The Monk’s Podcast 83 with Shyamananda – Social Justice and Spiritual Wisdom 2 – Caste System Analyzed

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Chaitanya Charan · Social Justice And Spiritual Wisdom 2 – Caste System Analyzed – The Monk's Podcast With Shyamananda

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining again. I think today we will continue our discussion on spirituality and social justice with a more specific focus on the Indian context with respect to the caste system. Will that be okay? Okay. So we will take the same template as we did last time. We discussed last time what is right about social justice, where it goes wrong and how spiritual wisdom can complement it. So today, let’s discuss about what was the original intent behind the caste system and how that was beneficial, what went wrong with it and how it is wrong today and how it can be set right or how spiritual wisdom can help to set things right as they exist today. Can I be allowed to be a lawyer, advocate and a spokesperson for those anti-party elements whom I have kind of faced in colleges, institutions? Yes. Okay. So, a very simple question. According to your learned estimate, when was the last time that you can say with little amount of certainty that the perfect varnashram system was actually being practiced in the subcontinent of India? Well, two things are there over here. When we talk about perfect, see nothing is perfect as soon as you apply it. Even if you consider the field of medicine, as soon as the human element comes in, people commit mistakes. Even the best of doctors commit mistakes. So, if we look for a perfect application of something, it’s usually only in theory. But in practice, I would like to draw attention to three facts. First is that the Indian civilization, Indian culture, whatever you want to call it, has had incredible resilience. So, practically none of the other civilizations are still existing. Ancient civilization, Greek, Mesopotamian, Sumerian, Mayan. Chinese is still existing, but modern China has very little in similarity in cultural continuity with ancient China. Alright. So, the point I’m making through this is that that although India was subjected to so many invasions and there were so many ways in which the social structure could have been disrupted and people had alternatives. So, if the caste system had been as discriminatory as is often pointed out, as is often alleged, then people could have left. And although people did leave, but that number is still not as big as it could have been. So, the caste system, even as it existed, even if it was problematic for many, many centuries, it still also gave a sense of connectedness and belonging to a unit bigger than one’s family. I would like to quote some thinkers over here. These are not necessarily Indian or Vedic thinkers. There are three major quotes. Sidney Lowe in his book, A Vision of India, there is no doubt that the caste is the main cause of the fundamental stability and contentment by which Indian society has been braced for centuries against the shock of politics and the cataclysms of nature. It provides every man with his place, his career, his occupations, his circle of friends. It makes him at the outset a member of a corporate body. It protects him through life from the canker of social jealousy and unfulfilled aspirations. It ensures him companionship and a sense of continuity with others in like case with himself. The caste organization is to the Hindu, his club, his trade union, his benefit society, his philanthropic society. What decade this quote could be cited? Sidney Lowe is a small Indologist, about 50 to 100 years ago, 50 years ago roughly. Okay. So I have two other quotes, Mark Tully is a contemporary thinker also. Mark Tully is a music correspondent. So the alienation of many young people in the West and the loneliness of the old show the suffering that egalitarianism inflicts on those who do not win. The superficiality of an egalitarianism, which in effect means equal opportunities for all to win and then ignores the inevitable losers. For all that the elite of India have become so spellbound by egalitarianism that they are unable to see any good in the only institution which does provide a sense of identity and dignity to those who are robbed from birth of the opportunity to compete on an equal footing. That opportunity is caste. So Mark Tully was a BBC correspondent for India and Gerald Hurd is also from an Indian Indologist. In his book, Man the Master, he calls Varanashram as organic democracy. The rule of the people who have organized themselves in a living and not a mechanical relationship where instead of all men being said to be equal, which is a lie, all men are known to be of equal value. Could we, but find the position in which their potential contribution could be released and their essential growth so pursued. So I have worked on preparing quite a, you could say elaborate, elaborate apologetic defense of the Indian tradition and the caste system. These are three quotes from it. And I would like to discuss each of these more unless, of course, you would like to respond to any of these first, then we can go further. No. So just for the benefit of my own and the viewers, what era, under which king, which particular dynasty do you think that, I’ll take out the word perfectly, but reasonably good working model of Varanashram was seen. One of the things about the Indian history was that the villages were self-sufficient. And that’s why to a large extent, who was ruling didn’t matter that much. There was basically, the villages were the sources of prosperity. The wealth was generated in the villages. India is primarily an agricultural land. Now the cities were the centers of prosperity. So the sources and centers are two different things. And whenever the invaders would come, they would usually plunder the cities and the rulership of the cities would change. But because India was such a big country and whoever would come and rule, they knew that they wouldn’t be able to restructure the management of an entire country or even if they were ruling one patch of the country. So they didn’t significantly alter the socio-economic structure in terms of the organization in rural society. Could we say that the British when they came here and started establishing their colony, their empire, did they find the caste system reasonably in working order? Well, there have been definitely discrepancies. I would say not discrepancies. There have also been atrocities which were done. But there are something which is systemic and there is something which is incidental. For example, there is a well-documented evidence that the Nasati, especially when it was done forcibly, was reprehensible. But even from the time of the Mahabharata, you see, Sati was not a forcible practice. And to some extent when the British opposed it, made it a law to ban it, that’s when some people tried to do it more because they said it’s our own cultural practice, how dare you interfere with it. So similarly, with respect to the caste system, although Buddhism and Jainism offered people India’s alternatives to get out of the lower caste status, and some people left. Subsequently, Islam came and Islam used the power of the sword as well as the opportunity that you could get out of the caste system. Some people left, but many did not. So yes, when the British came, there’s another quote I have, I could find it out, Macaulay said that I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen a single beggar, and not a single beggar across the country. And then he said these are the people who are so, the only way we can rule them is if we can voluntarily convince them of our superiority. Political power is not going to work. And that’s why he tried to anglicise the Indian mind. He said that we should have an educational system which will educate the Indians so that they start seeing our way of living as admirable and they start looking at their own social system as lower. So now all this is not at all to say that there hasn’t been discrimination, there has been terrible discrimination, but the point we’re making is it’s a matter of scale and perspective that while there was division, like these three quotes which I read out, basically there were benefits to the division of society and the evils that were there, they were not as much as have been portrayed. Discrimination and exploitation are simply facts of human nature. And if you want to compare that way, look at what the European colonialists did to the Native Americans in America, in North America, as well as to the Mayans, the Aztecs and others in South America. The Native Americans, they’re probably millions and millions and they are now a few thousands. So they were put in reservation colonies, and then eventually many of them were just eliminated. And 2000 year old civilization, the Mayan civilization was destroyed even without weapons of mass destruction within a few decades by the Spanish conquerors. So as compared to that, India, the lower caste, no matter how much they were discriminated against, still they survived and not only they survived, they have expanded, they are still there in a significant number. So all that I’m saying is we need to see things in perspective. In perspective, there was exploitation, there was terrible exploitation. But if you consider the very fact that wherever power has been acquired, there has been exploitation. Exploitation is not as bad as it is portrayed. It is as if sometimes the caste system is portrayed as this caste system represents the utter evil of the Indian traditional system because of which nothing from the Indian tradition should even be considered. Yeah, you gave me two solid points. One is that you answered my question and you actually took my question to a little bit of a higher level that my question also is rooted in the soil of Western way of looking at things as if, as I said, under which dynasty was this working, which king can be said to be practicing it perfectly, which era, which AD or BC or whatever. And you said that, well, the system was such that the king is actually not that important in the sense Prabhupada talks of farmers tilling their land and they see 500 soldiers rushing, galloping across the field, going in a particular direction. Two hours later, another party of marauders come after them and they ask them, did you see any soldiers go by? And they say, yeah, they went in that direction. So the tiller of the land has practically no interest, no say in what happens politically. He knows that one person may come, other may go. And if I have enough grains, I give my tax. If I don’t, I go to whichever is the ruler and I say that sir, my lord, you have to help me this time. So that time the king already has taken taxes for the last few years. The grain reserves are there. And he releases some of them for the benefit of the famine stricken or maybe that year the monsoons failed, whatever. So although it is next to impossible, I could say that because right now, even though as practicing Gaudiya Vaishnavas and we are trying to give this knowledge, we still think in terms of when Prabhupada was in America, Nixon was president, then Johnson, and then Kennedy was shot. And then under Clinton, this happened, then Obama, this happened. So just imagine how difficult it is for someone today to get out of this, I would say, today’s intellectual is shackled by current affairs and news. And unless we, in the words of Marx, who we quoted a few sessions ago, that workers of the world unite. The only thing you have to lose is your chains. So similarly, we have to say that transcendent list of the world unite. The only thing you have to lose is your chronologically affected shackles. I was just reading a book about American culture, it is called Sustainable Decadence. Sustainable Decadence. So what the author says, a very well argued case, he says that America’s future will not be as affected by political radicalism, no matter how far it goes, as it will be affected by how America deals with the increasing problems of substance abuse and mental health. Substance abuse and mental health. So there are certain issues which become highlighted in the media as potentially catastrophic. And some of them are, but most of them are not. So even in today’s world, is people’s mental health or is people’s self-destructive habits, are they going to change because of who is in power? Unlikely. Some people might get frustrated because of certain political changes and may use, get into abusive habits more. But basically, if we do not tie ourselves too much to the media and the media’s perception of reality, each human being has a small but significant power of agency to chart their own future. And if we go back to the original system, which is called as Varanashram, is that okay? Should I go back to the subject or you want to add something more? You said two points? One last point, then we go, let me take it back. I also want to go back to our social justice aspect of discussion. Yes. Since we talked about this equality, at least justice equal and satisfaction equal. You were doing different roles, different, you could be working in different sectors. There is a humorous clip from an old Charlie Chaplin black and white movie where he is unjustly put in prison. And so he’s not shown miserable there. He’s shown quite comfortable. And in fact, he does a heroic deed when some criminals try to break free. He prevents that from happening. And then he’s given a good citation. He’s given a release. And then he comes out. And the city is full of industrial unrest and strikes. And there is all kinds of uncertainty. He actually goes back and said, can I join again? Can I be allowed once again? So apart from the humor, which he was a master of slapstick humor, but many of his small clips, they kind of show a much more deeper emotional or even you can say a spiritual topic, which is still unanswered. That why would someone. So it’s almost like it is a competition between the advertised sense of freedom and security of being in a jail. And for a common man, it is surprising that the so-called like in today’s times, there is freedom to do any job. But then what is that any job for the best? Mostly it is working in a Walmart or working in Amazon warehouse. So, therefore, this justice system, where people are saying that what should give you fulfillment, what should be the contentment that nobody seems to touch that topic. The government says that will give you some benefit if you’re unemployed or will do some kind of work. And if you don’t love that work, if you don’t find fulfillment in life, that’s not my job. And I feel I’m not having the answers, but I’m just asking you that the feeling I have is that this Varnashram system. I prefer the word Devi so that we understand in the right context. This is what he said. He used the word Devi, Devi, Devi all the time. It means something which is rooted in wisdom. And the opposite is Asuric, where it is exploitation. So, for the sake of those who don’t want to know the Sanskrit or not, the wise caste system and the exploitationary caste system. So, the whole thing is obvious. So, I would now like you to explore more your previous point or address this. Are we going towards the decision of social justice in which we are originally? Yes, definitely. So, social justice basically has the idea that there is unfairness in society and sometimes it’s horrible and it needs to be resolved. So, that ambition, that aspiration is noble. How is it going to be actualized? Do we have across the world even today any country where we can say actually social justice has been implemented? So, certainly some countries are more successful than others. But overall, to go back to those three quotes, I would like to make one point based on each quote. So, can I go back to the quotes? Sure. So, here, here I heard you use the word organic democracy. And it talks about instead of all men being said to be equal, which is a lie, all men are known to be of equal value. Could we but find the position in which their potential contribution could be released and their essential growth so pursued? So, now what this means is that the American Declaration of Rights began with all men are equal. So, now equality is aspiration of the human heart. And it’s a noble aspiration. But at the same time, it’s not an objective fact. In fact, whatever material metric we use, people will come out unequal, whether it is height or weight or complexion or IQ or EQ, or whatever parameter we take for measuring people, whether it is drawing ability, eloquence, whether it is managerial ability, even artisan practical skills, whatever it is. So, at a material level, equality is not a self-evident fact at all. In fact, what is self-evident is inequality. So, in any classroom, it’s not that students are all equally endowed. In any cross section of people, even twins are not necessarily equally endowed, what to speak of a broader cross section of people. So, when we say people are equal, it is more of a metaphysical longing or a metaphysical hunch. By metaphysical, I’m not using the word necessarily philosophical, but something more in the physical. It’s not a physically evident fact. But it is more of an intuition that people should not be discriminated against. People should be treated equally. But how exactly is that equality going to come about? So, the problem is that everybody is not equally endowed. Different people have different talents. And rather than claiming artificially that people are equal, we focus on trying to help people find how that everybody can be of equal value if their contribution can be, if where they can contribute is discovered. So, before we go into the whole idea of discrimination, the fact is that if at all you want to talk about discrimination, nature itself is discriminatory. In the sense that some people are born with extremely high IQs. Some people are brilliant. Some people are outstanding. And some people are outstandingly forgetful. Some students read something once and they just remember it. Some people read it 50 times and still they can’t remember it. So, we could say at one level, by nature there is discrimination. And just by a declaration in the constitution, we cannot change the reality of nature. So, would it be possible that somehow there is a social system by which people are given a place to contribute equally according to their talents. So that everyone is valuable. Everyone is valued in their place. And the word organic democracy was used by Gerald Hurd. So, the example in the tradition for this is that of a body. Society being compared to a body. Maybe, would you like to elaborate that example? The head, arms, belly and legs being compared to the four varanas. Can you just check the quote again on the screen? Sure. So here, this Gerald Hurd, who is he? Is he an author? He is an author. He is an Indologist from the West, basically. I see. Just a quick context. In the history of Indology, before political… Devamruth Swami in his book, Searching for Vedic India, has a chapter called, When the West Loved India. Yeah. So, basically he says, there was a phase in the history of Indian studies before political and economic interests took over. Or rather, the economic interests were melded with the political desire for power. Before that, there was appreciation for many Indian things. But afterwards, it was lost. That could be a subject in itself. Okay. But there are many thinkers who have actually appreciated, and he is one among them. So, very strong. And I like the statement that all men are being said to be equal is a lie. Correct. Could we but find the position in which their potential contribution could be released and their essential growth so pursued. This strongly points out the direction of somebody guiding society. We are telling that, release the potential of the masses. Help them to pursue their essential growth. So, just like in our body, there is a brain, and I’ll come to the example of the different parts of the body being protected by different hormones. So, isn’t this the task of a Pandita, a learned person? Like you have think tanks. You have the entire COVID-19 thing guided by one Dr. Alexander Fauci. Dr. Anthony Fauci. Why? Well, he’s an author. His book which he authored is a textbook in most neurology classes and so on and so forth. So, I’m so happy that we have the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna explains, There couldn’t be any more diverse specimens found in history. That here we have Vidya Vinaya Sampanna. This person is not only profoundly wise, he’s also humble by training and culture. And then there’s a cow, which is a domesticated animal. There is an elephant, which is not a domesticated animal, but is a sign of wealth. And mostly an animal which is used for a draught animal, for hauling logs and whatever. Then we have a dog. Now, mind you, in today’s context, Westerners, there’s a family dog, the dog is a man’s best friend, and they have hoisted the dog on a much higher pedestal. But in India, even in common parlance, calling somebody a lucky dog may not be a very good compliment. Yeah, that’s true. The difference of culture. So, a dog and then a dog-eater. So, a dog-eater was considered one of the weakest elements of Northern society. He may not be even a member of society. He could be living on the fringe, living on the outskirts, not of a capital city, but some minor town or a nearby village or bordering a forest or a jungle. I’m just giving a cross understanding of these examples. Five models have been taken. But a pandita is said to be samadarshana. He sees all of them equally. How? Is he lying or is he imagining? He can lie and say that I treat all of them equally. Or he can be imagining that all of them equally. But he is supposed to be a pandita. So, the only thing common between all of them is the presence of a super soul, the presence of divinity in the form of a friend of the soul, the next door neighbor of the soul. And as you said, unless we bring society to the metaphysical level of seeing things, so we use metaphysics as an internal tool, intellectual tool, but externally we are still rooted in society. We follow the norms. And what do you mean by following the norms? That you don’t treat the Vidyavinaya Sampanna Brahman and the dog-eater by keeping them at the same level. In a ceremony, they won’t be seated next to each other just for the sake of equality. There was a management clip which was a favorite of mine. The hero, and he’s a bumbler, he always makes mistakes. He shakes hands with the liftman, calling him the CEO. And then he says, actually, I’m not the CEO, I’m just a liftman. He says, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. And then after two minutes, the actual CEO comes and he thinks he’s a liftman. So, the understanding is, what could be a bigger error? So, considering somebody who is not qualified and giving him a lot of qualifications, that is considered a minor error. But to think somebody who is the boss and call him a janitor, that’s a much more bigger level error. Although both of them are employed, both of them are serving in the same corporate office, but the scope of their work and everything is completely different. So, similarly, the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna doesn’t say that we do away with the elephants and do away with the dogs and do away with the dog eaters. They are there. They are for eternity. Till there is life on earth, there will be this kind of variety. So, when someone like George Heard says that they should be alive, they should be educated, who is that they? That they is somebody who is an adept, pundit, a wise person, especially what Krishna has given the Bhagavad Gita. So, to complete that analogy about the four limbs, the Vedas call the social body like a representation of the four varnas, where arms are the hands, I mean, the Kshatriyas are like the arms. And we also see this thing in English literature where weapons are called arms. Yeah, that’s beautiful. Okay, that’s true. What is the duty of the arm? The arm is supposed to protect the head. So, the head cannot have anything to defend itself. So, when a person tries to strike another one on his head, the arms come up. So, similarly, the head office, there are so many branch offices, but one office is called the head office because it thinks like a head. So, that’s like the Brahmins. And the Vaishyas are the productive element, the abdomen or the stomach. And what carries the whole society, what carries the physical society outside is the service sector. And they are the Shudras. And in one sense, none of them are considered better than others because I will not favor my left leg or my right leg. I won’t say that this is better than the other one. And at the same time, I know that the brain is more important because there could be a fracture of the legs, upset stomach and fracture. I can still function. But a neurism in the brain or brain dead, then even if the other three are very nice, strong, the social body is dead. Yeah, that’s true. So, there is division of labor, but there is not necessarily discrimination. In fact, I have seen some people who are critical of the caste system. They take this very metaphor and they say it’s insulting to say that the Shudras are compared to the legs. But that kind of criticism misses the point that the legs are also important. And if the legs are weakened, then the body can’t function as easily and normally as it could otherwise. So again, now there is, you could say there is equality in principle and there is equality in practice. Maybe a few years ago, I remember some of this incident is there in my memory that when the then American President Obama had come to UK. So he and the British Premier, John Major or whoever it was, they entered into the House of Commons and there was a guard over there. So as they were entering, Obama shook hands with the guard while going in and then the guard was a little surprised. He happily shook hands and then the guard looked at the British PM. Now he was very reluctant to shake hands with the guard. So this incident was shown as a difference of attitudes. Maybe the British still have a stuck-up attitude whereas the Americans have such a down-toward attitude toward everyone. Now while that might be true, still the fact remains that the guard is not going to go inside and discuss matters of international security. It is the President who is going to go inside. So in principle, everybody should be respected as a human being. There is some intrinsic worth for everyone. In practice, everybody has different roles. And now often with respect to the caste system, the discrimination is said to be that somebody is constantly relegated to a lower role without their getting an opportunity to have a higher role. So that is a valid objection. I would like to go to the next court to consider that. It is twofold. It is like somebody who is qualified and at the lower end is not allowed to come up. And the other counterpart is somebody who is so-called high-born and is sticking to his or her post even when clearly shown to be disqualified. Yes, that’s a good point. So that means now the legs can’t do the work which the hands can do or the head can do. But if the head is damaged, then you cannot just claim that this is the head and everybody else has to obey me. There are times when people are injured and they just walk to a certain place. It’s almost like the body takes over and takes them to safety and they don’t remember anything what I did. How did I get here? So the point is that the whole body has to cooperate. I have an example. I saw a small example that would you like to get operated in a hospital where once in a week the ward boys are taking charge of the operation theatre? It’s a classical example and I hope it is not implemented anywhere. But just to show that we treat everybody equally that if the ward boys say, why don’t you give us a chance to perform surgery? Okay, once in a week is your day. So all of the days the intellectuals perform their work and on one particular day just so that they should not get proud. At the same time, the lower sector should not be feeling left out. You also do surgery. They might do but then how many people will survive after that surgery? My God, that’s true. So that means there is a hierarchy based on competence and there could be a hierarchy based on exploitation. So there is no need to presume intrinsically that any hierarchy that is there will necessarily be based on exploitation. So in a surgical setting, there is this main surgeon who is giving orders to everyone, get this, do this, do this. Now that’s because the main surgeon is most competent over there and everybody has their role to play and everybody plays a valuable role. So first point is that what we discussed at this, the presumption that this is an unjust system is not necessarily true. Because if even if at least in principle, we understand that if people, different people have different abilities, and if they’re engaged accordingly, then they all can contribute equally. They’re not equal, but they can contribute equally. So now in today’s world, where we say that everyone is equal, but there’s a major problem that comes because of that. I’d like to explore another quote for this purpose. This is Mark Tully. The alienation of many young people in the West and the loneliness of the old show the suffering that egalitarian inflicts on those who do not win. The superficiality of an egalitarianism, which in effect means equal opportunities for all to win and then ignores the inevitable losers. So if it is glamorized, everybody can be an entrepreneur. Everybody can maybe become the CEO of a big startup in future. And as I said, the meritocracy brings about the belief that you could be the next Bill Gates by the age of 33. But then you realize that you are just at the middle of the middle rung of a corporate structure, and you are going past 40 and that leads to so much depression. So rather than having this presumption that everybody has equal opportunity, and then there’ll be losers because not everybody is equally endowed. But the only institution which does provide a sense of identity and dignity, those who are robbed from birth of the opportunity to compete on an equal footing. This is a profound point that birth itself discriminates. Now you can say society may discriminate people based on birth, but apart from that, birth itself discriminates in the sense that some people are born with a high IQ, some with a low IQ. So in today’s educational system, we could say that birth itself has discriminated against students, who say don’t have a very good memory, don’t have a very good analytic, especially math skills or whatever. So somebody, if everybody is told your success in life is to become an engineer or a doctor, and then everything else is seen like a consolation prize. You couldn’t do that. But instead, if there was social structure where everybody were given a trajectory, and you’re given support for pursuing the trajectory right from childhood. So somebody dreams to be an engineer and then they have to settle to be a clerk or something like that. But instead, if you are born in a particular family, that person has a career ahead of them. Somebody is born from a family of potters or of farmers or in royalty or in teachers and intellectuals. Then the whole anxiety of trying to find out one’s career and quite often struggling and going through insecurity and then eventually experiencing frustration, that whole anxiety could be avoided. This is not necessarily a perfect system or not necessarily always been perfectly implemented. But in principle, if you understand that this had its strength, that it sometimes said that too many options don’t actually bring freedom, they only bring anxiety. Yes. And that is what is happening, egalitarianism, everybody is equal, you can choose any profession that you want. And people might just get so crippled by anxiety and uncertainty that you don’t move forward. So a certain amount of predictability and structure to one’s life is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it could actually give a lot of mental stability for people to pursue their life journey. Any thoughts on this? Yeah, just one small thought that the preoccupation with understanding hierarchy and putting the whole blame on hierarchy, saying that the hierarchy in India’s society is the single most important cause of all of India’s wars, economic wars, social wars or whatever. So doing away with hierarchy, I see a lot more common with the Marxist way of looking at, they looked at politics like that, that please don’t try to see the situation and try to rectify it. Destroy it from the foundation. Yeah. And it was not just a kind of a fixation, it was an obsession with violence. And especially the violent overthrow of everything. And they realized to their peril that along with a few superficial negatives or whatever, they also, the society lost kind of the will to live that Marxism was trying to save workers from becoming robots. And by the way, the Russian word for work is rabat, rabat. So one who works is a rabat. And what does that mean, rabat? So the English language took the same word as a mechanical industrial worker, a soulless kind of a worker and then it became literally used for robots, that means a robot. Oh, okay. Just a mechanical thing which works. But otherwise, almost all Slavic languages, Russian, Czech have this word rabat, means to work. So any thoughts on this that this is seen even in today’s Indian intellectuals that very angry at the mere mention of the word hierarchy. Yeah. First destroy hierarchy. And you know, then what they discover that without hierarchy, you don’t have a system. That’s true. The rejection of hierarchy does not create equality. It creates anarchy. And now there is some extent, say, an incredible amount of ingratitude toward the existing structures. That’s a typical characteristic of leftist thought. Whatever we want, every system throughout history has had its problems. And we cannot have anything problem free, but there are many things that are working. And to reject something because of its flaws, do we have a working model of something else that works? Now, again, the point over here is that, yes, caste system, there was a hierarchy. And within that hierarchy, there were blemishes. But does that mean necessarily that the principle of hierarchy itself is bad? That presumption, it’s like, as they say, throw the baby out with the bathwater. So just, yes, we want to like, I think Prabhupada would give the example that remove the cataract in the eye. Don’t just pluck out the eye. So eye is what enables us to see. And basically when the eye sees, what does it do? It places things in a hierarchy. This is more important. This is what I have to pay attention to. That is not that important. I don’t have to pay that much attention to that. Suppose somebody is driving a car. The eye focus is OK. Those who are on the road and are about to come on my path, I have to focus on them more. And what are the kind of buildings in there? What kind of area I’m passing through? OK, that I can notice. But that’s not the foremost importance. So I think for doing something as simple as driving a vehicle, we need to place our observations in a hierarchy of importance. So like that, and somebody who can’t place things in a hierarchy, that person cannot function properly. In fact, I read one psychological definition of insanity. So insanity is the failure to place things in their proper hierarchy. That means somebody hears something has happened far away. Oh, this may happen to me. And they become paralyzed. They hear if somebody got a heart attack. What if I had a heart attack? And they can’t function after that. So everything that we do requires some level of hierarchical arrangement of our perceptions. And what applies at an individual level also applies at a social level. That we have to have some kind of hierarchy for society to function. And ironically, those communists who are those leftists who say that hierarchies are bad and they have to be destroyed, eventually they end up demanding the creation of even more rigid hierarchies where they are at the top. So, for example, nowadays, political correctness is such that anybody who makes one politically incorrect statement, they are treated like a pariah, they are treated like untouchable. And who decides what is politically correct? It is those who are leftists, they decide that. So as I think George Orwell said famously that all people are equal, communism, but some people are more equal than others. You can see that in the lifestyle of almost all the communist rulers of Eastern Europe, Soviet Union included. Most of them had a city residence and then a hunting lodge and right from Tito to Romania’s Ceaușescu, this Romanian person, Ceaușescu, he embarked on a 1500 or so room palace called the People’s Palace. And it was his own personal residence, by the way. That’s such a stinking level of hypocrisy. Exactly. So, therefore, even in Russia, I mean the Soviet Union, for the common masses would be the government managed department stores. And there would be the GUM, G-U-M, GUM stores, which were only for the party elite. Oh, so I think this is an important point which you would forward it. Hierarchies are required. And in principle, these hierarchies did serve a purpose. So the third quote, I’ll just quickly go to that. It adds one more point to it. That, OK, so this is the point I started with. So now how did the caste system provide stability at a social level? So it makes him, I’m going to the middle of the quote here, it makes him at the outside a member of a corporate body. It protects him through life from the canker of social jealousy and unfulfilled aspirations. It ensures him companionship and a sense of community with others in like case with himself. The caste organization is to the Hindu, his club, his trade union, his benefit society, his philanthropic society. Now, what this quote emphasizes is that caste, rather than creating division, it also created connections. When we say that everybody is equal, what happens is people just get atomized and lost in the vastness of the of the cities and the concrete jungles and the corporate giants. People just feel like insignificant cog in the wheel. But if there is a village, there is a town, there is a city in which, say, there are people who are of a similar profession and they all are together as a group, then there is a sense of community that comes over there. And that sense of community becomes, as I said, their insurance. So, yes, there is division of society. But the division also creates a sense of cohesion. And if there is no division, there is no cohesion. So, one aspect of leftist thought is the rejection of national boundaries. Why should we have? All of humanity is one. But now the current COVID crisis has shown how important national boundaries are. Because you have to galvanize resources. It has to be done. It cannot be done at the amorphous international level. It has to be done at the national level. So, similarly, within society, when there are divisions, that also brings cohesion within each identified distinctive unit. So, people from each caste would come together and they would have a sense of belonging. They would have a sense of a place within overall society. And then they would speak and they would have their representatives speak. During the coronation of Ram, or rather when Dashrath wanted to pass over the power to Ram, at that time he called an assembly to consult and inform. And it is said that along with the courtiers, there were representatives from all the four Varanas. And all of them had a voice over there. And they all said that, yes, this is bravo, this is an excellent decision. Ram is eminently qualified to do this. So, they were all seated in their own places, their own areas. And the idea was that this brought a sense of cohesion, which is often quite often overlooked in the emphasis on the discrimination, the division that happened because of it. Any thoughts on this? Yeah. I primarily am kind of very much attached to this concept from the first canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, where the boy Shringi, a brahmana boy, he curses a Kshatriya king. And Shri Prabhupada makes a point in that purport that there are divisions, there are hierarchies. But what exactly is the hallmark of the age of Kali is the animosity between the Varanas. Beautiful. Yes. So, this animosity, this particular incident kind of sowed the seeds of animosity. So, whenever I see somebody superior, I can have two or three kind of emotions coming in my mind. Oh, this person is endowed. Oh, I don’t have what this person has. Thirdly, can I make a try? If I can do something better in these two, three fields, can I join him? What exactly do I need to do? Whom should I take guidance from in order to reach that level? Now, these I can say, just correct me if I’m wrong, these are like normal sentiments. But when I see someone and I only get the thought of wrecking his Mercedes vehicle, or shooting him, or assuming that because he is high, he necessarily has to be evil. And because I am low, that is proof enough that I am good. And therefore, I need to take the law in my own hands. And so what justice means is, justice doesn’t mean I work in some way to pacify myself, or if possible, try to achieve what this person has. But justice simply means I remove all the paraphernalia which surround this person’s achievement and ruin him or destroy the symbols of power, as they say. And this is exactly what Marxists systematically did. Most countries, they had some previous artifacts, some books or something. For example, in Cambodia, just because it is a low-income country and doesn’t matter much in today’s history terms, the regime was called the Khmer Rouge, the Red Khmers. And Pol Pot was the assumed name of the leader. And he said from today, it is year zero. That means all that of what has happened in our past is of no relevance. Year zero, then year one, then year two. And surprisingly, I mean, after one and a half or two million people killed, it was the worst political genocide of the 70s and 80s. He said that because inherently we are a superior race. So can you imagine that they don’t have anything to show the world, no technological, no economic or political thought or anything. And they were thinking as if they are the superior race. And that’s why they had to start everything from ground zero. And basically what exactly you described, destroy all hierarchies. And anybody who could count up to, say, 500 or 1,000 or was a poet or a journalist, anybody who could think was seen as a first fallen enemy of the state, they should all be eliminated. So although we hear Hitler’s way of thinking himself superior and killing Jews and other things, almost everybody takes turns today thinking they are superior. Everybody is of the same. Kaliyuga seems to be a merry-go-round. What is that musical chairs kind of a thing where there are seven chairs and eight people. So obviously when the music stops, one is to be eliminated. And they are all of the same ilk, but those who remain, they feel they are superior. Yes, that’s true. So now going back to that point about equality and otherwise, if we have a pendulum… Just a small point. Could you please shed some light on what Sidney Lowe says the last four things. I like that quote. I just am feeling how it can be translated into society today. The caste becomes this person’s club. It’s trade union. Have you pondered on that? Club, trade union, benefits society and philanthropic society. How is it possible? My understanding of that is that people from each caste feel the responsibility of taking care of others of their caste. So when it creates a cohesion, then it helps them get a sense of community with others. So while at one level the government might go to the king for getting some charity, but the other understanding is also that this person belongs to our group. So let’s take care of him. So in that sense, his idea is that it’s the club, it’s the philanthropic society. So rather than simply going out to someone who is a money lender or somebody from whom you have to ask for charity. Now, of course, depending on how wealthy or poor one is, one might not be able to give financial charity. But it’s just like I have heard and read about this that say, if there is the house of a British lord or someone and says one worker gets injured over there. Then everybody else pitches in to do the work of that worker and they take care of that work. Why? Because they understand that we are all one unit. And today I take care of that person and tomorrow they will take care of me. So all these people are working. They have a sense of cohesion and that is important. Now we might focus on the fact that none of these workers can ever become the lord. Well, that is true. That may be true in that particular context. But there being workers together as a unit, there are cases, you know, for example, there are say British lords who had the same butler. The butler’s son would become the next butler. So there was a certain amount of stability in that. You could use the word stability or stasis. Stasis has a negative connotation. Stability has a positive connotation. So the idea of upward mobility, which is so prominent in today’s world, this was not there so much in the past. And we could call that as a deficiency. But this fantasy that anybody can rise to any height in society, a few people do that, but it also sends, it also keeps the remaining in a constant state of dissatisfaction. Yes. So if I was thinking of, can I move ahead to the next point now? Yeah, you finished the three quotes, no? Yeah, the quote. You want to add something on that quote? How you thought it might be like a club or a philanthropic society? Any thoughts on that? No, no. Similar thoughts what you said. Okay. So now if you consider pendulum, there is the capitalism, communism, and then we have the caste system. Now, I would like to use the word varanashram, but we’ll come to that a little later. Let’s keep it caste system at this stage, despite the negative connotation. So capitalism says that in presumption, everybody is equal. But if it’s a meritocratic society, but the idea is let the market determine everyone’s position. Yeah. Let the market be the sole determiner of everyone’s position. And communism says, basically, let the state determine everyone’s position. The state will decide, you will be doing this job, you will be doing this job. Whereas the caste system says, well, nature has already determined your position. You just act according to it. So that nature has created particular kind of dispositions with a particular set of abilities and inabilities. And if we can find a position that is harmonious with that, that will be good. So the real problem within varanashram comes up when there are misfits. Like you said, the misfits can be of two kinds. Somebody is placed in a lower position. Now here we are not using lower in a judgmental sense, but in a functional sense. So somebody is placed in a lower position when they can work for a higher position. And somebody sticks to a higher position, even when they are not capable of functioning at that higher position. So now how would we, the real challenge with any kind of system like this would be, how to ensure that people are in that position? In the Mahabharata, there is a discussion between Nahusha and Yudhishthira. And Nahusha asks Yudhishthira. Nahusha is a king who has now become, who has been cursed, who has become a snake. And now he is, the snake’s body is going to be released if his questions are answered. So he is asking Yudhishthira questions. So at that time he asks, what is the determiner of caste? And then Yudhishthira gives an elaborate answer. And then he says that ultimately it is one’s qualities. It is one’s qualities as manifested through one’s behavior. So he says that traditionally birth itself was a fair determiner of one’s qualities. Because in today’s world, birth is seen to be simply a genetic accident. That a man and a woman chose to unite. And then based on the way they united, then their genes came together and gave a progeny. Your isoprogeny. But within the Vedic worldview, it’s understanding the soul who reincarnates. And based on the disposition of the uniting couple, a soul of a similar disposition is attracted into their womb as their child. So a Brahmana and a Brahmani, those who are intellectuals, they would attract the soul of intellectual disposition. Somebody who is a merchant, they would attract the soul of a merchant disposition. So therefore, it would be that people would be, by birth, geared toward the kind of social vocation that they were best suited for in future. And it’s not just birth, it’s also they would get the upbringing. So then that upbringing also provides a head start. Like somebody is born in the family of doctors, and then they are innately inclined to be artists. And throughout their childhood and youth, they have the training of being a doctor and then they become artists. How do I do that? So actually, if we understand or at least theoretically accept the idea that there is an evolving soul and a soul’s position in this life is not merely an accident, then a system where a soul is born in a particular family and the soul is trained for a particular vocation may well give that soul a head start rather than being a discrimination at all. Yeah. Any thoughts on this further? No. So I would like to summarize. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the real problem came up when there’s an entitlement mentality and that’s what got lost. So do you think we will need another session to discuss how Varanashram could be applied in today’s world? When we talk about Vedic Varanashram and Devi and Asuri? Yeah. So then we can focus more on only the solutions part. Yes. We have discussed the symptoms of the disease. We tried to find out the cause of the disease. But we also need to discuss the remedies. Yes. So I think we’ll continue that in the next session then. So I’ll summarize. We basically discussed about the caste system and while the caste system has been villainized, it had its utility, it had its strength. So one of the main, if you want to know its strength, it is the very fact that Indian society has been so resilient despite millennia of aggressions and sacking. So it was resilient and that was because the caste system provided a place for people to function in. So while there has been discrimination, the extent of the discrimination is often exaggerated. Discrimination and exploitation are inherently possibilities in any human system of hierarchy. And other places like North America and South America, it was much worse. It was not just discrimination, it was almost extermination. So in India, not only the resilience is there, people continue to survive and expand. So we discussed three main virtues of the caste, of social division according to caste. One is it rejects the presumption that everybody is equal, but focuses on helping people make an equitable contribution by finding their position. So the idea that everybody is equal simply creates a lot of tension because equality is not a self-evident physical fact. It is more of a metaphysical longing whose translation into reality requires a lot of thought and planning. Hierarchies based on competence are not only required, not only not bad, but they are indispensable for functioning in society. And the second point of how it was equal or how the caste system was beneficial was that it helped people to give them a sense of identity and value, even if birth had discriminated against them. So it is, if you consider an education system in which IQ is essential for success, then birth itself discriminates against many students. So rather than having one definition of success for all people, you have a social structure where there are different definitions of success for different people and train everyone accordingly. And the third part was that while the focus has always been on discrimination because of the caste system, there has also been a sense of cohesion within each caste, where people from within one caste come to help each other because they know we all belong to the same social group. And rather than let the market determine the fate of people or let the state determine the fate of people, acknowledge that nature has already determined the starting point of everyone and then give them the best launching pad accordingly. The caste system becomes problematic when those in lower position are not allowed to rise up or those who are high up, who are in a higher position without the qualification, stick on over there. So the caste system often maybe solve the problem of individual and social engagement in a way that proved to be resilient for very long and how it went wrong and what was to be done about it, we’ll discuss in a future session. Did I leave anything out? No. Thank you. Thank you.

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Thank you for joining today. I was thinking we could discuss today on the topic of social justice and spiritual wisdom and we could talk about this in broadly three topics, three sections. What is right about social justice and where the drive for social justice sometimes can make you deficient and how spiritual wisdom can complement it.

Okay. So the word social justice is different from just justice or individual justice. Normally we may use the word justice in the sense that if somebody has done something wrong to me and I get some reparations from a court or so that would be specifically with justice.

We talk about just in the sense that there is a verdict that comes out or a system that is there is fair. If I want to go to university there's no discrimination against me to get admission in the university. Now social justice holds the idea that individually sometimes people cannot get what they deserve even if they try as much as they as much as they try if the system itself is rigged against them and social justice in one sense is strongly opposed to the Western idea of meritocracy where the idea is that if you work hard then you will succeed but here the idea is that rags to riches stories are there but social justice holds that they are so rare as to not be relevant for most people and those in fact rags to riches stories are often touted so that any system systemic change is avoided that so that means if somebody is born in poverty somebody is born in the locality where there is high crime and there is a lowly education available then if you work hard enough you will succeed so the endeavor is left primarily on the individual and social justice holds that this is unfair to the individual because sometimes even with your best efforts society is unfair and rigged against you then you will never succeed so there it will almost impossible for you to succeed and that's why so the idea is we need to do some social engineering society itself has to be modified at a collective level and often it is at the level of political change done by the government so that justice can be established okay yeah any thoughts on this is this connected with the Greek thinkers and their idea like I mean the British Plato Aristotle how things to be governed how a city should be organized how they should be opportunities for everyone to express themselves is it something to do with that particular soil of thought yes partially in some ways I think Plato's Republic was the primary book for Western administrative systems and many things have evolved from there in general in modern times social justice has arisen from Marxist ideology social justice is often associated socialism which is a milder form of Marxism Marxism so Marxism had the idea that now Marxism communism socialism they're somewhat different Marx was more of the political theorist communism was what was implemented and many people say that it was a misrepresentation or misapplication of what Marx thought and then there is socialism which is still considered widely appealing the idea that there are the world is divided to hierarchies there are haves and have-nots there are the wealthy the powerful the influential and there are the deprived so society is arranged this way and that needs to be fixed and so broadly it's more from a political left side of of the communism and that kind of ideology from what I understand okay maybe you can go forward so that when we come to the point where we okay or we make solutions we can compare that with the situation India that's true yes okay so now in social justice while if while certain the facts of social justice are true that it's not always possible for an individual to fight against the whole system and rise so there is this this one thinker who is who gives a thought experiment he says that suppose before you were born you had the facility to wander around the earth in outer space and choose where would you like to be born in which family which country which society so what would you want and are there certain places certain settings which you would not want to be born in then this is that is where it's indicative that some amount of social justice is needed that there is discrimination so there is disparity in society and that needs to be fixed so we might want to be born in a place where broadly there is good education there is a good medication there is good just system of justice and there is an overall possibility for growing in your career and in your life so are there places where we would not want to be born that that's one thought exercise to drive home the reality that there is disparity and that needs to be fixed so once we feel okay this is where I would not want to be born then okay that means something is wrong over there and that needs to be fixed so that's how we can develop some amount of empathy for this now the second point I my understanding is that now it goes wrong in both in its theoretical foundation and its practical application so in practical application if you look at it we do know that the attempts for social engineering led to disaster in in Soviet Russia and in China in Soviet Russia especially they were the after the Bolshevik Revolution all those who are wealthy farmers they were destroyed so my many of them were sent to the gloves which were like the locks which were like the concentration camps in Soviet Russia and then their wealth and their property was given to the poor people and especially in Ukraine or there was one of the biggest man-made famines in the night in the late 1920s because all the wealthy farmers who were they were in some ways hard-working they knew how agriculture worked and they knew what to so and how to manage it they were all either killed or sent to the concentration camps and people who were incompetent they were they were given the wealth and property they just couldn't manage it so basically there is the presumption over here that the victims are virtuous that those who are deprived are are good people and they are deprived and those who are successful are bad people they're bad because they must have exploited they must have gamed the system and now this is there are we could say in human society there are good people and bad people but Dostoevsky the prominent Russian thinker he said that so that communism draws this line or communism or the idea ideology underlying social justice draws this line very neatly between those who are powerful and those are powerless and the powerful are good and the powerless are evil however he says this line between good and evil it goes through every human heart and that means that people who are deprived people who are in a difficult situation it could be that it because of their vices they are there and people who are successful and powerful it could be because of certain virtues that they are there by virtues it's not necessarily moral ability it's not necessarily morality it could also be simply ability somebody just good at doing certain things somebody's not good at doing certain things so hi so the the fish the default suspicion of hierarchy itself could be a problem in social justice it's like if you want to cook food and you want to eat we have 10 people in the house then there might be one or two who are good at cooking and if they are in charge and they tell okay you you cut the vegetables you go and buy this and you do this we say you are the boss you're just sitting here and you're just mixing a few things you are telling everyone to go and go and do all the hard work but no if they are good at it that hierarchy is good for everyone because if the food that is cooked is good everybody will get the good food but if you say let everybody cook equally but then not every if there are five people instead of ten and you will cook five items not everybody might be equally good so the default suspicion of hierarchy often makes social justice go over the top in terms of its implementation the first implementation is let's challenge and destroy all hierarchies and this is permeated and this could be a whole different subject but this is permitted no gender theory where quite often the women are portrayed as the victims and men are by default the exploiters this is even permeated into parenting where it is said that parents are sometimes abusive to the children which is true it happens sometimes but the children need guidance and mentoring so the idea of complete coddling of children and almost no disciplining of children because parents are in a powerful position children are powerless position so this default suspicion of hierarchy can lead to a completely dysfunctional society and that is what has happened broadly speaking in in communist countries where social justice attempts were made at a societal level and the result was disastrous does not that by the social engineering alone society could be brought to a proper state other it led to discrimination exploitation and destruction in a scale that has not been seen otherwise in human history a hundred million people were killed in the communist governments and one argument which is given often here is that oh it was misimplemented the problem is that okay that Stalin or Lenin where people were vicious people but the problem is in this system okay if there is a minute this virtuous person that virtuous person could be killed and somebody else whose wishes will come up and if there is ideological justification for the social engineering then it may often very well go by that person's biases and whims of you know who are to be considered the exploiters and who are to be considered the exploited and anybody who is considered to be opposing one could be called as the opposite opponent of the state which is actually out to do good and we see this happening today now often those who favor social engineering are people on the left and they are claimed to be liberal they claim themselves to be liberal but often they are extremely illiberal toward anyone who opposes them and so liberals are illiberal towards anyone who is not liberal so that is where social justice often goes into a into excesses the effort for social justice can go into excesses any thoughts on this two thoughts one is that this thing that poor are poor because they have done something wrong and we see in the teachings of Jesus Christ this thing of blessed are the poor so they inherit the kingdom of God there or they are chosen favorites of the Lord so this seems to have something of a kind of a point to stabilize society during that time because Jesus was preaching not to intellectuals not to elite he was preaching to people who are oppressed and you need to give them some sort of confidence that what's happening to you is actually not bad you can still rise from this current state that is one point secondly as you told about in China and Russia in the previous Soviet Union how the rich landlords they were called kulaks and kulaks is actually it became a bad word they made an they made every kulak an enemy of the state and enemy of the people so something similar was attempted in India but not with force and not with the kajal or not with the ak-47 but we know about how we tried to persuade the hearts of rich landlords that on your own you give something so that you can improve the condition of the poor and it was called the Bhutan movement and the slogan was Jai Jagat so there is something like a movement there is something like a mantra to chant but the Jai part was just for this whole planet Jai Jagat unfortunately or whatever most of the land which was something like I don't exactly remember but about 500,000 acres were given to these volunteers when they toured all of India they would go they would hold meetings and they would then exhort the rich people that from your heart no force from your heart all they got was barren land was barren land donated or yeah barren land donated oh okay so mostly that was given to I don't know what kind of disbursement method was devised but practically we don't see we don't it was not a successful experiment at all so point is at the bare point of a bayonet this kind of social justice doesn't work and by kind words doesn't work that's interesting I once saw a slogan outside a church you know give God what is right not what is left sometimes when it is not given wholeheartedly when it is in the what is the 17th chapter the third verse over there is that when it is done with resentment and charity is given with resentment then that is charity then in the more the passion or ignorance yeah and that doesn't work that's a good point so if if people's hearts are not really into it they will it will not work so that is true so one side is that in terms of its social excesses you brought that point that in some ways social justice movement considers that religion perpetuates social injustice because religion is often an instrument for the status quo to be maintained that you are told if you live a virtuous life then you will have a good life in the future and in the future world in the next life so you live a good life means that you don't create disruption in society you just do the duties of where you are and whatever role you have in society and Marx had the idea that throughout human history injustice unfair system in society were maintained by these kind of religious justification of existing inequities for example the aristocracy what we call the royalty or and there was a royalty and there was a gentry so that the general people were there in the medieval medieval world so the idea was all those were aristocrats they practically never worked they would just have their seasons where they would meet potential partners and they would have parties and they would and they would just have their land holdings by which they would get money and they would simply enjoy life so if one was born among the aristocracy then the life was great if one was a lord or a lord or whatever but if somebody was born among common people the lot was very difficult so this that the social existing social order was a divine dispensation since by this idea the social injustice was justified and perpetuated and this critique is extended further within the Indian context because in the in the Indian tradition the idea of reincarnation is accepted and this is their idea that if somebody is born in a deprived condition that is because of what you have done in your past lives so it's because of your karma you are born poor you are born disempowered you're born deprived and you have to live out the way you are so both from the way of future not in this life you can't move it in the next life you can move and if you are here it's unfair so Christianity had the idea that it was a divine dispensation but they say Hinduism had the idea it's your own karma because of which you are here and either way religion becomes a deterrent for social justice and it becomes a justifier of the unfairness in society so any thoughts on this as we were discussing this prior to our recording I would classify the religion which Marx was against or anybody else as the as that side of organized religion which was corrupted to put it more clearly because we also see and then maybe we'll talk about it in our solution part that there existed at least we see through the pages of Vedic text state where disparity inequality and some people are highly skilled some are not so skilled all existing harmoniously where nobody was a exploiter and nobody was a perpetrator nobody was a victim that existed it just requires that bit of spiritual training as to how we can do that so the idea that I was born and you talked of the nobility many of them felt that if we bring these people to somewhat better level then who will serve us so any point of equality was always put down very harshly and then like this is the kind of thing where with every passing decade or every passing century the divide became more and more solidified and Marx was not alive to see what his teachings have done but through his pen he told the world that unless there is a violent over of the entire system you cannot have justice because these people are all rotten to the core and they would always look at the society this is one thing the Vedic texts tell us to see society not to the current lens of just a 21st century or 20th or 19th or 18th we get so many lenses we can use certain things other means cannot be used all the great Acharyas have always said that this is good but not practical today so the combination of rigid religion but corrupted by elite and then the social system where some people had to be kept down because otherwise they were they fear that who will who will drive the carriage who will sow the cut the harvest and so this is kind of the no compassion no mercy is also at the heart of the elite behaving like that yes so you know this is a this is a very important point which you made that the vice that can corrupt corrupt say the powerful the wise that can corrupt the powerless which will make them do self-destructively say but that same wise can also corrupt people who are within religious hierarchies also and when that happens then that can lead to the abuse of the religious ideas for justifying iniquity but if we consider within communism or within social engineering there is no system to itself foster virtue or to cure to remove vice and unless that is done so vice could be selfish this could be a self-destructive habits where people are smoking and drinking and things like people are introduced substance abuse and then that is terrible so no matter how much they have helped they cannot actually help themselves because of those are destructive habits so unless there is some way to foster nurture virtue and to remove vice any system can fall apart and I would say that this is where a spiritual wisdom can play a part so I would like to show a four-point diagram four quadrant diagram is this visible now yes so if there is no social justice and there is no spiritual wisdom then life becomes unbearable because I can see the blatant unfairness that is all there all around me and I think why should I be the victim and this can lead to violent the violent uprising and destructiveness so this unbearable now we have to get out from there now once you get out where do we go if there is only social engineering that means we bring out social justice but there is no spiritual wisdom then the problem can happen in two ways say in any society there will have to be for functioning some hierarchy even if we those who are those are sometimes called a social justice warriors they for example hold the idea that society needs to be rearranged and who is going to rearrange it they will rearrange it they have the wisdom they have the matured they have the compassion and what happens you know till they become powerful and everybody else becomes powerless so this is unsustainable I'll talk about each of these later but briefly and you can also add in this that sometimes those who become powerful in doing social engineering they might develop voices or they might be succeeded by someone who have concealed their why still now and then they can brutally exploit society and the other hand so through social engineering alone if the people in general who are benefited it may well happen that somebody instead of they were poor why were they poor because they they do substance abuse and they were not able to hold a job and then you you say that okay you will get money from the government as welfare because you have life has been unjust to you but then they might just live like that and not actually do anything to improve their lot so from both ways it could be unsustainable and this could be there could be a critic of this which could be discussed now spiritual wisdom with social justice it at least makes life bearable by bearable okay that even if we consider just the Christian worldview okay there is a better future for me if not in this life in the next life so I can accept my lot and from what I have read about medieval times although there was blatant this blatant huge difference between say the nobility and general people but it is not that say if there was a Lord who had a butler and the butler and the servants it is not they are constantly resentful and envious they accepted their place in society and they were relatively they were able to live that way now if we consider the Vedic perspective of there is a previous life also so rather than only considering that by way of previous life you are born into certain level of poverty and certain level of wealth but that sense of karma can give us some acceptance of it now I would like to differentiate between acceptance and passivity or acceptance and resignation that this is how it is I accepted now this is how I am meant to for the rest of my life that would be resignation and that is unhealthy but at least spiritual wisdom has the virtue of as the strength of making one's condition bearable yeah but now if we had both spiritual wisdom and social justice together that would be sustainable in the sense that people wouldn't just be focusing on social engineering but we could say also on spiritual engineering spiritual engineering means that act everybody actively works to cultivate wise and to curb virtue in their own sorry to cultivate virtue and curve wise in their own hearts both the powerful and both the empowered and the disempowered and then society can be more society can be transformed and sustained both so I just want to add a small point here that the sustainable thing basically we talk of power we talk of privileges when the lower echelons of society where they don't have power therefore there is resentment and there is animosity or there could be outright revolutionary attitude when when this class or these classes they see that somebody in the upper echelon in two scenarios scenario one they exhibit the power and that power is visible that power is palpable it can be felt so it is not like people want to do away with power but actually they want it for themselves because the whole idea is unless I have power I won't be happy unless I have power I won't be creative I won't be satisfied so when they see a voluntarily giving up of the power and privileges by the elite at the proper time so they come to know that this power and privilege doesn't define this person and I can't see any more example any better example than the behavior of a spiritually evolved personality like in my small experience what I hear about Prabhupada but I can say that for about any spiritually evolved person for example one Hong Kong incident where the devotees were not very financially resourceful but they still took on rent a suite at a very expensive down the last floor of a skyscraper hotel and the reporter came and started asking questions about who are you what are you doing what is the purpose of your spiritual movement and after a few questions few pleasantries he came to the main thing which he had in his mind that he said look we are talking of spirituality and education and everything and we are sitting in this plush suite of a skyscraper hotel and Prabhupada was quick to reward that I can have this dialogue in a open field in India but are you willing to come there so the point is someone spiritually evolved is finally focused on the transmission of the message the transmission of you talked about spiritual wisdom so when somebody is focused only on the wisdom part then they may use power use financial resources use privilege to be accessible to whoever they want to and if that purpose is not served they are willing to give it up relinquishing so like we have the French Revolution equality liberty and fraternity hmm egalitarian comes from the French word egalité so how to dispense social justice or well they were not that term at that time but how to dispense justice at least do away with the nobility all the crooks all the people who have amassed well that our expenditure expense do away with them how do we shoot so many hundreds and thousands or how do you kill them in a way that it will be will mark kind of a it will make a big impact so the guillotine was invented the name of the fellow was guillotine and the instrument also was called the guillotine it stopped only with the head of the revolution Robespierre that only when he was finally guillotine that thing stopped so initially it was known criminals then it was unknown criminal then it became anyone who's any connection any connection with nobility so this this kind of thing the world has seen that those who claim power on the basis of injustice emitted out to them grab that power and exhibit the same arrogance whom they were fighting which we were fighting yeah that's a very powerful example of French Revolution because it led to indiscriminate bloodshed and somehow that lesson was not learned in some ways by history and that was repeated so the French Revolution probably the unrest was there for maybe 10-15 years and Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte came up after that yeah and again in some sense there was hierarchy but Napoleon Bonaparte recognized the cause underlying the French Revolution and then he tried to although he was the king and in some ways his system was his system was similar to the earlier system but he tried to institute meritocracy that it's not that by birth you will become a become a lord or a commander or a leader in my government you can do it by merit also some kind of but now that same thing was tried for 60-70 years after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and China and I think you quoted was it Gorbachev who said that this should have been done in a small area before yeah I told you about that so now this this is a very so when you mentioned about the willingness to give up power if required yeah that will come only when there is understanding that there is some gain greater than power some gain greater than power some gain greater than worldly power or worldly pleasure and that is where spiritual wisdom is required so without spiritual wisdom the sooner or later the lure of power can become come irresistible and even if say there's one there could be people who say who seek social justice right now they might be genuinely compassionate that they genuinely want a change in society however the problem is that not everybody is like that and sooner or later when that power comes up that power will be taken over so one place I took two thoughts and that one is that in some ways social justice and social engineering tries to get the state to play God the state is a Frederick Nietzsche he had this idea that when the death of God happened or he said it has happened that God is dead now in the sense that there is no rational basis for accepting the idea of God he said as a result of this two things may happen one is obsessive individualism or totalitarianism so if there is no God then either I I become God and I decide whatever I want to do I'll do it or the state will become God some kind of totalitarian regime will come up so to some extent when the idea of meritocracy is taken to its extremes it is like I am the determinant of my destiny so basically I am God and I can make the world the way I want it to be and community so now if we can broadly associate meritocracy with capitalism then the opposite of meritocracy society is unmeritocracy to say it's unfair so then communism has the idea that the state will be God and the state will rearrange everything in such a way that that is everything is benevolently and equitably arranged but the problem is that if someone tries to be God it all it's extremely high probability that basically they will end up becoming the devil yeah because that power can corrupt corrupt in a very dangerous way so when we think that we can shape people's destinies that oh that means the idea is the way the world is it's unfair and if you say it is because of God we will change it either I am God that is meritocracy or the state is God that is that is that is social engineering so the so either way the key thing is yes society has to be changed then the injustice and definitely there is unfairness and there is exploitation that has to be corrected at the same time it is God whose presence in the heart the invocation of genuine spirituality that can actually transform the heart and then there in the virtue and when virtue is fostered within the heart that's when the social justice can be sustained so if we have spiritual leaders who who manifest virtue and who inspire others to manifest virtue then that is something which can take social justice to a level that is sustainable otherwise it will be basic it will be problematic it will will create a revolution as we say that there's a resolution revolution dissolution but no solution Prabhupada would say that so any any thoughts on this this is what came about like long ago one student told me that isn't Krishna ashamed of saying so many big big high Philippine things about himself in the Gita like I have never seen somebody without being embarrassed talking about himself in such a blatant way so I tried to explain but of course he was not that satisfied so the minute that happened so once I was talking and I said do you know that in the Rajasuya sacrifice whose job was to wash the feet of every guest who came in the pavilion and they said Krishna did that so he said so I said what do you mean so normally somebody who is accused of being full of himself as they say also has the the courage or the willingness to give up that power all the time and do such a simple menial thing like wash the feet of everybody who was coming to visit the Rajasuya sacrifice now since this is our Kali Yuga age we also have Machiavelli our Italian philosopher friend who would say that in case you want to have that power sometimes you should show that you are willing to relinquish it just to pacify the masses in your heart you have no desire to do that so there are a few countries where they are under totalitarian regimes and the dictator every two or three years he says I think I should resign and then the whole cabinet who are nothing but his stooges they all make a whole melodramatic performance saying no please don't you are the father of the nation you are this you're that and then it's just all right if you insist I'll stay on so not only like we see Genghis Khan or Taimur or Attila the Hun these people could be tyrants like being a tyrant is a 24 by 7 job they never have any humility they have never shown any humility what is more dangerous is the apparent show of humility where you in the the intent of latching on to power is still there so for a common person like I would say from my own point of view I am attracted to pomp and luxury and celebration so the Soviet Union what they would have is they would divert the attention of people into sports and then they would tell the world that because we earn so many medals therefore there is justice people are happy everybody is contented otherwise how can you have such physically fit people look at our sports record it says for itself we are superior we are breeding a superior race of human beings under the socialist banner when the whole system collapsed there were so many state-run laboratories who were using their sports stars their athletes as guinea pigs for a higher and higher and higher variety of anabolic steroids which would improve their performance in fact there is one lady from East Germany she took she was a world record holder of something like three or four Olympics in succession she won the gold medal in the women's athletes and the kind of medicines which were given to her possibly by the state made her realize that she's actually changing her gender oh my god yeah it was pitiless merciless and they were all thinking about one thing only we have to show the world how we are a happy population so as such there is injustice as such there is no willingness to give up power and Kali Yuga adds a dollop of hypocrisy and now you have a fine mess so you don't even know when somebody's taking the banner of like there is some population and somebody is writing article after article about the abuse done by a political party or you don't know whether this person is actually a or he has been paid by someone to only focus on this particular thing and not some other particular thing so to add to the mess that is today there are people who say that okay this person will only speak about this particular thing but not about climate change why well because their thesis or grant could be in the some multinational it is a difficult subject to comprehend as the two distinct points you made that if there is a desire to appear successful then the idea if somebody has the power of social engineering of being God then they can do quite a lot of harm while appearing to do good and covering up the harm that is being done they could do a lot of harm and other point I had in mind was that when there is okay both ways this virtue and vice which is an inherent human conditions so rather than looking is simply at the social situation in which somebody is born and saying this is unfair and this is fair you could also look at the psychological disposition with which a person is born a psychological disposition I mean the combination of virtue and vice yeah and that also is different for different people and that also results from one's past karma I would like to talk about two distinct experiences I had now when I travel abroad I often meet different people and I've stayed with some devotees and some people who are extremely successful so what I've observed is that there is one devotee at whose place I stayed he told me that he's a big doctor and he has six secretaries and he says that his schedule is there are he works with six different hospitals and each hospital has its own secretary and he says his schedule is planned for at least six weeks in advance if he has to attend one program he has to plan six weeks in advance so now and I actually showed me his schedule it is I would say it's almost merciless almost every minute of the day right from waking up to sleeping is planned and he said if I don't get any sleep if I don't get enough sleep for any reason he is going from one hospital to another hospital he goes and sits in the parking lot and he says I take a three-minute nap before we go to where getting out of my car and going to the next and it is has to do surgery and stuff like that so the point is that when I saw his schedule and then I talked with him about now is this what you're doing exceptional says no he says people who have my level of success everybody does that so you know there has to be a certain level of competence to be successful in society now even if we consider in the past there were kings or even when the aristocracy was there nobility was there some of them might have been wastrels but for anyone to be in a position of power and to maintain that some level of competence some level of commitment is required so the presumption that those who are successful are so simply because they have because the system was rigged in their favor that actually doesn't do justice to the reality that they they are working they are working they have worked hard so that whether everybody if anybody who is given power like that whether anybody and everybody can do that that is something which is open to question so for people who are successful and powerful they have certain amount of virtue and in our tradition there is the idea that if somebody is a king the king should be respected there's a story of Prabhupada where some devotees had gone to some circus and people were poking a tiger and making fun of it and some devotee also started doing that when Prabhupada said no.

Prabhupada quoted from the Bhagavad Gita that Prughanam Rugendroham. I think it was a lion not a tiger. It was a zoo.

It was a zoo, yeah. So I got a circus, zoo, right. So then Prabhupada said that you know this is the animal is meant to be like a king don't humiliate him like that and it's also there as Sanatana Goswami when Nawab Hussain Shah came to their place they all got up to respect him and the idea is that if somebody is a king right now it the king could be brutal but even if somebody is not having if somebody is a particular position that position should be respected so that to be successful in the world it's not just because you are power hungry and you are exploitative but also you have to be competent that's one side of it.

Any comments on this? Yeah I feel very empowered when I access this particular piece of information from the Vedas that power, influence, intelligence or cutting-edge prowess, success, ability compare that with like a big bank or a big ocean of ability and success and cutting-edge intelligence everything and if somebody comes with a spoon somebody else comes with a tumbler a third person comes with a bucket another one comes with a tanker they all will be given compared to the receptacles they have brought in them that would be made full so somebody with just a spoon will see that okay this he has given me one spoon full of water a tumbler is a tumbler full of water bucket is a bucket full of water or a tanker is tanker full of water now whether somebody can swim in that spoon full of water absolutely not it is meager but meagerness on whose part you did not bring a proper receptacle otherwise the stock is there so nobility or being a king or all these kind of things the Vedas tell that there is a huge unlimited stock God is the proprietor of that you do something to merit higher position in your society you get that you abuse it it is taken away you use it it can be kept or increased or as a part of the justice thing somebody may say I don't need it now because I am no longer a king so somebody was born in a high lineage he ruled like a king he had enormous power but because of the training and culture at a particular time this is now it is time for me to move into another state of mind which should be another state of environment I cannot practice that while I am sitting on the throne so voluntarily they relinquish that so the moment people below understand that it is not this person who is ruling but it is God who is ruling through this person before the idea of calling a king Naradeva is Nara is not God it doesn't become God unfortunately today we find like many dictators they actually some crown themselves for life or fear that if I come down I have no future in this country at all after that my enemies will hound me and kill me basically in order to keep everything under sway I remain so as I was telling you that they are removed either by death or by assassination there is no third alternative for this so when you have a system where the top leadership is so insecure first of all illiterate about wisdom and insecure emotionally the situation will prevail we will always have people like they say about the Chinese history say there is a Ming dynasty and there is Ming one then his son and his grandson most probably the grandson that means after 60 or 75 years of this particular family ruling the grandson is a wastrel so there is a farmer's son somewhere he takes 200 300 peasants then they band up they go from village to village they become 20,000 strong the fourth Ming dynasty king is simply assassinated and now this farmer's son says that from today onwards equality liberty justice fraternity for everybody because I know what hardship is his son slips down a little bit the third fourth generation so basically their whole history has been about 140 to 175 years of dynastic rule and everybody repeating the same pattern oh god that means even if somebody is virtuous afterward somebody comes up who is not that virtuous and then that person is throw overthrown yeah so so when you get that virtue it's like they say if you have done tapasya then you are at a particular stage but if you have fulfilled your tapasya now you have the credentials now you don't have the maturity and the humility to carefully protect those credentials you will be in a worse state because now you start offending others oh okay like the Nahusha king who became Indra so Indra hood is good you can enjoy the kingdom being the administrator of everything then he wanted the seven sages to actually take him on a palanquin yeah that is if it is the height of the nadir of arrogance and they said okay if Sarpa is what you want become a Sarpa and he said I am Indra that means Sachi also will be my queen so Sachi was saying well you have deposed my husband but that doesn't mean you obey you or me also he said no no no once I come here everything is mine so this is used as an example of pride it can also be used to show how and why mere virtue is not enough you have to have a they say classical I don't know that is Maharashtrian folklore or Indian folklore that power is like tigress's blood and you need a solid gold receptacle to collect it any other metal and it will make a hole in it and drain away what tigress is blood sorry tigress's milk is okay so strong that you need a receptacle of solid gold so here tigress's milk how can somebody milk a tiger that means this person has to be very very valorous so he got the tigress's milk but then in order to gather it you need a receptacle of solid gold any other metal and it will cause a hole in it so tapasya is the milk but humility of heart that is the receptacle that's a beautiful example let me try to understand this it's quite a vivid example also tigress milk so golden receptacle is that a person has to have that level of maturity or that level of virtue and by tapasya you could also say that that is the effort that a person is put in either in a previous life or in this life also like tapasya gives you power but not the art of building it properly yeah okay that's it's interesting sometimes I say that for success there are three distinct components there is talent there is commitment and there is temperament so now talent is say somebody is a somebody is just in cricket say for example extraordinary batsman yes they're just very very talented but in commitment is where they are ready to practice put in the mouth of the say work very hard but then beyond that there is temperament is how do they function in the tense moments or how do they function when they get when they get success do they become inflated and do they become so commitment is more of the hard work talent is more of what you have naturally got from a previous life but temperament is what you need to also cultivate yourself then the achievement will be sustainable so we could put it in terms of your metaphor the capacity to milk a tigress that could fall in the talent or the temperament but the receptacle so that will talent or the commitment you are working hard but you have to have the temperament to be able to do that we will to maintain that and that is the golden receptacle Krishna tested me by taking away everything from me the opportunity to have a center established in Chassi to start initiating disciples students everything kind of failed and he said I didn't protest I passed the test and post 1967 Krishna gave me so much success but I just handed it back everything to him and again I was successful beautiful so adversity you could say reveals one's character and so does prosperity or adversity the test of character and prosperity can also be a test of character both yes yes so this is a very beautiful note I think to conclude the discussion that we might be in a position of deprivation right now and certainly at a level of society changes do need to be made and we have for example in the past Kings who would who would have system who would themselves give charity and who would have systems for giving charity but along with that we would also have the so charity was a very very important principle and basically I read one very interesting insight about the difference between charity and government allotted what you could call it dole or subsidy whatever word you want to use subsidy or government use some support so what what the difference is that when an individual use charity that actually leads to first of all the development of virtue in the heart of the individual and it also develops some kind of connection between the giver and the receiver of charity but when the state use some endowment state use some something to people then it doesn't lead to it's it's not leading to the sense of charity being developed rather people after where is the after all where the state going to give it from it's from the taxes that people have been given people are given to the country so at an individual level it can even lead to a sense a certain sense of hard-heartedness now they know you are suffering the government is going to give you grants I paid my taxes for that purpose why should I do charity in advance in addition to that so that so the you could do the institutionalization of welfare the institutionalization of social change can actually lead to the hardening of the human heart and then so both you talked earlier about the entitlement mentality that if I have something I should be ready to announce it because it doesn't belong to me so the the entitlement mentality can be there among the wealthy who feel that this belongs to me but that entitlement mentality is avoided by spiritual understanding and the entitlement mentality can also be there among the poor within the system of social justice where they feel that the government has to give me these things and they don't work for it at all so that entitlement mentality can work both ways to to harm the those who are in power and those who are out of power those are disempowered so we need to avoid that and one of the best ways to do that is by spiritual understanding that actually whatever I have is not mine it is given to me for some time and let me use it as well as I can but if I have wealth if I have power let me use it to create some kind of equitability and to help those who are who are deprived and if there is spiritual practice then of course spiritual practice will be entirely different subject but if there is spiritual wisdom and spiritual practice the spiritual wisdom can give us acceptance as well as some extent compassion and spiritual practice can actually transform people so that virtue can rise in their heart and vice can go down and then the whole system can become sustainable so just a last remark about what could be the mentalities of somebody who is born poor born without any skills and he sees somebody born talented born rich born powerful and let us say a scenario where both of them are spiritually wise we began with the situation of the world where this is a sorely lacking thing but let us take a scenario where the upper class and the lower class both are spiritually endowed with wisdom because they follow an acharya so the the the lower class poor wretched poverty stricken or whatever they are empowered with the thought that I have done something to deserve this and this is the experience which I have to go through it is not an eternal situation it is temporary and all the help I get is from this upper class who only act as a conduit it is Krishna who is giving me through them so then I pray to Krishna let them prosper more and more and more now it's a critical situation but I'm just saying that it is a possibility so now if the poor class they are actually praying for the prosperity of the upper class the upper classes are happy that somebody's praying for my prosperity but they are also spiritually wise they know that I can enjoy only my quota so there is an example given in Hindi folklore that for a rich person he's like in a boat and the wealth is the water around him and he's very happy but what if he sees a leak in the boat and water is rushing in so now he knows that this actually may cause me to drown so you don't take water in one palm and put it away put it out you take with both palms as much as possible so the admonition for the rich class is you have done something that's why you're in a position you have these resources but these resources may drown you there is a reason why you have been given that your charity should be not with a palmful or a spoonful but with both palms so when you give something to a deserving person of the lower class you thank him for reducing your burden his role is to accept things given by you originally given to you by Krishna so he's also performing his role so you eat like reasonably commensurate with your social position like it is it is understandable that somebody who serves khichdi to 10,000 people every day he may serve gulab jamuns and paneer sabji to his own children nothing wrong with that but he understands that everybody who partakes of my charity is also my well-wisher so this kind of maturity on both on the part of both classes where Krishna consciousness is at the center point I have been deprived of something because something I did and I'm not fretting and fuming and angry at anyone I'm just working on it I have been given so much well I must have done something but now I have a bigger fear if this thing goes in my head I become arrogant tomorrow I may be at the receiving end of the same charitable foundation which I have started last year because both states are temporary so this idea that either sufficiently endowed or deprived are basically a temporary material state and a spiritual solution has to be to go beyond them only then we can have a situation where as you rightly said it could be sustainable yeah that's beautiful actually I think this whole discussion this is how karma and the consciousness of karma and the consciousness of bhakti or seva how it could permeate in and can takes the compassion to a higher level that's quite beautiful maybe in our next session we could apply this whole discussion to the exist to the caste system and we could differentiate that from Varanashram as it was traditionally meant to be and so we could take it forward so maybe I'll summarize please so we started basically three points what is right about social justice what is deficient and how spirituality complements it so the right thing is that we do see inequality in society some people are in terrible deprivation and they need to be helped and merit the idea of meritocracy that if you just work hard you'll be succeeding you'll succeed that is not always true because for some people the obstacles are so much that just individual endeavor is not enough from social institutions for help are required so in that sense the idea of social arrangement for correcting injustice and disparity is a important point it's not just an individual effort but now but the where it is deficient is that there is a default suspicion of hierarchy and that those who are deprived are virtues and unfairly and fairly deprived and those who are endured those who are wealthy with a powerful they have exploitatively done that so the the line that separates vice and virtue is simplistically drawn that those who are those who are victims are deprivers are virtuous and those who are and those who are powerful are vicious but it is in every human heart that line and the problem with this understanding is quite often that those who are powerful though they may be a social engineering might social revolution might be done they might be overthrown but then whoever comes in power they will become they will they will do the same thing or their successors will do the same thing so we talked about the Russian Revolution and also the French Revolution what happened therein and then we discussed about that four quadrant diagram that if social there's no social justice and there's no spiritual wisdom then it is unbearable if there is social justice but there's no spiritual wisdom then it is unsustainable because somebody else will come and they will take over that power so then we talk about social justice and spiritual wisdom sorry there may be no social justice but there is spiritual wisdom so now spiritual wisdom there are distinct aspects to it one is that the existing arrangement the existing social arrangement is a divine providence if I accept it and live so the Christian understanding is that if you live beautifully faithfully following Jesus and everything then you will have a bright future life in heaven but why the system is unfair right now why am I poor that there's no explanation for that in Christianity but if we took the take the understanding of the Gita then where we are presently is determined by our past and this is the difference between acceptance and resignation acceptance where I am I accept resignation is I can't do anything about it and this is how I have to be forever that's not the idea so if it is at this level at least the religious insights the spiritual insights can help one gain acceptance of one situation the desirable is where there is both social social justice and spiritual wisdom and for that what is vitally required is the is the cultivation of virtue whether it is in the people who are deprived or people who are people who are powerful and in that connection we discussed how that when I said that when God is removed either the individual becomes God or the state becomes God so capitalism and meritocracy are like the individual is God and communism and extreme inversion of social justice are that the state will be God but the state cannot foster virtue in people and the end result is that instead of God some people become like devils so you give the example of a tiger that a tiger's milk to be taken is a golden receptacle that means for somebody to have power they also need heart that is pure enough to not get intoxicated by that power they need a temperament and the spiritual wisdom wherein wherein we understand that whatever I have is given to me by God and it is temporarily with me and I have to give it up sooner or later that understanding can ensure that one doesn't develop the entitlement mentality and then one can use things equitably and instead of having the state doing reform if it's individuals doing it then it leads to individual bonding between the giver and the receiver of charity it also leads to the development of kindness and compassion in the heart if it's a system doing it then that doesn't happen so overall spiritual understanding coupled with a charitable instinct that is the best way to actually correct the inequities in society any points remaining no we'll continue next time thank you very much.

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The Monk’s Podcast 83 with Shyamananda – Social Justice and Spiritual Wisdom 2 – Caste System Analyzed

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