The Monk’s Podcast 41 with Garuda Prabhu – The Nectar of Writing for Krishna

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thank you so welcome to the monk’s podcast thank you very much for sparing your time you know in when i read your book the beloved lord’s secret love song somehow since my childhood i loved the english language hmm and after i was introduced to bhakti among all our books i somehow loved the bhagavad gita very much and in your book i found the most exquisite use of the english language to convey the message of the bhagavad gita so i just completely would say fell in love not just with your book but actually fell in deeper love with the bhagavad gita because of your book oh wonderful very gratified to hear that thank you and also you know the i have heard about how you entered into academy and there are many adventures by which you are able to get into it and how doors open and your ras teela book is also amazing it’s uh it’s open new dimensions of the ras panchadhyay which i never thought about and the most amazing point i find about your presentation is you know you can you are very deeply devotional while at the same time being deeply academic that’s a tension that is not easy to resolve yes yes because you have to have a certain level of criticality to be in the academia but yes but it’s not that you lack the criticality but the criticality doesn’t obstruct the devotion that emerges from your books so that is an amazing achievement so i actually chaitanya charanji i’m sort of astonished to hear your level of perception along with your appreciation it honestly i have to tell you it’s fairly rare that i actually hear anything like this from devotees first of all if they would pay any attention to my books and secondly if they do to actually understand the way you have i have to say i i’m a a little astonished i mean we once when we first met i remember in the potomac temple you expressed it briefly and i was a little shocked then i have to say i’m more shocked now in a good way you know actually although i have not written a lot i don’t read books as a reader i read books as a writer okay and of course i think all writers do that but especially books written by devotees i try read them as a writer so then i try to see what is being done over there yes okay so with a special with a special eye to appreciate the way language is used the way ideas are conveyed and how audiences can be enthused yes true you know sometimes chaitanya charanjee sometimes it will take me a whole week to write a single paragraph really holy the word crafting has to be so careful with very critical portions of a book that will convey very deep ideas without dumbing down but yet simple enough to be absorbed you know how some vitamin pills yeah they have um uh what do they call extra absorbable you know 24-hour release you know something like that so you know in a way sometimes writing has to have embedded within it ideas and and a way of expressing them that will be absorbed immediately but even more deeply over time that’s rich word crafting and writing where every word has its place it’s it’s it’s a hard thing it’s a uh it’s a lot of tapas as you know you’re a writer you know writing is a tapas yeah it’s it’s very absorbing but it can sometimes be very exasperating also pleasurable and painful at the same time that’s true that’s right so we we concur on that yeah that’s right that’s true so just a few more words about writing if you don’t mind before we move forward so yes so when you write do you you know i have read in writing books about how a writer each writer has a creative voice and a critical voice and uh or a creative side of the critical side so the creative side is strong and the critical side is not very strong then the that author writes a lot but then the quality is not very high on the other side of the critical side is very strong then the author doesn’t write much but what they write is is like nectar so i talk with ravindra swaroop prabhu and ravindra swaroop told me that i can’t go to a second sentence unless i have completed a first sentence so so i think he falls more on the critical side yes the critical side is very high and uh maybe no disrespect but satsvarupa maharaj falls more on the he’s more of a creative writer every day write something so i from what i understand you for you have a high critical side isn’t it that’s why you spend a lot of time in going through each word how would you place yourself it’s it’s it’s a critical side but it it it it really has to be a tremendous blend of both because you’re speaking to people now you have to remember i’m a university professor at the undergraduate level and then at the graduate level i am at another university on the west coast so i’m on the virginia side and on the california side but so i’m used to having to present ideas in front of people who pay lots of money to get an education from me um and even doctoral students that i mentor so i have to make sure that things are written in just such a way so for example uh i was tasked with completing tamal krishna goswami’s book um you may know the book right i think you wrote the introduction in the first you know the introduction yeah yes i’m for some reason i can’t find it the living theology of krishna bhakti isn’t it that’s right a living theology that’s right a living theology of krishna bhakti in the first i mean the first paragraph it’s you you you either gain a reader or you lose a reader that first paragraph is either a hook or you’ve lost them so it’s so important to write in a way that is precise that is honest but that is uh that has the ability to connect with the hearts as well as the minds of your audience after all how we feel after we read something determines whether we’re going to read more i feel bored why would i go further i feel excited now i’m going to read more i’m intrigued maybe i’ll read more and see what happens so it seems to be one of those three bored intrigued or interested what are the third intrigued so yeah and third was i would say bored or moved really moved or intrigued okay sort of in the middle you know so what obviously ideally we write to move the minds and the hearts of others so i i give it my all to janitor ng i i really do and it seemed to have sunk into someone like you for which i am extremely pleased to hear so that is an honor to hear that and i mean the the bhagavad-gita um the beloved lord’s secret love song it has sold over 50 000 copies 50 000 that’s amazing yeah is that is that was it published by academic press or a like a trade press how who publishes published by a very prestigious very high worldwide trade press who likes to take academics that know how to speak to people widely oh and not to get stuck within the academic jargon so that’s an ideal author for a trade press that wants to bring in scholarship but not have it locked by scholarship so that’s what i sought to do here that’s what i sought to do and i think you know this is what in one sense we as a tradition are lacking for example you know not many people read scientific papers but if atheism has spread it is because of say popularizers of science like richard dawkins and others now richard dawkins arguments may not be great but he is a good writer he has oh absolutely chaitanya charan you know when i was in graduate school at both university of chicago and harvard university i was reading vedanta with one of the world’s greatest scholars at the time okay so first we started with the jaimini sutra and we talked about purva mimamsa and we looked at the prabhakara and kumara the bata and he was preparing me with all of the mimamsa hermeneutics and the tools to be qualified to read vedanta and then he said okay now it’s time to read the sharidaka mimamsa bhasya of shankaracharya i went oh um can we can we skip that and go to the sri bhasya of ramanujacharya and he said you won’t be able to appreciate the sri bhasya of ramanujacharya unless you’ve appreciated the sharidaka mimamsa bhasya of shankaracharya okay but of course echoing in my head chaitanya charan ji was you know krishna das kaviraj’s statement in the chaitanya chartamita even a mahabhagavata can fall down reading the sharidaka mimamsa bhasya now how do i explain this to my professor of course i cannot explain so i called up some of my god brothers and said what do i do i mean i’m trying to get out of this but i have an assignment here to read the sharidaka mimamsa bhasya of shankaracharya what do i do well consulting with my various god brothers back then who supported my academic work because i was the first devotee to go back into academics with the express purpose of becoming an expert on us on our tradition they said you’re in it well if this famous professor is telling you to read it i think you have to read it but if i were you i pray like anything at lord chaitanya’s lotus feet you know that kind of thing and it was you know pray for protection because it is very serious to read the the sharidaka mimamsa bhasya now the only reason i bring this up chaitanya is because of your earlier point which was very good good writing is very seductive dawkins i think is successful more because of his writing than because of what he says yes and guess what shankara is the same way what i learned from shankara is that his sanskrit was beautiful it was beautiful it was pristine it had a monumental feeling to it sort of like reading shakespeare in english i there’s nothing quite equivalent but reading something so powerfully phrased and it wasn’t that it was um you know elaborate running on you know sort of uh embellished and and uh sort of erudite you know dripping with over erudition no it had a simplicity about it and a beauty that i’ll never forget and i have to confess to you that my writing sort of takes after what shankara was doing but i transfer that to the english language and so when i write every word is so very carefully placed no extraneous words every word fits there there are no lacking of words i hope but there are no extraneous words just like a fine piece of art nothing extra in the composition because that weakens the composition yes nothing lacking in the composition because that too weakens the composition and if you think about it our ultimate vision of krishna bhakti is a perfect picture and it’s a divine picture so i’ve had the good fortune of also encountering our ultimate vision the sarva leela chudamani the crown jewel of all leelas but that too was something that was imposed on me unexpectedly i don’t want you to get the impression chaitanya charanjee that you know i went to graduate school went to harvard for a doctorate and and uh all to write the rasleela no i never had that intention never the way it happened if i’m if i may tell you the story is that all right if i tell you yeah is i was always planning to do what prabhupada had instructed in some earlier letters to giri raj swami about you know if what we he could do if he stayed on to graduate school his parents had complained to prabhupada that he was in school and very talented and um that they would like to keep him in school well turned out giri raj swami decided not to stay in school i mean obviously he’s an important member of our society but he gave giri raj swami an instruction that i followed he said if you can show by comparative study that krishna bhakti is the highest theological thesis among all theological theses this will be a great accomplishment he said if you can do this by comparative study so my doctorate from harvard literally says back here you know religion comparative religion in latin they still write their diplomas in latin for whatever ungodly reason but in any case um so i went i was intending to compare the christian mystics with our bhakti mystics particularly krishna das kaviraj goswami that was always my intention that’s how i got into the doctoral program i declared that to be my intention fulfilling prabhupada’s interest and his desire what he called a great accomplishment so i was sitting one day with my doctoral mentor as one does at the dissertation level which is a very intimidating part of getting a doctorate especially in a place like harvard yeah um and he said so i’m confident that there are plenty of materials written about the christian side i’m not sure about the vaishnava side and so i wouldn’t want the comparison to be imbalanced he i said okay um and then he suddenly sat back and asked me a thunderbolt of a question he said graham using my legal name of course first name say graham what is the highest vision of the chaitanya school okay flipping through my mind i’m going through bhagavad gita i’m going through all of my bhagavatam reading over the years i’m going through everything you know i’ve learned from the chitana charita all of this is rapidly going on i’m putting it all together and i sat back after a minute and he was quiet i was quiet and i said well it would have to be that is our highest vision he said okay and then you come back oh yeah well then he then he said has there been enough treatment on that to where you could do comparative work i said oh i’m sure i mean it’s so well known he said show me i scoured the harvard libraries the largest library system in the world i came up with nothing i came back and reported that he said that is your dissertation topic and that’s how i and then of course i had the embarrassment of going back to my god brothers and saying guess what i’m writing on the raslila oh oh that’s great oh that’s just great karuna okay you know you know i mean it’s just the raslila there was a stigma for years and years and years you just don’t even talk about the raslila even though it’s plainly there in krishna book you know um it’s it’s there in the bhagavatam although stopped short of several chapters uh and and and gopi paranadana and did that translation and um uh but but mine was uh to pay attention to what is found in our tradition that can ultimately enter into dialogue with other traditions so i have written articles on the supreme expression of love in vaishnavism compared to the supreme expression of love in christianity and that is the song of the songs isn’t it that’s right well well it’s it it can it starts with the song of solomon but very it depends on which christian mystic you will look at okay but yes the song of solomon becomes the kind of their raslila if you will okay and so i of course and i’ve written about that in the as you know in the introduction to my my book published by princeton that’s true i remember that yeah yeah so that’s the it’s quite a journey and i got you know suddenly i’m stuck writing about the raslila so it got around the movement you know what is doing he’s writing about the raslila i i’ve been confronted once i gave a lecture at a sunday feast uh in alachua in about 2005 when the book first came out and a devotee said to stood up and said what qualifications do you have to write about the raslila are you a pure devotee can you imagine getting confronted like that in front of 300 devotees okay so my simple answer was chaitanya charanji i never intended to write about the raslila this was it landed on my lap but all i can tell you is that chaitanya mahaprabhu and shrila prabhupada their grace is stronger than all of my misgivings weaknesses and mistakes they will work through me in spite of me i have complete faith so all of my weaknesses are not nearly as powerful as krishna’s grace and that’s what i depend on that’s all i can say there is no qualification the only qualification is my connection to the guru parampara what other qualification can anyone claim that’s my only qualification well as it turns out i’ve become the world’s authority in the academic world on the raslila such that if someone writes something very negative as a scholar all journals and publishers know graham schweig is the authority the world’s authority on the raslila we have to send it for peer review with him so i have tossed out several bad treatments of the raslila so i’ve become a kind of academic guard of the raslila i’m protecting the raslila from bad treatment i didn’t know it would have that effect but it turns out i’m a protector of the raslila in the academic world yeah that’s amazing because after i read your book on the raslila i actually didn’t read the ras panchadhyay i first read your book i mean i read krishna book of course right that part of the tenth canto had skipped so and it struck me that actually the kind of explanation that you had given if we don’t give that then we are actually it’s not that people are going to be silent that’s right people are going to speak and the we sometimes think that in protecting our tradition if we don’t touch our tradition that the others are not going to touch it that’s right exactly exactly chaitanya charanjee we cannot be ever embarrassed about what is so precious and highest in our tradition yeah let’s say i have a a huge diamond ring well it’s so valuable i’m not going to wear it anywhere i’ll just keep it in the safe well what’s the point of having the ring if you’re not going to wear it you know you never look at it you never see it you never enjoy it that you know to be embarrassed or or um afraid of of explaining to outsiders that our vision is a vision of dancing with god for all eternity that that’s perfection i mean why is that an embarrassment that is a beautiful vision eternal dancing eternal singing with divinity is our is our goal it is a dance of divine love we are a tradition about love chaitanya charanjee as you well know why deny that and why are we denying that even among each other and why are we denying that even about the world it’s sad to me that devotees can miss the whole point of the movement which is to develop the heart to such pure and abundant levels and to be able to offer that heart to others and to krishna that’s our whole that’s our whole effort uh let’s listen to what what prabhupada says here uh in the nectar devotion the basic principle of the living condition is that we have a general propensity to love someone devotees may too often think that it’s just sex life you know love and sex life is one and the same they conflate them and there’s no love in this world i’ve actually heard major leaders in our movement i mean major i’m not going to mention names tell me that there’s no love in this world and i said i’m sorry swamiji or probably you are not reading prabhupada’s books carefully enough no one can live without loving someone prabhupada says here yeah this propensity is present in every living being yeah we are vaishnavas who focus on cultivating the hearts in ourselves among ourselves and then offering that to others this is our process yes true so just a little pause you flowing with devotion you know so yeah we did spend a significant amount of time discussing writing as i was wondering whether you would like to we could have a discussion about writing in bhakti itself and then we could discuss about love separately because we almost spend about 25 minutes and i had some few questions as well as i wanted to share some of my experiences are you okay with the topic you’re the boss no i think this is what you are sharing is i had a podcast with jaydev maharaj on the writing yes uh now it was it was good but jaydev maharaj is not so effusive with his emotions so it was so it was more of you know do like this don’t do like this i felt that we could have a different flavor yes so so i had a lot to say about writing first is that in some ways when say when you when i appreciated writing and i could see that you were we’re happy about it in the sense that writing is quite lonely and the amount of work we put in we don’t really get we don’t it’s not that we are hungry for appreciation right is the recognition that you know how much amount of effort and thought has gone into it yes other hand you know i compare see i am a writer as well as a speaker yes i thought that i’m a not a not particularly a great speaker but i can see that many of my i say i may prepare 10 minutes for a one hour class and for a 300 word article i write every on the bhagavad gita a small 300 word article i’ve been doing this for the last 10 years almost so for that one hour for that for that one hour article i for a 300 word article i spend about an hour or so more than an hour daily but it’s the number of devotees who might appreciate a class which i have really not prepared that much as compared to an article which i have prepared so much it is so it becomes almost a little bit discouraging in writing of course i have few devotees who do appreciate but how do we how do you look at the reciprocation for the effort that you put in writing where do you get that rasa or reciprocation yes there is an internal reciprocation and an external reciprocation so when i heard your very not just appreciative words but they were words of of of deep uh perception of what what i was doing and this is so it was not empty praise it was genuine appreciation sometimes devotees you know a devotee never accepts praise you know and we hear that vaishnavas do not like praise and you know what i don’t like praise and when devotees come up to me and say oh prabhu that was a wonderful class thank you so much it was so beautiful it was one of the best classes i immediately interrupt them and say please tell me what was it in my class that moved you then the real conversation starts that’s true yes okay what actually did you get from the class but those who just say oh no i just it was a wonderful class i said okay go away i don’t literally do that but you know what i’m saying it doesn’t mean anything to me it’s just empty praise and sometimes i think devotees they see senior prabhupada disciple harvard phd i just go up and praise him no i no i don’t like that i don’t like that at all echo this i also do the exact same thing if somebody appreciates ask what do you appreciate and there have been two results of that the two results many devotees don’t even come to appreciate and those who come to appreciate they know i have to come prepared with some specifics that’s good yeah very good that’s very good yeah so there is a difference between praising and appreciating appreciation is good in fact we vaishnavas need to appreciate one another more not just writers we’re you and i are writers and speakers and so on but just in general it’s so important to appreciate one another not empty praise i mean come on how much of that can you take what do i really appreciate when you speak what do i really appreciate when you write btg articles you know what do i get this is this then becomes the substance of shravanam kirtanam between us and then we’re lifted up into a new community of vishnu smarana you and i get lifted up into vishnu smaranam the shravanam kirtanam that we trade back and forth in dialogue that lifts us up it’s a beautiful thing this these three foundational processes are the foundation of everything so it’s about appreciating it’s about sharing it’s about mutually enlightening one another bodhayanta parasparan the verse you well know everyone knows that verse so so are you saying that you have some friends with whom whenever you write you’re able to do after writing do this bodhayanta parasparam of course well of course there are you know disciples you know students of mine and and and there are um but these these disciples of mine are not just yes men or yes women no again i don’t want praise i don’t accept praise i only want dialogue and i want honest criticism if they are troubled by something i want them to say it if they’re doubt that there’s some doubt about something i want them to express it if there’s some question left over i want them to inquire about this is genuine heart to heart as well as head to head that’s what makes the life is so rewarding now you asked me so how where where do i get my uh uh connections i think you said something to that effect and i responded internally and externally right yeah now excuse me you mentioned that writing can be a very lonely task yes and no at the same time lonely in the sense hey i can’t you know yeah hey i can’t call me back i can’t talk to you no no call me back i can’t go away everyone go away it’s a singular task but it’s not lonely because as you write you are connecting with everyone in the guru pampara you are joining a new community of writers that’s very profound joining a new community or a community it’s new it’s in the sense of fresh it’s fresh every time i write it’s new so it’s it’s fresh it’s new in the sense that it’s just starting when i i write about this or i write about that so right now i’m um uh producing my translation and interpretation of the yoga sutra and proving that it’s actually a bhakti text if one looks at it with the bhakti vilochana and i showed this in my book proposal to yale university press they said why there’s so many yoga sutras why should we even publish yours i showed them the difference between mine and theirs they went wild a press as prestigious as yale so they gave me a contract now i’ve got to come up with the writing right as i write about the yoga sutra and i write commentary i am drawing from rupa goswami i am drawing from jiva goswami from krishna das kaviraja goswami from vishwanatha chakravarti from baladeva dubhushana from bhaktisiddhanta sarasvati and of course our beloved shila prabhupada so sometimes devotees ask me so who do you go for your association when you need it well i have i have my god brothers like you and others that i can you know talk to about writing but i also commune with our great parampara when we write it’s as if they are either working through you or they’re not okay so the idea is that the electricity of the parampara is working through you into what you’re writing your love for the tradition your love for what our theology is about in essence must come through the writing and then you have very good company with everyone in the guru parampara so it’s a very powerful experience things things come out of you you’ve i know you’ve had the experience things come out of you that you never knew were there where do you think that came from chaitanya sharan that came that came from a very powerful tradition that is now speaking through you that’s where that comes from it’s powerful isn’t it yeah i also experienced this by speaking while writing yes get thoughts that we didn’t even know we had that’s right that’s right and then of course you know getting together with god brothers and god sisters who give their feedback and i said oh wow that’s a very important point so it works through them so you’ve got so we have so in one sense it’s lonely but in another sense you couldn’t have better sangha it’s beautiful so now if i may play a slightly a devil’s advocate oh yes i love devils yeah that’s fine see i have also i have read a lot of books on writing so because so now this is a experience which even those who are not devotees they have i read in the book on writing that we don’t write only to express our thoughts we write also to discover our thoughts yes so in that sense getting ideas that which we didn’t even know we had or getting some kind of we can say mini revelations yes that happens to even those authors who are not connected with krishna in the sense they’re not they’re not external devotees but of course we could say they are connecting with the super soul in their hearts but yes is there essentially uh not just a conceptual difference but an experienceable difference between say when a devotee writes for krishna and a non-devotee author somehow i don’t even like the word non-devotee but just functionally i don’t know if there’s any other word for that yes i but i know what you mean of course so so a person who is not say explicitly connected or devoted to god that person writes so is there is writing itself a communion with something bigger than ourselves yes respective of the subject that we are writing about yes beautiful it’s a beautiful question um first of all um all writers all writers are in some sense instrumental to the culture in which they find themselves and the culture that they are transmitting so culture is very powerful and in some sense writers are instruments of a culture so there is a little bit of that kind of experience of discovering not only one’s own thoughts but discovering what their culture is about that has somehow been distilled in each one of them powerful writers experience this yes now honestly i’ll confess to you chetan and sharanji i have never read one book on how to write it’s just through all my you know three master’s degree i’m an over-educated idiot okay so i mean through all my writing and all my years of having to write and writing endless papers papers that would stack up to here from the from the desk i mean and then going through the dissertation process and then of course my experience as um as as a bhakta all of that comes together in creating my writing voice now of course outsiders don’t have that extra guru parampara connection and they don’t write about krishna but you know i’ve seen some scholars write eloquently about krishna isn’t that amazing yeah eloquently it can happen but i’ve also seen scholars use our tradition and speak in the kind of a mixed way you know i mean look all we have to do is use the tools of bhakti yoga right there are sattvika scholars you know rajasa scholars and tamasa scholar and writing when it’s sattvika is clear and so much comes through rajasa kind of gets stuck a little bit but stuff gets through as well tamasa writing is kind of narrow and kind of dark and doesn’t really contribute much it’s interesting that you’re classifying rajas sattva rajas tamas here uh not based on the content of the writing but on the uh on the mode of writing or the transmissibility of the writing which is very that’s right yes the level of transmission because um you know i i was done at at in a university once when uh a professor i did he wasn’t my professor but he was famous and he got the nobel prize for literature and he doesn’t write about krishna at all okay but then again you know let’s examine that statement is it possible to write about anything that is not a part of krishna no it’s impossible that anything is separate from krishna they just don’t know it but they are utilizing aspects of art literature um uh you know the the realm of aesthetics they are tuning into how powerful their art can be and ultimately that power comes from krishna just like love ultimately comes from the with from within krishna and radha so that all that that power that power manifests in part but the devotee is not satisfied with part we want the whole thing so we go to krishna we go to radha and krishna we are in parampara guru parampara to radha and krishna and therefore our opportunities are exceptional but that doesn’t mean that a devotee is automatically a good writer of course not right that’s true this is a lot of points you said if i could just reflect on some of them sure i’m stunned that you you said that you have not read a single book on writing that is you know i read one author she says that have you heard of this elizabeth gilbert that of the eat eat pray love she wrote a famous book oh i’ve heard of that book yes eat pray love so she is probably among the nearest who comes to theism so she says in one of her books that it’s called big magic that many of the top authors after they wrote their best book so they went into depression and some of them committed suicide this is why does this happen so it is i needed a psychological model psychological construct that would protect me from such depression because after i wrote eat pray love it became an international bestseller you know i knew that every book of mine would be compared with that so she has this theory that she doesn’t explicitly talk about god but she says ideas are floating around in ether and ideas are just waiting to come into the yes heart of a person and if we just are receptive so sometimes the idea will come to us and force us sometimes we keep plugging on and the idea doesn’t come to us yes all that we can do is we can just show up and do our part so it’s almost like karmanyavadika raste mahafaleshu kadachini it’s very much like that so anyway i quoted her for this point that in writing so she advises writers she says that i don’t recommend any author to ever any prospect aspiring author to go and get a degree in writing yeah so it’s interesting so you know i would among the best writers so is it simply by the process of writing that you have developed as a writer that’s certainly part of it chaitanya charanjee but you know if you look at yourself you’re not you’re you’re not someone who just practices writing or just writes a lot you have a passion you must have a passion you must have something that needs to be said desperately that’s what i feel that’s what i experience i write books not because i love writing in fact honestly i really don’t like writing very much i write because i can’t help it i have to because there’s a need for people to know this stuff for example in the bhagavad the great secret the greater secret and the greatest secret of all i said how can i not write this i have to write this people don’t know this it’s there subtly in prabhupada’s books but i need to underscore it i need to emphasize it i need to yell it out i had to write it it’s a passion chaitanya charan it’s it’s something that causes you to roll around and be restless in your sleep you know it just you you can’t rest it’s something that stirs around and and and bothers you troubles you someone’s talking to you and you and you apologize because you didn’t quite hear what they said why because it’s still rolling around in your head you can’t pay attention to other things because you’ve got to get it out that’s true so true you know i noticed this in a different way that it’s very difficult to write a book just because somebody tells you to write on a topic that’s right very difficult to have it since it has to come from within that’s right so that’s one that’s one point and another point which you said that as the thoughts keep going inside you know you have a burning message which you want to share yes i consider jaydev maharaj to be my writing guru he did once did a writing seminar and we asked him what what is the most important qualification for writer and he said the same thing what you said that a burning desire to share a message yes everything else will follow after that that’s right so now exactly if that is there that we have certain ideas we want to share now sometimes there is that maybe not fear exactly but we could say skepticism towards either oneself or toward the world whether any whether i’ll be able to express this message it’s an important message whether i’ll be able to express it or whether anybody in the world will be able we’ll hear it we’ll appreciate it yes and both ways we can get we can actually get choked and you know when you wrote on the last leela i suppose you might have faced both of these because as you told me about how you didn’t feel qualified but also for the audience to understand this it it is a challenge isn’t it so how do you deal with these two aspects yes i mean i could have waddled in my feeling of inadequacy forever but what was more powerful was the necessary you know the necessity of having people understand this leela and not to go around misunderstanding it we’re fearing it on the part of devotees okay hearing to talk about it would be tantamount to a christian who is too embarrassed to talk about the the passion death and resurrection of jesus my god now that’s the central part of that theology exactly now you know admittedly not every christian is capable of articulating and discussing the passion death and resurrection of jesus but that is their ultimate vision and and if they can’t talk about it a little bit or imagine being embarrassed by it or or feeling like um uh a god brother of mine said um who said he read my bhagavad-gita loved it he got so much from it i said what about dance of divine love he said oh i’m not touching that well what do you mean you’re not touching that he said i’m not advanced enough to read about the ras leela i said well who is you know i mean we’re not you see it’s funny when we judge ourselves that’s really kind of a fallacy so you’re you know better than krishna whether you should read this or not but it’s here it is the most it is the ultimate it’s the leela sarah it’s the essence of all leelas and you’re telling me that you’re not advanced enough so you in other words you must be so advanced to judge that you’re not advanced enough to read something so advanced is that what you’re telling me you see how convoluted it’s convoluted you know in other words it’s it’s not that any of us are qualified for this wonderful privilege of participating in this glorious tradition it’s that we are given an opportunity to allow things to flow through us and that includes reception and understanding of such a high leela this is an amazing understanding through if i may rephrase it what i understood that in one sense to consider that we are qualified is is pride but to consider that we are unqualified is also pride so we could say exactly so exactly if you know i don’t know if this is true but it goes around it sounds so like Prabhupada that there’s you must have heard there’s the story that a devotee said to Prabhupada Prabhupada i am the most fallen and Prabhupada said you’re not the most anything yes so i don’t know whether this is actually accurate but you know what it sounds so much like Prabhupada because the point is while trying to be so humble you can’t try to be humble humility is epiphenomenal of love humility and but here’s the fallacy Chaitanya Charan everyone talks about humility but that’s fallacious you cannot talk about humility without talking about passion the gopis embody both as epiphenomenal of their perfect and unexcelled love for Krishna if i’m just humble without a passion in devotional service i can become complacent i can become discouraged i can feel you know the self-esteem goes way down you know but if i have passion without humility that i can become egotistical i can be insensitive i can be proud humility and passion both have to be there and they are natural both are natural consequences of true love if i love if i love you Chaitanya Charan i with humility i accept you for all who you are if i if i have a but then again it’s not just humility i don’t accept you just as you are because if i did i would simply sit here in silence that’s true okay but i have a passion to know you more and that’s love love is full acceptance of Chaitanya Charan but love is also i want to know him more in love one can never be close enough to the beloved so in true friendship Chaitanya Charan if i’m your friend then i’m going to want to know you more i’m going to want to contribute to you more but i can’t do that properly unless i receive you in all humility that’s beautiful so so like just to clarify i think you’re using the word passion not in the sense of the mode of passion not mode of passion in the sense of energy it’s like passionate energy you could say or electricity as you said yes so yes okay so this is so resonates with my understanding i have written a book called that is that is you could say my sleeper hit book it has sold over 35,000 copies till now oh my gosh wow congrats yeah so it is called gita wisdom through quotes uh-huh so basically there is a fingerprint is a not fingerprint this is crossword is one of the big book publishers in india booksellers actually they also got into book publishing and they did a series of 365 quotes by eminent people quotes by gandhi 365 martin luther king and they came to know that i have a gita daily website and i write on the gita so they asked me to give 365 quotes from the gita yeah very nice and i told them that you know i can give you 365 verses i can do a poetic translation also but the gita is actually a philosophical work of wisdom you can’t take one verse out of it and have it as an inspiring thought you need to enter into the thought world of the gita then you get inspired yes yes so so what i said is that i could take the like the key message of the verses and present them through quotes which are not the translations of the verses but they are they are they’re conveying the message of the verses yes synthesizing yes so so one of the things which i wrote there was in that book so it was it is just a small book 365 quotes yeah it’s available on various airports and other places so i thought who will want to even read such a book like this but apparently many apparently very young so one of the things i wrote over there is humility means to not let our ego come in the way of our purpose very nice very nice that’s an unusual understanding for iskand devotees because prabhupada in prabhupada’s humility he was bold humility means vulnerable honest presentation not hiding not manipulating not trying to do something political no power pulls but honest presentation of yourself not necessarily passive like humility means like oh i have nothing to say i have nothing to give i’m not you know not like that yeah that’s true but your but your point is excellent i appreciate it very much yes to not get in the way of actually being yourself in the way you present yourself yes beautiful yes thank you so that was one point about writing so that now the other thing is you said that not every devotee is a writer so now here again as a writer when we read other writers even other devotee writers it is sometimes uh you some devotees for them writing is not art it’s a craft with all due respects it’s for them writing is simply a tool for producing some material for proselytization if i may use a little negative word worry over here and often for them it’s like they produce books as tools for preaching nothing wrong against that and nothing against that per se but right there is not much rasa in those books and you don’t really uh now somehow many devotees who actually want to preach they may use those books like uh reference books or textbooks and the books may also be received very well yes so but the books are not not works of art right now sometimes it happens that books which are actually not written by good writers which are not actually good writing they they receive a greater appreciation circulation and books which are we we are not here for the results in one sense but at the same time we we need to look at maybe we are doing something wrong and we should do something better so right so you know it’s it’s a joy and a relief for me to meet somebody like you who is so so passionate about writing as an art yes yes so now but you can also experience that the books which are nowhere as well written as yours sometimes they do far better than what your books have done that’s right right that’s right and it can happen even in the devotee community yes yes so then and now do you see this as do we see this as our inadequacy do we see this that this is the level of the audience that’s what people need or do we see it as as krishna wanting us to learn something how do you see this all of the above okay all three points yes so in other words um one cannot know the reach and the effect of one’s teachings i know this is a university professor sometimes i’ll get a letter from a student who’s already graduated and he or she will write to me saying dr schweig you have no idea how you have influenced my whole life clearly out of the blue i you know i i don’t know i i i don’t i can’t think back and say oh yeah i remember that person i influenced them really really really well i it’s unknown to me we are not to know how powerfully and deeply our teachings are to affect people in their lives or not affect people in their lives a book can be very very popular but then just thrown aside um another book can be not so popular but something that is kept and is read and consulted over and over and uh it is deeply moved one soul toward krishna is powerful you know so there are different levels at which uh teachings work in the form of books in form of lectures and so on we cannot possibly know this is only for krishna i’ve had the great privilege uh chaitanya charan to lecture at the smithsonian institution in washington dc where you cannot apply to get in there even ratana swami was not able to lecture and he lectures everywhere i think is there one place ratana swami hasn’t lectured i can’t think of any i mean he goes everywhere he’s very prolific that way and and and uh he’s a loved speaker but you cannot get into the smithsonian and lecture there unless you’re invited they found out about this book they invited me to come and lecture about this book it was only supposed to be one lecture and a book signing for one evening at the smithsonian but the director who introduced me to the 150 people audience she said she couldn’t leave she was supposed to go home that evening but she couldn’t leave because she was so much enjoying the lecture and from that point on she said we will have to get you back here and ever since 14 years ago i’ve given over three dozen lectures at the smithsonian they’re all in they’re all invited you don’t just ask you cannot ask you’re either invited or you’re not so that has been a great privilege now how did i first of all i never arranged for the smithsonian to read this book and i never arranged to be able to come back dozens of times to speak of the smithsonian these things are inexplicable this is krishna kripa who gets a chance to teach krishna bhakti at the smithsonian for 14 years it’s it’s kripa it’s anugraha what can i say these are privileges granted to us and we all have these special opportunities that come to us that we didn’t even expect if if 15 years ago or i should say 25 years ago you were to say uh garuda i have a crystal ball and i can see you’ll be publishing with the likes of princeton and oxford and yale and harvard collins and and and and you know columbia and i would say chaitanya charan your crystal ball is broken that is inconceivable i cannot conceive of all these greatest publishers wanting my books well as it turns out chaitanya charan all those publishers have been wanting my books are publishing my books and they can’t get enough books from me i’m behind they want more books i’m behind i can’t produce books fast enough for them who would have known these are the special gifts from guru parampara they give us opportunities to continue the teachings special privilege we have you and i and other devotees in our situations special very special so just one question here when you talk about yes a smithsonian now many devotees may not understand the speciality of yes you go over there so they may not they may not yeah that’s right so then you probably have to get whatever reciprocation you have to create a circle where people will appreciate that a few people will appreciate and that’s all that i i don’t need more than that they they appreciate this opportunity as extraordinary they know that the smithsonian is the largest museum complex in the world yes and have a special lecture series and they only get the best around the country what they considered the best and somehow they include me in that i don’t know how i really it doesn’t it’s beyond my wildest imagination honestly so again things happen and this happens for you chaitanya charan i know this happens to you things happen opportunities occur you know connections are made you didn’t know you weren’t in control they happened to you this is krishna you know this speaks so much to my experience in india that one of the top newspapers is times of india and times of india has a spiritual column called speaking tree so i used to read this in my since my school days yeah i had like a childhood dream that one day i would write over there ah okay and then i became a monk i joined the temple i started writing for krishna and i sent an article to speaking tree and to my amazement it was published the just unsolicited article i sent and i was there you go ecstatic yeah and then i i shared it with other brahmacharis you know my article is published in speaking tree yeah it was like everybody had blank faces and then one brahmachari asked me how does the tree speak that’s very good but then so i was so disappointed at that time but a few days later jai jai swami visited our temple and i had got articles published in some smaller newspapers also and speaking tree was my biggest uh newspaper to get published so i put all of them together and i showed it to jai jai maharaj he was so happy yeah nice profusely appreciative so what he said so that appreciation was it more than made up for the lack of appreciation from others yes yes wonderful wonderful yes and you mentioned jai jai swami you know i i was um privileged uh to to help him write his own book of vanity karma and in fact he uh he came to me years ago and said um you know garuda i i uh i know how to write articles and edit and so on and i’ve never written a book so how do you write a book so i helped him along the ways of course he comes with enormous talent and capability already but you know to write a book is an intimidating thing and he wanted to write something comparative and uh anyway it came out you know i think he writes really an extraordinary uh piece uh for which i agreed to even write the forward to it as a scholar so um so again it’s it’s you know we all consult with one another you know we consult with one another and that’s it’s a kind of guild you might say um a loose guild a loose guild um um it’s nice to have um i ran some things in front of jai jai swami years ago that i wanted to get his opinion on just a an interpretive piece um i didn’t necessarily agree with everything he said in his critique but i know him well enough to know how to make use of the critique so that’s the way we can all work together yeah yeah so what he said earlier writing is lonely i think for writers to grow there has to be some deal like this they have to find it and they have to become a part of it then that there is that internal nourishment spiritual nourishment of connecting with the parampara but we also need some social nourishment yes that probably will come through this sadhu sangha is absolutely the most essential thing in any seva any seva it’s the very heart and of course as you know rupa goswami boils everything down to five you know principles five rules right bhagavata seva harinama right um living in a place like mathura right or brindaban um uh deity worship or worshiping tulsi and then but sadhu sangha of the five that has got to be the most important um what is next sadhu sangha so you can have the faith but it’s no it doesn’t go anywhere unless the sadhu sangha is there and i translate sadhu sangha in two ways typically it’s translated as a tatpurusha samasa in sanskrit which means the coming together sangha coming together with saintly devotees that’s one way the sangha of sadhus that one way samasa okay but i also translate it as a karmadariya samasa which says sadhu means is an adjective for sangha so while in the first translation sangha modifies sadhu in the second form of a samasa or compound in sanskrit the first member modifies the second member sadhu modifies sangha sadhu is perfect sangha perfect sangha perfect here means balanced reciprocal the six exchanges that sadhu sangha most devotees don’t understand it that way they understand it first as a purusha samasa that’s and that’s fine but it also means perfect sangha reciprocal sangha balanced sangha that’s beautiful prabhu you know just to put it another way i’ve realized that even if we associate with devotees but if those devotees don’t share our definitions of success because each devotee in bhakti has their definitions of success and sometimes that association although it is a devotee association can actually be discouraging or demoralizing yes yes it can sometimes in fact you can go to the extreme if you associate with some devotees it’s like being with them we have to justify our very existence as a devotee oh too many times i’ve had to do that yes exactly exactly i think you know what you’re asking yeah yeah yeah when you’re asking how can you write the last book on the last yeah there you go yeah but but that i expected you know i mean chaitanya charan that’s reasonable because no one had done yeah it was you know it was um it’s a reasonable thing to be asked and frankly i don’t mind being challenged about anything chaitanya charan i don’t mind i know some devotees can be a little sensitive but i don’t mind i can be challenged on anything personal professional devotional theological anything i’m an open book for anybody but especially for someone like you with whom i enjoy sharing so much it’s amazing allowed to be challenged oh yes on anything i even tell my disciples that i’m not i know prabhupada says that whatever the disciple hears from the guru you must accept i tell them yes you must accept to hearing enough and if you want to challenge back you can so i add a little phrase to it if something yes you should accept it but after accepting it and receiving it you want to respond to it react to it you must do that let’s not develop a culture of repression or suppression let’s develop a culture of dialogue genuine and truthful dialogue dialogue that is transparent that is sadhu sangha now you know what i mean by that it’s beautiful you know this with this little dialogue when you said when you after a class you don’t want praise you want dialogue i have i’ve been writing for back to godhead yes now back to god it doesn’t have a huge circulation but i found nagaraj prabhu and the panel of editors yes they do a fairly good job in fact nagaraj does a very good job yeah i look forward more to the reviews of the articles by them rather than the publication of the article in the magazine because we learn over here some things that’s right very good well that’s the guild’s concept the guilds so now i’ve also seen some devotees they want to write but they just can’t accept critical reviews they either feel defensive or they shut off or the when they say that you know so many other people appreciate my writing why are you criticizing it or i’m writing only for self-expression so then of course i keep a distance from them but i am sometimes not able to understand how that kind of writing works so yeah now you know what sometimes writing um in more of a kind of diary context you know and just self-reflection that’s about that that’s a valid genre i mean what’s wrong with that no problem and that that kind of self-reflection personal writing naturally would not warrant a critique or um you know evolving a draft after a draft after a draft but if they intended to speak to others if they attend if they intended to be a meaningful contribution to others for more than just information if it’s just information that they want well then that’s good enough but but if they want it to be something that is a meaningful publication then it needs to have critique yeah needs peer review yeah yes yeah so there are different forms of writing when you write chaitanya tron you really want to speak to people you want to you want to contribute to people’s understanding of krishna bhakti so you know obviously you want the critique because you want it to be absorbable like that vitamin pill we talked about earlier right they put other stuff with the vitamin so it’s more absorbable well sometimes our writing needs to have some stuff to make it more absorbable that’s okay yeah you know earlier when you had mentioned about writing either moving or intriguing or boring yeah i remember a metaphor i read about every author is taking uh the readers on a trek and yeah the if the it’s a good trek leader the trek leader arranges goodies to be found along the path of the trick yeah that’s right and you find it right you feel i want to move on i want to move on first of course it’s sweet it’s nourishing right that’s right yeah you give them things along the way but you give them the ultimate the denouement the conclusion the climactic message yeah krishna’s last words in the gita to arjuna 18th chapter 72nd verse have you heard this whole teaching with thought focused on the single highest point what is that single highest point that’s what i went after when i did my translation and presentation i found out it’s thought of you are so much loved by me that’s it that is the single highest point we are not a tradition that chants and practices and has so many different things because we’re just supposed to start doing that all of that is a response to krishna’s love call his flute or his expression of love for us his desire for us our bhakti is in response to krishna’s love and desire for us not all devotees really focus on this but that’s what our bhakti is a our bhakti is a response bhakti is epiphenomenal it’s something that is a natural consequence of hearing krishna’s flute song of of of hearing how krishna desires us because he loves us i desire you i love you now you know i counted how many times in the gita krishna is preoccupied about souls coming to him i counted over 20 times yes if i say to you chaitanya charan i say um would you please call me sometime and you say yes i’ll call you chaitanya charan i really want you to call me sometime okay garuda i will call you really honestly i’ll call you chaitanya charan i really really really want you to call me and now i’m saying it three times krishna doesn’t say it just three times four times ten times 12 times he says it 20 times at least probably 23 times that’s how much krishna wants us to come to him in 575 short verses some of them are longer you know um you know they’re not all anish do but you know a longer metered verses that’s fine trish tube and so on but he manages to sneak that little message in throughout it would be like throughout my talk with you today you know chaitanya charan you should really call me sometime we can talk more about this you know and i say it 23 times first of all you’ll get a little sick and tired of hearing it well but that’s because i’m just an ordinary jiva when krishna when divinity keeps telling us how much he has a passion for us to come to him then we start chanting hare krishna hare krishna this is this is our return response the ma mantra is a return response and as i conclude in the dance of divine love book it is the sonic replication of the ras mandala yeah so many so are our beads circuitous we dance around our beads this way and then that way and then this way and then that way and that’s what the vraja gopikas do with krishna and the ras mandala they dance clockwise and anticlockwise is that well well we do that with the japa but yes they go they go back and forth yeah yeah amazing so you know i can see how much devotional energy you have you know also being in academia you have to read a lot of books which are not devotional books oh yes oh you can see them around yeah although the chetan chart to me just right behind me you can you can probably see that yeah yeah so how do you do you keep a specific quantity of time when you always read devotional books because how do you avoid that almost because of reading books which are constantly non-devotional critical not critical in the negative sense but critical in a just filled with a critical so how do you maintain your devotion and devotional energy i think it’s really about how much you know you love what you’re absorbed in and you go to these more technical treatises of which you mentioned and for tools okay like like when you let’s say literally um in my garage i have a toolbox and when something needs to be built in the house or something needs to be hung a picture needs to be hung get the tools out now am i relishing the tools you know am i trying to buy fancy tools and getting distracted by the tools no they’re tools what i’m focused on is the picture that i’m hanging so our picture of krishna bhakti theology i’ll use whatever tools i need to frame the picture to hang the picture to build the wall for the picture and so on but the picture is the main thing that’s the focus so it’s our love for our tradition the love and the passion for going deeper and deeper and deeper into the tradition and this is what moves me through all the technical treatises i see everything as something that can either help me um present krishna bhakti theology or something that doesn’t and over the years i’ve gained many many tools and this so this love for the message that you want to share the picture of krishna that love you nourish and protect by your devotional reading or because that also has to be that’s what we want to do but how do we protect and nourish that well we protect it of course by um uh by well you know a frame a frame protects a picture right it can contain a glass it can it it holds the picture but it also helps us focus on the picture can you imagine going to uh the uh national gallery of art in downtown washington and having a rembrandt hanging there without a frame i mean that would be absurd the frame the more valuable the picture the more elaborate the frame some of those frames aren’t even hand carved they’re practically art in themselves you and i chaitanya charan we are framers we are carving beautiful elaborate frames for our krishna bhakti theology we’re in the framing business you’re a framer i’m a framer we’re carving all kinds of frames for the picture and now so that’s how that’s how we we engage other tools and that’s how we keep focused on the picture yeah um so in a sense when you read other books it’s more from a functional or a utilitarian perspective it’s you know you are basically getting tools from there and those tools could involve words they could be writing styles they could be even concepts which you can correlate with our traditional concepts yes well i’m i’m a i’m a trained a theologian hmm i feel this theology and psychology psychology and theology and and so i work with the nature of religious experience the nature of divinity and the world and the soul in relation to divinity and these are the kinds of things that i’ve received a lot of training for over the years at a place like harvard university so i’m bringing all of that knowledge and experience with me when i start writing i’m not you know conscious of all of it i mean it’s too much but i’m utilizing it it’s it’s it’s matured me it’s you know like you know some people like lift weights right you know have you ever seen those people right they’re lifting weights right yeah so you know all that training in the university was like lifting weights for the brain for the intellect yeah i had to learn how to strengthen my ability to be precise to be accurate to say a lot with a little and sometimes to say a little about a lot and you know i mean all of these capacities are something that we go through in in the in the educational process not that you need to have that but when you do have it those are tools sometimes extra tools that are hard to get any other way and of course you are then opening i mean it doesn’t hurt to go into a publisher with a harvard degree it helps it helps usually it helps a lot yes it’s true yeah i think you just made a very striking play of words can you repeat that sometimes say a lot with a little and then use a little to say a lot or what are the other second thing that’s right that’s right you got it that’s right that’s right okay you thought of it just now or you had thought just describing what i experienced yeah yeah beautiful yeah one of the things you learn in graduate school is is how to take an enormous amount of ideas and to describe them with very few words but without dumbing them down without misrepresenting the thought but how to be concise and how to again use words powerfully the more precise the more accurate the more true the more sincere the more honest one uses words for the more powerful the greater power words take on so sometimes devotees will make you know statements like sometimes i hear devotees sit down with guests at the sunday feast and they say so look um you know prabhupada is a pure devotee and you should surrender to him because he’s a pure devotee he’s connected to krishna he’s he’s krishna’s representative you see the problem with those statements is that they move toward being platitudes first of all the question is how do you know that prabhupada is a pure devotee that’s the one question that’s going to come up in a person’s mind second of all what is a pure devotee you know it’s another question that’s going to come up in one’s mind and why does it matter to me and why does it even matter to me exactly all these questions but if some if that same person sat down and said i found in shrila prabhupada someone who is the ambassador from the spiritual world who has spoken so powerfully to me and he’s spread krishna bhakti around the world so i’ve given my life to this would you like to know more it’s so beautiful so relatable it’s honest though that’s the point chaitanya charan you know prabhupada is a pure devotee well you know what i mean you’re skipping over that’s a non-sequitur how do you know prabhupada who is prabhupada how do you know what is a pure devotee you’re it becomes you’re skipping over too much and second of all you’re you’re making a statement that is sort of sits out there as a kind of platitude and it’s in the third person you the person sitting next to you cannot refute what you directly experience though if i say prabhupada is a pure devotee that you know that’s one kind of statement if i say i love prabhupada so much for what he has done i want to reciprocate all the gifts i’ve gotten from them that’s why i’m here at this temple wow what are these gifts wow tell me more you know i wow you mean you are going to go in one direction in your life and then you found these gifts and then you redirected your whole life toward these gifts oh i want to hear about that that’s genuine it’s powerful and no one can tell you that that’s not true you start you know you know mahaprabhu gurunga he says even great stages disagree on points of philosophy but it’s the behavior of a vaishnava that establishes the principles of religion what is it uh dharmam uh dharmam dharmam to sad no no no anyway it skips my mind but anyway it’s anyway it’s a direct statement from a mahaprabhu in the madhyamila but in any case the point is this if our words convey our actual realizations and behaviors no one can refute them they become powerful they are truthful we have to speak from that place and then we become brahmins and we’re speaking as brahmins and brahmins use words as shabda brahman brahmans use word the shabda brahma beautiful that’s right yeah with this point about speaking from our experience i think this is one of the great untapped strengths of bhakti because in the in the post-modern world the ethos is the ultimate authority is experience i don’t care what books you quote i don’t care whether you’re scientific or not all that but yes i think it’s worked for you i want to know about it and we have not written in our tradition we haven’t written many books from that experiential genre that’s right adhant maharaj journey home is probably the most successful yes have you considered writing your autobiography oh my gosh um my i i don’t first of all think there’s much of a market second of all uh but my wife has threatened me that she wants to write a biography um so he happens to think there are a lot of very funny and strange and weird things that brought me to krishna bhakti and things during my krishna bhakti experience that uh devotees would uh you know enjoys hearing about and so on so i you know i might be willing to be interviewed on parts of my life and so on but i will not i will never write about my life no but i can write about my experience of within krishna bhakti i can write about my experience uh the the devotional experiences the mystical experiences that i have um but again i prefer to give people mystical experiences rather than give them my own that’s for me that’s that’s simply a personal preference yeah when you say new people mystical experiences means new people the resources by which they can have mystical experience of themselves yes through my translations through the message that the the son of a boy at the mobuya that i want them to actually realize that krishna is busy loving them but that’s a secret it’s a secret because you’re not ready to hear it although it’s all over the gita but no one picks it up even the best scholars in in the academic world who translate the bhagavad-gita they don’t quite pick it up i have my students read um together you know prabhupada’s gita along with mine and i tell them that this is uh this is someone who lived and breathed the gita in this life he he embodied his whole life is embodied you know and so this is what you get here what you get here is proof that what prabhupada says there is correct academically but then i also show on the literary and theological level that these messages are powerful and that i don’t have much room to write in here the way prabhupada writes 900 pages of of bhashya but many people have doubted sometimes people think that prabhupada’s gita is too self-promotional be a devotee join iskcon etc etc right but i say you have to you have to look at the message of what prabhupada is saying he’s saying we are meant to perform we are meant to live a life of devotion and only then will we be happy you know i never somehow i’m surprised i never thought of this point that actually your gita is substantiating prabhupada’s message in the gita yes the strategy you are using is very different but but you are arriving at the you are showing how what prabhupada says is the conclusion of the gita and what prabhupada says throughout the gita you are actually showing how that is the essential message of the gita that’s right my gita supports what prabhupada’s gita was is saying and and they get this the students get the practitioner and the scholar together that’s beautiful and this you’re doing this you do for your disciples or this you’re doing your academic classes both yeah both i i i this fall i’m teaching 120 students they’re all going to purchase prabhupada’s bhagavad gita and they’re going to purchase mine and they’re going to read them together they get a very full experience that way very full i found that prabhupada’s gita is very much a devotee’s gita and unless you’re a devotee you know somehow dormant you know that i’ve seen some students come out and say oh my gosh dr schweig i’ve been waiting for this book all my life but very few people come out of the class saying that so what i found is i needed them to appreciate the gita more by the help of a bridge over into prabhupada’s gita so my gita can function as a bridge as well as being intrinsically valuable with a message so it can function both ways so i i use them both now you’re a brahmachari i mean i’m a householder i have a job you know what my job is it’s unbelievable i go into the university and what do i teach krishna bhakti and they pay me can you believe that it’s i’m spoiled just utterly spoiled philosophy of yoga you know bhagavad-gita course comparative religions which is what my degree is in prabhupada said there is bhakti in all true religion so i’m busy showing my students how there is bhakti in all true religions first they have to understand bhakti from bhagavad-gita then they can see in all true religions there is bhakti that and i get a paycheck for that this is actually like a dream for a devotee to get forums which as a as iskcon devotee you would never be able to reach that’s right in fact one of the things now i have in the last five years i’ve been spending almost nine months a year in the western world six months in america and three months in uk australia new zealand other places so radhanath maharaj asked me to spend more time in helping or in serving in western outreach whatever we can do so what i noticed is that even in our temples or temples we hardly get any western people but even in our customized for western outreach centers we we are not really attracting the intellectual elite whether it is in the college programs or whether it is in the other programs so i think we come off as a little sectarian or otherworldly yes if you want to reach the intellectual elite actually we have to go through their forums yeah and the people you will reach uh it’s very difficult for them to ever themselves to come to a temple and attend a program that’s right that’s right we have to be sensitive to our audience we have to know our audience i i heard some advanced devotees coming together in a meeting i was on the zoom meeting with them and they were talking about how we have to give krishna you know to others out in the world it’s neither more than we have to give christ i said that’s well and fine but you can’t give something to someone unless you know that someone well enough you you have to be sensitive to where they’re coming from otherwise they’re not receptive you know i spend much of my time making my audience putting them at ease making them comfortable um and the more receptivity i feel from them the more i deliver it’s a careful balance the greater the receptivity the more we can deliver the the less the receptivity the less we can deliver it’s part of just being an experienced teacher you know very important though very important otherwise you’re giving them too much you’re overloading them and they will feel that you’re not sensitive to them they will feel they’ll interpret that as you don’t really care about them and then they go away that’s true i think you know i think samuel butler he said that what is written without effort is read without pleasure that’s a good one yeah that’s very good yeah through one question you said that you were able to get to a press which presents scholars who don’t write in a very scholarly or academic way so did you do any conscious changes because that is the genre you could say popular philosophy like richard dawkins got into popular science so popular philosophy that is the genre which i am also targeting i have also written one book on the ramayan which which is not a retelling of the ramayan but it is it is applicational essays based on the ramayans i take incidents and draw human lessons from them and that’s and that’s done quite i call it wisdom from the ramayan it uh in about two and a half years it has sold about 20 000 copies so beautiful wonderful you’re gonna have to get some copies of your books it’s wonderful yes so so no thank you for your kind words i just wanted to know did you do any reading see i i was i’ve never been an academic scholar in that sense but i read extensively and i think deeply and try to think deeply so what does it take to say make philosophy popular or rather to reach read reach philosophy to a popular audience a broader audience are there any books you would recommend or what would you recommend if somebody wants to write in this genre books to recommend i i couldn’t say but because again my training comes from um you know many years of university uh work and education but but if again we have to return to that passion if we really have a message that we want to give to others and now we can add the other factor which we just talked about and if that audience if we really know that audience then we can deliver you know um even the heaviest kind of philosophy and you know our krishna bhakti theology is actually very very complex and deep and rich and sometimes i think devotees simplify it and and and even to the point of some being simplistic and we have to be careful now not every devotee is going to be as trained as as others of us and experienced and that’s okay but but then you know if an audience requires very sophisticated presentation then we need to bring the right people in we need to bring the right people in okay so this is something we have to be sensitive to we have to be sensitive to our audience um so i do know when i wrote uh the dance of divine love i know that the uh the executive editor there said write this so a an intelligent lay person can read it so i worked an extra year and a half to make that possible really so a year and a half you worked on your phd thesis to modify it or oh oh this book took a long time first of all there’s four years at harvard and that’s my uh a dissertation then after harvard i worked for several years more so the dissertation was 550 pages then after that it went to 2800 pages many manuscript pages okay double spaced okay 2800 pages because i was drawing from and translating the commentaries of the bhagavata remember they there weren’t these sort of um moderately okay translations being produced like there are today back in in the late 90s or early 90s there were no translations of vishwanatha’s works or anything i had to translate it myself i had to go in and which was better anyway i’d have to do that in any case because a lot of these um translations have done by devotees who are familiar with sanskrit they’re not necessarily terribly careful translations especially when devotees keep sort of churning out translations they’re not terribly careful translations and in sanskrit you want to you want to you know unearth you want to um you want to excavate the richness of the sanskrit terms so just quick translations don’t do that so when i translate i go for the richness and i do it slowly and i do it carefully and that’s the result you know of dance the divine love to 2800 pages now when i got to princeton and they want to wanted to publish it they said we’re not going to publish 2800 pages we’ll publish 800 pages so i had to get rid of 2000 pages oh painful painful painful right but i was able to consolidate and essentialize and distill most of it but it was very hard took me a year and a half more so overall the book 10 it took 10 years to come out these things are never easy to produce these very deep scholarly but also accessible layperson accessible treatises some people have written to me how this book they said is some of the most beautiful book in the world they’ve ever read these are people i don’t even know these are not even devotees well they must be devotees i mean so and i’ve had and then one devotee a god brother of mine’s read the book recently and said this should be required reading for every gbc person anyway i i don’t know i get different reactions and they’re wonderful and uh they’re often effusive and not just praise but appreciations and it’s very gratifying and you know what that’s like you get plenty of that too so it’s nice it’s nice to get that of course but we can’t possibly comprehend all of it and how people so much appreciate what it is that we’ve offered so this is krishna so well i have i have kept you on here for quite some time chaitanya charan i don’t know that you want to use all of this but um it’s up to you what you use yes this is personally exciting for me and good good very much me too and i i have a like i have a few devotees who regularly hear these podcasts i’m planning that i will share it with them first yes then i’m sure there are devotees who like to write and they would love this yes other devotees may not find it that relevant but that way actually for devotees who want to write we don’t have much encouraging material yes you have some instructions of shloka prabhupada that devotees should write but institutionally the pressure for devotees to do other services that the institution requires but it’s true that’s right collect funds and do other menial services in the temple that is so much and they also get some appreciation for those services that’s right writing they don’t get those that appreciation so i think for those devotees this would be a very very nourishing good wonderful well i am delighted to serve you and your series here and to serve any devotees that would benefit from i’m it is a privilege and an honor to turn the charm oh this is far far far better than far far richer and enriching than what i had expected and i would humbly and fervently request you to join for more podcasts in future and we didn’t however we could we didn’t even touch on the theme we were going to touch on i think i guess when you get two writers together they can’t help themselves that’s very true so yeah it’s good well thank you so much again it was an honor and let’s and let’s um yes let’s plan again i’m happy to to be here with you and explore other topics yes i look forward to that true just let me know when you’re free and i’ll adjust my schedule accordingly excellent i will do thank you very much hello my pranams my affectionate pranams