The Monk’s Podcast 69 with Braja Bihari Prabhu – Guidance or Independence – How to make responsible decisions

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
obeisances from Hare Krishna Hare Krishna humble obeisances welcome back to the Minds podcast thank you for having me many devotees appreciated our last discussion on how to disagree without being disagreeable in fact several devotees wrote to me that it helped them see their conflicts in proper context one devotee even said that he actually tried to phrase things in a powerpoint and I thought we could also give them links to your future if you do any courses like that he said he will follow you and see if you can learn more yes Prabhu so Prabhu today I thought of discussing on the topic of say following instructions on one side which Prabhupada told us to do and also on being independently thoughtful so these two can seem opposite and both are instructions given by Prabhupada so firstly we often hear much more the first instruction follow the instructions and become thoughtful is not become independent thoughtful is relatively less heard so firstly how do you how can we see these two instructions in a conciliate in a harmonious way any thoughts on that well the harmonious way is simple follow the instruction to be independently thoughtful I thought of the same thing then it’s taken care of but I know you meant something a little slightly different than that let me start by referencing something from another tradition so a devotee interviewed a well-known Franciscan monk quite a leader in his field and written many books and also quite a liberal broad-minded thinker and asked this question about when you’re training monks basically the same question you asked how do you deal with this this situation and then by the way remind me then after that I’ll take something from our our tradition and try to combine them so this person said assuming that the in the Christian tradition often the Catholic tradition your seminary meaning you know 18 or 19 you go to college and then you may do another three years so say you’re like you may decide to be a monk around 23-24 so he said up until 30 very very strict training just learning the discipline and you know being a yes man so to speak you know when the authority says jump you say how high you know that kind of surrender and then he said after 30 slowly slowly gradually giving them more freedom of choice so that’s not very different than if we think about our Gurukul tradition that the young boy comes at around 5 years old or so and is kind of a blank slate and by the time he leaves the ashram whether you know Prabhupada said different things 16 or 25 whatever year we put into that the guru has what’s the word I was going to say transform that’s the wrong word has placed into the intelligence of the disciple the guru’s discretionary abilities you know based on guru sadhu shastra etc and so by the time so gradually gradually the student has become independently thoughtful enough so that when he leaves the ashram let’s say you know traditionally enters into married life he has the intelligence of the guru you know transferred into his intelligence and he can live his life in a sattvic way in a Krishna conscious way so very similar in these two traditions you know this idea of so yes like for example I was 17 or 18 when I moved into the ashram I didn’t know anything about the material world and I didn’t know anything about the spiritual world you know so having a compassionate person I was very fortunate to have a number of such people and a number of great really wonderful role models also as brahmacharis in those days it was a relief to to to have that to have that those devotees you know telling me what to do sometimes we’ve had this problem I don’t know so much if it happens in India probably does but we used to have a problem when a new person joined the ashram six people were giving him six different instructions sometimes you know yes yes yes you know and not knowing which which way to go so there does have to be some you know planning or bhakta program or whatever you call it today or you know but I like this idea of as Prabhupada says in the Gita it’s kind of like a military training right he uses that word in I forget which chapter and I think that that is help pardon me I think the third chapter 330 I think 330 okay so fight their purpose is fighting is like military training we need for that it’s a good example thank you thank you for that reference yeah yeah so I think that’s that’s that’s healthy now of course we as authorities we need to be learned and we need to be practical and we need to be compassionate and we also have to know our limits and be and also be humble enough to say I’m not sure about that I’ll get back to you you know we have we need to have our qualities but I think there’s a good combination in the beginning where the young devotee especially is is is focusing on surrender and the the older devotee is is meditating how to how to engage this person according to their psychophysical nature how to you know what’s the next step not to get them to you know jump but what is the next baby step in their progression in spiritual life and and really focusing on that person’s needs interests and concerns to bring them gradually to Krishna’s lotus feet so I think that combination is can be really wonderful and and part of that even in the initial training is gradually slowly training their intelligence helping them make good choices so they do become strong and independently we don’t want people who are been in the ashram 20 years and at the age of 40 there you know they can’t make any smart decisions in their life and they’re still troubled what should I do that’s not going to make strong people for outreach it’s going to not make strong people for taking care of their health and and you know and focusing nicely on it’s not what we want and Prabhupada was focusing on that in his letter to Karanda Prabhu which basically what you’re quoting when you’re saying independently thoughtful that letter was focused on how a manager should think but but it’s important so even in the beginning as we are giving military training and strict regimented training we are planning how to help this person gradually become strong in their Krishna consciousness and be able to make good Shastra based and also practically based decisions I had a professor once who said it’s okay to have your head in the clouds as long as your feet are on the ground so you know and Prabhupada was like that right he spoke philosophy 23 hours a day and he was so practical you know he was keeping track of finances in his in his diary in 26th 2nd Avenue and trying that the devotees don’t get cheated when they’re building the temples in India etc. So I went to too many places in that answer but I hope that’s helpful.
Yeah, thank you. Definitely. Let me start with the first point about the phases.
So definitely in the initial phase obedience is required in any field we go if anybody wants to say any field for that matter so that’s perfectly fine and generally when a devotee has to come to that phase where one is becoming independently thoughtful so at that stage we might come because of 2-3 different reasons like you said somebody is 40 and then they still need someone to give them instructions so there is a Prabhupada talks in the Ishopanishad purport that we all have a sense of initiative and we are meant to take initiative for Krishna’s for the Lord’s service so now I would say 3 different ways say somebody is very dependent on authority and suddenly they lose their authority maybe they get relocated to some other place or their authority departs from the world or more traumatically their authority departs from Krishna consciousness then it happened to me twice 2 Gurus My God I know about that theoretically but that must have been traumatizing isn’t it do we want to go there it happened to me and my wife also she has also been initiated 3 times also me 3 times it wasn’t it was somewhat traumatizing but not too bad especially when my first Guru Jaya Tirtha Prabhu left Krishna consciousness joined the Gauri Yama first and then I don’t know what he did after that I took shelter of traveling Sankirtan I just got in my van with another devotee and we just left the temple and all the news about what was happening and just went out and distributed Prabhupada’s books and by doing that it really saved me it really helped a lot just got focused on service and also were you close to him sorry were you close to him on a level or I was one of his first disciples because I was a bhakta when Prabhupada was living and with us I think you just you just barely missed initiation from Prabhupada yeah I missed it because I missed getting initiated by Prabhupada primarily because of a material glitch we had a change of GBCs in 1977 at Mayapur and the GBC that left didn’t tell the new GBC and the new temple president that you know Bhakta Brian was ready for initiation so we didn’t have emails in those days and so it just didn’t happen so after the GBC meeting in early 1978 you know the 11 gurus started initiating so in March I got initiated right after the GBC meeting so I was like one of Jayatirtha Prabhu’s first disciples yeah but somehow I remember one senior devotee came to me and said such a wonderful thing he said why don’t you just focus on the things on your appreciation for Jayatirtha Prabhu and what he did for you and that really helped because he did give me some really nice instructions and so that’s what I did that was very helpful then I got initiated by Rameshwar Prabhu and then I kept that in mind he really inspired me in some kirtan and even in that time I’ve been in Brahmacharya life and I just when he left when he went to do other things I just kind of focused on what I benefited from him and that instruction really helped me a lot okay so then also after that again you took shelter of some service by which you were able to um yeah well actually after that I kind of I continued doing my service I had lost some enthusiasm and then by Krishna’s mercy I got a flyer in 1987 saying first Vrindavan institute for higher education and before that there had been no you have to understand Prabhu that before that time there was no such thing as seminars in ISKCON there was no Braj Mandal Parikrama in ISKCON because 87 was the first seminars and the first Braj Mandal Parikrama same year interestingly enough so the idea of studying just didn’t exist except Brahmacharyas getting together in local temples there was nothing so what we are doing so I got this flyer so what we are doing right now would be considered a waste of time a discussion like this just unheard of you know you would have been a heretic what is Chaitanya Charan doing this is crazy so I went to Vrindavan for that and I got so inspired because I had I was a student by nature I loved to study and just everything about that month with really great senior devotees Tamal Krishnamoorthi, Giri Rajamouthi, Guruji, etc and I especially got attracted to somehow I was doing a little service for Puri Jan Prabhu because he was running the whole thing by himself and then I said well could I help you know I mean it’s not the same thing as 26 2nd Avenue and somebody finally asked Prabhupada can I help but he was doing everything and I just said can I help and I was the first one to ask him that question and I just developed a relationship with him naturally it wasn’t because matter of fact he wasn’t a guru he wasn’t on the list or anything so he was much more natural and organic in that sense and then I did some tricks to be able to go back to a few months later back to India I can tell you that another time about how I convinced the Tamil president to let me go back and one thing led to another and I decided to move to Vrindavan and to help serve that and I became the director of VIHE and the first time so Puri Jan Prabhu was not a guru and he was not initiated so one time he called me into his room and he said have you ever thought about being reinitiated and he suggested some names and we were actually sitting in chairs on the balcony outside facing Bhaktivedanta Mark on those balconies in the Gurukul building and I said well I was actually thinking about you and not figuratively but literally he fell off his chair he was so shocked by the idea he just oh god so as I was Jayatirtha’s first disciple I was his first disciple and so that was a Govardhan Puja in 1991 so it’s been almost 30 years now you know in some ways what you experienced is probably the in one of the most difficult scenarios because I was thinking of three situations one is the spiritual authority becomes unavailable for the guide becomes unavailable but the whole there is a principle of following instructions and quite often in some ways we elevate this principle of following instruction even above the limbs of practice, limbs of bhakti like in your case what I can say they say you took shelter of service in the first case, second case you take the shelter of Shastra and in some ways these are the primary ways in which you connect with Krishna, studying Shastra, worshipping the deities, having our particular services so sometimes the the instruction to follow the authority is emphasized above the purpose of that instruction to connect with Krishna and then when we have some kind of connection with Krishna in a long term sense that is what gives us stability and strength in our spiritual life so it could be through our sadhana, it could be through whatever it is so somehow there is at one side the aspect of surrendering but then other aspect of say taking responsibility for one’s own spiritual life and one’s own spiritual growth so how can I steadily connect with Krishna what is the service that I can sustainably offer where does Krishna manifest to me in my life so this aspect of of finding our connection with Krishna and overall taking responsibility for our spiritual growth sometimes that becomes downplayed and I remember the first time maybe about 8-10 years ago somebody asked me in a class it was we were discussing the past time of Bali Maharaj and Vamandev and Shukracharya so Bali Maharaj refused the instructions of Shukracharya so I made this point that ultimately our spiritual advancement is our responsibility it is not our spiritual responsibility it is not our spiritual guide’s responsibility it is not your counselor’s responsibility and we have to take a responsibility for our spiritual life and this is a brahmachari class and it is almost like you could hear a pin drop everybody was shocked by that point so I don’t think anybody would be shocked now but there are several questions that came up afterwards so then of course I gave the example of at the time of death Prabhupada says that each of us we have to remember Krishna and we have to it’s like a fighter plane we have to fly our own plane so then I substantiated it but it was almost as if that idea itself was unheard of for many devotees so so I was saying that this is in this principle of taking responsibility for one’s own spiritual life so in a sense you took that and you found out how you could connect with Krishna through Shastra through Seva so this is my fear I have that if we overemphasize following instruction then the aspect of taking personal responsibility is downplayed and then especially if like what happened in your case and other devotees case if the spiritual authority leaves Krishna consciousness then it becomes it becomes totally devastating for the person because they just don’t know what am I to do so any thoughts on this so many thoughts are going through my head do we have five hours um gosh so many thoughts first let me clarify one thing especially in the first case in 1982 the I did follow authority, I followed the GBC I knew Prabhupada’s will the GBC has been managing authority of ISKCON and I knew the purports in the Chaitanya charts I used to read a lot but that was that stood out for me that Prabhupada saying how the Gauri Ma fell apart because of not following his Guru’s instruction to establish a GBC so I did take shelter of some spiritual instruction and they of course said stay in ISKCON and so I did that and then I just went traveling so I followed that instruction and then decided to go traveling that’s just one point it’s interesting you used the word go ahead when you said this you followed the instruction so you know there are generic instructions and there are specific instructions so generic instructions like do your sadhana and like stay in ISKCON so sometimes what happens is we wait for specific instructions and then we build our life around a specific instruction and if those don’t come we feel as if something is missing but in your case there are generic instructions which can also be which can also be very important like say study Shastra is also an instruction sometimes over emphasis on specific instructions can actually divert us or make us devalue the generic instructions yes yes and you know there’s we have to remember the Krishna factor in all of this that Krishna may give you look we have a whole set of Bhagwatams and Chaitanya Charita there’s enough generic instructions in those to last us many lifetimes and if that’s the main instruction that Krishna is giving us you know we’re getting general instructions from devotees general instructions from Shiksha and Diksha Gurus we have enough to fill our time more than enough it’s all over the Shastra we should hear, we should chant, we should follow the principles we should share Krishna consciousness with others, there’s tons and if Krishna arranges through his devotees that we get a specific instruction then that’s also Krishna’s arrangement and we can then take that specific instruction to heart and Krishna arranges it in different ways according to you know what we need in Lord Chaitanya so we do have to keep the Krishna factor or we used to joke the blue boy factor in mind all the time yeah okay I’m sorry I interrupted you you’re saying something well I was going to just you used this word surrender and it’s a very interesting word we know as you know the word is Sharanagati generally or well what is it in the Gita Aham Paritam Paritam and so we often take surrender as I say you do right but we also know surrender is Anukulyasya Sankalpa Pratikulyasya Bhajanam etc so surrender really means love means bhakti means you know thinking of Krishna as our maintainer thinking of Krishna as our protector you know Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s Sharanagati prayers it’s not just the military it’s much more or it’s doing this with developing our devotion devotional service so I just wanted to because we we’ve kind of used that word especially in earlier days of this kind of maybe in parts of this come today as you know surrender means I say you do yeah if you consider the point of military training then it becomes like that also it seems justified also I tell you do hmm exactly exactly so another point that I thought of if it’s okay is you know I sometimes say this and it shocks devotees but let me finish before you turn off the internet that there’s certain things that by example Prabhupada could not teach us let me explain what I mean by that he could not teach us for example excuse me how a guru treats a older devotee right because I think like the oldest there was like one or two devotees who may have been in their 30s when Prabhupada left this world or you know maybe some devotees have been in their early 30s but not most of them most of us there was this huge gap between Prabhupada almost 80 and us in our 20s so we didn’t see how Prabhupada would treat a disciple when he was 55 or something like that right or in my case I’m 62 and my guru is 73 I think right so we didn’t see that example of how a spiritual master would treat a someone who’s hopefully become independently thoughtful right you know they’ve been a devotee for well they’ve been a part of ISKCON for over 40 years or something like that right so that’s one thing we never we didn’t get a chance to see that example and I think that’s somewhat so we our understanding of guru and we see with Prabhupada when he’s naturally when he’s such a wise person in all aspects and of course a pure devotee and then he’s dealing with like children you know as Ravindra once said Prabhupada was the only adult in the movement so he was writing letters about how to take care of our health right you know you should do this and you should do that and take you know and all kinds of things that because he was dealing with you know really young innocent people and often therefore he was cutting us off and really you know and would he do that if he had a disciple who’d been his disciple for 40 years and was in their 60s and I don’t know I’m not going to predicate it you know try to predict his mind but we never but sometimes we take that example and we try to apply it keep applying it as you know the disciples in their 60s and has been through someone who’s a grandfather grandmother and you know so that’s another aspect of our discussion just a couple of thoughts about this one is that of course Prabhupada didn’t have any disciples among the life members in India but just now Giriraj Maharaj is completing his book has completed his book on the Juhu project it’s going to come out soon so in that he describes his Prabhupada’s interactions with many of the life members and it was he was treating them quite differentially one reason we could say that they were not so surrendered as his disciples but another was they were themselves well established in society and they were they were younger to him but still they were old they were probably the 40s 50s 60s some of them were older also so that is one example but not exactly precise but Prabhupada did was quite differential in those dealings and there’s other examples like that as well oh okay Nirguna Mataji talks about this very saintly devotee in Vrindavan she she was living in Calcutta and Prabhupada came to their house was speaking to her father in a very friendly almost mind revealing way rather than thou shalt okay amazing and another thing was that there is this whole point that not only the devotees at that time with all due respect they were young but also it was I read somewhere a quote that if in your youth you are not a liberal something is wrong with you but as you grow older if you don’t become a conservative something is wrong with you so in a sense you know in youth we think there is so much wrong in the world and this should be removed this should be removed but as we grow older we start appreciating what is there yeah we can remove things but we have to preserve things also so I am talking liberal conservative have different meanings but in that context the mood in youth is also like this is wrong this is wrong this is wrong and then we are going to fix it all so that could also have broadly affected the way Prabhupada gave his instructions the way he conducted himself with his disciples I don’t know that is just a thought well I think maybe a safer way to say that is that he channeled that energy in pre Krishna service and in the Sankirtan movement yeah definitely he channeled that energy because yes we thought we were going to save the world yeah for the first time I remember first time maybe 1988 so I just remember this I won’t mention who it was but a senior devotee so that is 88 that is ok ISKCON has been around 23 years by then and a senior devotee said to me something like you know we could we could mess things up and Krishna consciousness doesn’t have much of an impact on the world and that just as we would say in ISKCON that blew my mind now it is like what else is new right that just I don’t think I could eat or sleep for a day or two after that we could mess you know because we have this idea that we were going to just things are going to just change really rapidly in the world and Krishna consciousness is going to just inundate the world with the love of God very much mindset even though I came a little later I joined in 76 that was so much our mood so 88 means 11 years after Prabhupada departed and still that that mood was still there at least in me maybe because I was very innocent or whatever but or not maybe innocent that’s a idealistic maybe that’s a positive way to look at it it’s a different subject but just going on it’s like those who are liberal are often quite illiberal toward those who oppose them like liberals are often quite illiberal toward the tradition and towards so in a sense this liberals have a dismissive attitude that you know all this materialistic people are all foolish science is just ignorance or whatever and in that sense the whole mode of thinking is different at that time so I thought of it directly so in that sense the disciples also might not have expected that Prabhupada that we can contribute something to Prabhupada but Prabhupada is going to instruct us Prabhupada will tell us what to do what is right what is wrong Giriraj Bharat writes in his book that he was there in Juhu and then he saw that Tamal Krishna Maharaj was with Prabhupada and one more senior disciple and they were practically arguing with Prabhupada Prabhupada was saying we’ll do like this and he said no no you can’t do like this so he said it was a shock for me how could anybody argue with this spiritual master and then he since he talked with Prabhupada Prabhupada said that even at that time some devotees were senior Prabhupada did seem to treat them in a way that was almost joltingly different from the other devotees yes and in 76 in New Zealand he wrote a letter to I can’t remember if it was a personal visit or a letter and he said now you are older devotees I cannot tell you what to do but I can simply request please shave your head every fortnight Oh God so he so my point is there were some hints in how he dealt like with senior devotees Tamal Krishna Maharaj or Kirtanananda who was older Rupanuga who was older there were some hints of that gradually changing before Prabhupada left us physically yeah so you are saying this was one of the things that Prabhupada couldn’t demonstrate to us and so that also affects the factor that now how to be independently thoughtful or how to take responsibility was that the point you were making through this yes yes and then it becomes a challenge let’s say the spiritual master let’s say a spiritual master has disciples who have been devotees 40 years and disciples who have been devotees 40 months and how to interact with them differently and if they are in the same room at the same time how to say things in such a way that you know if you start kind of being a little more casual or friendly with your disciple who is in their 60s the young devotees you know so it’s a little tricky for the spiritual master this brings us to one more question that we talked about following instruction so from a practical perspective that the a devotee’s spiritual advancement how much does it really depend on the specific connection with one’s guru or the specific instruction that the spiritual master gives because at least the way we are in our movement we have sometimes some spiritual master with thousands of disciples and very few interactions and in many ways the devotees may be able to follow the instructions of local authorities but it’s not realistic to expect them to have the same deference to the local authorities as they would have to their spiritual master so in one sense the lived reality is that the devotees who grow are often the devotees who take initiative and take responsibility so as our movement has evolved has it naturally happened that the over emphasis on following instructions has has naturally become lesser I’m not saying that we define instructions but it’s just that the idea that I will wait till I get some specific instruction then I will do something the lived reality doesn’t give much room for living like that actually right so many things to say about that first is maybe from a systemic point of view I like to think of systems sometimes and so your first point about inaccessible authorities senior devotees so we need to do more training so that there’s a lot more really independently thoughtful strong devotees who can give shelter you know we need to do that that should be almost like a mindset that 20 years from now we’ll just have thousands of gurus whether they’re Shiksha or Diksha or Ampradarsha and they’re going to be strong in their Krishna consciousness and exemplary and compassionate and loving and all those things to give because we can’t depend on what is it I think it’s like 100 or so gurus in this con I don’t know the exact number but it’s something around that number which is we need thousands literally so that’s just a systems point that we should be really, when we see a devotee who’s been a devotee two years and they’re 22 years old we have to remember they’re going to be 45 one day and so what should we do between the 22 years and the 45 years to really make them great spiritual leaders think about they’re green mango now but they’re going to become ripe so that’s just the thing that the Shiksha gurus should be training young devotees so that they can themselves become Shiksha gurus that train them to become independently thoughtful that’s true yes so that’s really important we can’t be depending on these you know one senior devotee especially after Bhakti Trumaj left this world said unfortunately this is probably going to be the decade of tears because so many senior devotees are going to be in their 80s and they’re going to be leaving this world and we need you know we need the next and the next to fulfill that I don’t know if this is maybe also true in India but we have this almost lost generation I don’t know what year was when I guess it started at Chowpatty but when we really started making lots and lots of good devotees I don’t know what year that was I’m guessing 1990-ish yeah 1990-ish roughly but 1990 onwards was the really big push right so we had this kind of and we made a lot of devotees at least in the west just around after Prabhupada left lot of devotees and then as the gurus started falling away I think around the world there was this gap I don’t know this is speculative but around 82-92 or something we have like this lost generation where we don’t have that many devotees and I guess they would be in their early 50s now or something like that and so we do have that gap you know but at least for the other we need to start making them we really need to start thinking long term and we need really strong people who understand ISKCON, understand the idea of unity and diversity understand Prabhupada’s ultimate managing authority on that level and then who are strong spiritually and are collaborative in nature and so many things that we need to have a strong unified movement going forward so in a sense you are building on the same point that while we have our personal relationship with our spiritual master it’s like we also need to connect at multiple levels along with the spiritual master, uncles and other devotees uncles, aunts, brothers sisters, yeah I mean yeah personally I never and I guess this may be controversial, I mean there’s two sides to this, I never got so much into when a devotee said you know this is my god brother or this is my god sister because they have the same guru because I thought well in ISKCON we’re kind of like you know those who are not disciples of Prabhupada I always thought that we’re all god brothers and god sisters, now that could I can see the downside to that because that kind of depersonalizes things and we do need identity groups to some extent so you know even this guru groupism it’s a double edged sword because identity groups are good you don’t just you don’t just sort of identify with the world you do identify with a smaller group of people, but at the same time for me I always thought it was kind of weird when someone says well I’m a disciple you know what I mean yeah you know I read about groups and I talk about two things like organized groups and organic groups so organized means that is you’re given that in this organization you belong to this group as organic group is very naturally grouped or organically grouped with some people so Swajitya Sighasya Sighasya so I think we all will naturally belong to a guru disciple that’s an organized group but in many ways we might find some of the devotees in that group less like minded with us than some devotees who are outside their group also so ultimately I think the organic group is what will nourish us and the organized groups if they are over emphasized then they can cause conflicts and they can cause sectarianism or even schisms so therefore unity in diversity and we try to do that I mean in DC we came here 10 years ago I won’t mention the names this guru, this guru, this guru they have their own sanghas and their own projects sometimes and we decided that’s totally fine and then make Radhamandana Mohan the main deity here the focus for all the groups so that’s the unity, the temple and Radhamandana Mohan and then sure, have your diversity and have your different programs Bhakti Tirtha Maharishi’s disciples have their outreach program and Gopal Krishna Maharishi’s disciples have their programs and Radhamandana Mohan that’s fine but also come together to the temple, all of us you know almost like Sarvapadhi Vinyamuktam and let’s shed this disciple that and come together as servants of Radhamandana Mohan That’s beautiful yeah so again going back to that point that in some ways like you talk about the God family God brothers that also is centered on the point that sometimes the connection with the spiritual master and one’s identity being defined primarily or even exclusively in terms of one’s spiritual master when that ethos is created then again when that sometimes hinders independent thoughtfulness or taking responsibility because then I’m defined in this way and I have to, to the extent I’m following this or showing I’m following this so that can become a problem to some extent yeah it can, yes therefore few things, the gurus should be training, helping to train their disciples to be independently thoughtful that’s one thing, right you know, gradually like I said, the 19-year-old you train differently than the 60-year-old right and what else was I going to say? go ahead, you were going to say something actually I got that word wrong, it was not organized groups it was organizational groups because every group can be organized, because groups created by the organization and groups that organically evolve so that is the small clarification going back to this point you mentioned just now that you know say a disciple is 40 months old and a disciple is 40 years old in their discipleship so I observed since I started coming to America that in general the relationship between the devotees are quite horizontal much more horizontal in India the relationships are very vertical so I remember I had gone to meet one spiritual master I don’t know whether I mentioned this in my last discussion that one senior Prabhupada disciple who is a spiritual master and then I was talking something with him and then he said okay that is there with his assistant and his assistant was in the next room so then normally if it is in India, maybe the guru will have a bell or something and the assistant will come running but then in this case the spiritual master went to the room of the assistant and the assistant was actually sitting down comfortably and the spiritual master was standing and talking so I was spiked out I just put it how can you do that but of course now I think about it even the assistant was old probably around 45-50 or something like that and the spiritual maybe 40 at least so in general I have seen is it just American culture that things are more horizontal or is it that because devotees who are in America in general at least there are many older devotees and that’s why to some extent the interactions become more horizontal I think there is a combination it may be that maybe a bit more of that spirit in America that kind of you could say casual on one side or you could say distrustful of authority on the other and yes and also if you look at the history of ISKCON I would say that most of the no I don’t know I won’t go there I was going to say that maybe more of the fall downs in the 80s at least came now this is a long time ago came from the west where you had Jaipataka Maharaj and Gopal Krishna Maharaj he came a little later he wasn’t one of the original gurus Bhakti Churma Maharaj who were obviously haven’t I haven’t had any fall down that may be it but also you’re right I think there’s sometimes older devotees but I do see younger devotees are very reverential it’s a mixed it’s a mixed bag but also yeah it’s a mixed bag but also you do things here in America you have to kind of take your car to the shop by yourself even well to do people it’s also just a different culture sometimes when I was studying I would stay with wealthy people especially in Delhi and they don’t do anything they have servants I’m not talking about servants as disciples they just have servants and they have a driver so they don’t drive themselves and they have a cook so they don’t cook themselves and they certainly don’t do their own laundry and they don’t do their own shopping and all those things and you don’t have that even many I live in an area surrounded by wealthy people and you don’t have that culture either people still cook for themselves and certainly they drive themselves I mean very rarely does someone have a driver they enjoy it so that’s also there that there’s more of a DIY DIY do it yourself kind of mood so we were discussing about I said that when devotees become independently thoughtful one factor was where the authority departs for various reasons or one no longer has access to the authority then I would say that is probably the most it can be most jolting or disorienting of course and somebody goes through experience any situation can feel very disorienting but that’s one another could be say it could be just as problematic that suppose one starts feeling that one’s authority now here it need not be the spiritual master because practically speaking the spiritual master may not be there giving practical guidance in today’s world but one starts feeling that one’s authority is not guiding one in the right way at one level we shouldn’t think like that at another level it could be that something the authority might not be practically good in that field or it could be that what they are saying is not personally right for me it could be right for somebody else because I have my nature or it could be God forbid it could be that something it’s just what they are doing is wrong maybe it’s ethically questionable they have certain values of looking at things which may feel is wrong so at that time one has to seriously think what do I do and so in one sense this was the kind of situation Bali Maharaj encountered where the instruction that he was given was wrong so even at that time one is forced to become independently thoughtful because this doesn’t make sense to me and if one has been taught that to follow instructions unquestioningly then that situation one doesn’t have the intellectual equipment to deal with that situation at all so now we hope that devotees never come to that situation but life is such that we may come to that oh it happens it will go on for the next 10,000 years 10,000 I think it’s amazing how I think because you have experienced so much something which is so sobering you can speak in a way of like nonchalant realism do it yeah so okay so that devotee has some choices he can reveal his he or she can reveal their minds to another devotee you know or okay so in a very ISKCON management structure kind of thing you can go to that person’s authority you can go to a friend of that authority you know and say listen I have this problem I’ve seen this and it doesn’t seem right or I’m told to do this and it doesn’t seem right and of course especially to someone that they trust we haven’t discussed much about trust but trust is really the oil that has the machine of Krishna consciousness and ISKCON moving in the right direction you know trust is so important in any relationship if someone has a really strong trust with that authority they may even be able to go to them directly and say you know you’re encouraging me to do this it’s so different than my nature you know can we discuss this so hopefully some people have that kind of relationship and so there is a chain of command now the other point is that this is one of the reasons why back in 2002 you know and it’s only even after 18 years it’s just slowly getting established in ISKCON is having an ombudsman and in fact right now I’m training 43 devotees I think are on the zoom call in India to be ombudsman and the idea of the ombudsman is it’s a person who’s who’s trained and who has some seniority and is totally confidential you can tell them anything and they won’t tell anyone else right and they help you think about your options and how to deal with the situation that you’re in so that can be really helpful here’s someone I know is going to be confidential I can just explore my options or I can just vent and and then the main principle of an ombudsman is about independent thoughtfulness because an ombudsman is not going to tell you what to do an ombudsman is going to help you think about your options and discuss with you the pros and cons of each of those options and then say so which one do you think you’d like to explore you know kind of like what verse is that in the Gita you know now do as you wish to do as you desire yeah so that’s very when you think about it that’s what Krishna did in the Gita he kind of made him independently thoughtful didn’t he in one sense yeah so you know because after Sarva Dharma and and all those things he said okay now do as you wish to do yeah so just going back to this point that are we in some ways moving back to the way things were in the tradition like when Prabhupada came at that time all the devotees were young and Prabhupada had very limited time and there was a lot to be done so in a sense at that time the principle of utter obedience to the spiritual master was highly emphasized but if you look back at Shastra itself now it is the Pandavas for example when they had to take decisions what to do with Ashwathama Krishna doesn’t hand out an instruction now Arjuna hears Yudhishtira Arjuna hears Draupadi and then he takes a recent decision so in scripture itself we don’t see many places where decisions are handed down by by the Guru to the disciple in fact it is more of a general respect for Brahminical culture say Yudhishtira Maharaja in the forest and he will hear from Narada Muni, from Parvat Muni, from Markandeya Rishi and then he takes his decisions it’s that so in that sense if we look at the tradition it seems rather than rather than submission to one spiritual master with over dependence on that it’s more of submission to the body of Brahmanas along with one’s own independent decision making or one’s own responsible decision making so could we say that could we say what could we say that we as a movement you know we are in a sense returning to the way things were in the tradition where where we had an emergency application where there is a over emphasis on just following instructions but now as devotees are growing, the movement is growing then there is naturally a need to emphasize the aspect of thoughtful thoughtfulness also, independent thoughtfulness Wow, okay so I have a few thoughts on that. First of all we do, I do feel and I think Shastra backs this up that we need to we should develop more of a culture of respecting shiksha and diksha gurus on the same level which is from Krishna Das Kaviraj Chaitanya Charitamrita and that whole idea of uncles and aunts and grandfathers and grandmothers, as Jaya Dwaitamara said, the problem in early days of ISKCON is there was no grandmothers you know, elderly people who could just say, yes, it’s okay this too shall pass sit down you know, have a cup of caffeine free tea you know, whatever it is you know, so that idea of having more, you know, just this idea of not just the diksha guru not to minimize the diksha guru but shiksha and diksha so the next point is we have an organization so, you know, in our tradition a lot of spirituality was very personal was very, you know, your relationship with Krishna and the Sangha you know, we read in Narottama Das Thakur’s life and in Keturi you know, just that whole wonderful idea of the Sangha of Vaishnavas etc. but in an organization to get things done you generally need a hierarchy you know, I worked for one of the mothers of all hierarchies, right, the federal government in America, and you know we have a chain of command, let’s speak of in the military you definitely have a chain of command and I can’t, I have a supervisor now I have a really good relationship with my supervisor and it’s a little bit on a friendly base, I’m older than him but still basically you lose your job if you don’t do what you’re told to do unless it’s illegal and even then you might lose your job you know, so to get things done you do need you do need you do need some system and people can argue it should be more egalitarian or whatever, you know some people say that Brahmin life is anarchy, Kshatriya life is monarchy Vaishya life is capitalism, and Sudra life is communism, now I don’t know if there’s any truth to that Brahmin life is anarchy, my god yeah, you do as you wish to do but so my point is we have an organization and Prabhupada did set up a hierarchy and that is needed to organize the Lord Chaitanya’s Sankirtan movement okay and we have our individual relationship with Krishna and with devotees on that level of you know Guhyamakati Prishti you know what’s that verse, how does it begin? Machitta Madhata Prana well that also, I was thinking of Isha Upanishad, Nectar of Instruction, but yeah Dadadhi Pratiguna Guhyamakati Dadadhi Pratiguna Guhyamakati so that is that’s there and that’s been a challenge because this, we haven’t gone to Vimatha a little bit but there hasn’t really been in our tradition there certainly hasn’t been an organization like ISKCON worldwide right and so much money and so much manpower and that and in some places even status so how to combine all of this because even I can tell you since I won’t mention names it’s not so controversial in some places in the West some gurus thought that the disciple course should be offered after a second initiation and their reasoning was this because the disciple course talks a lot about ISKCON and even has a section what happens if your guru falls down in Prabhupada’s preeminent situation but this was their reasoning it was that people join much more out of individual spirituality than joining an organization and only gradually do they start understanding that their devotion to Prabhupada can be expressed by serving his society it’s a gradual process to get them just by individual spirituality and whereas in some other parts of the world and you can tell me if it’s more like this in India people are much more cognizant I’m joining this big organization that has so many rules and regulations and things like that and therefore so I just thought that that was and of course this is generalizations because it’s not that people in India don’t join because of individual spirituality, it’s not that people in the West don’t join because of joining an organization but maybe some tendency is there so how to have this where we do have our individual spirituality and our advancement on one hand and then the needs of the organization on the other one way that I try to marry these two is that we learn again and again in Shastra that we make advancement by serving devotees we can quote five or ten Mahat-se-vam-dvara-mahor-vimuktes Sadhu-sangha, Sadhu-sangha, Sarva-shastra-vim so many and so many places in the Shastra that love me, love my dog and the whole idea that yasya-prasada-bhagava-prasada and so if we do that with a heart and with bhakti so that’s the individual part and if that’s serving that devotee also serving the needs of the institution and of course by serving the institution we’re serving the great devotee Srila Prabhupada, maybe that’s a way to combine these two needs but really we make advancement practically speaking by serving Krishna’s devotees that’s the isn’t that, what is that verse that’s the mula, that’s the root of bhakti in Chaitanya Charita Amrita it’s mentioned yeah okay I’ll try to remember it yes so many verses yeah so if I understand what you’re saying right, what you’re saying is that that by broadening our relationships that rather than focusing on guru-seva or like the relationship with the guru see that there are many manifestations of the guru and focus on the principle of aishno-seva at large, not minimizing the spiritual master but recognizing that the spiritual master manifests in many different ways that there are shiksha gurus there are diksha gurus and the guru-tattva manifests in different ways so yes yes and beyond that you know especially if you’re, because you keep bringing this up if your spiritual master is not readily accessible having friends or mentors who we feel we can reveal our mind to this is a huge, we could have a whole hour and a half on this of course but this is a huge issue that devotees so many devotees and I lived in India for 21 years it doesn’t matter, India, Australia, America, Canada, Mexico, it doesn’t matter struggle at some times in their life and even sometimes struggle with the principles and they just sometimes feel they can’t talk to anyone they just fear that if they talk to somebody might end up on the front, on Facebook an hour later but they need to sometimes talk to someone and reveal their mind and their heart and it’s great if every devotee in Iskcon has at least at least one and hopefully two or three people in their lives that they feel they could really open up to reveal their mind, say anything to them and know that it will be treated with respect and with compassion and with care and you know we need people that we can reveal our minds to, whether we’re, you know, spiritual masters need that and new devotees need that we all need that and if you can’t do that with your Diksha Guru, you know, for so many different reasons hopefully every devotee has someone like that in their life This is so important in the last few years I’ve been realizing this more and more that on one side we, maybe it’s just the way we look at scripture that we sometimes stress, okay, you have to follow the instruction of the spiritual master but one instruction is also to have close heart-to-heart interactions and to do what it takes to develop those kind of interactions and then you can also say that being independently thoughtful won’t become it won’t become whimsical, we’re not simply following our mind because we can’t share with someone and so that is one thing and you said about 43 ombudsmen in India that’s quite significant so these are all Eight of them will be like the two for each divisional council and then the others will be more local their temples so the Bureau authorized these eight but then when Acharya Ratnaprabhu arranged the training he wanted to open it up more that devotees can be trained also locally.
Okay so this will be like known online or somewhere if devotees want to know. Well I have to work with you know I have to work with the Bureau to see how exactly they want to do it you know so it’s a work in progress but it is something that’s happening you know I know our conversation we’ve been going in a lot of different directions I hope this has been helpful to you and to the listeners but one thing I’d like to add and I don’t know where this fits in and maybe I mentioned it in the last call I’m not sure but I was talking with younger devotees who were born in the movement and they were saying that in their Sangha they’re trying to create this trust right that they can reveal their minds and but yeah this is connected to the point that you were making about how we each have to fly our own airplane right they were saying that the trust they feel is a stepping stone to something a little bit higher and that is so you were saying we take responsibility for our own Krishna consciousness that they were feeling that in a real strong Vaishnava Sangha I also take responsibility for your Krishna consciousness and therefore if you and I have a real trusting relationship I can also go up to you and say hey you know you really seem to be chanting inattentive rounds or you know you’re not taking care of your health in other words I can because we have a trusting relationship and we worked on that I can they use the word disruptive we can have also a disruptive relationship where we actually push each other to be more Krishna conscious disrupting you know in a positive sense that I can you know come up to you and say this is not good what you’re doing but because we have such a trusting relationship you don’t we take it in the right way and so they were saying that this is one way that peers can help each other Krishna consciousness that there’s enough trust that then you can go up to someone and say that I’m really taking responsibility to help you in your Krishna consciousness like maybe even getting on your case as we say and you take it well because you know it’s coming from a trusting space rather than from a I’m your authority and I’m getting on your case kind of thing so trust is really important yeah that’s true and this is in many ways much more workable in today’s world rather than expecting an authority to know everything about us and then to expect that okay you’re going wrong and you should do this so yeah and so we could say that rather than rather than seeing say following instruction of authority or being independently thoughtful as two polarities we could say that it’s all on one spectrum and it’s all about ultimately how we can grow spiritually so sometimes we grow spiritually by following instructions sometimes we grow spiritually by being independently thoughtful sometimes we grow spiritually by by having close friends who who will give us space to be thoughtful but who also give us some guidance so in a sense so it’s like if you could say this is one extreme is being independently thoughtful one extreme is being a pendulum like having authority that you follow we could say in between could be having friends with whom we discuss and we speak our mind they speak their minds and then they move forward this doesn’t mean that independently thoughtful is not required or authority is not required but this could be a much more sustainable way for devotees to move forward I think all three are parts of the picture of course yeah you do need it you do need authorities you do need someone who’s just going to say you know we’re going to you know make three outfits for Jamas instead of two because this is a special year we’re going to do this we’re going you know somebody’s got to make some decisions you know you need that in any organization we’re not we’re never going to get away with that and but we also want authorities that are so trained and so Christian conscious that they also understand the need for independently thoughtful and they start empowering the devotees and they you know they learn how to delegate and now we’re talking managerially but there’s an art to delegation and part of getting things done in an organization is delegating there’s so much great literature some good literature on this I’ll just briefly I can’t remember all the things but a authority could let’s say a president could sit down with the department head and they could say some some decisions I hope I get this right are twig decisions that means you make a decision I don’t even know about it it’s your job I don’t know about it and then the next one I think is a branch what’s that? twig yeah yeah I wonder if I can find this I don’t think I can find it really quickly but anyway the idea is that you know some are root decisions where okay so the next one is a branch decision you make a decision and inform me afterwards okay so you still make the decision just let me know after you make it the next one is you and I talk and then you decide and the last one is you and I talk and then I as a temple president I decide it’s too big it’s big enough decision that I should make it and so you imagine if a temple president sat down with each of their department heads and talked about these four levels of delegation not everything has to fall on the temple president’s desk and and of course the key is to know which ones which decisions are which naturally and so that’s a way to combine the two so it’s not it’s not a it’s it’s learning how to there’s something called polarity management learning how to manage that polarity nicely yeah so you know it’s in a sense whether it’s following instruction or being independently thoughtful it’s ultimately about taking decisions it’s because we have to take decisions so whether I think the four things which you said is that I do and I inform you or you do and you just inform me no you do and you don’t inform me it’s such a you know you don’t have to tell me who’s going to do the four o’clock offering today that the Pujari got sick and you found someone I don’t even I don’t need to know that yeah right you decided to add some you know do I don’t know add some special change the sweets so okay so you did that and you told me later right but you want to spend more money on the Pujari maintenance and it’ll be a little less money on the outfits for we have to talk about that but I’m still going to let you decide but we’re you know discussing how to have darshan during the pandemic let’s discuss that but that’s my decision Tamil presence so that’s just a quickly off the top of my head you know this becomes a much more you could say like it’s not yeah not even it’s not like taking responsibility for our spiritual life it’s more like taking or taking decisions responsibly so responsibly could be I defer the decision to someone it could be that I discuss and I take the decision it could be I take as I said take a decision and inform and sometimes I take a decision there’s no need to inform also you know if I look back if I look back my spiritual life I can see at different stages I have been located different places and been with different authorities under different devotees and they all had different styles some devotees like when I moved from a devotee who would either tell decisions or like ask me to at least inform somebody why are you informing me of this I was quite surprised initially so I thought that’s what is expected but this is very helpful in understanding actually how to move forward so taking this in some ways which decision will fall in which category that can be a little tricky to decide yes and it also will vary on their maturity a 20 year old and a 60 year old will have that will be different yes so now just I was talking about the second case where you know where we find that the decisions that were given to us are wrong for whatever reason practically wrong or personally wrong so now here is there also the consideration of jurisdiction or area of specialization say like for example Prabhupada at sometime literally arranged the marriages of some of his disciples but then afterwards he said this is not the purpose of a Sanyasi and then in our movement at sometime the devotees leaders were doing that but now it is more like you take blessings but it’s your decision so so the question overall is that the like taking instructions is it primarily for our spiritual life or is it for all aspects of our life now of course if somebody is living in a temple as a Brahmachari then it all aspects of our life relate with their spiritual life and somebody is living outside and they have their family and job and everything then spiritual life we could say the spiritual mood can permeate their entire life but spiritual life is one part of their life then so so do we have I don’t think we can categorically say something, something is also based on trust I had an arranged marriage it wasn’t by my Guru, it was by Bhadrinarayan Prabhu at that time now Swami, but I trusted him, he brought me the Christian consciousness, he was my wife’s temple president and you know I had and he didn’t say you will marry this person, nobody arranged so sorry, arrange in the sense of recommended or what do you mean by arrange then, yeah but a little bit more than that he paid my airfare to fly to San Diego and yeah so I don’t think we can say across the board but I think your point is well taken in Jayadvaita Maharaj’s really wonderful course on straight thinking and strong speaking, the straight thinking part he talks about logical fallacies and one of them is the fellatio appeal to authority so you know someone is a you know just because someone is a sannyasi and they can give you very good spiritual guidance doesn’t mean they can necessarily give you good plumbing advice well Maharaj said we should you know we should hire this plumber, well you know is he an authority so that is a good point, somebody is not just an authority they are authority usually in certain things, now of course Prabhupada again because he was you know he was who he was and we were who we were you know like I said he gave medical advice and all kinds of you know practical practical things you know because we were just children practically speaking but you are right it does become tricky especially like you are saying in the congregation and I guess in some places they have addressed this by having counsellors a counselling system in certain temples in certain yantras so I don’t think it is one size fits all but I do think as leaders we should be in our training of future leaders we should be cautioning about this and you know it is just like if you go to a you know because devotees are good hearted and even when we are young we are pretty simple hearted and also we are trying to seek the Krishna factor and all this right oh well Krishna arranged for me to get this instruction and there is something obviously wonderful about that right but as senior devotees we should be trained to be cautious and to understand when it is more of a discussion or when we need to get more information right if you can imagine going to a doctor and they just start you walk into their office and they just start writing a prescription right away how much faith do you know but the doctor takes a blood test or what is it called in Ayurveda the pulse yeah then you have you know so we as leaders I think we talked about this last time we need to be good listeners and that was Prabhupada’s instruction to Balabhanta Prabhu if you want to attract intelligent people Lord Chaitanya spent seven days without saying a word listening to but ultimately he converted him or he helped him become a devotee and part of it was that that willingness to do that so you know sometimes our preaching is more like a shotgun where we just kind of close our eyes and we hope we hit something but when we listen to someone and hear their needs their interests and concerns it’s more like a laser so we also need to be trained to be better and better at giving good advice and to be able to and to be humble enough to say you know that’s not my field of expertise but here is someone who really is good with mental health issues or marital problems or health issues yeah you know this is a very striking point I have never heard this instruction to Balabhanta Prabhu that with intelligent people you need to be good listeners you don’t know this no it’s very striking because I can share my screen I’ll give that access to you yeah I found it striking is that that in some ways we think of preaching as simply not even talking with people it is talking to people yes yeah well and that may work and that’s what we saw when Prabhupada sometimes dealt with 20 year olds yeah but if you see like when he talked to that race car driver he listened to that race car driver for like 20 minutes about a car racing and then found so with people more established in society it seems that he would sometimes deal differently so let me read this is of course an important letter in my service now I want that we shall recruit more and more our men amongst the intelligent class of men they because they are little educated or you can see this yeah I can see this yeah because they’re a little educated or they have some wealth or fame or ability so they will be sometimes little puffed up but that’s all right they deserve it so he’s recognizing if you’re going for the intelligent class of men they are going to you know be either famous or have some money or you know be at IIT or whatever right that’s all right they deserve it sir karma now we shall have to learn the art how to approach such higher class of men and attract them to apply themselves to this Krishna conscious process of self-realization that requires much tact and we shall have to expect to meet all challenges by sharp minds but if we remain always absorbed in remembering Lord Chaitanya how he converted so many intelligent men even sitting for three or whatever seven days and nights to hear them without speaking anything and if we remember how Krishna was so patient to explain everything to Arjuna even Arjuna was speaking like a fool in this way remaining always tolerant of others and I think this is really important and appreciating their point of view it will be easy matter for us to convince them to gradually join us so a college student in America in 1972 their point of view was probably four things drugs sex rock and roll and Mayavad philosophy and still Prabhupada said and I always thought this letter was such a genius because Stephen Covey 25 years later comes along and writes makes millions and millions of dollars and one of his main principles is seek first to understand then be understood and Prabhupada saying the same thing 1972 this is amazing can you send it to me after our talk of course three things struck me in that first is they deserve it that they deserve it they are in political position so in a sense respect needs to be given where it is due if somebody has attained some success in any area of life we can’t from a transcendental perspective we might say completely zero but they are not in the transcendental perspective so in a material perspective we can’t be dismissive about that and second is also Prabhupada says the word tact over there so one is about appreciating the perspective appreciating the point of view but also tact in the sense that how with the race car driver Prabhupada heard and then tactfully introduced something meaningful yeah this is powerful listening is one of the greatest ways to develop relationships and whether we are preaching to people or we are talking to a peer one of the greatest services you can do to another devotee is be a good listener and the other now relating this also to devotees and as an ombudsman for now 18 years often when I am listening to a devotee because that is one of the main things an ombudsman does and I am reflecting back some things let’s say they come to me and they are kind of affected by Rajas and Tamas and if I am very sattvic and I am really listening carefully and making it clear that I am listening carefully sattva, sandhyate, jnanam by that association they start seeing things more clearly and lots of times talking about being independently thoughtful they come to their own, they just say Rajvi Haripur, thank you so much thank you you clarified everything and I didn’t do anything, I just listened but it became much more clear in their mind what they should do and how they should do it just by being sattvic and being a good listener the modes, the lower modes started going away and they started seeing things more clearly so listening is powerful on all kinds of levels that’s true I had a very striking experience exactly this point because earlier I used to have that I am more of a philosophy teacher so even when I would travel to some places I would talk with, if you have any philosophical questions and then after that just general basic enquiry and then I would do my work so one devotee had invited one devotee had arranged me to go to a particular country and he said so I went there and I came back and this devotee told me afterwards, they were quite disappointed they loved your classes but they said that they didn’t get any association apart from that you are busy doing your writing and everything and then they would discuss some things and they would start talking about their personal lives and I would say I am not exactly a counsellor so I don’t think I can guide with respect to this so then he said when people come it’s in a sense they don’t just want to hear classes they want personal association also so the next time I went and I didn’t think one year I have become specialised enough to give them some guidance but I just hold them and let them think aloud so sometimes when I came back they told the same devotee oh you know we had such wonderful association so it struck me that when people are associating with someone they don’t just need wisdom they also need warmth they need rasa ya that means I really didn’t speak much to them about their issues but just the fact that I heard them out they felt valued by that and I just I try to be a good listener to whatever extent I can be so it seems like giving association is not just like giving classes giving association could be also giving a ear giving an attentive ear or a caring heart that is also a way of giving association yes there is a time for everything there is a time for sitting on the Vyasa San and there is a time also Prabhupada’s morning walks his room conversations so he did that also and I’ve seen I recall one time I was in Kanpur and Devaki Nandan Prabhu he created that project and he was running it but sometimes he would just sit down casually with the brahmacharis you could see they were just so they loved that he was just chit chatting and it just remains in my mind that they really appreciate it so yes but listening is very very powerful and it’s we go to school we learn reading, we learn writing sometimes in some schools we learn how to speak but there is never a class about listening and it’s one of the most important skills you can have as an adult and we understand it also that listening is such an important part of spiritual hearing and also asking good questions part of listening is asking powerful questions we don’t have time now, we could spend an hour on powerful questions and we also know that from Shastra how many times does Suta Goswami praise Shonaka the question itself is so good you know and friction and you are great at this because in these conversations you ask great questions thank you now I relish the association and I would like to get more and more just one last point another thing I thought is that through discussion actually we think also by talking we just don’t think in our head like you said you just heard them and then things became clarified for them so you didn’t give any guidance but things became clearer so you talk something about Sattva Guna so are you saying that by talking you come to Sattva Guna or just Krishna Consciousness is caught as much as it’s taught ok and so if the Ambasman or the Brahmachari or the Sadhu or whatever if they are in the mode of goodness and people associate with them or what speak of Krishna Consciousness then just by that Sangha they can start rising up at least in the modes of what speak of coming to Krishna Consciousness and I remember, I don’t remember the details but I’ve heard it once or twice on a lecture by His Holiness Radhanath Swami how he talked about when he would especially do preaching programs at universities in Ohio and he would do cooking classes and he I think, I remember him saying that he didn’t do much at all preaching and he made so many devotees just by being with them and showing them how to cook and being their friend and answering some questions and he was like he was almost like the less I lecture, the more devotees come I don’t remember the details it’s been a while since I heard that maybe you can ask him that sometime so different people will be attracted in different ways this point, I was thinking of it from a different perspective, so what you are saying is if somebody is hearing from a senior devotee or is speaking to a senior devotee, through that also they are associating with that devotee and that infuses, that raises their consciousness so I was also thinking yeah and there are ways to ask questions that get people to be more thoughtful because thoughtfulness is a mode of goodness right, so what we want to do is what a person in my field does sometimes is get people to observe their mind instead of think they are their mind very true there are ways of asking questions to say how did you come up with that feeling or that understanding or that attitude towards that person where do you think your mind came up with that mood yeah and so that’s more of a subject thing where you have to be introspective yeah so one more thing I noticed about this is that when you, sometimes when the mind speaks nonsense inside we don’t realize that it is nonsense but when when we start speaking it to someone, then I might be very angry and I might be on a on a tirade for some time but after sometime just because I am articulating it, I start realizing hey this is what I am speaking is not really sensible, so in a sense just the act of articulation helps us, helps us start evaluating our thoughts much better than just thinking inside, so from that way also we rise by articulation to some extent so Prabhu I will thank you so this was should I try to summarize and then if you want to add some few words I will summarize yeah okay so I think we discussed broadly on the topic of how to take decisions responsibly using both guidance as well as independence so we started by talking about, there are two instructions one is follow authorities follow instructions and other is becoming thoughtful so one reconciliation is that follow instructions to be independently thoughtful but you talk about Christian monks teacher that till age of 30 follow instructions and after that give more independence and then you discuss also about how Prabhupada at one level couldn’t give us that example of how he would treat senior devotees we have some glimpses of how we dealt with life members or with other like parents of devotees or whatever but not much example of that and instructions are important because ultimately we have to get things done so at some level following instructions is required but at another level I talked about two cases I couldn’t get in the third one but when would a devotee be forced to become independently thoughtful is if their authority is no longer available to them or their authority is departed from the world or departed from Krishna consciousness then you talk about your experience and then how you took shelter in Shastra and Seva, Sankirtan so sometimes we overemphasize the specific instruction we might get from the spiritual master rather than the generic instructions to practice Bhakti and connect with Krishna so if we focus on that then we will have the spiritual substance and you talked about surrender also is not just obedience but surrender is also choosing what is favorable and what is avoiding what is unfavorable so in a sense surrender is also taking responsibility for our spiritual growth and then I went to the second part where if we feel that the guidance given by the authority is wrong either practically or personally or even ethically then what do you do at that time so you talked about you know consult someone else their equal or some other superior or whatever and then we talked about the concept of ombudsman as well as the idea that we need many gurus and then many shiksha, diksha gurus so that the guru is accessible and the devotee is not connected only with one teacher but the devotee is connected with many and they can get guidance so that was in a sense the brahminical culture in the past and we are going toward that with having many shiksha and diksha gurus and then in that connection itself we also discussed that more important in the principle of following instruction of the independent is actually that we take guidance wisely and for most often for us it might be that we need a close friend who can who can be disruptive for us sometimes if we are going off in a long track and that requires trust as a very important thing so trust will help us they will be able to tell us some things and then decision making also you talked about those four things now do and don’t inform do and inform discuss and decide and discuss and I will decide for you so I think that is good categorization and there was and toward the end we discussed about how best to how best we can areas of specialization that they can’t have a watertight thing that this is inside the area this is outside the area but if something is not the area of specialization rather than saying I won’t guide we can actually just be good listeners and by asking powerful questions we can help them arrive at a decision and in that sense we can have the devotee community to as a support for devotees to move on toward Krishna so I will just add one thing to that also if we are going I am not saying don’t preach and only listen but when you have listened to a person carefully you know which part of this huge philosophy to choose that will really help that person yeah beautiful report you know so yeah actually again this is you talk about the Stephen Covey’s principle seek first to understand then then we understood so Prabhupada did that in his letter to Balwan be tactful be appreciative of them so when we hear then we can like as you said we can give the medicine properly a doctor who hears the patient properly then can give the medicines yes so so thank you very much for this was very broad ranging discussion and yeah we covered a lot yeah lot of sobering points but I think overall it was uplifting also that how we as a movement are evolving and moving forward as they said the ombudsman have been created and we are also having the ethos of more and more leaders coming up so thank you very much for your time too thank you Prabhu Hare Krishna