Bhakti spirituality for the contemporary mind – The Monk’s Podcast 119 with Shyamananda Prabhu

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welcome back to the Monks Podcast Hare Krishna, thank you for having me wonderful to discuss as usual some contemporary and deep topics I believe you had suggested that we could today discuss something about Bhakti spirituality or Bhakti wisdom for the contemporary mind yes so one metaphor I had you can build on it but maybe you could think about this in terms of understanding the characteristics of contemporary mind and then how they perceive Bhakti spirituality and then are the spirituality in general religion and spirituality in general and then we can talk about how Bhakti spirituality features can be highlighted and presented in a way that can relate with them so broadly you could have three features but one metaphor you are ok with this three part structure broadly hmm so yes so one metaphor I have thought of is that that actually in one sense every generation has its own language so just like if I speak to in English to someone who doesn’t who knows only say Marathi they just can’t understand so similarly now we may be speaking English today 1920s people might be speaking English and Shakespeare might be writing in English but the English itself has changed the language has changed so just as language can change the whole significant part of a person’s way of thinking way of looking at the world the way of conceiving one’s own identity and function in the world all that changes and we could broadly use the use language just as we can consider the person here the world is here language is one way a person interacts with the world so similarly we could say the ethos the world view the defining set of ideas that people have they change from generation to generation and that’s why unless we present in the language that the people can understand we just lose people so that’s why understanding the contemporary mind doesn’t mean we are pandering to whatever we could say whatever ideas they presently have but it is like we are trying to understand the language that the contemporary mind understands very true so that was my idea also that for example this one group called the millennials it could be coined by psychologist then used by marketers so millennials use this kind of attire they talk this kind of language what concerns us is religion for this particular group it basically means an institution and in truth it may not be like that but for say those who are born between the years 1981 and 1996 and they could be anything say 40 years or say 25 years so today those who are between the age of 25 to 40 for them if you say that my religion protects me from the influence of other religions that could be wrong language in one sense for them at least because for them now I would like to keep this for inspection in front of you how much is it true that religion means just accepting a way of life which comes with a description which you conform to certain rites, rituals and you are supposed to ask a particular set of questions and the set of answers are already there yeah there is a caricature of traditional religion done by atheists and they say that religion means pay, pray and obey pay, pray and obey your donation when you go to the temple then you go and offer some prayers and obey whatever are the commandments whatever are the instructions so that is to some extent that is how religion has been practised at many parts of the world and to some extent even I would say no tradition is exempt to that but I try to present that if you consider the Vedic spirituality it is Brahma Jigyasa so its enquire so its enquire analyse and then realise so Vimrish Shaita Dashaina Krishna says deliberate, deliberate so enquire, analyse and realise but this is not the normal conception of religion that people have any thoughts on this I have this mental model which I use like say would I use a a map of Mumbai or New York or Detroit in order to find something like today’s terms would I use a GPS system to find something or if I have time at my disposal would I just say that ok I have my lunch early morning 7.30 I take something and I am with a small backpack without any map I am just roaming around the city and trying to find out what comes my way oh I saw a museum oh you never knew that 17th street there is a museum no I just went on from 1st street to 2nd to 3rd and 4th and then I was so happy to discover a museum on the 17th street so so religion means tomorrow you are going to a museum this is the address this is the Uber they will pick you up at 7.45 in the morning the museum opens at 8 o’clock so be there because there is a big rush so you avoid so many other hassles and then you get a good tour of the museum and then you come back and spirituality could be you just don’t want to have the map but you want to find the joy of discovering it now there could be a chance that you discover the museum on a day when it is open or whatever but there could also be a chance that the day you choose to go to that museum it could be closed and then you say okay well I didn’t have any structured plan in my mind anyway so I am happy that I didn’t get it but I got to see the zoo so there is a a structure versus the joy of exploration now those who as I said the first instance you want to do something you want to use minimal time so then you have to follow a certain procedure when you have all the time and doing that is like finding out something is not exactly your goal but you like to have a walk so you walk for one and half hours and that was good for the body so I hope you are getting what I am saying so can these two be joined can there be like we say Prabhupada gave us Krishna consciousness we call wisdom with spirituality Prabhupada gave it a name and he also put that name in the name of the movement but in the accounts of people who joined say from 1966-67 onwards where the Swamiji was always available the discussion was not just Atma, Soul, Paramatma, Super Soul it was about village life it was about emotions he would tell stories of his life for example many things in the biography of Swami Prabhupada would not have been revealed unless he has chosen he had chosen to reveal them so so how do we now I got the crux of it how do we satisfy the urge of someone between the ages of 18 and 40 today that your urge for discovery for exploration can also be satisfied and this metaphor is beautiful of in the spiritual path we often talk about sadhana and sadhya there is a destination there is a path and one of the characteristics of spirituality as contrasted with religion as the words are understood in today’s world is that spirituality is characterised by you could say ambiguity openness as you said and religion is is characterised by closeness, rigidity so I think that we have all the answers you just have to you just have to accept the answers and live with them that idea so my understanding would be that both sides on the side of religion sometimes there is a overconfidence and oversimplification of complex issues so just like the what I mentioned about pray, pay, obey that spiritual growth is cannot be reduced down to such simple I was going to use simple in such a it cannot be reduced down to a list of bullet points to be ticked so on the side of religion and actually when we live religion, when we analyse the philosophy that has been given by religious traditions and consider the lives of people so the real life is much more complex so on one side there is overconfidence among the religious people that we know everything, we know everything this is the path, this is the destination and there is oversimplification of complex issues there could be ethical issues, there could be philosophical issues there could be practical issues so just like in our movement we say that whatever the problem, chant Hare Krishna and be happy but is that a solution say when somebody is having a serious sickness and needs treatment and the treatment is not available and some arrangement has to be made to get the treatment so on one side what happens is that you say this is the path, this is the destination, people may feel are you so sure? does it work that simply and the nuance and the complexity of real life may be overlooked and also people may find that those who claim to have all the answers, they are not really all that great people as human beings and they feel that you know he is not such a wonderful person that I want to become like such a person so in one sense the destination doesn’t seem as attractive if this is the ultimate perfection of life, maybe I don’t want to go to the museum, this is what people who are in the museum, people who are in the kingdom of God or people who are going to the kingdom of God look like this is how they act like so that is one side of this point of the whole issue I can speak the other side also but is there something you would like to respond to this right now? No you are doing fine, you can get to the point so the other side is that one of the challenges with spirituality is seen as only openness I think it is said that GK Chesterton said that you know, minds are like mouths, they need to open to take in something but then after taking in they have to close so it’s good to be open minded, no doubt about it but what after that unless we choose some path so I like the metaphor of a mountain that okay you can explore from the bottom of the mountain okay I like the scenery over here maybe this path looks better that path looks not so easy but ultimately one has to climb up the mountain so if we want to really become spiritual then we have to climb up the path to get to the peak of the mountain, so the religious traditions may say that okay this is the path and that peak of the mountain is the destination so take this path and get to the destination but somebody else may say do I even want to go to the top, does this path even take you to the top is the top really the best so that selling of selling I am using here in a commercial sense that selling of both the desirability of the destination and the feasibility or the workability of the path to the destination if that is not done adequately then somebody may say why do you want to go to the peak I am happy wandering around over here, there is so much more to see over here and somebody will say okay I have seen so many people they are saying they are going up the path but they are not really going up that some people have become very sectarian and they exhibit one-upsmanship and they claim to be following one particular path but all that they are doing is just demeaning other paths, demonising other paths and sometimes literally pulling other people down from their paths so that can put off people also so that’s how, now if we actually explain that yes this is the path but along this path you can see beautiful sights and at the top of the mountain you can see the most beautiful sight of all, you can have exquisite visions from there then the desirability of the destination and the feasibility of the path, if that is presented properly then people can become attracted when Prabhupada was asked how did he attract so many people Prabhupada’s answer was disarmingly simple he said Krishna is all attractive and he has presented him and he attracted everyone so in one sense Prabhupada presented the desirability of the destination and he made the path also seem adventure or he presented the path in a way that it was adventurous, challenging, enjoyable can I move further to the yes please go ahead connected to the same thing so it may or may not be true but religion seems to think like oh I know what questions you have I have put all of them in this manual you just read it and if you don’t get convinced it’s your fault and the spirituality the definition among this particular group is what if I have a question which is not asked by anyone else before I feel I am unique, I feel I am special not that I need special privileges but I feel that this question could not be anybody else’s question, this is my question oh you say my question means what exactly are you trying to say by that that means this question has not been asked in any manual therefore there is no answer for that and just because I am asking a question which was not asked before you are just shutting me out of the club you are saying no membership for you because you are asking too many questions yes that’s true when I was on my whatever little spiritual search I did one of the things that struck me about Prabhupada’s books was there are so many question answers in the books and sensible answers sometimes stunningly brilliant answers so but otherwise there is a lot of feel good wishy-washy kind of platitudinous kind of statements so yes Prabhupada did entertain a large number of questions very open-mindedly I need to answer them also so that ethos of as you said in the Rig Veda there is even a question that is raised so is there an ultimate God or is there none who knows some people use it to say that the Rig Veda is actually not even a theistic book that’s clearly not true it is theistic but the fact is that that questions are not that even that kind of enquiry about even the existence of ultimate duty is raised in a book that is considered one of the foundational religious texts so yes often the traditions are more open than what the root texts of our tradition are often far more open than what some of the current practitioners or some of the current perceptions of that tradition and those texts may be just to give a balanced approach to this thing of what if I have a question which nobody has asked before many political leaders many business leaders when they write their autobiography they have revealed that there were chances or there were events which disappointed them so much they contemplated suicide so if somebody from this age group asks that okay you have this Krishna conscious conception of God does your God have suicidal thoughts so one of our leaders he said I’m very happy to worship a God who doesn’t have this kind of mental issues so I was just thinking what space this person is coming from to ask such a question could be because of the conditioning that many of the I’m not saying of all but many of the leaders of society in the fields of trade, commerce, business, sports, politics they reveal themselves to be as they say in English deities with clay feet the deity is made of gold but the feet are made of clay and because there is a big robe those clay feet are hidden but when you remove that then the clay feet are revealed so the clay feet are their neurological problems, their problems of trying to quit something or their anger issues or whatever so it could be a chance that this particular whole segment of population is simply conditioned by the issues which are faced by society today and they are projecting their thoughts on the screen of religion and spirituality religion doesn’t entertain those questions so they move on to the vast uncharted area of spirituality and chances are they might not get an answer even there so what could be a guiding principle for someone who as they say in today’s language burn their fingers or burn their lips with religion we have in India very popular saying that one whose lips are charred because of hot milk then even takes buttermilk a glass of buttermilk with extra caution have you heard that saying? yeah I think in English it’s put as once burned twice shy it’s an approximation of that same principle so yes in one sense the suspicion or hesitation or aversion to religion is not so much because a religious or atheistic life is so attractive it is because people have had negative experiences with whatever religion they found in their social cultural environment and that those negative experiences often came because religious practitioners and religious teachers sometimes were far from exhibiting the kind of virtue that were taught in their traditions also so one point which I felt is vital is that we need to connect with people first at a human level before we can connect with them at a spiritual level or at a religious level one of the things which the contemporary generation at one sense in one sense values enormously at the same time loses very easily is relationships in one sense everybody needs and seeks relationships but at the same time this amount of anxiety and despair and agony and even suicidal thought that come associated traumas in relationships show that one level people are heavily invested in relationships in the sense that they want it but at the same time things don’t work out because of various factors so if rather than talking about beliefs and behaviours this is what we believe rather beliefs and not behaviours I would say beliefs and rituals this is what we believe and this is what we do as a part of religious tradition if the focus could be more on connecting with each other at a human level so that would be seen as through practical cultured conduct, Prabhupada would say that my followers are perfect gentlemen and ladies so if a good courteous behaviour is seen and through that is based not just in the show like marketing but it is based on a foundation of sound values then even people who are otherwise burned by their negative experiences they can also be attracted because ultimately they do want relationships. Can I move on to the next point? Yes please.
So this is also I think we both have discussed sometimes in the past about we both know Father Baron who talks of rather than giving spirituality to those who are not part of your flock you can concentrate on those who were with you and have chosen not to be with you and this also makes sound business sense rather than gaining new customers if you find out why old customers are not buying from you that is a much more saner business proposal so I am just comparing sometimes what makes sense for religion and spirituality may not make sense with hard core materialist but this principle is also emphasised by those who have nothing to do with religion but they say it cost four times as much money to get a new customer than to retain somebody who was with you but has been disgruntled because of poor service or whatever so in the western scene people have left the religion or sect in which they were born for one big reason that is they feel religionists are very judgemental and the western topics are LGBTQ rights rights of immigrants many other social issues in India it could be caste and community based interests or somebody could be seen talking about the equality of everyone but in their private behaviour they might choose to favour a particular caste or a community so most of this group between 18 and 40 say that we don’t want anything to do with this kind of hypocrisy yes this is again I mean so hugely true and again I think this comes back to the point that sometimes within religious traditions the emphasis on dogmas and rituals becomes so high that that becomes a filter through which everything is seen that becomes the only filter through which everything is seen and therefore anybody who doesn’t conform who doesn’t seem to harmonise with that that person is immediately not only rejected but even condemned as you said judged so from a my understanding Bhagavad Gita actually talks about three modes of material nature and these three modes in one sense have nothing to do intrinsically with one’s faith in a particular deity or a faith in a particular path the modes are largely behavioural characteristics of course we can say that if there is devotion if there is a spiritual inclination spiritual commitment naturally one will be more in the mode of goodness but overall the Bhagavad Gita talks about the mode of goodness in terms of characteristics that are not intrinsically spiritual they are more behavioural cognitional and psychological than spiritual so the idea is that the Bhagavad Gita acknowledges the point that good people that characteristics of goodness are something which is to be valued and sometimes when we become too judgemental because of our religious practises then we may think we are being transcendental but we may come off as somebody so narrow minded that people may think we are in the mode of passion or ignorance so if we for example use our religious traditions, philosophy or practises to bash other religious traditions then people may say this is just the same competitive mentality I see in the mundane world so where is the broad mindedness, where is the tolerance they may not even know the modes of goodness, passion and ignorance but our behaviour may come out as passionate to them so if we are distributing books and we say we somehow or the other trying to opportunistically get something, give a book to them and take something from people then they may not see any spirituality in our conduct although there is spirituality in the content of the book we are giving so I would say that judgmentality which you talked about it if we see people as nothing but somehow you could say uninformed targets of conversion and if they are not ready to be converted then they are to be condemned then it becomes a problem, now I am not saying that we do it all the time but religious traditions in general have been guilty of that so it is very easy to become judgemental and it means quite alienating I am sure you must also have had experiences of such judgmentality oh yes, in fact it is interesting that you brought up this topic of three modes that is such a fundamental way of looking at things and you rightly said that it doesn’t what did you say? it doesn’t talk about your relationship with the deity but more about your behaviour doesn’t talk about commitment to a particular faith conception bhakti is used in such a broad way in almost all of Swami Prabhupada’s books or conversations and I was at the same time pleasantly at the same time a bit worried when I read Lord Kapila actually analyses even bhakti in the three modes so from day one I was under the assumption that all the bhakti I am doing is transcendental and when I read those verses which are the part of Lord Kapila’s teachings to his mother Devahuti it is very clear there can be bhakti in the mode of ignorance there can be bhakti in the mode of passion there can be bhakti in the mode of goodness and also the highest point of bhakti in pure goodness so yes this holier than thou attitude is something which people get put off and then they wonder that like the most worrisome part is organised religion doesn’t so much introspect and when people don’t come they in fact criticise the customer for not buying their goods I love the way you are phrasing this yeah people are so fallen people are so degraded that’s definitely a problem big problem so we move on to another significant point just your thought how do we avoid the judgmentality as I mentioned one thing is that we connect to people at a human level exhibit good behaviour exhibit behaviour that is appealing by normal social standards also not standards of sensuality but basically expectation of what is a decent behaviour that’s one way to avoid another point I thought is that it’s important to recognise that we can’t judge people by standards that they haven’t accepted so if I say somebody is such a terrible person because they are eating cow flesh they don’t even know there is anything wrong with eating eating any kind of meat leave alone the meat of a cow so if we demean if we demean people for standards that they haven’t accepted then it becomes a big problem so I would say that we have to put it to some extent we cannot impose our standards on others those who are not accepted those standards also so that understanding is important in the business world what they say is if you feel as a boss your telephone system I am giving an old example where your secretary or the receptionist they give reasonably good service one simple thing is to make an anonymous call yourself so when you call your own company and then they make you with their weight or they are insulting or whatever then you come to know this is how they would be treating the average person so similarly in the army they say the top brass they should eat the food which is cooked for the the the basic level soldier and of course there is a joke in the air force a good friend of mine shared that there would be a day when some top brass would do this service they take this service by turns like if there are four commanding officers they could be told to go once a month and check out what food is being served to the whole mess they have their officers mess but this time they come and eat with the rank and file soldiers but that day is known in advance so the kitchen takes special precautions oh god so like in a school there is a inspection committee that is going to come and the school is already spick and span because everything is so if like I am a so called office bureau in a temple and if I come in the ordinary line for taking prasad and then I know who are the people, who are the volunteers who are serving what kind of language is used what kind of atmosphere is there, if there is a welcoming atmosphere or not so this is what is meant by introspection, it is not like rocket science and once you come to know that even if four out of thousand people have been treated like that like they say we have the six sigma level they say no this is not accepted we need to do some change and what is that six sigma six sigma is a quality control test so let’s say six out of ten thousand cases six products out of ten thousand such products that is the limit of them being defective one more and the whole lot is rejected so regarding how queries are answered, how people are felt welcome in your premises or how their questions are dealt with this becomes that exercise of trying to improve our relationships and once somebody has seen that this particular place or this person has invested in relationships authentically not as a show or something then can I hazard to say that every business has failures every service has its faults like not all airlines give you top notch service, sometimes they may misplace your baggage, sometimes they may they may be six hours late or whatever but let’s say that I was once going on a flight it said instead of 10.30 it’s going to be 11.45 then it became 12.45 then 1.45 then 2.30 finally at 3.30 the plane actually left but throughout the time they were exceptionally kind of good and the staff there was cheerful they gave fruits, then they gave some chips and then they offered something else, every time they had to move the clock one hour ahead they said ladies and gentlemen, things are really beyond our control there is one part is needed which is very important for the aircraft’s safety and we cannot compromise on airline safety standards therefore the delay so what was happening was people were cursing for them not having that particular part but some of them started saying that hey if that part is so important then it is good that the plane is delayed, I wouldn’t want something to happen mid-air and they say that okay brace for landing in the water or whatever something like that so of course hoping that that part was not there was a real thing but the main point is lacunae not coming up with the standards all these are part of a community or community organisation, like somebody asked a real technical question about the universe and like one devotee he was preaching in Switzerland so one man came to him and asked a very challenging question and he said look why don’t you come to this place on a weekend and over a nice glass of fruit juice that particular fruit grows in a great quantity over that area so why don’t we just discuss as friends now this one instance of someone reaching out to someone’s heart pacified that person not that his technical query about the universe was immediately solved but he got the feeling that here is someone who is interested in me so this is what of course as you rightly said we cannot oversimplify complex issues so winning over people’s heart is also not just giving them free fruit juice or free cookies or whatever that also if it’s not done with authenticity it may come out as outright a public relations disaster but the fact is that today’s social media boom is a glaring piece of evidence that people are looking for connections and facebook is giving them but sad to say that facebook research from one Harvard research group kind of revealed that facebook also lands you in serious loneliness yes so religion and spirituality which is supposed to give you thick heart heart to heart connections you heard the letters BFF yeah I was just thinking about that now you may say that I am 55 today I don’t use these things these words to anyone he is my BFF best friend forever so I was just thinking does society or the wisdom floating around society does it empower this 18 to 40 year old as to what best actually means is he or she clear about the gamut of emotions which are available to make something best they say need is a friend indeed how many times the need has been see the need is only for money for some connections or for self gratification parties how do you define best and even more challenging is how do you define forever people today forever could be 6 months, 6 weeks 6 days, 6 hours he was my best friend forever for 6 hours now this this shows the ok so the point you are making through this example is that that there is a there is a desperate need for connections yes so overall our podcast is going toward that direction that whatever be the preconceptions that the contemporary mind may bring in its approach towards religion or because of which it may not even approach religion the way if we as a representative of the tradition are trying to address them the way would be to try to develop a human connection to try to develop relationships one of the key ways I would say not the only way but one of the key ways so I come to the last major point that is what are the outlets what are the ways in which people who are attracted more to spirituality express themselves A is B can I just wait one minute let me make one point there is this whole in the western world also especially in Christianity there is lot of discussion about how Christianity is decreasing a lot in the western world it’s increasing in say in India and Africa and other places but so one of the reasons they say is that we are too dogmatic too ritualistic but then that’s the view that the liberals have but the conservatives say that even the liberal churches are emptying not that liberal churches are flourishing so what they also say is that if the church simply becomes a place where it just becomes like another place for socialisation then people feel that we have other places we don’t have to come to a church so we also have to offer something distinctive that people will not find somewhere else and ultimately that’s of course we want to offer also no doubt about it but in I think that in developing relationships at one level the fact that our if again we use commercial terminology our USP is that we can offer a relationship with a personal loving deity so that shouldn’t be so downplayed that it is lost and so I already talked about the dogmas and rituals dogmas and rituals have a negative connotation to them but there are practises and there are principles we could use more philosophical tenets there are there are truths shared by the wisdom texts whatever words we want to use but those also need to be presented in the appropriate way at the appropriate time otherwise we just we are nothing different to offer so in one sense there is something which people seek and need and there is something which people need but they are no longer seeking so most people may not be seeking Krishna right now but they also need Krishna so in one sense we may have to make sure that we provide people what they need so that what they currently need so that ultimately we can help them to gain what they eternally or ultimately need and providing them what they presently need doesn’t mean we have to go out of the ambit of Krishna consciousness not that we have to do something we don’t have to start a sports club in a spiritual centre we don’t have to have an entertainment centre in the spiritual centre but just like basic human relationships or basic human courtesies and warm relationships they are actually we could say they should be natural outgrowths of our own spirituality and our bhakti yes yes so can I go on to this next point? so two basic broad categories which are the favourite sort of hanging out places of this particular segment of the population is get out of your home be alone with nature explore nature and so then that gave a rise of trekking and trail walking and so many things I was surprised to see there is something called forest bath it doesn’t mean taking a bath in the forest but being in a forest and trying to absorb the sight, sound, smell being aware so the second category is art, music, singing, painting journaling creative writing so these are the favourite haunts of this segment and I would dare say that anyone trying to reach out to them would risk a big hazard if they don’t have something to offer this group by using their spiritual wisdom so the first question could be that can we seek out Krishna in nature? yes certainly I mean the whole 10 chapter is about Krishna in nature isn’t it? many ways so nature is also brings us closer to sattva guna and sattva guna also makes it more the mode of goodness that makes it more receptive to spirituality and in one sense if I go back to your earlier points what you said about judgemental or too close minded too predetermined like a trajectory this is where you have to go this is how you have to go so if somebody is looking for higher experiences nature offers one some higher experiences without making any preconditions you know you have to believe this you have to follow this nothing just come explore observe and nature just by observing nature and reflecting thereby one can get many higher experiences at least higher than what are offered in the normal sense conduct of life so this can go up to certain level where nature itself becomes like a deity for people but yeah I say nature and whether it is environmental consciousness or just nature walks and things like that they can be a good segue to help people perceive of higher reality and thus connect with Krishna or it could also be a means by which if devotees are doing these things providing these things we connect with people and bond with them at a level where they are receptive for something higher so that would be my thoughts what are your thoughts about this? yeah exactly when I read Ropa’s life story initially Ropa did not insist on people playing just one particular instrument in fact in second time he said you bring whatever you have and the whole atmosphere was the Swami like a kind father he didn’t change his rituals or whatever he would perform his Mangalaksharan with bells and very soon the young crowd started calling that ceremony simply bells that the Swami comes and sits and for 7-8 minutes he just does some ceremony he doesn’t insist the audience to participate in fact after that he starts singing and then when he starts speaking people leave so he could immediately understand that these people are so much averse to someone telling them what to do so while watching the Archana ceremony there is no force while singing it is perceived as I am just participating in a musical concert but when one starts speaking and 20 starts listening they feel this is some somebody being judgemental somebody saying this is good therefore this is bad I am saying this therefore you should do that so very deftly with a lot of creative vision the Swami it is not like there was a team of Swamis who would cooperate together there was just one person 70 years old and about 20-25 youngsters mostly below 30 and when the atmosphere was don’t trust anyone above 30 Srila Prabhupada convincingly turned the tide in his favour by just becoming the the wise father, the compassionate father the generous father, everything what they wanted for in a relationship they could find with him and therefore majority of them those who took up the process seriously almost none of them said that my intellectual questions were satisfied and therefore I continued I had a relationship with the Swami and that drew me slowly slowly slowly inside the process once I liked the person I started liking the philosophy also very important point so at one level Prabhupada as you said Prabhupada did talk about if you go back to the dogmas and rituals let’s not use those words because philosophy and practises Prabhupada did not deny or neglect them like he did the Mangalacharan rituals he also spoke philosophy he did talk about our spiritual identity but that was not the primary thing that attracted them of course the Kirtans attracted them to some extent but it was a personal bond so Prabhupada is an excellent example in one sense of making sure that the human connection is not impeded by so we preserve almost the sanctity of human connections or relationships at the same time we preserve also the sanctity of our traditions, philosophy and practises both so we don’t let one take over the other yes you know going on to one point which you mentioned about creative journaling and writing and creative writing and journaling it’s one thought I read somewhere that basically I read this in a book by a Christian historian about why is this, what’s wrong with Christianity so he says today’s people are more much more interested in understanding the divinity of the self rather than the demands of a jealous God oh so now divinity of the self I wonder whether that itself refers to that I am God but not necessarily that I am God it is just we are all parts of the divine it could refer to that also but all these journaling or creative writing or poetry at one level we could just see them as self indulgence but another level we could see them as attempts for self understanding and so in one sense even people who are doing all this they are not just interested in money and gross sensuality it may they may still be interested in that those things they may not be giving up those things but that’s not all that obsesses their minds they are looking for deeper self understanding and of course they may not understand the self up to the level of the atma but they are looking deeper who am I really what is it that will give me fulfilment in my life so all these can be gradually channelled towards spiritual understanding so we could say self understanding is what is being self expression self understanding that is what is being sought over here and in my own small way I try to present journaling as integrate journaling with gita wisdom and I find that it does resonate many people who otherwise feel that ok all that I do over here is even among those who are trying to practise bhakti all that I do is I just chant this mantra then I attend these classes and I do these services but am I gaining self understanding am I actually being transformed so they feel they often treat journaling almost like a spiritual practise and if we take a very inclusive understanding of spirituality as anything it takes us closer to our spiritual essence then all these activities they are taking people towards closer to us closer to their spiritual essence I think when you talk about nature walks going back earlier I think was it Thoreau who wrote that Walden when he was in a forest and they are very deeply introspective discussions so introspective reflection not discussions and they are considered classic in their tradition so I feel that if we can there is a lot of avenues where bhakti spirituality can connect with the contemporary mind if we just learn to do a we just we just seek to understand them before before condemning them for not understanding us so that completes almost completes my point you want to add something or like to summarise yeah I will try to summarise so today we discussed about how how is bhakti spirituality relevant for the contemporary mind and then started by talking about how each generations has almost like its own language and unless things are communicated in that language things don’t make sense to them or even what they are doing doesn’t make sense to us if we don’t understand their language then you started talking about the characteristics of the contemporary mind so one of the things we started with that they say religion as very rigid and predictable with no sense of exploration if this is the place take this map and go to the museum whereas I just want to go on a walk and if I find an but I want to discover, explore so spirituality bhakti spirituality also does provide that facility for exploring in the sense that although a path is given and although the destination is told but going on that journey is an individual experience, individual discovery so we have to present the desirability of the destination and the feasibility of the path if you don’t do that and just tell this is what you should do, you will not be attracted so I talked about two extremes, one is that we just keep going round and round at the bottom of the mountain and never go up and the other is you just tell this is the only way up the mountain and don’t even think about anything else but instead of that explain that okay this is, why is this what is, the two things then we can attract people there is no doubt about that then another point which you mentioned is that about there is judgmentality a lot and judgmentality comes because we are quite we judge everyone based on our dogma religious tradition, judge people based on their dogmas and their rituals and in one sense it’s unfair to judge people according to the standards that they haven’t accepted so instead if we try to connect at a human level and then we can that the relationships are displaced out of the people and through that we can actually help people grow and one more thing was in the part of discovery is not just discovery of what I do but also discovery in terms of can I ask any kind of questions so that point which you mentioned about, so if we rather than just judging the question itself as inappropriate we see that we see our answer to the question not as an opportunity to simply condemn the questioner but to connect with the questioner then we can address that inquisitive spirit and our tradition has Brahma Jignasa as its cardinal as a starting point of spirituality enquire about the ultimate reality so the exploring spirit, the questioning spirit, the non-judgemental expectations so we can meet them if we focus on human connection and then we discussed about while all this we shouldn’t forget that we have something more to offer, otherwise we just become part of another social club and then lastly you talked about the creative exploration of nature, so nature can be a non-demanding way to experience something higher and then from that experience of something higher, some people can be guided further higher toward Krishna through friendships through sharing spiritual insight based on nature, whatever and then lastly you talked about creative expression so this creative expression can be seen as self indulgence negatively but it can be also seen as self exploration, self expression and the self is a part of the divine, so if that can be channelled creatively then there are all these whatever the current areas of interest of the contemporary mind, they all can be they all can be channelled in a devotional direction if bhakti spirituality is understood and presented appropriately any concluding thoughts? Thank you very much, it’s a wonderful