The Monk’s Podcast 52 with Deva Madhava – How to share the Krishna conception of God in today’s world

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
krishna welcome back the monk’s podcast wonderful to be with you prabhu as always my obeisances the several devotees told me about how they liked our podcast especially on western outreach bhaktivinod maharaj is one of the prominent preachers in south india jayapratakam my disciple he’s also interested in western outreach so he told me in our discussion in the discussion of two of us a lot of points came out which he had never heard he has done he has participated in seminars on western outreach but it was so it’s very insightful so anytime i have a conversation with you prabhu i feel like something fruitful is going to happen at least for me so i’m glad that something came out for other people too yes so with janmashtami coming up i thought we could talk about a more directly devotional subject but maybe we’ll approach it from a secular perspective so we could talk about the concept of god specifically how the krishna conception of god challenges and charms the contemporary mind you’re so clever with your phrasings for me i love that yeah so i get some i think that is the only rasa i get i don’t know if i get any devotional rasa but some intellectual rasa used in the service of devotion is all that i have in my life yeah well you have quite a lot of it so if it’s working keep with it challenges and harms it certainly does yeah so i remember i read some book i don’t remember which book now it said that they did a cross-section survey of you just go on the street and ask people what is the strangest thing a stranger has ever told you a stranger suddenly approached you and told you so it seems a significant number of people said it is the hare krishna’s approaching us and telling us that a bluish black boy youth is god so now i know sometimes i thought it was lighter weight yeah go ahead it’s still the strangest thing i’ve ever heard that’s true so maybe you can start with your story you know what was your idea of god before and how was it challenged or fulfilled when you encountered krishna i was one of those who was in an amalgamation of in distress and in search for shelter and in search for knowledge all at once when i met the devotees and i had gone to something in my heart had told me go to detroit and i happened to be working with a door-to-door book selling company going door-to-door selling educational textbooks for children and distributing books but not Prabhupada’s books yet and i was in highland park chicago where your your groom Raj was born where he appeared there in the suburbs of chicago and i left that place somehow my heart said go to detroit and i went to detroit and i went there with this mood of trying to help the people i wanted somehow to uplift them with these educational product offerings and make my life something of service i i had that inclination at that point in my life i was starting to see around me that everything is suffering whatever i try to do for someone else it just undoes a part of me and a part of them in the ultimate and so let me try to contribute something but what can i really contribute so i went to detroit where people were in apparently great need and left this place highland park chicago which as for your groom Raj gave this very kind of disillusioned because everything is very nice there everything is perfect suburbs nice nice grass nice plastic surgery faces so in detroit those three weeks um that i was there before i met the devotees i was going door to door and i was asking people what what do you think caused your city to fall apart why are you in the condition you’re in now what would help you and so many of them were saying that it was the um the churches actually they’re blaming the churches who were uh yeah who were promoting this they called it jesus jesus money they said that that’s the kind of gospel of the church uh in the big kind of um what they call mega churches that had kind of taken over detroit these like stadiums ten nine seven thousand people in one church jesus jesus money if you worship jesus and give us some money then he’ll give you some money back and this kind of very shallow presentation of spiritual culture and so i was here there i was thinking about that as i was going door to door in detroit and at the same time i was looking into offering this educational material and i was more and more realizing that the whole track of a good education and success in the western culture was ultimately just to bring those children in detroit to the same place that those children in highland park already were and i’d already concluded and seen for myself and experienced also that those children in highland park weren’t really any happier than the children in detroit that material success didn’t bring you much it just in fact it sometimes brings more anxiety because now you have nowhere to go you’ve already achieved everything there is to get but you’re still not satisfied so there’s this hollow empty hopeless feeling and so in this very like melancholy situation i knocked on the door of the temple president of the the detroit temple and instead of buying one of my books uh his name is brudge kumar now okay uh one of your god brothers uh at the time his name was barrett and there’s a little i actually met his wife first and then she had me come back so she was the very first devotee i ever met and then she had me come back and speak to her husband and instead of buying one of my books i bought one of his books i took one of the prophets books home he gave it to me as a gift actually we had a great conversation and in that book i was it was science of self-realization which personally i feel if you’re going to give a book to a new person and that new person is of an intellectual you know kind of western mindset whether they’re from india or america um the best book to give someone is the science of self-realization very powerful thoughtful methodical presentation of krishna consciousness and you learn who prabhupada is as a person because many of the presentations that are conversations and so in reading those conversations of prabhupada i really i saw somebody who was willing to answer the questions that other people were angry for me even asking the big questions about life and why are we here and why is there so much suffering and how can there be a god and at the same time suffering exists and and can we do anything about it surely prabhupada’s answers were so lucid and clear and it was such relief because growing up i’d i’d come in from a kind of you could say a christian background in the the south of america where it’s a very narrow kind of classic um evangelical protestant presentation of christianity where it’s like you’re in our boat or you’re drowning you’re going to hell you’re done you either agree with our team and everything we say or you’re no one and you have no spiritual value and so that very distasteful presentation was such a so contrasted by prabhupada’s broad-mindedness and encouragement and uh clear appreciation for christianity and judaism and islam anything that brought you to real love of god so that was the most refreshing thing for me when i first met the devotees was this idea that spiritual value is universal and it can be cultivated in any tradition and still it does bring you to recognition of an objective truth so your subjective experience can have value in helping you recognize the objective truth that felt really right when prabhupada you know in prabhupada’s presentation beautiful by subjective experience you mean the experience of say different religious traditions seekers in their particular paths yes and yet god is an objective reality ultimately yes and even cultural social experiences as i mentioned i left the very you know very white very well-to-do suburb and i went to this very poor very black ethnic uh inner city situation and in both places i saw how their experiences could inform them of this truth that shila describing so you don’t you don’t have to preference anybody which is a value in you know western ethics is like egalitarianism and everybody’s experience matters and my truth and your truth these are all phrases today that people use to bring out this point which is that your subjective experience has value in indicating the objective truth yes that’s very striking because at one level when we talk about krishna consciousness there is a certain level of specificity but that is the beauty that we have specificity without narrow-mindedness and in some ways people feel that in order to be at least i have read this in some books which of which say historically in india they favor monism as a unifying force they said india as a nationalist force could get a united by monism said because as soon as you have something specific some people identify with the specific and some don’t and that makes it sectarian but if we have the non-specific or generic absolute truth the impersonal absolute truth then there won’t be any sectarianism associated with that so what’s the specificity of krishna of the krishna conception ever a challenge for you it’s funny that when i looking back i realized my first few months spending time with the devotees and i was at that point i was going to the morning program uh i guess i met the devotees in july and went to the rathi yatra actually the my first my second sunday feast we were it was snan yatra so i was bathing the deities and i you know pouring the milk and honey over these you know wood carvings it was a very surreal experience but i just i kind of went with it i didn’t question it but a few months later uh during kartik when we were every day uh during the morning program singing this song to baby krishna and mother yashoda and spending so much time focusing on the deities i suddenly realized that these crazy people actually think this little blue boy is god it suddenly dawned on me like they don’t think this is a metaphor they don’t think this is some kind of like analogy or you know some kind of fable that was created to make up you know impart morals like they think this little kid is god and i might too it’s the feeling of recognizing my own budding faith was so striking because it’s and it speaks to you know bhaktivinoda thakur in his chaitanya shikshamrita he talks about how certain anarchists are just removed by krishna’s mercy anarchist towards voidism and impersonalism and and the idea you know atheistic conceptions that god is not a person most of those anarchists are actually addressed by krishna just kind of by his mercy bhaktivinoda thakur killing up demons and the different anarchists they represent in vrindavan and so i i realized like it dawned on me i might actually believe also that this little blue boy is the supreme person and it was during that first experience of kartik mas and and the worship involved and the mercy that comes and seeing the other devotees and particularly there was this one little young boy narottam and narottam was only three years old at the time and he would come in each morning with his parents he would himself pay obeisances to prabhupada he wouldn’t you know mom and dad usually force the kids head down and you know drag them over to the altar and take them by each one of the deities and try to get them to pay obeisances but this little boy on his own would joyfully pay obeisances to prabhupada be the very first person waiting for the deity curtain to open when the deity curtains open his hands fly up in the air and then he lays down with with all sincerity in front of each one of the altars and witnessing that a young three-year-old boy much the same age as boy krishna who we were reading and singing about every day could have so much natural faith and affection for these apparent you know statues and and songs from a religious tradition that he you know how can he understand as a three-year-old boy what’s really going on it struck me seeing that experience the three-year-old was having i said this must be real what what i’m experiencing must also be possible if this three-year-old can be having the same you know that’s fascinating i if i think back at my life you mentioned three-year-old i don’t really remember my first remembrance of krishna in the sense that we grew up in a culture where krishna was a familiar part of the religious iconography the place where i lived was just behind my house till my third third standard seven years old or eight years old the place behind that we had a ram temple and we had a ram image at our home so i was more centered on ram and then i moved to nasik where i lived for most of my youth and that is also a place sacred for lord ram okay so in that sense i connected with more ram as an image of divinity and then in india there were the there was an attempt to televise the epics so the ramayan was immensely popular and after that the mahabharata was televised and that was i think probably my first direct impression of krishna of course i had read and i heard and in fact my childhood i had recited the bhagavad-gita verses but i didn’t really connect bhagavad-gita with krishna so directly hmm so it was the presentation in those in those um serials i think they’re called right was was the presentation in that mahabharata that krishna is the supreme person or was he like another character how did he occur to you it did talk about krishna is god it does not necessarily everything was in agreement with the philosophy but it was definitely krishna’s divinity was not denied i think the first presentations on both the ramayan and the mahabharata were quite faithful to the tradition and they were also done by people at least the directors were somewhat pious if not devoted when subsequent because if the original one is already done there have been many many subsequently done so then they tried various things they tried to have more special effects they tried to have more plot twists and they tried to bring in more uh more narratives that challenge the mainstream narrative that’s how they put it so of course they they also had to decide how much boundaries to stretch without without alienating the readers yeah intrigue the intrigue the viewers but not alienate them but the first was quite good so there i got the impression of krishna as a very very shrewd person so krishna was that but that is mahabharata in the mahabharata krishna’s childhood pastimes are not talked about much but it is more of how he expertly guides the pandavas and how he’s very very now sure you can have a both a negative and a positive connotation for sure both come both came in that and then like you said in my journey toward krishna consciousness also it was not so much the krishna conception as the krishna philosophy that attracted first that okay there is some higher meaning to life even life’s material success doesn’t bring fulfillment there has to be something higher and that that highest reality is krishna it is more of a like a okay this is a whole package and this package this thing is there yes yes and although the whole we call it krishna consciousness and krishna is the center but really when we take to krishna consciousness even as an indian when i took to krishna consciousness there is so much going on within that that the focus on krishna itself or the you could say the unusualness of the conception of krishna as god that doesn’t register unless somebody tells it or some incident happens yes so i grew up in a christian i grew up in a hindu brahmin family and i went to a christian convent school and both gave some we could say nominal nominal not even devotion nominal theological conception of god and so then i remember i think it is again damodarashtakam i had gone to rindavan yatra and for me physically yatras are quite an austerity and i was completely irritated and exhausted i yatras are on for many devotees yatras are a great delight for me physical austerity is demanding for me being around people is demanding and yatra means both of them a lot of both mostly only those things yeah so i was i was completely frustrated i was kind of exhausted and frustrated and then we went to the temple the ratharaman the our krishnapatram temple and there my guru maharaja anath maharaj started singing in damodarashtakam and that was such a stunning experience it was i i could say that i experienced something which i had never experienced till then and then similarly i think the second time when i experienced you could say krishna or something like that was during my first recitation of the gopi gita i think it is bhakti charu maharaj who was reciting it and these two are even now for me probably the things that give the closest experience of krishna wow so for me mostly it has been through sound there is not so much to go through places even if i go to places even if i go in front of deities it is not the place of the deity that gives me an experience of krishna it is i need to go there and recite some verses or articulate some prayers so it is more a you could say a sonic connection with the divine rather than a visual connection of the brahman sub the brahman okay yeah um so where how do you experience krishna the most uh i appreciate that question i would i would agree sound um is so power and particularly the srimad bhagavatam if i look at my own if i’m in distress if i’m feeling melancholy uncertain disconnected uh uninspired all those things at the end of the day what i want to do is sit and read bhagavatam then and and that will reassure me and and give me that um sense of satisfaction and also safety which is you know we whenever we have those negative emotions and feelings and it’s in the and it’s an indication that we don’t have a a positive enough sense of self right where our own identity feels uncertain because of this material energy our existence is in the atmosphere of non-existence as prabhupada says so when i read that those verses from the bhagavatam i i just i’m reminded that it’s real i’m real you’re real we’re all real it’s gonna work out just stick stick close and it will happen and then also harinam uh if i can i can in my devotional life i can trace all the blessings and i’ve received many all the blessings that i’ve received from the devotees in my personal life spiritually materially what have you it’s all come through my spiritual master and harinam those two my my to whatever degree i’ve been able to focus on those two things uh those two people then i’ve been able to receive krishna consciousness and being out and chanting the holy name for the benefit of others jiva doya uh krishnanam sarva dharma sar to the degree i’ve been able to do that sincerely i’ve felt you know the blessing come through so also sound vibration it’s beautiful so now moving on to our topic was how challenges and charms krishna conception so we took our journey say when you are introducing not just krishna consciousness to new people but the idea of krishna as god have you experienced any apprehension in doing so at any time with new people and how have you how have you dealt with that sure yeah mountains of it um mountains of it uh one one idea that i i’m coming to more and more today um that i’ll share now that i i could there’s an idea in sales as i mentioned i used to sell bookstore to door so there’s this idea in sales that the first person to the objection wins say i’m selling large boats i’m selling yachts so the objection to a yacht is that besides i may not live on water is the price right it’s very expensive everyone wants a big boat but who can afford it so if i’m selling a yacht then the first thing i’m going to do is address price somebody walks in my shop i’m going to say you know i can tell you’re a man who doesn’t care about money you’re a man who values the finer things in life and whatever it costs you to live the best life you can that’s the choice you’re going to make i might say something like that that’s slower okay on the table right first one wins whereas if i i go my whole presentation then he says well it’s all very nice but you know i think it’s a little pricey then i’m in the um defensive position now rather than on the offensive having already brought out this this idea of the price as an obvious barrier to the person buying the thing so what was the statement you made in the starting one who addresses the first objection yeah the first person to the objection wins meaning there’s a there’s a series of there’s a couple natural reasons the person wouldn’t want to make a choice so and and when we’re talking about buying a product it’s the most simplistic way of framing the analogy yeah right so the objection might be i don’t live near water around buying a boat it’s too expensive it’s too much maintenance right there’s a few things just a minute i understood that point but the first person to the objection the objection the first person addresses the objection that’s right somebody brings up the objection or somebody addresses the objection yeah the first person bring it up okay if you wait for the customer to bring it up then you’re on the defensive okay yeah you could say it in a class you know sometimes before if in the class itself is our question on the question in the address right in the beginning no i want to hear this but otherwise if you have a question that goes on then that doesn’t that really you could say distracts us from focusing on the class very much so right somebody says something and we don’t it doesn’t sit well with us then the whole rest of the time they’re speaking we’re only thinking about that thing that doesn’t sit well yeah it’s true this is how it is in krishna consciousness is that we don’t need people to believe in krishna and this is a misconception in the presentation of our philosophy we need people to experience krishna i didn’t believe in krishna i experienced him i experienced the power of his name the power of his prashadam the power of his association with his devotees that prayers of dhammadharastakam seeing that little boy that those were all experiences i didn’t have any belief any kind of a priority need to associate with this culture it was something direct and felt and so we have to accept that people are naturally going to have intellectual apprehensions about a blue boy who plays a flute being the supreme person and if we can allow those if we can just be okay with that and and let the experience of krishna also be there for them then automatically just as it did for us if we’re a little humble and honest we can admit it wasn’t our intellect that brought us to accepting krishna as god it was the experiences of of him as who he is because of the mercy of the devotees that now here we are today having this conversation so being uh actually having that conversation with the person and allowing them to express their doubts that you know this seems you know it seems a little far-fetched and i you know i like this process but the bhagavatam is a lot and these some of these stories just seem like they’re they’re more stories rather than history if you can sit and and just accept a person saying that without the need to kind of push back and at the same time say well what do you think about chanting what do you think about the prashadam have you noticed any positive changes in your life as you’ve started to associate more with the devotees and just kind of fan that spark it will naturally burn away all the apprehensions eventually beautiful so you when we’re using the word belief it is more in the sense of we are addressing the rational aspect and can i rationally accept it or not accept it so whereas whereas the strength of bhakti of course we can make a rational case for bhakti but the strength of bhakti is not so much its rationality as its experienciability if there’s a word like that yes so yes so then that means even if there is no belief in krishna at least somehow we need to create enough credibility for people to at least open themselves to the experience of krishna exactly exactly bhagavad tattva vigyana mukta sangha syajayate the famous verses of the bhagavatam gives first canto chapter two he says this is the process of krishna consciousness and that’s the feature verse when you have bhagavad tattva vigyana that that scientific experience indian american young old rich poor you have that scientific connection experiential then after that mukta comes that liberation from all the anxiety of material energy when we’re giving people the explanation of krishna consciousness it’s not always an experience it’s it’s a wikipedia page it’s a you know a kind of uh academic um you know reading a list of religious bullet points it’s not necessarily the experience which that the actual thing that they need and so in our own krishna conscious communities i’ve noticed too much emphasis on the philosophy at the loss of just experiencing krishna and if you the proof of this for me is the christians who make so many more members every year their philosophy is not anything compared to ours their their philosophy has so many clear holes and and missteps and incongruities any intellectual person even a christian one admits that and yet when they think and talk about what jesus did for them they call it testimony they testify what what has happened now that jesus has come into my life that’s where the power is in the christian community that i had all these problems and all these anxieties and all these fears and now i’ve i’ve invited jesus into my life and all those emotions have transformed into something sublime that’s that’s exactly what we want for krishna consciousness is the devotees to personally testify to their experience and sometimes that gets obfuscated because of this need to speak to this like objective supreme philosophy which in itself is just a kind of um container for the experience of a relationship with krishna fascinating you put it this way i’m thinking early days his classes where he talked about how you’re not the body or the soul but it is more the kirtans and his personal kindness and his sweet dealings with the devotees that’s what that’s what attracted people yes so we could also put it this way that we need rationality to as i said earlier to clear the way for people to experience krishna but sometimes our emphasis on rationality might be so forceful that we may we may we may put down people’s emotional shatters because we may offend something which they believe previously and then they can’t experience krishna exactly exactly interesting so now another point which i thought of as you are speaking is that i have heard many times in classes and i have also talked about in my classes how the conception of this bluish black covered boy as god is so radical yes but i have talked with so many devotees about how they came to krishna consciousness and not one of them has mentioned the krishna conception of god as a factor in their coming to krishna either obstructing them or bringing them it is not i mean that particular conception of krishna has not played a major role of course i won’t say it has not played a role but it is not so major a role that it either factored a positively or negatively so even anything yeah go ahead i visited a museum uh a week ago and i was thinking about this when you see a painting your first idea isn’t who made this painting your first idea is do i like this painting first you’re examining the work and you’re looking at you know its layout and is there something being expressed here and and does it resonate with me it’s all it’s all centered on you and then if you appreciate it or if it strikes you in some way then you ask the question okay who painted this and if you’re very inspired you come to want to know about that painter what’s what was the period they were painting in what was the inspiration for this particular work uh where where does that sit in their overall uh canon of of artistic output so that that interest in the person naturally comes later first you want to experience that what that person has made and created and decide is it even worth getting to know this guy and it’s very seems very similar to what you’re pointing out which is that we’re all attracted to things around krishna first before we then naturally eventually want to know who’s the person that’s created all of these interesting things that’s an interesting point you are equating krishna with the artist or the painter and the whole experience of krishna consciousness as the like the painting painting that’s interesting so yeah so it’s interesting again that so do i like it is a more important question then then does this make sense yeah exactly but does this make sense so you know in the vegan sutra also it is said that brahmacharya in his commentary uses says that we can use rationality to to some extent point to the existence of god although it can go both ways but he says to know about god’s existence reason can work but to know about god’s personality what reason he said it requires revelation and revelation doesn’t just refer now i’m thinking about it aloud that revelation doesn’t just refer to some some books that are considered revelations but revelation also has to be like an experience that is revealed in our heart which we come to know so the the books that are revelations can be aids for us can be you could say almost in indispensable aids for us to have the have the revelation in our own hearts in the form of experience beautiful yeah amy do you remember this we’ve all heard it this famous statement from nietzsche western philosopher he said god is dead and this is it’s a it’s a statement which is often almost always quoted out of context nietzsche was not declaring that god is actually dead what nietzsche was pointing to is the very shallow kind of relationship that western culture had with theology and and krishna it was a very explanatory relationship transactional where we needed god to explain the natural phenomenon we saw around us that we we couldn’t um point out the the mechanistic process of so how is the rain falling from the sky being evaporated back into clouds and then falling again how is the sun rising and setting and the moon changing phases because we didn’t know how to explain those things from a western side centuries ago we needed some kind of divine being to arrange it all but in the rest of that essay nietzsche says what did we do when we untethered the earth from its sun describing when we learned how the you know the planets are situated in the sun is etc when we learned more of the details of our world around us then suddenly our relationship with god was no longer necessary because we didn’t actually have a relationship it was just a set of kind of rationalities and some kind of transactional um exchanges that we needed from him but the actual connection with him as a person was missing so we murdered god once we we removed our need for uh our description of him and that’s what nietzsche is pointing to in that essay is the need for a deeper relationship with krishna than just one on a surface of explaining the material world around you and how you can make yourself happy and comfortable in it that’s interesting the way you’re putting this from i haven’t read all of nisha i mean i don’t think anybody can he’s quite a dense to then no need but from what i read that particular section uh what i thought was that he felt that uh because of the advent of science the the concept of god was no longer rationally tenable and so in his conception that that well did god exist he he was in some many christian atheists so for him it was not that god ever existed but the viability of the conception of god itself has become unacceptable now that god was no longer a rationally viable conception yeah i would i would walk it back just one level and go to as stephen hawking said god is not necessary yeah stephen hawking we don’t need god to explain the universe which is what nietzsche is pointing to is that we no longer need god to explain what’s happening around us it’s he could be there but in order for us to know that he’s there we’ll need to develop some other purpose for the relationship because the original impetus which was to explain the world around us is now no longer there because we have this mechanistic science to explain that relationship yes true you know this is maybe a different subject and we won’t go too much into it we could talk about later but this is one thing that in the history of europe as you mentioned that since the time of the sign maybe renaissance and thereafter there was a shift significantly from revelational theology to rational theology that you know that god is someone who’s revealed to us or god is rationally inferred and the more god became a rational inference then if you can come up with a rational way to establish god’s existence we can come up with a rational way to counter his existence also exactly so now from our traditions perspective there is the concept that om poornam adhah poornam idam that the world is come that the divine is that the ultimate reality is complete and the world is also complete yeah that sense god is not needed to explain the world exactly but it doesn’t mean that god is not there united said that the perfect management is that where everything is managed and no manager is visible so in that Krishna has done that yes so so maybe that because i don’t see much of rational theology as being a issue in india um in india also even now although there are some critics of religion and there are rationalist societies but more often than criticizing the existence of god they criticize many of the superstitions that go on in the name of religion and the target is more that so so have you experienced uh even atheism as an intellectual conception among people obstructing them from experiencing krishna of course that’s that’s why i was bringing out this point i think it’s very um it’s very i’m glad we’re having this line of discussion because it’s so much centered around what we’re trying to do in the west to share krishna and why it’s not working very well is because the the needs that we’re speaking to in people’s lives they don’t need krishna for that they don’t need krishna to explain the world around them they need to they need krishna to explain the turmoil inside their heart they’re emotionally distraught people totally um confused and scared about their own identity everything around them in the world is explained is explained but inside they can’t understand how to relate to it in a healthy way and that’s what people are suffering in a loss of they can they can learn about who got elected in parliamentary um elections in turkey right now if they wanted to sitting in their bedroom in ohio the world is flooded with information about the existence and materials external but it’s the internal situation that people are lost and confused and scared about and so when we’ve put so much emphasis on the philosophy of krishna consciousness and the kind of explaining the universe but we don’t focus on the relational aspect and krishna the personality then we disenfranchise the western population because that’s where they really need him and that’s where they’ll have an experience that the the scientific you know rational uh atmosphere around them can’t account for and can’t offer that’s beautiful so you know it’s like there has to be i read the book on writing that solutions are useless unless they are attached to an identifiable problem so you might give the best solution i might have the most precious medicine but if you don’t have the disease that is going to cure that medicine that medicine is of no value to you or if i don’t know that i have the disease yeah or i don’t know also that this medicine will work for that disease that’s right all of those things prevent the solution from being very attractive yeah so yeah certainly mental health crisis is a far bigger crisis i read an article new york times long ago which said that you know how mainstream christian or evangelical christianity has rebranded god not god as the cosmic physician cosmic uh provider like oh father that what in heaven hallowed be thy name give us our daily bread but god as the cosmic therapist yes exactly because people are going to get their daily bread from amazon and they’re going to get their entertainment from netflix and they don’t have to talk to a single other person to to exist but that existence is so shallow and so unfulfilling and so so terrifying actually that when we help them see that real life is about relationships and that’s what’s special about krishna is that he doesn’t want to be god either he lets somebody else take care of all the administration he himself in his village in vrindavan is just concerned with loving intimate exchanges and that’s what you’re missing and that’s what you want when that’s what we present then we we have a ground to stand on we have we have an exclusive product to bring to the marketplace but from any other place the rest of the world has something to offer that’s easier to get without all the attachments and you could say inconveniences of the krishna conscious culture that’s beautiful you know i took whenever i speak in the west um i see if i travel for three more months and i give probably a class a day so i might give probably 100 classes out of the 20 will be to western audiences but most of them are on very basic topics like psychological topics mindfulness and stuff like that so it is only twice that i took a i mean i was like a tour guide for about 25 30 western people who went to vrindavan and vrindavan and rishikesh and go over the nicole in other places and we so we were talking this that was the first time i actually got to speak about krishna directly to western people and what was the response and either i i didn’t i was a little it seems i was more apprehensive than they were skeptical that’s right and it seemed of course they were not really people who are many of them became devotees but they were open to explore totally and so i was i was talking more about the krishna conception of god of course we are going to temples and i was hesitating to tell stories because you know how do i tell the story of say krishna i lifted govardhan hill and what will they think about it rationally but after that we brought them to mumbai and there radhanath maharaj has this once a year the pusha abhishek the flower festival and in that he gives classes and he speaks quite directly about krishna but i found that there was no the the surrounding atmosphere was so sweet that either people everybody’s coming together and making taking out flower petals and then showering the lord and the music was soothing and people were warm and welcoming that it just went along with the experience and yes the way he tells the leela tells the pastimes of krishna in such a way that it just charms the heart so now that you’re talking about the x if the experience of krishna is what is important then in some ways we have a reservoir of pastimes of krishna which say other religious traditions don’t have that kind of activities of god per se isn’t it exactly exactly so have you have you talked about krishna’s pastimes with new people or how is your experience um and krishna and also lord chaitanya there’s that i i have a little essay and and uh one day it could be turned into a book um the the five features of lord chaitanya uh that make him the ideal avatar for this age because he loves to dance everyone loves to dance he loves to sing everyone loves to sing he he came and shattered all social boundaries right he didn’t care muslim man woman rich poor he shattered all castes and social strata and offered the highest thing to everyone who is ready to step up to it lord chaitanya and his pastimes and dealings with the aristocracy his dealings with the the lowborn his dealings with people from other castes are so ideal and in line with modern values that’s what’s it’s so beautiful lord chaitanya is the avatar of the age and it’s so clear if we just take a moment to see that so along with krishna promoting lord chaitanya’s pastimes mahaprabhu is in fact you know the kaliyuga avatar so promote promoting and sharing his leela i found to be very powerful um one experience that i had was at a yoga it was at a yoga studio um and i it was a kirtan program and the devotees who’d organized the kirtan program invited me to speak and i just didn’t want to talk about mindfulness anymore i didn’t want to you know i know these guys already hear that stuff from other people and i know that i i don’t want them to think that that’s what we’re about because we’re not we’re not about mindfulness and peace and tranquility for its own sake those things come as a symptom of the degree to which we’re focusing on krishna so i wanted to offer them that focus on krishna and somehow or other i just decided to tell the pastime of radha raman appearing for gopal bhatta and and they were yeah and they were enthralled they loved it and then i i told the pastime of shila prabhupada and how um there was a an anecdote which maybe some devotees are familiar with but it’s kind of one of those less popular anecdotes shila prabhupada wound up coming to the u.s and landing stepping foot on u.s soil the eve of an eminent russian nuclear attack there was going to be a nuclear attack on the u.s from russian submarines in the atlantic that were stationed there and one devotee’s grandfather was on one such submarine and when his grandson was reading leela marita to him decades later he sat out in his chair when he heard the date that probably had landed on u.s soil because that date was forever etched in his memory as the day he was supposed to bomb the u.s and he didn’t so i shared that story and i shared the appearance of radha raman and afterwards every one of those 20 or so people in that yoga studio came and said i so much loved that story you shared it so touched my heart it’s really pow you know all kinds of glorifications of the glories of krishna and prabhupada because that’s the nectar they’re anxious for and that’s what no one else can give and we have and yet we often you know kind of throw ourselves in with the the shallower end of the pool in the name of accessibility and relatability missing out though on the the actual thing we have to offer which is exclusive and would bring them to krishna i’m amazed to hear this so how can you what was the philosophical point you are making through that story of gopal bhatta the power of prayer how prayer is the the purpose of the the power of prayer is to help us transcend the mundane reality right that here’s a rock and and that rock is a rock forever except when it’s not because prayer intervenes that intervention of the divine in our life and if we if we want that and if we’re ready to accept the transformation that may happen to us and others because of it which we’re actually scared of for all those and that’s where the mindfulness comes in as a as a back end is that you’re scared you don’t want your life to change actually and you’re clinging to your uh your traumas and your excuses for your very mundane humdrum unimpressive life because that’s all you know so when you’re praying you’re actually praying for the strength to exist in that natural atmosphere you were meant to always be in which is one of love but you don’t really want love so you need to turn to the person who’s the source of love and that’s that’s krishna and so i i framed all of that within this pastime and and very softly not not that you have to accept the purport just hear the story for its own sake hear the lila and it’s it’s sweet you know you don’t need to be explained the nature of the sugar structure in a mango you know this is fructose and this is sucralose and there’s so much proportions of each you just bite the mango and you know that this is sweet and juicy and i want another bite um so again not needing to couch it so much in philosophy just let the lila stand on its own strength and let your own example be the evidence of the power of living within this culture and eventually people become attracted automatically i mean just to speak to the power of harinam we were doing harinam not daily but maybe four times a week on campus at university of michigan and as you know you’ve been here michigan winters you’ve braved them you’re one of the few traveling preachers who bothers to come to us when it’s snowing outside god bless you so we were doing harinam through the winter at the university of michigan and we would be outside three or four days a week and one girl who’s who used to she was part of the atheist club and i would attend this they call them the secular student alliance and so i would go to those meetings um regularly and just you know throw a wrench in their schemes and plans that’s a another point but anyway april when things started to open up spring started to come the sun is out and the birds are chirping and there’s some buds on the trees this young girl came up to us and i recognized her from the atheist club and she said you know my friends and i have noticed you guys through the winter and we don’t believe in what you’re doing but we can tell there’s something different about it it was amazing you know she’s like she didn’t want to align herself completely with you know like throw her support in full on but she was saying that there’s we can tell there’s something different about what you’re doing as compared to you know the christian guys who only come to yell at us when it’s nice and sunny out we can tell there’s something different about what you’re doing because of how you did it even when it was cold and uncomfortable still you were out here still you’re with us still you were you know your your experience of that sound vibration was the same whether it’s nice or it’s not nice we can tell there’s something different they say you’ll go out for harinam in winter or you just go for their program we would we would go out for harinam in winter time and in noticing that and noticing the consistency and the mood of the devotees whether it’s sunny out and 70 degrees and lots of students or whether it’s drab and dreary and chilly and not many people to chant to she noticed that our our experience was the same in the chanting and so she came to express that to us she she came she said we we can tell there’s something different about what you guys are doing my god so i could have explained to her until i was blue in the face like krishna about the glory of the holy name and sankirtan and you know lord chaitanya said and prabhupada did but until i’m actually doing it myself experiencing it and and that’s my demonstrate my preaching is my prachara my activity until that’s my preaching then people are going to reject it it because of it it’s the explanation and the experience don’t line up this is my favorite definition of purity is when the explanation and the experience match you say krishna’s name and you feel krishna’s presence that’s purity the explanation and the experience are the same so in our own humble way we have to see how we can live with integrity to the experience of krishna we’re having personally and express it to others in a way that they can connect with that they can share it don’t don’t speak above our pay grade but also don’t degrade ourselves actually bring krishna to the degree that we have him in our heart and other people will be able to access him that’s how the the mercy works that the devotee can give krishna that’s beautiful and i was hearing your explanation of gopala at the past time so i was thinking almost every story in our canon we could actually contextualize in universal terms or accessible terms and then if there is an appropriate context no matter how far out the specifics of the theory of the story may be they don’t matter that much exactly exactly and there’s one maybe you’d be a great devotee to take this on or maybe we could do something like this together but i’ve thought for a long time about helping people devotees de-jargon their presentations how to recognize what words can be substituted so that a western you know minded person can hear the same past time from the same bhagavatam lila and not need to hear about demigods and and yugas and you know other terms which just every time they hear a term they don’t know it’s another little barrier so there’s words there’s natural substitutes for all these ideas that then make the story flow in an easy way that lets them actually hear what’s happening and the purport rather than the details which distract and put up barriers that would be a wonderful project that’s something we could educate the devotees on yeah definitely i like the word also be jargon that’s true we have this we have our own language of iskhanese and we expect others to speak it or accept it and if they don’t then they’re demons and blah blah blah and we would do ourselves and others a great service by yeah taking the jargon out of it so no one really questioned the idea of the stone turning into or anything like that that was not objection from them at all no i mean i and i i can speak with testimony this is again it’s important i’ve seen radha raman i’ve been in front of him i’ve felt his presence he’s real and in my heart and so when i’m speaking about him he’s not a theory he’s a person for me he’s a person so then when i’m it’s like if if i’m talking about my mom nobody’s to come back at me and say i don’t believe in your mom my mom’s real everybody i’m who would ever dare to say that my mom’s not real so when we speak about krishna we we again tend to speak about him even though we ourselves have an experience of him as a person we speak about him as an abstracted concept rather than speaking about him as a person that we have a relationship with so the more we can do that the less people feel comfortable challenging us because they see something’s going on for this guy i don’t know if it would go on for me but it’s going on for him her no this is actually challenging my conceptions also to some extent that you know i used to feel that one of the strengths of our philosophy is that it is quite rational and like you said it answers questions which other traditions don’t answer yes but at the same time in one sense that rationality itself is inconclusive yes yes it’s like we want to have a drink we need a container the container is the philosophy but the container is not the thing we drink it just contains the thing we drink it makes it so that we can access it next time i get a opportunity i’ll try to speak some krishna pastime to a western audience and see how it goes i love it and they don’t expect it also they are also expecting you to say some mindfulness stuff or like you know definitely this guy’s not going to talk about god because he knows we you know he should be scared to do that so then we bring these pastimes they’re just blown away how sweet they are i another time um i was at this yoga just before you move do you use the lord or what do you use the word for krishna yeah so i supreme krishna the supreme personality i try actually to stay away from the word god yeah until unless i’ll bring up the word god only first acknowledging that it’s a pejorative term like this is a bad term that i know i’m not supposed to say but i’m going to say it anyway to challenge you i bring it up in that way like i know you don’t like this word but i my my presence here is to indicate to you that maybe you should re-examine your relationship with this word because this god is a position but krishna is a person and i’m going to talk to you about the person krishna and from there you’ll be able to better appreciate how he administrates the position of god that’s my that’s my mood in in relating with them so that to just to this point um there is a yoga group there is a yoga group up north here in michigan and um self-realization fellowship the paramahamsa yogananda who wrote the autobiography of a yogi they they have a group up north uh kind of a new vrindavan property 800 acres and we go up there and and do programs with them from time to time and we have a nice relationship so they had one swami come and one of their uh one of the young guys who organizes up there he wanted me to come up and have like a debate with the swami he wanted to see like he’s aware of the tension between the bhakti tradition and their tradition and so he wanted us to have a a face-off so i i thought okay why not let’s see and the this person was very the the swami that they brought very classic kind of mayavadi philosophical jnani uh you know 1980 not this not that so he was preaching all this heavy you’re not your body kind of stuff and and you have to renounce and the you know the senses are a network of illusion he was preaching all that stuff so i got to talk about the sweet pastimes i had nothing else to say but the sweet pastimes of krishna so i started talking i told the past time of um krishna taking the banana peel from uh from um vidurani and how how god accepts our mood not the what what what’s offered but why it’s offered i spoke about um lord chaitanya allowing the woman to stand on his back to see lord jagannath at the puri temple um several other pastimes i shared and at the end everyone was like wow david that was great we loved you talked so much their own guy was there but they appreciated what i’d shared more because i was sharing the pastimes of the lord and his devotees and the dry philosophy stuff although he didn’t say anything objectionable he didn’t say a thing about brahman and you know everything being one and there is no god there is no krishna he didn’t say any of that stuff he spoke our philosophy from the point of sense control and the the soul being separate from the body but they didn’t have much taste for that as compared to the leela that i was sharing from our our shastra beautiful and so are there some aspects of krishna leela that you feel would be objectionable and we had better maybe hesitate in talking about those aspects well let me i’ll share a here’s a fun like thought experiment that i give to people to kind of dovetail their rational minds i often challenge them and say if you if you examine the entirety of the krishna bhakti tradition and culture if you examine this entire history it its very existence refutes the idea for which you think it exists we the detail of the of our history and tradition is so complex it’s so far out to use a an antiquated term it’s so detailed that it self undoes the usual idea for which religious stories and histories are there which is to impart moral value and create some time some kind of social theological union right that there’s some morals in society we want to impart to some people so let’s make up some stories and fables which will help the people appreciate those story those morals and principles that we want them to live by the very complexity of krishna leela itself is a refutation of that idea why would you create such a complex history with so many characters and so many seemingly contradictory pastimes and exchanges why would you make this person god if that’s all you wanted god to do was create a moral philosophy by which people can live in this material world the only explanation for the complexity of krishna leela is that it is in fact what’s actually happening in the spiritual world that’s the only reason a thinking leader would ever want this to actually be brought into their society otherwise it is dangerous and subversive literature it is running against natural moral principles that this you know the supreme person is running around with many women and killing many people etc etc all those things are abhorrent if and unless what we’re saying about it is actually true which is that it’s a transcendental exchange of love between god and his most intimate devotees that’s a beautiful thought that in some ways you could say the broad vedic tradition serves the sociological or psychological need for religion and god yes but the krishna bhakti tradition itself doesn’t serve that need in fact the krishna bhakti tradition you could say subverts that it undermines it if you just take it on the surface it would undermine it totally yeah that’s fascinating and so again answering that objection by bringing it out ourselves don’t think that’s what this is for because it doesn’t work that way that’s not what this is for and that’s not what we’re about living your life in a in a naturally in a moral way will bring you to the place of purity that you need to actually access these pastimes that’s what we’re about living your life in a natural way means means moral that kind of thing actually yeah living your life in a wholesome way according to human morality will bring you to a place of being able to recognize the transcendental value of these pastimes that’s what our tradition says so if you’re still you know indulging in the senses writ large and you’re self-engaged in illicit sex and intoxication you’re not going to be able to appreciate what krishna is doing here well you may appreciate because just to put it directly i think prabhupada says in krishna book that the krishna and gopi pastimes are the original and pure sex psychology yeah absolutely right and in that sense that was also is like the medicine for those who are deceased and this is like the tonic or the stimulant for those who are already healthy so we could say that it can attract everyone but the purpose of this is not to create morality yes so yes i sometimes talk about three levels there is the immoral the moral and the trans moral so krishna’s pastimes i exist at the trans moral level yes and they can attract the immoral also to the level of morality and then to a trans morality but that’s not their purpose yes so if somebody thinks that the purpose of religion is to foster morality then and appearance itself right from the first point itself the krishna leela seems to defy that purpose defeat that purpose exactly undermine it and again going to nicha speaking to somebody i reference him only as somebody who westerners have a lot of affection for there’s a lot of affinity for nicha and there’s a lot it with yeah definitely i mean most of most of what could pass as philosophy in the modern world is coming back to nicha’s ideas most of what the modern world has to offer is coming back to nicha’s ideas and he wrote a book beyond good and evil his whole premise was to rise above these these two moralities good and bad and to get to some transcendent place because at at at the point in humanity he saw where everything was that essay we talked about where he says god is dead that’s spoken by a madman who’s coming to a marketplace so even 150 years ago nicha saw that the focus on consumerism was eroding the better part of humanity and taking away his sense of a transcendent purpose so to rise above good and bad on a mundane moral level was going to be essential to rediscover our relationship with a higher purpose higher power god however you would like to put it so again nicha beyond good and evil and he also happened to say i will only believe in a god who dances so we would we would have to hold him to that statement if we had the opportunity so when you are saying about nicha talking about going beyond good and evil so you are talking relating that with krishna being transmoral is that the current correlation why is why is god dancing because he has nothing to do because everything’s already done perfectly om poornam so now all he has to do is enjoy himself with his devotees who understand also that everything’s going on perfectly and in that sense of safety and satisfaction they can express their hearts without any reservation yeah i’m thinking still going back to your earlier point of how krishna undermines the conventional conception of religion krishna bhakti yes so now we could say that like the gita verses four categories of people come to krishna the distress the financially needy the inquisitive and the knowledge seekers so aren’t these conventional motives for people to come to god so these four we could say are universal motives and now of course one answer could be that they are coming to god not specifically to the krishna conception of god yes yes and then that is 7 16 in the gita then two three verses later krishna then actually talks about himself more clearly that bahunam janmanam that after many lifetimes they actually become full with knowledge and they surrender to me knowing me to be everything yes so we could say 7 16 that is they are approaching a conventional conception of god or god as conventionally conceived and by by by becoming devoted that is that is still krishna but they are so we could say krishna is god you know i sometimes differentiate between the concept of god and the conception of god that you know all theistic religions accept the concept of god okay and in terms of fundamental attributes say like we could say omniscience omnipresence omnipotence those are more or less something which are universal attributes of god or you could generate or organize a destroyer in the basic concept of god there may not be much disagreement between the various traditions right okay beyond the concept there is a conception of god so that might be something similar to what you said earlier the position and the person yes the subjective relationship that the worshipers have with him yeah so 7 16 talks about people approaching the concept of god that you know they’re approaching okay god will give me relief from my problems and stuff like that but then by staying connected with him then they come to appreciate the krishna conception of god and that is when they surrender themselves because that is when krishna offered earlier he’s talking about bhajante bhajante is worship you can go and pray do some rituals but it’s it’s more preliminary whereas this is an offering of one’s entire being so even in the so even in the devotional journey people could come from a normal conventional conception of god to a more transcendental or more transcendental conception of god absolutely yes and seeing where people are at this is another challenge that we have in our our own krishna conscious community we we have this tendency to download the entirety of the philosophy onto a person in one sitting and that’s so overwhelming and it leaves them with more questions than answers rather our process of of preaching to ourselves is shravanam kirtanam and in also reaching out to others it should be shravanam first we should sit and hear from that person understanding they already have some relationship with krishna again it’s not a matter of belief we we can be both simultaneously the most liberal and conservative people because conservatively we axiomatically accept everyone has a relationship with krishna and we liberally recognize everyone means everyone so no matter what condition of life someone is in they have some connection to krishna already it’s my duty as a as a preacher to find out where that connection is where is that little seed sprouting and water that take care of that tend to it not just dump a whole pile of you know it might be the most fertile soil it might be very good compost but if i dump a giant pile of it on top of that little creeper then i’m killing it so to hear first and then do some kirtanam then speak to the particular situation concern interest they already have related to krishna that’s powerful sharing of krishna consciousness rather than just a kind of objective self-righteous preaching speech you know dogmatic didactic kind of approach that many people take yeah that’s beautiful so they are i used to talk about the point that to find out what is their current interest and see what is the like this is the circle of their current interest circle of bhakti and find where the two intersect yes like a venn diagram yeah i think the way you’re putting it is more devotionally apt also and it’s not just a matter of their interest it is they already have a relationship with krishna and in some ways we could say that whatever is our deepest experience is our experience of krishna even if you don’t do it sorry i i love that statement prabhu i’m just i’m saying harry ball to that i’m affirming it so something loves music the music may not have anything explicitly devotional about it but what is it about the music that is attracting them it is a spark of krishna manifesting through that music to them honey bowl every person in this car needs to hear this statement here i i this i call that the sankirtan principle right because what is what is sankirtan actually sankirtan is not spouting off things you heard prabhupada say in bhagavatam verses and berating people with bhagavad gita just for the name of saying that you did that so that when they walk away you can call them demons and feel justified sankirtan means that you’re sharing your experience of krishna with that person your actual relationship with krishna you’re inviting them into that same room with krishna to be with him in that same way that’s real sankirtan so to what you’re saying social justice people musicians artists businessmen they’re all having some experience of krishna they’re convicted in whatever they believe to be the most important thing to speak to and in that sharing and speaking they’re actually talking about krishna they’re doing sankirtan so if we honor their sankirtan they will honor our sankirtan but if we dismiss them if we say that you’re in maya you’re an illusion every your whole life has been a useless waste of time then what’s the impetus for them to listen to what we have to say about krishna if we’re not willing to listen to what they have to say about krishna so prabhupada says in the chapter 12 text 11 purport uh that that famous section if you can’t do this for me krishna says then do that for me if you can’t do that then this that stepwise description prabhupada says in that respect social service community service national service sacrifice for one’s country etc may be accepted so that someday one may come to the stage of pure devotional service to the supreme lord if one decides to sacrifice for the supreme cause even if they do not know that the supreme cause is krishna they will gradually come to understand that krishna is the supreme cause by the sacrificial method so we we’ve got a website name uh the servant particle and this is what we’re really interested in these days if people you know the question of do you believe in god or not i’ve found to be a not a very fruitful way to to start a discussion around krishna consciousness because many people believe in god and have very knucklehead ideas about what it means to have a relationship with god and what is expected of one who believes in god what we’re really looking for is people who are interested in bhakti in service if they have faith in the idea that my life is to serve then those are the people that that we can offer something to and can recognize the value of our community but if they have a belief in god but they just think god is there to give them their daily bread and provide for them a happy safe you know comfortable existence in this material energy i’d much rather talk to an atheist who’s out there trying to save the world through you know self-sacrifice and service than a christian who thinks god’s going to make me rich it’s beautiful a lot of points over there first point is you know we see social justice sometimes the word social justice warriors is used in a pejorative sense but yes people who do that they have a zeal and whether we agree or not with that specific cause we can’t deny the seriousness which will they pursue that cause yes they are experiencing over there so you use the word the servant particle is it yes the god particle in in reference to science so we’re interested in the servant particle that’s what the soul is the servant particle we’re trying to find that in the heart of everyone so it seems the word servant doesn’t have that much of a negative connotation nowadays does it no it’s no it’s certainly much more yes it’s valid it’s seen as valuable now maybe that’s a result of our christian consciousness movement as one of those subtle effects is that now in society in general there is a recognition that my life should be about contributing to others the challenge is that many people find a hard time navigating between that contribution and the need of just making it in the world it takes so much effort just to have a stable existence for yourself what to speak of being able to do something for other people so it’s it’s very you know confusing and bewildering for many people and their lives may look like very shallow expressions of this value if you speak with them though they do recognize the value of living for others the value of service and being a servant minded as far as possible beautiful i know the word contribution is very attractive people want to contribute or even businesses talk about giving it back to society absolutely i i saw one somewhere on a new website that like an interview of art newspaper of a author an intellectual and there was people offering appreciation and one review was that he has the heart of a servant i found it very striking that was considered like a eulogy almost it’s funny kurt cobain who’s one of the most famous rock and roll people of the last 30 years he he was in a band called nirvana which maybe you’ve even heard of yeah they came out with an autobiography of him recently serving the servant that’s the name of his autobiography what does that mean so i don’t i haven’t read it yet but it just i saw it the other day online serving the service so that was all krishna maraj’s auto you know autobiography and his relationship with probod and there’s now some autobiography there about kurt cobain uh called serving the servant so that that idea of being a servant is lauded now it is seen as a valuable idea something to strive for what people are worried about in general is again i need to look after me also in this world is not an easy place and and so there’s this kind of yeah the two are seen in conflict and that’s again where krishna consciousness has so much to offer because in varanashram culture the whole consideration is around what is my service what is my sense of responsibility to others if i’m considering others responsibility i will naturally be cared for and protected and yudhishthira is the prime extreme example of that that he always considered others welfare and in that way he was always ultimately cared for this is beautiful you know as contrast with belief if you focus on contribution then in one sense we can actually dodge the whole question of belief absolutely most people they want their life to have some meaning some purpose and as you rightly said while it has struggled to just maintain your position in the world but that doesn’t really give meaning and purpose to people’s lives you know most people don’t have careers they have jobs yes let’s do something to earn a living and have some clothes in society that’s not that they’re driven toward that totally so if we can offer them a framework where they can make a meaningful contribution yes then then the then the rational theological aspect of the framework is not as important as the sense of personal meaning that it brings for them yes and connection relationship that’s what they’re hankering for that they can’t get from amazon or netflix or video games or pornography or their their stock trading whatever the other things they are doing they can’t get that connection like they can get it in the bhakti sangha beautiful and at the same point it goes back to your earlier point which said that you know people don’t need to make sense so much of the world outside as they want to make sense of the world inside absolutely probably a sense of meaning a sense of connection that can calm the inner storm otherwise the mind can just go wild yes and to maintain that it’s been shown that people are ready to believe anything right this is culture based on this that by providing people this what they need which is that sense of belonging and that sense of common purpose unity and and personal inner development if you provide that people are willing to literally do truly crazy self-destructive things so we’re lucky in that in krishna consciousness we have a way to provide that and we also have something wholesome for them to do with their external life it will be good for them and it will be good for others unlike other cults which provide those things but then do so only to subvert and and exploit that surrender that the person is offering yeah now this also makes sense of why people can join irrational or even extremist groups but they just want a sense of connection and meaning and purpose there’s no philosophy there’s no higher purpose there’s no parampara there’s no saints there’s just a feeling of connection and purpose and in that people are satisfied for the most part most people are satisfied because most people are very simple-hearted you know uh shallow people and we can’t fault them for that it’s our responsibility to protect them and provide for them also that’s so so in some ways you know we our tradition is a focusing a lot on taking people from goodness to pure goodness the parikshit maharaj arjuna was already in goodness and he was confused and the surrender he rise to good as to pure goodness parikshit maharaj is also like that he lived a life of goodness so in raising people from goodness to pure goodness sometimes goodness is minimized and trivialized even criticized sometimes we may criticize various isms you may criticize humanitarian work but that is it is bad okay as compared to pure love for god that is that is uh well let us not it should it shouldn’t distract people from pure love of god yes for people whom for whom love of god is not even in the in their horizon that’s right so then these these kind of humanitarian causes like you read prabhupada’s 12 level purport these are what bring some kind of meaning to their lives yes sometimes when we criticize them and then we just alienate a lot of people exactly because people will not feel as krishna has come to them in that form that is their religion that is their deity that is the degree to which they’ve understood the the tatva they have a little knowledge that life is about service life is about contributing to others welfare who can argue with that in principle via the bhakti philosophy that’s our philosophy they just understand that a limited expression of it so we’re the actual atheists coming in and and taking that experience of krishna away from them it’s it’s very abusive and violent actually i’m you know personally sick of it in our communities especially in the west it just totally disenfranchises us and makes us look like very insensitive you know potentially cultish people see when you use the word disenfranchise are you saying it in the sense that it alienates us from them or what do you mean by disenfranchise in this contest the so disenfranchise there has some like there’s some investment a franchise is something you invest in so when now my understanding of the word disenfranchise was that say somebody’s a part of a voting back of a they have the rights to vote and then their disenfranchise means they can no they can’t vote that’s my that’s that’s also true yeah that’s also using in some other sense in the sense that we we have we we take away their um you use in the context of right to vote so when we say that all their life’s effort and and the as you said earlier the supreme realization of their existence so far to serve this particular cause and then we come in and say that cause is meaningless now we’ve disenfranchised them now we’ve taken away their power and their sense of purpose and and that’s cruel that’s um you know it’s it’s violence of the worst kind yeah i’ve seen places where people can do something or people where whichever projects especially western outreach projects where people have the opportunity to do something that’s like the highlight yes even when we went to vrindavan after going to vrindavan when we’re leaving with this group of western people we asked them what was the best part for you and a large number of people said that when we went to that uh school for orphans and served food to them now initially when i heard that i was disappointed you know i thought that’s just a mundane humanitarian activity and there is so experience of krishna but you know from their perspective krishna might be way too high for them to experience and this is one step higher for them yes so rather than dismissing that as mundane we have to see that is the way in which they are experiencing krishna absolutely the degree to which we see that is the degree to which they will be able to see that but to the degree that we don’t see that how can we expect them to see you know chakshudana diloye that the the spiritual master which we’re all being asked to become is giving that vision but if we don’t have the vision ourselves how are they going to get the vision so we could say that if we don’t see the potential for krishna consciousness in others that indicates the lack of krishna consciousness in us absolutely everybody has some potential just need to discover that experience also never never mind potential they have an experience of krishna already that’s the ontological premise of our philosophy they cannot help but have some experience of krishna already so what is that experience of krishna they have faith in and how can i augment that there’s a um vishnu john maraj there’s a website which shares glorifications of him and i was reading through some of those and there was one person who was a friend of the devotees and he was just you know he’d hang out take prasad but wasn’t serious at all and vishnu john maraj needed to travel somewhere in california maybe like la to san francisco or something i don’t remember the geographic details but it was like a three-hour drive and this person happened to have a truck which was a rare commodity back then you know a the hippies so he offered to drive maraj but he wasn’t thinking to be very pretentious or anything you know he was just going to be himself on the drive so he was cranking his rock music the whole time and listening to his favorite songs along the drive just as he would any other time and vishnu john maraj sang his heart out with this man for three hours these karmi songs rock and roll whatever after that drive three hours this person decided i want to be a hari krishna also because he’s so much appreciated vishnu john maraj uh connecting with him on that level because for him those rock songs they were his bhajans they were his heartfelt expressions they were the songs that spoke to his his highest realizations mostly just around frustration and mundane love and politics whatever but for him that was the absolute truth at that point so then vishnu john maraj relating on that level allowed him to recognize the level vishnu john maraj was actually on and see that it is something better something more to have than what i have just with this stuff and he became a devotee and there he was two decades later glorifying maharaj because of it that’s amazing so normally we would say that this is something so mundane i’m gonna fall down if i hear this stuff i remember the first time i encountered something like this was jeeraj maharaj had written a book on uh on death and dying i think he wrote several books so in this book he talks about how he reconnected with his mother and then how eventually during the last days he was there and he helped that comes up but then he said that um that initially he would get his mother to come to his house and they would watch some prabhupad movie or some other movie like that and he said that my mother would beautifully would just out of deference to watch the movie but after that there was nothing to talk about so then then we decided to take some wholesome western movies which talk about some morals and we would watch them together and then we would discuss something based on that so so then i wrote to maharaj maharaj asked me to like review or edit his book so then i wrote to maharaj maharaj this might uh raise some eyebrows that is the why the sanyasi watching a mundane movie so maharaj said actually you know for such things i consult with rudra doj maharaj who is my guide so let me talk with him and then maharaj said that you know the point here is very clear this is what i did to develop my relationship with my mother and i feel that that is the lesson that devotees should take from that so that’s it’s fine i’m going to keep it there so i appreciated that point that sometimes uh you know we need to walk out of our krishna circle to help people come closer we can’t just stay in the krishna circle and keep pulling people inside so you jump sorry yeah you jump across the gap across yeah yeah that’s true so i have recognized that in the last few years i also connected more with my family and my friends and my pre-devotional friends and relatives and it actually opens them to krishna much more when they see that we are we can connect with them at a human level before we demand that they connect with the spiritual level yeah absolutely yes true so people i feel that uh you know we talked about more like how to share the krishna conception of god not so much challenges and charm but i think it’s all included so should i summarize or you have something concluded some concluding points to make sure yeah well i think the challenges i at least personally i i just i felt the challenges came out through the the positive approaches right the challenges are actually mostly our own that’s what i wanted out if our own society focused on what we’re doing uh ineffectively if our community looked at that then the outside world would naturally respond much better rather than again pointing out you know what’s wrong with them and their conception uh the problem is with the so-called preachers as Srila Prabhupada put it once um with tears in his eyes choked voice the problem is with the so-called preachers Prabhupada said this with choked eyes yeah with with a choked voice you can hear it he’s crying the problems with the so-called preachers he was speaking in the context of his god brothers but we should take it for ourselves also that this krishna consciousness movement is for everyone and if people aren’t attracted that’s my problem first it’s not their problem first it’s it’s my problem first and then we can look at what they’re doing but first we have to look at what i’m doing or not doing that’s beautiful so maybe i’ll just try to summarize and cover a lot of territory so good at this i’m it fascinates me your memory you know i i just uh live in fear that someday i’ll try to summarize that i’ll get nothing so when that day comes it’s also krishna’s mercy don’t worry yeah that’s true but basically so we discussed about how how the krishna conscious krishna conception of god challenges and charms the contemporary mind so you shared your experience and i shared mine and we discussed other experiences also that it is not so much the specific krishna conception of god as uh the bluish black covered boy that is a major factor either for or against it is more the what comes around it the the experience of krishna which which could be through the rational answers to life’s questions which could be through the loving association of devotees which could be through the experience of harinam so so you mentioned that your experience of krishna the harinam i said it’s minus to some prayers specifically to do that sound but that was the common factor and then so our focus has to be on helping people experience krishna and the rational aspect needs to be stressed enough so that people become open to experiencing krishna but if we focus too much on the rationality then that can alienate people because we want to see what is it that people need so they don’t need god so much to make sense of the rational order present in the outer world no it’s not today so that might have been a need few hundred years ago now they want to make sense of their inner world and that comes more by the experience of krishna rather than by the explanation and i like your point that purity means the alignment between experience and explanation and then i discussed about how for most people who come to krishna it is the the krishna conception comes significantly later and prabhupada himself focused more on giving the experience of krishna and for that we understand what is we try to understand what is their deepest experience and appreciate that deepest experience and then bring it closer to krishna and help to connect with krishna so then you also talked about two three things quite i found radical that say in my experience of trying to talk about krishna with western people i was more apprehensive than they were skeptical and in your cases you talked about so if we give a basically a universal frame for contextualizing even far out past times like say present miraculous emergence of a deity from stone in the context of the power of prayer then it is not only intelligible but it can also be captivating and then we we give people something that is distinctively at the of our tradition rather than giving mindfulness which is fine to the extent that it creates a bridge but so krishna’s past times are if told properly and we discussed that we might have to discuss how to disorganize those past times but if we do that then we can just through those past times which are not there in other religions traditions other other religious traditions idea of god but they can be our strength in helping people experience krishna and so christians they don’t have much philosophy but and what they give is say the experience of warmth and stuff like that personal warmth so what people want is a sense of a connection contribution and how the word servant servant particle or servant leader or heart of a servant all these are quite acceptable or appealing also laudable kind of attributes so if rather than rather than demeaning what people are passionate about what people are experiencing if we see that is there that is where they are krishna conscious now maybe indirectly but that is where they are krishna conscious and then we try to elevate them from there to krishna so the people want that their life should have some bigger meaning and if we can show how krishna consciousness can help them develop that gain the bigger meaning for their life then belief and disbelief won’t matter at all because so many people get involved with so many activist causes where the rationale it doesn’t seem very rational but people do it because just they want that sense of purpose and meaning and connection and then we also discussed about how the one more point you mentioned is that people the conventional religion reasons where people may come to god or people may come to religion in some ways bhakti the tradition undermines that so if religion is for establishing morality bhakti talks about a god who seems to transcend morality so then there is the concept of god in the conception of god in some it says all religions have a fairly common concept of god but we have a very distinctive conception of god and we can attract people from wherever they are whatever their concept of god might be right now from that concept the specific distinctive conception of krishna that we have and we talked about how the problem the challenges in outreach are not so much with the krishna conception as our presentation as prabhupada said the so-called preachers they are the problem and if we can just this bring me to the point that prabhupada was asked how we shared how he was able to spread krishna conscious movement all over the world and prabhupada said krishna is all attractive i just presented him as he is and he attracted everyone so maybe anything you’d like to conclude with no that was a miraculous summary as usual so much love your association you bring out the best in me thank you for thought i’d love to have a discussion sometime again in future of some related topic maybe we’ll talk about disorganizing our philosophy broadly our past times you could discuss that that’ll be fun i always love having any any excuse to have your association this is good for me thank you