approach you had originally planned because there is also the autobiographical narrative over there that does the book I read first and you say that that book of the Ecclesiast was the book of question book that gave you questions and then the Bhagavad Gita was the book that provided you answers well I think it’s it was conscious and it was sort of a natural approach to the book I did want to write a I didn’t want to stuff our philosophy into the authors throat I wanted to write a book that would be honest and that would respect the book I was commenting on are you working on any new books now I’m working with one of my grand disciples on a cut to a punish a translation and commentary oh okay for devotees who are eager to write is there any concluding message or maybe something you would like to share with them probably said write your realization what you’ve understood of the philosophy right to glorify Krishna not for some other motive not to be a great writer not to be famous probably said it may be published or not published but we should try to glorify Krishna so as devotees we shouldn’t worry too much about the quantification of the success of writing then we tried to do everything nicely but our main consideration is to glorify Krishna if you have all ornaments and you know literary embellishments and poetic expressions and so much and there’s no Krishna consciousness then show maybe cave loans it’s a waste of time it’s useless Todd Bob what is that disargo even Bob the a state is criticized you wrote so many things all wonderful but you haven’t glorified Krishna so naturally you are dissatisfied so now directly glorify Krishna even if it’s imperfectly done the honest people will accept it yes thank you very much for your time like I myself learned a lot especially the point about secondhand news and first-hand experience that is a powerful point and I hope that through this podcast many devotees get inspiration and your blessings to take up the service of writing for Krishna thank you very much