Why we need a Gaudiya Vaishnava eco-theology pt 1, The Monk’s Podcast 135 with Radhika Raman Prabhu

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few… Hare Krishna, Radhika Arun Prabhu.
Welcome back to the Monks Podcast. Such a delight to have you back. It’s always a pleasure, Chaitanya Charan Prabhu, to be in your association.
I think this is our third podcast so far. Is that true? Yes, yes. And both our podcasts have been very well received.
I mean, the first was quite a marathon. We went for almost three hours. It was wonderful.
So, you know, this time, I thought… I read your article in the ISKCON communication journal about Gaudiya Vaishnavi co-theology. So, I thought maybe that could be a topic for discussion today. And are you okay with that? Yeah, it sounds excellent.
Yes. So, to begin with, I find that broadly there are four areas. We could say broadly in the western world or even in the westernized world where we could say consciousness is coming towards global human consciousness is coming towards sattva and maybe becoming more receptive to not just spirituality in general, but also bhakti-spirituality.
So, yoga is one where it’s bodily consciousness, but there are more holistic ways of taking care of the body. People have become open to that. Veganism is another where people have become conscious that we shouldn’t be hurting other life forms.
Then mindfulness is another where psychological problems are to deal with them, but not just in chemical ways. We want to understand what is the mind and find more holistic ways to deal with the mind. And the last is environmentalism or environmental consciousness where I feel that people are becoming aware that our actions have consequences and that we need to take care of our earthly abode, earthly residence more.
And not only are these indicative of a broader vision of life, a broader awareness, expanded awareness, but also, we could say the expanded awareness is a kind of sattva, but there is also an openness for spiritual wisdom in addressing these issues. So, what do you think about this? I think that’s a wonderful summary on what is the major trends that we find in the direction of spirituality and bhakti in popular culture in the world and in intellectual circles. So, that’s a wonderful analysis.
I can say from my own perspective in working in university classrooms and teaching at the university, when I teach courses on world religions and we go through a variety of different traditions, or when I teach specific courses on Hinduism, there are two areas that my students use to assess the viability, validity, quality of any religious tradition. And this has been true at multiple universities, not just that I’ve taught now at four different universities. And at each one, these tend to be consistent measures when they’re looking for is this a religious tradition that I could stand next to, that I could exist within, that I could live with? Or just in terms of assessing its quality, there’s two things they look at.
One is how does this tradition treat its women and give voices to women? And secondly, how does it offer solutions for our contemporary world issues, especially the environment? With respect to the environment, I see that the issue has also become a little bit politicalized in the sense that while there is an acknowledgement that the environment has deteriorated, and it has significantly deteriorated, but it seems between the left and the right, there is polarization. And maybe because the issue has become commercialized and because the issue has also become, you know, some people are using it to score political points. Sometimes, in some circles, the environmental issue is polarizing.
But beyond that, for a vast majority, there is concern. The magnitude of concern may vary. But I don’t think the problem itself is being denied by anyone.
So the magnitude of the problem and the nature of the solutions, what all we can do, what all we should do for solving, there might be some debates about that. But even within that, there is openness to various approaches for how to solve the problems. Isn’t it, overall? Yes, yes.
I agree. I agree. I think it’s this issue is also coming to a point in the world where, especially for the next generation, it’s not a question of if it’s an issue.
It’s just a question of how we need to address it and to what degree and in what ways. What’s the best way to address it? The politicization of it is a reality. I live in the United States where it’s highly politicized.
I think other places in the world, also, the environment gets politicized. But I think precisely because it’s politicized, we, as Gaudiya Vaishnavas, as followers of the Vedic tradition, have the opportunity to provide a fresh perspective that cuts beyond the often very petty fights that take place to score political points or to promote my party or your party, that kind of thing. So this is precisely why we have an option to give spiritual solutions to material problems.
Okay. So now when you say that spiritual solutions to material problems, there are various kinds of material problems which we can deal with. And as devotees, at one level, Prabhupada was very environmentally prescient.
From what I have read, among the various environmental leaders that we have, among the various spiritual leaders that from India went to the West, not many really emphasize a lot about lifestyle and certainly about simple living. It was more about add yoga, add some mantra, add some meditation to your life. But Prabhupada talked a lot about, he didn’t probably use the word eco-friendly that time, but he talked about simple living, based on a farm and having, using cows and with a cow and a piece of land.
So in that sense, what Prabhupada offered was also very, although the message was transcendental, but he offered very tangible real world applications of the transcendental message. Yes, and I think Prabhupada was visionary like he was in so many things. He was visionary in this respect, in this aspect of placing before us a goal as devotees to live in such a way in the world that we practice our Krishna consciousness as our first priority and at the same time we relate to the world in a way that is simple, that is sustainable, that is in touch with, as his famous phrase, land, cows, and Krishna.
And so that foundation, these three things he said, if you have land, cows, and Krishna, then life is good. There’s no problem. Those basic problems are there, janma, mithyu, jatavya, but we can live in this world in such a way that we can live comfortably while also remaining focused on our ultimate aim.
And so that encouragement that Prabhupada gave, which gave and that insistence in creating spiritual communities that are based on land, cows, and Krishna, that’s something that we have yet to accomplish. We’re working in that direction. There’s wonderful examples of that that are developing.
But it’s an area that we have a lot to do in on an international scale, on a society-wide scale, to really provide an example. It really is something that the world is looking towards. There’s now a whole variety of ecologically conscious communities in the world.
Often they’re called anticipatory communities. Communities that anticipate a better vision for the world. And they come from a variety of backgrounds.
Some are Christian, some are more secular, humanist in approach. And with Govardhan Eco-Village, we see a wonderful example of a Gauri Vaishnav example of what such an ecologically aware community may look like. And it’s perfectly in sync with what the world needs.
But it’s also, more importantly, it’s a direct result of the proper practice of Krishna consciousness. Interesting. I have been in Govardhan Eco-Village and what I found, I’ve been staying here for more than a year now, during the pandemic.
I visited here before also. So two, three things I noticed about this is that firstly, it radically transforms people’s understanding of what Krishna consciousness is. My brother, he’s based in America and he is appreciative of what I’m doing, he’s appreciative of his con, but appreciative from a distance.
He’ll come visit me, talk for some time. He came here and he looked at the whole eco-friendly thing, he spent some time with the cows, he spent some time in various things and he said, next time I’m going to come, I’m going to stay for several days over here. So he is, I would say, representative of that Indian westernized young person who is delighted to see, I’m just giving that as an example of an Indian westernized person, what to speak of western people, they’re delighted to see such an expanded or expansive understanding of what Bhakti spirituality means.
So, it is quite, it opens new, I would say that, I tend to use this metaphor that, say, if you have a temple and the deity at the center, there can be different doors to come into the temple and have darshan of the deity. So, we could say that normal temples and people having direct devotional program, they are like the main entrance from which most majority of people will come. But there are many other doors that can be opened for people to gain an appreciation for Krishna and come closer to Krishna.
The environment does open environmental consciousness and if we are doing something to promote green living based on spiritual understanding, then that does open doors for a lot of people who would otherwise not be interested. I totally agree. I mean, from an outreach perspective, it’s something essential.
When Srila Prabhupada came to the United States, it was during the time of the heavy protests against the Vietnam War and against the idea of war in general. And Prabhupada wrote about and spoke about the peace formula as provided from Bhagavad Gita. How can there be real peace in the world? He addressed the concerns of the time.
And although war continues to remain a very significant concern, but today, the dominant concern again and again is ecology, is the environment. And it becomes our duty as followers of Srila Prabhupada, as members of a long-standing ancient tradition that has always responded to the concerns of the time, it becomes our duty to address this concern and respond to it as well. And let me emphasize that this is not just some sort of a PR move where, you know, this is what people want to see, so we got to show something as some sort of practice to seduce them to come and practice Krishna Consciousness.
That is not the case. This is the nature of Vaishnava and the Vaishnava tradition throughout history to address the concerns, the issues, the problems, the worries that people have in broader society, and to show how Krishna Consciousness can not only provide a way out, but also a way to flourish in the here and now, a way to flourish in this world, to live in this world in a peaceful, holistic way, simple living and high thinking. Yeah, this is, I would say that in one sense, our own understanding of Krishna Consciousness individually and collectively as a society has expanded.
Earlier, I was talking with Sri Prabhupada disciple a few months ago in a podcast. He said that our mood was that that, you know, within a few years, we are going to take over the world and a short time after that, we are all going to become pure devotees and go back to Godhead. So the idea was that there was this mood of revolution, but the quantity of the work that was required for bringing about a substantial change, that was massively underestimated.
So that’s why the world was seen simply as an arena for preaching and then an arena for getting out of this world. But beyond that, now of course, we do want to attain Krishna’s abode. We do want to share Krishna Bhakti over here.
But it requires a much more deeper engagement with the world beyond what can be negatively called as proselytization. Yes, very much so. There’s no… I think the idea that we can take over the world is still very much true.
It’s a reality. It’s a possibility. But not taking over the world in some militaristic sense or in some, you know, triumphalistic sense.
But I prefer to think of it, I like this really nice example that the Amish give, this pacifist Christian community that you find in parts of the United States. That we have to be like the leaven in the bread, the yeast in the bread. It may be only one teaspoon of yeast that you put in the bread, but it raises the entire mixture of flour and so on and transforms the entire bread into bread, into flour into bread.
It may not be that everyone is a devotee, that everyone is shaved up, that everyone is wearing pilaf. Certainly the numbers will grow. But the point is that our presence in the world and our attempt to live in an exemplary way, it will raise the consciousness of the entire society, of the entire global community.
Not just that we’re an island unto ourselves that, you know, doesn’t affect anything, we just do our own thing. But that our presence in the world should be such that whether they are, you know, part of the Iskan community or Vaishnav community or not, it doesn’t matter. Our presence, the presence of a devotee within a community, within a neighborhood, within a city, within a town, the presence of a Vaishnava should be such that that presence uplifts the consciousness of and uplifts the vitality and the happiness of everyone in that neighborhood, everyone in that community.
Like the way that yeast raises the entire loaf of bread. That’s quite a striking example, very practical because it’s something which everybody experiences in this yeast something. So, we could say that to some extent Bhaktivinoda Thakur was like that.
Then after that, I think the subsequent Acharyas, Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Prabhupada, they were more, you could say, spiritual leaders who were in the renounced order and that’s, Prabhupada was in the Grahastha Ashram, but we know him more in the renounced order. So, in that sense, maybe the ethos shifted more to recruiting people into the movement rather than transforming the world itself from where it is. I think as for example, in the academia itself, we have had devotees and which was a book I was reading recently, which said that Hinduism itself is massively underrepresented in the academic study of religion, except for one exception, which is which is ISKCON and Gaudiya Vaishnavism.
There’s an impressive number of young scholars who have joined and that they have set an example for other traditions also to enter. I think that has happened in the last 10-20 years. Where did I read this? In one of the books on Hinduism, I read that.
So, I think that’s an example of spirituality. Yes, and I think it’s natural in the course of a movement’s development for that to take place. I mean this vision is there in Shila Prabhupada very clearly as well, in terms of the development of Vaishnav communities as you were describing, farm communities, simple living and high thinking.
It’s a vision that he put before us for us to develop in due course of time. In the initial stage of a movement’s development, one has to go out and be a revolutionary band that grows and that focuses on expansion. And then, as Prabhupada gave the example of boiling the milk, and then you expand and then you have to cook it down more and more and more until something becomes very rich and then you expand again, you add more milk and you cook it down.
And so, this is how we make this khoya, this is how we make this condensed milk, nice sweets and preparation is by that process. So, yes, both of those work in sync with each other. It’s not that one is better than the other, but the process of expansion and then condensation.
Expansion, condensation have to work hand in hand with each other. And it’s the putting down of roots and settling down and becoming involved in communities is a natural process when a movement develops, when it matures and after it has grown, it’s gone through a phase of really fast expansion, then it’s very natural for those who are there to settle down and to diversify in the types of professions they engage in, how they engage in their communities. Because we saw that shift in ISKCON, right, from being the renunciate tradition, as you’re saying, to being primarily a family-based grihasta tradition.
And these types of concerns about the environment and ecology are primarily concerns for grihastas. They’re primarily concerns for people who are involved and engaged in their societies and their communities. They cannot avoid, they cannot walk away from such situations, whether it is the situation with homelessness or homelessness and hunger in their communities, or it’s the destruction of the natural environment, or it’s safety within your neighborhood.
These are things as family people in this world, one would be naturally concerned with, right? It’s not whether one is a devotee or one is not a devotee. It’s just a human concern. And if you don’t want to approach it in a Krishna conscious way, it’s not that you will avoid the issue, you will just avoid it, you will just approach it in a non-Krishna conscious way.
I cannot avoid being engaged with my neighborhood. Why? Because I have to live with my neighbors. I have to live in my community.
And when my children play outside, I want them to be safe, and I want them to have good friends and everything. So I have to be engaged in my neighborhood. Now I have a choice.
I can be engaged as a devotee in a Krishna conscious way, or I can be engaged like everyone else, in a secular fashion. That’s the choice I have. To be engaged or not to be engaged, that’s not a choice I have.
I’m a family man. This is my reality. So I think this is a natural transition in ISKCON, because we are majority composed of family people, of grihasthas, and therefore our concerns about the environment, engagement with people’s health, all of these things, this is unavoidable as a reality.
Good point. And not only is it unavoidable, you could say it’s also, it’s a positive thing. As you said, not only it’s functionally required, but that’s how a spiritual movement, you could say, becomes more gradually influential at different levels in human society.
So with respect to the environment, now, just taking this point of engaged Vaishnavism a little bit forward, that there are two levels. One is utilitarian in the sense that okay, this is for PR purposes, or this is what we need to do. But the other is more of an intellectual, intellectually grounded, and spiritually directed.
So one is because of simply social or functional necessity. Now, if we don’t do this, we’ll get into trouble. But we can do this because this is a part of our tradition itself, as you said.
So are there examples in our tradition of, say, previously of leaders getting involved in social issues, which we can draw as a precedent on? Yes. Just to qualify this, it does seem that especially when the, say, when India was under Islamic rule, most Indian spiritual leaders didn’t seem to get involved in the political dimensions of the struggle. So the Goswamis, they were not involved in any political intrigues to try to overthrow the Mughal rulers, or even for that matter, Netanyahu didn’t try to do anything with the rule of Nawab Hussain Shah.
So, of course, that’s a specific political thing. But some of those examples are often given that we are not so much into, our tradition is not so much into world transformation. It is more for world transcending.
Individually, of course, we transcend, but society, we don’t bother because it’s just too complicated. Any thoughts about that? Yeah, this is a very important question and a concern that you’ve raised. And in fact, when you asked the question, the first people I thought of were the six Goswamis of Vrindavan.
Yes, and specifically Shilajiva Goswami. I let me start by saying that these are six devotees who are at the very foundation, at the core of our entire Sampradaya. And they are 100% renunciates, Vedagis.
So going back to my original point, whatever we find in them, we can multiply by 10 at least for Grihasthas, like Shilabhakti Vinod Thakur. Because the examples I’m going to give is despite the fact, this is my point, this is despite the fact that they are Vedagis of the highest order, that they’re living under a different tree each night. So anyway, so Shilajiva Goswami in particular, he was deeply involved in not just the philosophical and theological foundations of our movement, but also in its social, political and legal health as well.
He’s someone who we might say had hands-on engagement with these aspects of our tradition. He was, like many of us are, he was born and raised in the second generation of the movement after Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, as the founder of the movement and the six Goswamis as the direct associates and followers. And then those, the five Goswamis left everything in the hands of Shilajiva Goswami.
The temples that they had built, the libraries that they had collected, the books that they had written, all of that was left, it was bequeathed to Shilajiva Goswami. And Shilajiva Goswami, he engaged with, he was very aware of the political realities of his time and the legal realities. And, dare I say, he was on the cutting edge of these aspects in terms of engaging with them for the welfare of the Vaishnav community at the time.
In fact, he, so for example, the Govinda Dev temple was there, and Madan Mohan Mandir and all of that. The fact that these temples today are still standing is directly a result of the legal work that Shilajiva Goswami did. You see, Vrindavan was located in such a place in the plains, in the fertile plains of North India, and in a place where, very close to Delhi, so that for generations, for literally a millennia, anytime a ruler needed, in Delhi, needed some extra funds to add to his treasury, or needed to build up support or whatever, he would come through with his army and raid Vrindavan.
Destroy temples, and, you know, collect money from the treasury, loot things and then go back. This happened again and again in the history of Vrindavan. After the time of the six Goswamis, we have the famous ruler, Aurangzeb, right? And he raised so many temples to the ground.
But the fact that the Goswami temples are still standing, I mean, Govinddevji Mandir lost a few stories, but it’s still there, and Madanmohan is still there, all these temples are still there, are because, in the time of Akbar, Shilajeeva Goswami worked with the emperors in Delhi to create legal documents, we have records of all of these, legal documents, preserving and promising that these temples would remain in the hands of Gaudiya Vaishnavas for the future. How did he do this? Not by going directly to the Mughals, but by working with the most important allies of the Hindu community who were in favor with the Mughals, which as you know were the Rajputs. So we have documents from Raja Todarmal, for example, in Rajasthan, who says that, who worked with Shilajeeva Goswami to get the favor of Akbar and others in the Mughal court in Delhi.
And we have a firman from Akbar saying that, we hereby bequeath the land of the Govindevji temple to Jeeva Goswami, a poor and worshipful man. This is how he describes Shilajeeva Goswami. Very sweet, actually.
A poor and worshipful man. So, this is just one example. One more example I’ll give.
Jeeva Goswami wrote a will specifying how the worship of the temples under his care should go on, particularly Govindevji temple, and specifying how the properties associated with it should be cared for. He left a final will and testament. Now this may not seem like a big deal to us today, but scholars studied Jeeva Goswami’s will as the earliest example of a testamentary document of a will in Indian history.
This will that’s visible at the Vrindavan Research Institute is the earliest example. What I mean to say is, maybe there were other examples at the time, beforehand, that we don’t have preserved. We don’t know whether it’s actually the first or not.
But the point is that Jeeva Goswami was at the cutting edge of legal instruments in India at the time. No one used wills before that time in order to preserve the Gaudiya Vaishnav legacy. So we have many examples, and this is like I’m saying, this is a Vairagi of the highest order who is doing this.
He’s not a grihastha, he doesn’t have a job, all of that. And yet, as a leader of the movement, he shows his concern for political and legal realities of his time. And the Goswamis in general, dhira dhira janap priya karam, with Sanatan Goswami, we see that as an example of how he’s engaged in the community, not just of pure Vaishnavas, but just the simple villagers in the community, concerned about their lives and contributing around them, and much love.
So this is an example of the Goswamis, of how engagement in our community, in our society, in our world, is a very natural thing for a Vaishnav. It’s not something we have to plot and plan, it happens naturally when we are Vaishnavas and we live in this world as a devotee. That’s amazing.
It is so radically different from maybe just my preconception. And generally we talk about Siddhanta Acharya, a deeply philosophical person. We read the Sandarvas, we see death of his philosophical thought also.
But it’s fascinating about the legal documents. When you are speaking this, I was also thinking that how careful Prabhupada was with respect to the Juhu temple. And many of the other devotees involved were having no experience.
But Prabhupada orchestrated the you could say the battle for the Juhu war in such a way that eventually for the Juhu temple in such a way that we won it. And point by point you do this, do this, when the temple was demolished. How Prabhupada turned it into a PR victory, although it was heartbreaking to have the temple broken.
this aspect of what Prabhupada said, I presume we can apply that for Yugoslavia also. Head was in the sky, but his feet were firmly planted on the ground. Yes, and we see that throughout our legacy.
Bhaktivinoda Thakur is a wonderful example of that where he says how this engagement with the world and people’s concerns for food, clothing, medicine. This is a symptom, he says, a sign of a Vaishnav culture. That’s how he puts it.
And you see with Srila Prabhupada and his famous statement that no one within miles of our temples, of the Mayapur temple in particular, should go hungry. And this was not just some PR move on Prabhupada’s part. This was a product of his natural compassion as paradukkaduki, as the natural kripa of a Vaishnav.
That effect that it had on Srila Prabhupada to see that scene in Mayapur of children fighting with dogs for food. This was something that touched the heart of a pure devotee of a Vaishnav. So the PR is, we may have to do things for PR purposes.
It may be a by-product. But the marker of a Vaishnav is that he or she is not hypocritical. That they are the same inside and outside.
That’s the marker of a Vaishnav. That as far as possible what is inside is what is outside. There’s no two layers.
There’s no two masks that we wear in this circumstance. We are Vaishnavas through and through. So if we do something for a purpose of PR, for the purpose of whatever it might be, then it has to come from a genuine place.
It has to be the product of a truth that we live and that we embody. Not just that we show. Good point.
Many times devotees feel that as if I’m living two lives. One as a devotee and one as a professional. But if we have a more integrated understanding of Krishna consciousness, ultimately Krishna can be served in the temple.
Krishna can be served in the home. Krishna can be served in the workplace also. then that one doesn’t feel that the ways in which I’m going to do service may be different.
So in the way you might talk about Krishna Bhakti in academic class may be different from the way you might talk about in the devotee program. And that is something which is there even for me. If I’m giving, speaking to yoga audience of primarily yoga students in the West and if I give Bhagavatam class in India, there will be different the way I’ll speak.
But it will be Krishna’s message ultimately. So in one sense there is responsiveness to time, place, circumstance. But at the same time in that responsiveness there is an underlying common thread of you could say responsibility that I’m meant to serve Krishna here.
So both go together nicely. Very well stated. Very nice.
So now this is beautiful foundation for what you led. So there is a practical level of engagement where we work for certain causes and because there is a more of a philosophical or theological level of engagement. So in one sense with respect to the environment devotees if one cause of the environmental challenges that we face is excessive consumption then as devotees just by following the four regulatory principles by our by practicing Bhakti we start living simply.
So to some extent we could say that our levels of consumption may naturally go down. That is more of the lifestyle aspect of it. At the same time there could also be a deeper level of theological engagement where why should we care for the environment? There is just to elaborate on this point that if we see the mainstream direction of the intellectual or the world view today it is increasingly secularized and secularized is basically a more polite word for non-theistic if not atheistic but even within that there are people there are people who are concerned for the environment they are recognizing that if we want people to take care of the environment just giving them doomsday prophecies this is a big problem this is a big problem stop doing this stop doing this that is not going to be enough.
So there are the transform if transformation is to be brought about in people’s lives that has to be coming from inside out and they are also recognizing that that we need to connect with the religious and spiritual traditions of the world. I had a podcast with Gaurang Prabhu where he talked about the concept of faith based organizations and he was saying that ISKCON is also recognized as a faith based organization and like we have non-governmental organizations the faith based organizations are the organizations this is a unit of organizations United Nations works with and they say that because they are faith based they have a significant influence on a particular demographic and we can channel that influence for addressing issues of global concern like say the environment one of them so I am making two points by this first is that there is a recognition that we need to draw towards religious and spiritual aspects or religious and spiritual resources for transforming people so there could be but there is often a utilitarian approach like one of the pioneers who wrote this declaration that we need to draw on the spiritual resources of the United Nations conference and he is known to be an atheist but he said we need to infuse we need to infuse a vision of the sacred in people’s understanding of nature although in one perspective if there is no God is there something sacred so there could be utilitarian approach from us as devotees and there could be utilitarian approach from the outside world to use say whatever the religious or spiritual theology or practices are there for each other’s purposes so how do we ensure a deeper level of authenticity that we are not just simply using nor are we simply getting used any thoughts on this yes this is I think you’ve raised a very important issue that sometimes others can see religious communities in a utilitarian way and also devotees can see this sort of engagement as a utilitarian sort of engagement and and and I think both do a disservice I mean both are coming from the perspective of how can I get something from the situation but the reality and people will approach things like that and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to find utility in one thing or another but the reality is that as I was saying earlier as devotees when we enter some sort of engagement then we should go into something only if we can be genuine and authentically a Vaishnava through and through that that for a devotee to be deceptive, to be two-faced, to be different inside and outside is different is not appropriate. Now time, place, and circumstance is different.
That deals with application application of eternal principles in a variety of different circumstances. How do you apply? According to time, place, and circumstance that has to do with application but the principles that drive that application are eternal they are Siddhantic. They don’t change with time, place, and circumstance they are not shaped by time, place, and circumstance but they respond to time, place, and circumstance and there’s a big difference between the two so as Vaishnavas when there are utilitarian engagements which like I said is a reality in the world and this is how the world works then when there’s a utilitarian opportunity then we have to think how do I respond to this as a Vaishnava not not that I shift my principles that I modify my principles in order to fit whatever it is that’s going on and this is why I think when we engage in environmental concerns as devotees when we engage in any kind of worldly concern as devotees it’s important that we ask ourselves how do I contribute to this situation in a Vaishnava way sometimes there can be a tendency to jump on the bandwagon and just go with the flow wherever everyone’s going yes yes yes Gita also says this you’re saying this yes Gita also says this actually there’s a verse for this also and the tendency is natural but the point is we have to stop first and we have to ask ourselves I don’t the goal of a devotee is not to engage with the world by agreeing with everything that the world does no a devotee engages with the world by making a genuine Vaishnava contribution that may be unique and the world needs to hear as Gaudiya Vaishnavas we have a unique contribution to make to the environments environmental issues in the world I’ll give you one example it is very popular these days to speak of the world as a beautiful place right you celebrate if you celebrate Earth Day at least here in the United States it’s celebrating the beauty and the wondrous glory of the world and how everything is so beautiful and people are good and etc etc etc and it’s a very popular thing to even in environmental circles to start with the assumption that the world is a beautiful place that it can be a perfect place because that’s how it’s supposed to be and then progress from there then talk about how depressing the situation actually is and how much work we have to do to match the reality with that vision we don’t have to jump onto the world is a beautiful place bandwagon we don’t have to jump onto that train because the Gita the Vedas say very clearly that this material world is a it’s a miserable place it’s a suffering place and it’s not a perfect place it’s perfect for its function but it’s not you know it’s and this is something not just Vaishnava say but it’s agreed upon widely by all branches of the Vedantic tradition it’s agreed upon by Buddhists by Jains by all the Indic tradition right a good chunk of the world’s religious tradition see the world in this way and this is a perspective that can help contribute to the world’s environmental issues by changing the narrative by changing the expectations and you by saying no we’re not going to start with the assumption that the world is a beautiful and perfect place that it’s meant to be that way and then talk about how depressing the situation is because the reality is you know when for people who work in environmental engagement that the number one personal challenge for them the emotional challenge is that they that it becomes the work becomes very depressing over time that there’s so much to do and so little progress and it feels like you are swimming upstream no matter how much effort you do the world’s problems only increase right they don’t decrease and and this and the Vaishnav perspective can offer very very helpful moderating aspect of this by saying look the making the world a perfect beautiful place is not our goal it’s not going to happen yet but what we can do to make the world a livable place so that we can achieve our ultimate goals that’s what we’re trying to achieve right we’re not going to set the bar at some place that is impossible we’re going to set the bar someplace that is practical and if you cannot if your work doesn’t transform the world into perfection that’s okay because it’s not meant to be that way anyhow it’s just the nature of the world that it’s going to have its issues in it so our perspective of can provide a very valuable voice in the current environmental discourse that takes place and that underscores my broader point which is that we don’t have to just go along with what everyone’s saying application engagement with the world according to does not mean simply towing the line right it means engagement by offering a genuine Vaishnav perspective that we can truly live as devotees that is authentic it’s remarkable that the statement the world is a place of distress can actually bring positivity in one sense it’s like if you are in a hospital there are always going to be sick people and unless you accept the baseline the hospital is going to be a place of suffering there is a place where there is going to be pain there is going to be suffering but what can you do to minimize it unless you set the baseline expectation right it can have very counterproductive results one of the things which I have noticed in the environmental movement is that there is there is almost a self righteous streak of misanthropy it’s like humanity is a problem and it’s almost like a hatred of humanity humanity is the burden on the earth and in one sense I have two different perspectives on this it’s not that human beings deliberately went about trying to destroy and destabilize the environment it is not that sinister agenda we tried to do it of course you could say Rajoguna was there but at one level as science and technology started developing it was just an attempt to survive ok these are these diseases how do we deal with them how do we survive and yes as we were surviving we started expanding our influence so what happens when we if we don’t have this baseline understanding that the world is a place of distress then we attribute all the problems that are there in the world to or in the environmental problems to humanity rather than to the nature of the world and that leads to quite a hatred for humanity which I don’t think is healthy so to both of these points you made Prabhu excellent wonderful points on the hospital example I like that very much sometimes devotees may feel that you know the Shastas say that the world is a miserable place anyway and things are going to get worse in Kali Yuga therefore what’s the use what’s the use of doing anything for the good of the world other than getting people out of it what’s the use of caring for the environment this is all pointless endeavor but that’s not our philosophy nor is it a very practical perspective to take on the world and the finest example of this is disease we are told repeatedly that janma mithu jarab yati this is a reality, birth, death, old age and disease, it’s a reality in our life, we will know one not even Brahma will escape so we get sick with some kind of disease, what’s our response anyway we’re going to get sick and keep getting sick, so let me not take care of this infection let it just seep through the whole body and let it go on no, of course not I know I’m going to get sick again yet I’m willing to deal with this sickness so that my life can go on in as reasonable and peaceful a fashion as possible so the social body is exactly the same way, the idea of the social body goes back to the Veda itself that society is the body of the virat purusha so the idea of the social body is the same way, yes the social body is going to be diseased, yes the global community, yes the natural world is going to have its problems we even know it will get worse in the course of time and yet that, there is no logical or theological argument to go from that reality to the idea that therefore we have to do nothing about it that’s a logical leap that has no that is an illogical leap I should say it’s a logical fallacy to go from the nature of reality in the world is that it’s just, you know it’s to the response that I should do nothing about it if a doctor were to take that perspective then the world, you know everyone would die of the current pandemic, right you know that a pandemic is going to make things worse in due course of time, when a pandemic begins you know it’s going to get worse before it gets better that’s the reality, that’s how pandemics work does that mean therefore because it’s going to get worse anyway you’re going to stop attempting to help the person who’s right in front of you thankfully not for those of us who have dealt with such issues and we’ve had to take, avail ourselves of such medical care we know that we can trust that doctor to deal with the issue at hand and improve the situation, even if he has no control of the trajectory of the global world’s health altogether right so that we have to keep that broader perspective in mind, we’re never going to win in the sense that the world will be perfect and yet precisely because of that we have to do what we can to be present as a salutary agent in this world, as a salutary agent so that’s to your the first point just to echo this we have within the Vedic tradition itself, you talk about pandemic, but even within the Vedic tradition itself we have this branch of medicine Ayurveda and a significant point of Ayurveda is that it does not invoke divinity constantly as a cause of problems or as a solution to problems in some ways Ayurveda is actually quite methodologically naturalistic that okay, these are the elements which comprise the body their balance is what maintains the health and if they become imbalanced, these are the natural substances you can put in the body in the form of medicines to fix the problem so the same tradition which says disease is an unavoidable problem of the world offers an entire body of knowledge to deal with diseases and it’s a body of knowledge which acknowledges the existence of divinity but its functionality, it is quite naturalistic, I am not saying naturalistic in an atheistic sense, that it focuses on material causes and material phenomena to address the problems so that idea that just because a problem can’t be eliminated doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need to be attended to or that we let it exacerbate that there is no justification for that within our tradition yes, very well stated, yes very nice and your second point that you raised remind me again after the so I was making this point that on one side we talk about the the there is a certain level of misanthropy that might come up and was that the point you were talking about? yes, yes, yes, yes, so I remember now, so that’s what I wanted to mention is that I’ve noticed this myself in Bhagavatam that to this point I mean is that if you study Srimad Bhagavatam and you look at the role of of human beings in Srimad Bhagavatam then the way the Bhagavatam takes the presence of human beings is not as an external factor that is dropped into the world after it’s all set up but as rather integral to the world’s ecology right, so the creation of human beings it just follows the creation of everything else and the world, just like the world cannot function without the presence of plants and trees right, it cannot function, just as the world cannot function without the presence of animals without the presence of water and mountains and the sun and the moon so the world also cannot function without the presence of human beings human beings have specific roles to play in the dharmic cycle of this world and so we are integral to it, and I think this idea that human beings somehow are dropped onto the world and that they’re placed that they’re placed here to then manipulate the world and they always walk two inches above the earth, this is not a Vaishnava idea, it’s not a Bhagavata idea, dare I say it’s not a Indic idea in general about the place of human beings in the world, rather human beings have a special role to play by virtue of our intelligence and our spiritual especially our spiritual capacity but that role is one amongst the roles of so many other aspects of the natural world and human beings we need to have human beings on the earth the earth needs us, Bhoomi Devi needs us to play our role it’s just that we have to act according to our dharma, according to our dharmic duty, our nature, according to the natural order of things, in the Vedas this is called rita, the natural order of the world just like everything else does animals do and plants do this by instinct by being forced by their natures, human beings have more flexibility and so we have the ability to veer away from rita, from the natural order and this is why the question of dharma then applies only to human beings is because we have that option to veer away whereas others don’t but we’re as much part of rita of the natural order as everything else, there’s no separate, you know, it’s not like we’re some extraneous feature Oh, okay this is two points interestingly, so the idea that we human beings are integral to nature I think the Bhagavata movement takes it further in the 11th canto where there is this description of the lord of all, there’s a word which is the lord of all living beings after he made all life forms he made humans who had the capacity to inquire about spiritual, about nishreyas about the ultimate self-interest or ultimate purpose of life and then he felt that the creation was completed so in one sense it’s both from existential perspective as well as from a transcendent perspective humans complete the process of creation if you could say without humans it would just be the samsara chakra going on and on endlessly and all living beings samsara chakra endlessly yes, yes, yes, very much so and think about how Bhagavatam describes even the creation of a simple element like water when it defines, third canto it defines water as something which is wet and something that flows right, all these attributes that we will say physical attributes of water a physicist will agree with but that’s not it, it also defines water as something that is cooling that removes tiredness and refreshes someone, now these are subjective qualities of water means even at the level of bare physical elements, the Bhagavatam is describing not an objective creation but a subjective creation even at the very beginning of creation, the subjective perceiver is already present right, the perceiver the experiencer is already present so there is no such thing as a natural world independent of the perceiver, the subjective perceiver, the subjective perceiver is always there right at the beginning whether it may be in the form of Brahma or it may be in the form of the sages or it may be in the form of human beings we are part of the very foundations, the very fabric of the world itself beautiful, I read the sections of it, I didn’t think about this yeah, even if you say something like viscosity of liquids you might talk about but the Bhagavatam talks about something like refreshing is not the flowing is, we could talk about viscosity but this is different it’s quite striking in one sense what is happening here is that so we could if you envision the pendulum is that that we humans may go may encroach beyond our quota like Tena Tek Tena Bhunjita what the Ishopanishad talks about and then if we then we can become a destructive influence of the universe so that we humans having excessive and destructive influence of the universe we could say is one extreme of the pendulum but some you could say some extreme environmental activists may take the pendulum to the other side and say that humans have no influence of the environment only that humans have no role and there is this joke sometimes devotees also tell in classes that if humans were eradicated from the earth and all problems would be solved on the earth all the psychological problems would be solved one way of looking at humanity’s role is that we are disrupting the environment because we are encroaching beyond our quota and that is bad but you could say reactive or excessive response could be to say that humans have no role at all on the earth sometimes I have seen some devotees make jokes in classes I might also be guilty of this that that there are some ecologists who say that if humanity were eradicated from the world there would be no ecological problems because of the extinction of human beings in fact most ecological problems would be solved so normally if somebody considers talks about murder that would be horrible but here somebody talking about not just genocide but what would be the word for eradicating humanity entirely I don’t know omnicide not omnicide omnicide means god so normally you would not talk about something like that so I think that goes to other extreme also to see humans humanity itself is not a burden it probably is like the idea of a bhaar is there in the Bhagavatam but it is when humanity loses its spiritual orientation its consciousness degrades so the degradation of the consciousness of the human beings is the problem it is not the existence of human beings itself that is the problem yes and I’m glad you brought up the issue of punishment because that’s one of the foundations of Vaishnav eco-theology is the understanding that each of us has a certain god given allotment to live in this world in a simple way and if we exceed that which is the very foundation I mean we can think of Ishopanishad’s statement on an individual level right if I’m consuming and throwing things away at an extraordinary pace I will destroy the ecology we can also think of it in terms of a community level or a national level when nations do this in the relentless drive to increase GDP and to increase economic growth more and more consumption just to keep the economic model alive so when this sort of consumption approach Ishopanishad is rejecting and insisting that from any Vaishnav eco-theology has to begin with the transformation of the heart that’s where it that’s where it starts because unless there is an internal transformation any external rules, regulations, etc will be a losing battle because the desire from the heart of the living entity is not eradicated so that’s not everything we have to say but it is the starting point is starting with a transformation of the heart to reduce if not eradicate this tendency within the heart of the human being for greed for overconsumption Yes, true.
I think that’s an important point before we go to that can I just step back to one point where you mentioned that that humans don’t walk two inches above the earth that is not an Indic world view so so does this world view come from now I’ve heard say that this world view comes to some extent to the Judeo-Christian ethos which considers humans to be special that in one sense the idea is that only humans are going to be delivered by Jesus and it places humanity in one sense above nature now what I have over a period of time learned is that it’s it’s usually for complex phenomena to give a unipolar or singular explanation it’s generally oversimplistic because for a complex problem there are multiple causes but how how objective or how fair is it to say that to some extent at least the problems of the environment are associated with a particular theological view of the nature so two things I’ll say here that it is widely acknowledged that anthropocentrism the idea that human beings are at the center of everything everything is about them and everything is for them to use, manipulate, rule over that idea has not served us well it’s caused it’s led to a lot of abuse of the natural world animals and let me say that certain branches of Christianity historically have interpreted the Genesis story to in anthropocentric terms that human beings are above they are meant to rule over which means to manipulate the world around them and they’re free to do as they like but this now I should say the vast majority of Christian denominations has been appreciated and repudiated rejected as being a misinterpretation of the Genesis idea and replaced with the idea of stewardship which still places human beings at the center of the picture but in a generous fashion as being caretakers of the world and I think what we have to think of as Vaishnavas is whether that stewardship model works from a Vaishnava perspective or if we have other models to offer for the place of human beings in the world whether human beings need to be at the center of the picture at all as the ones who are because I might say I don’t know if we’re at the center of the picture or at the top of the picture rather is the right word not center but top of the picture because we’re sort of one factor in the middle of many factors right above us are the Devas and their will and their engagement with the world and our importance of us keeping them happy whether through Vedic Yajnas or Sankirtan Yajna and then below us is the whole world of animals and plants so we’re more like middle management. We’re not at the apex of the pyramid from a Vaishnava perspective. We’re important in that we have a huge responsibility towards the world but we’re also tied to the world in very deep ways a very deep ways that are not necessarily at the top of the pyramid in terms of life forms in terms of responsibilities and so on.
So Vaishnava approaches to that may be a little bit different. So what you are saying is that the presumption that we are the stewards or caretakers underlying that role is the assumption that we are at the top but in the Vaishnava worldview we are not exactly at the top. We are more intermediate.
Is that how you are saying that the Vaishnava worldview might be Vaishnava approach to environment might be different from the Christian approach? Yes. I mean there’s many differences but this is I think one important difference is to think in terms of what is the from a dharmic perspective from the perspective of rita what is the role of human beings and what I want to say is that from a Vedic perspective the role of human beings is far more interconnected with each aspect of the world. More in the ways of the way like for example deep ecology thinks of the natural environment and the ways in which traditional cultures around the world have seen have thought of human beings place in the world.
Rather than at the apex being very deeply interconnected with every aspect of the creation and being one significant element of it. Okay. So just to conclude from a causal perspective then it was more of a you said that many branches of Christianity have rejected the anthropocentric reading of the Genesis story.
So is this is this something which is how do I put it like a damage control done to to avoid having a negative the Bible seen negatively from what I have read overall it does seem that it is more the ascendancy of of materialism and godless view of nature that led to indiscriminate exploitation. Yes. Yes.
Yeah. So it is as three things from what I read is that one is through science and technology we gain more power to control nature at least in the short term. We didn’t really know to fathom what consequences how it would backfire.
Second is that from a philosophical intellectual perspective we removed god from nature that there is a higher controlling or being to whom we are accountable and then we reduce nature itself to more of a more of you could say mechanism rather than organism. So if you consider from the Vedic perspective there is a Jiva Ishwar and Prakriti. So we removed Ishwar from the picture.
We overestimated the role of the Jiva and we you could say dehumanized or depersonalized Prakriti. So I don’t, at least I don’t think the Christian worldview that we are the that we are, the earth is meant for us that was the primary thing that contributed. It could be one causal factor but what are your thoughts? I love your, that’s brilliant, the analysis according to Ishwar and Jiva and Prakriti and what that’s, where materialism has left us and led us.
That’s very very nicely stated. I totally agree with you that I think it would be wrong to point a finger at Christianity or any other religious tradition. I think we live in a world where other religious communities are partners in our pushback against materialism as and this physicalism as the sum and substance of what human beings are.
Every religious tradition agrees that we are answerable to something higher, to someone higher and that we have to live in accordance with that and that a society driven purely by materialistic ends will end up in destruction, will end up in a state of suffering. We, every religious tradition is a partner in a common struggle that we have today and so I think we do ourselves a disservice by hitting ourselves against each other when we’ve got some much bigger fish to deal with in the ocean. Especially on your point about damage control, I don’t think it’s damage control in terms of the reinterpretation of the Genesis story and so on.
You see, the way theology works is that any theological resources one has, any religious tradition is not inherently environmentally friendly or inherently environmentally destructive. It’s all about how the individual practitioners of a tradition understand, explain and apply their theology, their scriptures, their texts. I can build an argument very similar to the old Christian view of domination from a Vaishya perspective.
It doesn’t take too much work. Human beings are intelligent creatures. You get human birth and that’s very, very rare after a long time.
And therefore, we have the ability to control and do what we like with the world. Ultimately, the world is a miserable place. There’s no use taking care of the world and our main goal is to escape from the world to get mukti.
Therefore, do what you have to. It doesn’t matter what state you leave the world in, do what you have to and get out of this world and let it go to hell. One can make an argument.
You use a different set of resources, different set of theological ideas and you build an anti-environmental argument from a Vaishya perspective. It’s not that any theology or scripture is fundamentally problematic. It’s a fact of how do we properly understand the shastra? How do we properly understand scripture and apply it in a siddhantically correct way for our own time and for our own issue? I’ll give you one really nice example of this from a book by Professor David Haberman, who’s a professor of religious studies at the University of Indiana in Bloomington.
I think he’s a classic translator of NMOD, no? Yes, yes, yes. Bhaktidasam Sindhu, he’s done a translation. He’s written multiple books.
He’s really a scholar of Braj and all the different traditions that are there in Braj. He recently wrote a wonderful book on Govardhan, on Giridhach, called Loving Stones. And before that, he wrote a book on tree worship in India, called People Trees, with the word people being spelled like the English word, people, but also with the pun on the word people, the type of sacred tree in India.
And then before that, he wrote a book on the Yamuna River, called River of Love in an Age of Pollution. And I would recommend anyone who’s interested in Vaishnava eco-theology to read these books, really, really beautifully written. And there in the Yamuna book, he says, he gives, he shows the impact that theology has on how we engage with the environment, or rather our understanding of theology, our application of it, what impact it has on the environment.
He says that when he went to Braj and he spoke to pilgrims and residents about the level of pollution in the Yamuna, this is now, I don’t know, maybe a decade ago, so it was at a time when this was still being recognized, right? It was still entering the popular consciousness in India. And the river Yamuna was deeply, deeply polluted, largely because most of the Yamuna river water was stopped in the dams near Delhi. And so there was very little Yamuna water in Vrindavan.
And that problem continues. But anyway, when he asked pilgrims and residents about the pollution in the river, what do you think of this polluted water? He got three responses, three types of responses. The first was denial.
The water can not be polluted. Yamuna is eternally pure. And he even had one pilgrim dip his cup into the Yamuna, drink the water and say, see, I’m completely fine.
And the second response, so one was to say nothing will happen, Yamuna cannot be polluted, it is eternally pure. Number two was to say Yamuna herself is pure, but when we put pollution into the river, then that pollution will negatively affect us. It does not affect Yamuna Devi herself, but it affects us.
And the example was given of light pollution, just like if you’re in a big city, and you look up into the sky at night, you cannot see any stars, right? But the stars themselves are not affected, they’re not damaged. It’s that we are unable to see the stars. It is our loss, not the stars loss.
So this was creating a distinction between what is pavitra and what is swach, pure versus clean. Yamuna is pure, but we have made, put pollution or uncleanliness into the river, that will affect us, not Yamuna Devi. That was response number two.
Response number three was that for centuries, Yamuna Devi has been sustaining and giving us life like a mother, Yamuna Maiya, like a mother. Now she is sick and ailing as a result of the actions of her own children. We have gone back and made our own mother sick by our behavior.
And it becomes our duty to care for her, right? Imagine your mother falling sick and suffering and us being careless about it. It doesn’t matter, I don’t care what’s happening. How can someone who is even a human being, what to speak of a devotee, relate to their mother in this way? So needless to say, environmental consciousness and engagement increased in the order in which I described.
The most environmentally active were those who felt that Yamuna Maiya, their mother, they had a personal connection with her and felt that she was suffering and it was their duty as her children to take care of her. Still environmentally active but less was the more human-centered approach. She’s fine, but I’m suffering as a result of the pollution.
And the least amount of interest were those who denied the very possibility of Yamuna waters being polluted. So this is an example of different theologies leading towards different levels of engagement. And all three theologies are grounded in a Vaishnav conception.
None of those people were Gnastics that he was speaking to. None of them were atheists. They were all devotees, they were all Vaishnavs who were either pilgrims or visiting brunch.
And yet their perspective on the Yamuna, how they applied their theology to Yamuna Devi had a direct impact in their engagement with the environmental issue. Amazing. So, you know, when you first made this point, I thought you’re going towards a completely deconstructionist or relativist reading of scripture that a tradition has no intrinsic meaning.
It is just whatever meaning you read into it. But it is not so much like reading a meaning into it, but there is a basic set of texts, but how you bring those texts together that can lead to radically different conclusions. So, yeah, I fully agree with this point that we could use, Bhagavad Gita could be used to say, why work to deal with anything in the world? Why do work to solve any problems at all? But then we don’t see that approach in the Bhagavatam.
Say for example, Prithu Maharaj, when his citizens are starving and they come to him, he doesn’t say, yeah, this world is a place of distress, just tolerate it. He doesn’t say that. So, a lot of responsibility will be there on the contemporary practitioners and especially contemporary teachers.
Isn’t it? Because with respect to issues which are universal for humanity, then maybe we can look back at the previous Acharyas to see how they have handled the issue. But if there are some contextual contemporary issues that have come up, what the response of a tradition would be, it depends largely on who is going to speak for the tradition. Yes.
Yes. Very important. It becomes crucial to deeply accept and imbibe what we received from the previous Acharyas and then to explain it in a way that is according to our own realization, that is according to the time, place and circumstance.
And this is the essential meaning of parampara. If we don’t do that, if we don’t take that responsibility seriously that you’re describing, then essentially we have given up the very idea of parampara. We have stated that parampara has ended with such and such person.
It’s over. And there, at that point, then the further application of the tradition is no longer possible, that its continuity is no longer possible. But we see from Bhagavatam that from Parikshit Maharaj, from Sugadev Goswami to Parikshit Maharaj, from Parikshit Maharaj to Suta Goswami, yatha dhitam yatha mati, each one faithfully transmits what they have received and then adds to it or transmits it according to their understanding and the application for the people in front.
Sugadev Goswami’s application, his audience at the time was Parikshit Maharaj and his needs of someone who is about to die in seven days. Suta Goswami’s application was different. His audience, the needs of the time were different.
It was for us, for the impending arrival of Kali Yuga and those sages who were worried about what Kali is going to do. Each time Prabhupada’s audience and who he’s addressing is yet different. He took science as his great interlocutor because that was the purvapaksha of his time.
This is the very meaning of parampara and we may not be great acharyas, we may not, we are not Shila Prabhupada but the duty to follow in his footsteps and to do our little bit, we may not, like I said, we may not transform the whole world, we may not come up with some grand scheme but our duty to do our little bit to practice yatha dhitam yatha mati in our communities, in our neighborhoods, in our society, that is our responsibility. It’s a great responsibility of every individual devotee and as you said, especially of teachers who can shape the entire direction of the community of devotees. So, maybe just a couple of questions before we finish.
I appreciate the level we have gone to the discussion, otherwise we may have to continue, this is a very important topic. So, to some extent you talked till now about what Indic thought is or what the issue of Nishad is. Is there if we consider ourselves not just as a representative of Vedic thought or Vaishnava thought but Gaudiya Vaishnava thought, so does Gaudiya Vaishnavism itself provide us some distinctive insights about our vision of the environment as contrasted with other Vedic schools of thought? Yes, there are many things that we can contribute which is shared across all the religions of the world.
There are many things we can contribute which is shared across all the Indic traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, like that. There are many things that we can share which are, that we can contribute to the environmental problem that are shared across Vedantic traditions. So, you know, the various Vaishnava Vedanta traditions, even Advaita Vedanta.
There are various things we can contribute that are shared across the Vaishnavas in particular. And then there are some things that we can contribute which are distinctly Gaudiya Vaishnava contributions. And that are maybe not exclusive to our tradition, but are especially emphasized and brought to light and developed by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in his book.
So, this actually leads to a whole section of the discussion that I don’t know if you want to pursue in brief today or say for another time, but we haven’t actually gotten into the building blocks of what a Gaudiya Vaishnava eco-theology would look like. That is what we’ve been speaking of the need for it, the context for it, the pushback against it, the various arguments that may dissuade someone from engaging, which is all essential foundation building, groundwork. But we haven’t actually spoken of those specific aspects of our theology that would lead us to engage with the environment ourselves and also contribute something to the global discourse on ecology.
We’ve not addressed that at all yet. And there’s multiple points in that regard that I think you would very much enjoy in discussing because I think you could contribute, you personally could contribute a lot to it because they’re grounded in Bhagavatam, they’re grounded in our theology which you’re of course very learned in. So I think it may be a very interesting discussion or dialogue in terms of some kathas, some philosophical points, leelas that I would like to bring up and I’m sure you would be able to bring up many things as well.
I think it would be a very rich discussion. So it’s up to you, Prabhu, how you want to approach it. Maybe we could do this in two parts.
So today we build up the need for it and then next part we could have a discussion. I’ve done this three-part series in fact on ethics and Krishna Conscious Ethics and ISKCON. I’ve been doing with Rasmandal Prabhu.
So we’ve been developing it over multiple podcasts. So we could do that I think because as I said that is the core subject of what we want to discuss and we won’t do justice to it if we rush through it. So maybe I’ll just ask one more, I’ll raise one more point then I can summarize and we’ll finish.
So when we talk about say you said that it is important for us or the leaders of our tradition to take responsibility as the essence of a parampara. So in general there are within a living tradition there is a wide number of people with very different approaches to the world itself and we see that there are many different with environmental friendly living eco-friendly living, we have many different devotees leaders doing many different things of how to implement eco-friendly living. So as individual devotees when we look at nature or we I would say not so much nature but when we deal with when we go about our daily lives we could explore this a little bit later but in our next session but is there something simple which we could add that could make us a little more eco-conscious in our day to day living say like Prabhupada said when you drink water think of the taste of water as Krishna.
Now that’s wonderful, that’s Krishna consciousness I’m not sure that is going to enhance our environmental consciousness anything that maybe you have adopted personally in your life or something which you feel which is not a difficult thing to do but it is also a way to bring Krishna consciousness into our life. I’m very happy you asked this question simply because there is no automatic translation or sequence from theology to action the history of religion is replete with examples of beautiful theologies and ideals that are either misapplied or not applied at all and that leads to all kinds of misery in the world. Was it Immanuel Kant who said that there is no line from facts to values from what is to what should be? Was that Kant? I’m not sure but that sounds, this is very nice what you’re describing, I’m not sure who said it.
One could give many examples of that gap but I think it’s a very well known gap one doesn’t have to work very hard to prove it. I think it’s more difficult to recognize this in one’s own tradition it’s easier to point it out in other people’s traditions. The lack of sequence from ideal theology to practical application.
But this is true in our tradition as well. It’s because we human beings are imperfect in our application of what is a perfect gift from the Lord in terms of our philosophy and siddhanta. So it’s very nice that you asked this question about application and of course we can get into it in much more detail in our next part but this is something I’ll raise in detail but I think the one thing that we can do is something that Srila Prabhupada emphasized on multiple occasions that when we see any type of I don’t like to use the word resource but when we see any kind of resource or natural element or anything in our lives that we recognize it as Krishna’s energy, as his shakti, as belonging to him and therefore not something that we have the right to overuse or waste.
Regardless of who’s paying for it, regardless of how much abundance there is of it people in places where there’s a lot of water, they think it doesn’t matter there’s so much water here. Let the people in India worry about not enough water or people who have who think I’m working for a greater cause, therefore the exception applies to me. I can use or damage the environment because I’m working for something greater.
No, we understand as devotees that everything belongs to Krishna, it’s Krishna’s shakti and therefore regardless of the abundance or availability or who’s paying for it or whether it’s cheap or expensive, we think no this electricity, this water, this everything that is there, this is Krishna’s shakti and I think our shakti theology is very crucial for this perspective, for understanding and therefore we minimize its usage as far as possible and this is directly this is all a preview of next time, but this is directly the ethos of Vairagya Vairagya doesn’t mean giving up the world, it means recognizing that nothing in the world belongs to me, it belongs to the Lord and therefore just as I would not waste something that you give me to borrow I would use only it as much as I need to and then return it carefully to you, so why should I waste, overuse overconsume something that doesn’t belong to me, that belongs to the Lord. Beautiful thought Yeah, I think many places in our temples, in the ashram we put don’t waste Krishna’s water don’t waste Krishna’s electricity turn off the lights the simple things but they can actually be be expressions of a deep level of devotional appreciation for Krishna’s gifts also a wonderful thought In one sense we are realizing the value of things when we don’t have them very easily but the way you put it is even when we have it easily if we recognize that this is actually something which Krishna has given me then abundance doesn’t, even the abundance won’t make us take it for granted Yes, I remember one little incident in Prabhupada Nectar series by Satsvarupa Maharaj, the little books, little anecdotes of Prabhupada one particular story where Prabhupada is in a temple and he’s walking with devotees, I think he’s just returned from a morning walk and he turns to them and says they have eyes but they cannot see and and then he continues walking and devotees are thinking this must be a very deep philosophical point what is Prabhupada trying to say here in terms of our inability to see Krishna or whatever and he stops again and he says they have eyes but they cannot see and he points to a light bulb which is running on outside in broad daylight and he says look it’s running, it’s right there and you cannot see it right, go turn it off so Prabhupada was very practical like this I had heard another story that Prabhupada was in Mayapur and somewhere a tap was dripping a few drops of water they can’t see for light amazing, so beautiful it’s a very sweet note to conclude this so should I just quickly try to summarize what we discussed through before we wind up so today we discussed broadly on the the relevance of Gaudiya Vaishnavism in terms or relevance of Krishna Consciousness Bhakti Theology in terms of the environmental crisis facing the world so broadly I think four or five points we discussed started by how this I mentioned the four points of mindfulness, yoga, veganism and environmentalism and you mentioned about two points the attitude toward women and especially environmental that is like a make or break for people with respect to how they see spiritual traditions then with respect to the environment specifically we discussed how while the problem itself is grave specific measures what to do, what not has become politicalized but because it has become politicalized we can bring in a fresh perspective from our theological perspective and then you said that this is what we should be doing as a tradition and then we talked about Yugoslavia although he was, he embodied the summit of renunciation still he is so socially engaged that he his writing of his will is the first existing legal document that we have of that kind so he was a legal expert and the fact that Vrindavan was, our temples were mostly Goswami temples were preserved despite Aurangzeb’s reign of terror was because Yugoslavi had arranged for the protection by working with the Rajput kings so if he as an announcer is so engaged then those of us who are in the world how much more we should be engaged and that’s beautiful Prabhupada also was had a foresight to talk about simple living and high thinking cow’s land and Krishna and then how do we translate it into today’s world in those terms we discussed about when the environmental crisis is there what are the what are the causes of it if you went into that it’s rather than attributing it to a particular religion we can attribute it to a particular ideology that is anthropocentrism and that could have arisen from many causes not just one religion so we avoid unipolar explanations then within that we discussed from our traditions perspective that we don’t have to jump so I talked about how we shouldn’t be you mentioned that we shouldn’t be just using this a devotee should not be hypocritical or superficial inside and out with a deep level of understanding of what our theology says when we engage then there will be an authenticity to it and others may try to use us because even secular environmental activists have recognized that spiritual traditions are required for bringing sustainable change in people’s lifestyles so they may want to use us so to prevent that from happening we shouldn’t jump on the bandwagon of whatever ideas they come up with we have to see what our theology says and then to say the world is a very beautiful place on say world earth day or something that is a fad today and yes there is beauty in the world but there is also distress in the world and if we bring that point in paradoxically it can actually decrease the distress of environmental activists because then their baseline expectation changes they otherwise feel that why is the world not becoming a better place so they may start even this amount of misanthropy where they start hating human beings so humans don’t have excessive role that we don’t have to encroach on others quota but humans have a valuable role in society in the ecological system in one sense we fulfill the purpose of creation by having that capacity for spiritual realization as the Bhagavatam says and then with respect to humanity’s contribution two three things that the theological understanding from Christianity is that we are human beings are caretakers or caretaker stewards now our understanding might be a little more nuanced because we don’t see ourselves either at the center or even at the summit within the environment we are intermediate because our houses are devatas so what would be our role in the environment that is something which has to be explored but broadly we could say that as devotees as representatives of Vedic tradition it is important for us to engage and then another point which was quite striking when you talked about the attitude towards the pollution of Yamuna in that it was denial there was it’s not a problem at all or that it is a problem at a transcendental level not a practical level Yamuna is affected we are not affected but rather third is that we have made our mother sick so we have to heal her now so that means whatever be the basic text of a theology how those texts are read or interpreted that depends on the current leaders of the traditions how they are understood explained and applied and that’s where we need to be responsible in our presentation of the of Gaudiya Vaishnava theology and with respect to the problem that we face today is more because of materialism by which the understanding of all three have been distorted it’s not due to any specific religion and we by hitting out at each other we do a disservice to the bigger cause that we all have to work on today and lastly you mentioned that the way we can bring environmental consciousness into our daily lives is by being aware that whatever resources we are using they are Krishna’s energies so even if we don’t have scarcity that doesn’t mean we take it for granted but we use them we use it cautiously any points you would like to add no Prabhu as usual your summaries are wonderful they’re perfect you said it all better than I could say it I think I missed a few points but it’s good wonderful actually I look forward to our next discussion yes I look forward to it very much I think it will be awesome thank you very much for joining today Hare Krishna thank you