The Bhagavatam’s relevance for a postmodern audience, The Monk’s Podcast 146 with Kaustubha Prabhu

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna Kaustubh Prabhu. Welcome back to the Monks Forecast.
It is my great pleasure to be here with you Prabhu. Thank you for joining. Last time we had a very broad and insightful discussion on Western outreach.
Today I thought we could go deeper into a specific aspect of the Western mind and your outreach. It seems that the Western mind is significantly affected by postmodernism. So, and then you are, your Mr. Manasaheb’s podcast has been quite successful, where you are directly teaching the Bhagavatam.
So we could discuss about presenting Bhagavatam to the postmodern mind or the postmodern world. I thought we could discuss broadly that topic. Sure.
So maybe first we can start with what is postmodernism? That will help me define it more clearly. So, you know, it’s one of the aspects of postmodernism is that it rejects all structures and definitions. So in that sense, it’s very difficult to define.
But I’ll talk, maybe I’ll present in two, three different ways. One is that, we say that modernity was characterized by rationality, that we should be rational, we should be using science as a tool, scientific reason as a tool for understanding. So, pre-modernity was characterized by revelation, that the defining epistemological source of knowledge was revelation, whether it is Bible or the Vedas or the Quran or whatever else.
But in the postmodern, the idea is even both revelation and rationality are both considered to be basically instruments of power. That revelation is used by the religious people to hold power and rationality is used by those who can use it for maybe for gaining power over us. Our idea is rational, your idea is not.
So, their idea is that ultimately each individual is free to decide their own conception of reality. So, in one sense, experience, personal experience becomes the defining parameter for deciding what is the reality. So, there is the concept of truth with a capital T and truth with a small t, that whether there is actually an ultimate truth that is either not there or that is not knowable, but each of us have our own truths, truth with a small t, my truth, your truth.
I’ve heard people speak like that. I’ve heard people speak like that. Very subjective and experiential based on one’s own experience.
So, that’s one major aspect of postmodernism. Should I go on or would you like to reflect on this? No, no. Why don’t you lay it out for me and this will be helpful for me.
So, another aspect is also that within the postmodern context, people consider that any, so in one way intellectual structures, but even societal structures, the whole idea is everything is seen as a means for gaining power. Some people say that what Marx talked about as power in terms of social dynamics, that history of humanity is a struggle between the powerful and the powerless, the haves and the have-nots. So, that is taken into all domains of life.
So, it’s like maybe the masculine males are trying to dominate the females. One race is trying to dominate the other race. So, any societal structure it may be, it is seen with suspicion and especially religious organizations, religious systems which have structures and hierarchies, they are also seen with great suspicion.
The default assumption is that this structure has been created for gaining power. That through this structure somebody can develop competence or go towards excellence or transcendence. Those are seen as secondary at all present.
So, suspicion about structures, we could say, first is more in terms of epistemology, how we know. Then the second could be more in terms of functionality. That’s why we can say there is a huge crowd of spiritual but not religious.
They usually associate religion with either some structure of dogmas or some structure of rituals. And they say, I don’t want those. But I want to experience something higher in life.
So, that SBNR group, that is quite typical of the postmodern mind. That second thing about structures and third would be, broadly speaking, the postmodern mind is often more concerned with, you could say, more with feelings than facts. That if something feels good, we want to do it.
So, now this is not necessarily bad. It is the whole attempt for social justice. Social justice itself is not a postmodern endeavor.
It is, of course, almost a humanitarian endeavor. But anything which is seen as discriminatory or unjust, there is a strong opposition to that. And sometimes in proposing solutions that people are governed more by feelings than facts.
This sounds right, so we should do this. So, now again I might be making some connections which not everybody would agree with. But say in America, there is this whole defend the police, agitation is there.
Now there are of course genuine reasons why people may have suspicion about police authority. There have been abuses of power. But for most people, if there is no police, there will be chaos in society.
That’s their way of looking at it. But here the idea is, police are causing so much injustice. So, decrease policing and focus more on education, on other facilities which will bring about sustainable change in society.
So, now whether providing more education, whether providing better medication, better health facilities and all those things, whether that actually decreases crime, whether that, so often the facts are not examined so much. But one is driven by quite a bit by feelings. So, I would say experiences, then focus on experiences, then suspicion about structures and feeling based activism.
There is a zeal to do something, but it’s largely feeling based. So, now there could be a lot more in postmodernism, but these are three broad things I thought we could address. Does this resonate with your experience also broadly? Kind of people you encounter? I definitely, yes, feel those trends and thought for sure.
And so, where to start? Would you like me to start with, I guess, just some of our, some of our discoveries with Zimmeditate, just like what we’ve kind of experienced with people that we’re connecting with. Yeah. So, any of the people with any of these mindsets, if you encountered them and how you presented Bhakti to them or what challenges they faced in Bhakti and how you dealt with those, you could go that way also.
Or you can go according to your thought flow. Well, in one sense, Wisdom of the Sages is a dialogue between myself and Raghunath. And everyone else is just listening, right? Of course, we do take questions once a week.
And they may get into these topics, but maybe what I would, you know, currently we have about 6,000 people that listen per day to Wisdom of the Sages. So, it’s like 6,000 people listening to Bhagavatam. And the interesting thing is that so many of them had no prior experience it until very recently.
You know, for instance, a lot of people, a lot of our listeners, there was a huge spike in our listenership from people from the Joe Rogan show, which is a popular podcast that has absolutely nothing to do with spirituality, Eastern spirituality or anything like that. But Raghunath appeared on that, spoke about Bhagavad Gita, spoke about his journey in life. And that brought over a huge spike in our listenership.
So, that means you’re dealing with someone from scratch. And someone, you know, that is likely in one way or another either a product of postmodern thinking or, you know, responding to postmodern thinking in some way. So, it’s a big, you know, it’s a big swath of people.
Maybe let’s start with institution because that’s interesting. That’s important, yeah. That’s the first thing which I think we have to encounter immediately.
Yeah. And, you know, my thoughts about institution have, maybe they’ve developed a little bit since doing Wisdom of the Sages. It’s occurred to me that—well, let me put it this way.
First of all, Raghunath and I, we speak openly, say, about ISKCON. You know, we talk about it. We talk about our experiences growing up in it.
We don’t speak in a cynical way, although sometimes we look back at it in a humorous way. Or we may, you know, point out flaws or weaknesses that were there, not so much with any kind of bitterness, but just like as an observation, you know. Again, sometimes humorously and sometimes to help us better understand how we might do things better.
But we try to never do it with any kind of axe to grind or some kind of cynicism or anything like that. But what we definitely don’t do is present Bhagavatam or Krishna consciousness or the practice of bhakti as something that’s dependent on a particular institution. That, you know, you need to become a member of this institution in order for this to work for you or something like that.
And I think largely what we present is that the institution is there to bring us to the goal of the practice, It’s there to bring us to that stage where from within the heart, you know, arises that true nature of love for God. And that we feel that love through feeling for that root of all existence. We feel it for, you know, every living entity who’s like, you could say, a leaf on the trees of that existence.
You know, for every living being, we should feel that compassion or affection in some way. And that the institution is designed to get you there. You know, it’s not that you’re meant to fall in love with the institution, but that the institution is meant to facilitate your love for God and for every living being.
And I think that can get lost, you know, and maybe a presentation that is more institutionally directed, more, you know, when the attitude is, how are we going to get these people into the institution? How do we get more members of the institution? If that’s in the psyche of the person that’s presenting it, perhaps the postmodern mind will not respond very well to it. You know, it’ll be sensed, it’ll be understood, and it’ll be avoided. So a couple of things.
Thank you for mentioning this. Sure. So I also heard your podcasts on your wisdom of the sages.
And in one sense, what you are saying is that you made that nice category that either people are influenced by postmodernism or people are reacting to postmodernism also. Both those kind of people might be there. And I have seen that there are quite a few people who are opposing postmodernism also, quite aggressive opposition to that, is there to that.
So you are addressing both of those. So we could say one group may be very strongly a defender of the institution and the other could be like a very strong critic of the institution. But what you are doing is, you are avoiding both of these extremes by focusing just on the message of bhakti.
Yeah. We try to keep it there. Honestly, not only as a presentation, but actually as well as like within our own lives, in our own practice, in this day or this age of polarization.
Not that I try to be aloof to social concerns, but I definitely try to avoid being swayed by the emotion that you’re talking about on either end. True. So the point I was making is that while we are, you mentioned that we don’t show, we don’t say that this is dependent on any particular organization.
So then if we consider, do we talk about standards, say for example, four regulative principles, or chanting a certain number of rounds. So now if we consider part of the tradition, there are the five potent forms of devotional service which are mentioned. But the specific magnitude, how much to chant is not mentioned within the tradition.
That is more, we could say associated with the institution. So when we are teaching, can you give some examples of where or what not emphasizing the institution would mean? Does it mean that you don’t tell people to visit Iskcon temple or what do you mean by not emphasizing the institution? Well, I suppose we try to speak, for instance, you brought up, okay, there are five potent forms of devotional service. And the understanding is there that even one of these has such potency that if you become absorbed in it, if you absorb your mind in it, it’s powerfully transformative.
So then the question is, well, I do try to absorb my mind in and I sit down and chant my rounds and I don’t feel all the transformation that I meant to feel. Okay, well, then let’s look at why apparently you’re not absorbed in it properly. And that may have to do with our attitudes, that might have to do with our lifestyle, that might have to do with our sentiments, that something’s not quite lined up right now.
Now, whether the institution is going to help you get there or not, my mind isn’t so important. Perhaps Raghunatha and myself are going to help the person understand the right conceptions or the right sentiments that one needs to have when they chant that name to feel a more transformative power in it. But in one sense, Raghunatha and I, we’re both products of the institution.
So if we can help them understand that, then in one sense the institution has played its role. I was thinking recently about one statement Prabhupada made, and I hope I’m quoting it accurately, but it was more or less that at one point Prabhupada said that even if Vizcon collapses, that’s okay, as long as the BBT continues. Does that ring a bell? Yes, Prabhupada said that, yeah.
And so it made me think that that was just interesting. We might be institutionalized in our thinking, and we may have, based on our experience, we may see that there are temples with people that live in those temples, and from those temples, Krishna consciousness or bhakti will spread, and it’s dependent. But is it really? Or could the role of those temples shift with time? Could it be that there are just people out there? They may be authors.
They may be musicians. They may play some other role in popular society, and they’re reaching many people with the message of bhakti, and people are being transformed because those people are reaching them, not so much people coming out of a particular temple, and that the temple’s role could be that place you go to to seek Radha and Krishna in the temple, to have darshan. Perhaps that’s where the future goes.
Whoever can carry that message effectively can carry that. Sorry, I didn’t get what you’re saying. Are you saying that the role of the temple would be a base for authors and poets, or the authors and poets will be elsewhere, and they will encourage people to go to the temples for darshan of the deities? Yeah, the second one.
In other words, I think in the past we’ve seen, maybe we still do see, temples as a breeding ground for preachers that go out into the world and change the world. But is it always those people that are actually reaching the most people? Sooner or later a movie’s going to come along, sooner or later a musician, just like George Harrison, or the role that even Raghunath played and his bandmates in the band Shelter, where they’re reaching so many people. Now we see someone like a Genevieve Harrison can reach hundreds of thousands of people through her music, through social media, and others are out there and they’re reaching people with these messages.
Raghunath and I are surprised that actually so many people listen to Wisdom of the Sages. It’s interesting. We feel that the message is suitable that if we were just promoted more, there are a lot more people that are out there that would also be willing to listen to it and be affected by it.
So it may not be that people need to come to a temple to learn Krishna consciousness from the people that live inside that temple, but it may be that those temples could just be the place where you go to see Radha and Krishna, maybe celebrate a festival. But there’s people, not only reaching people with the message, but maybe even supplying them or providing them the care and assistance that they need to progress on that path, through different ways. So it seems to me like it’s already moving that way.
And I think the whole lockdown with COVID and everything may have accelerated that a bit too. That’s an interesting point. Yeah.
So the institution, at least in terms of physical boundaries of the institution, they have become, the physical structure and the physical boundaries of the institution have significantly become downplayed because of the pandemic. So, yeah, you know, we notice it also in terms of usually a devotee would go to the local temple to hear a class. But now a person can hear, even if they want to hear classes regularly, they can hear from anyone in any part of the world practically.
Yeah. And I think perhaps unintentionally, not with, you know, or let’s say with only the best intentions, but I think the institution may have had a way of holding down certain people that did have the ability to spread Krishna consciousness. You know, there is a structure, there’s a hierarchy and so on that that’s established.
And with COVID, you know, everyone just going online. It’s like whoever’s reaching people is going to reach people. Beautifully put.
Yeah. That’s true. So, yeah, if you want to go online, in an institution, some people may be given opportunity to speak, others may not be.
But in social media or through the Internet, anybody can speak. And if people are attracted, they are attracted. Yeah.
That’s so true. I think it’s similar. Like, I’m no expert on this, but I think, like, for instance, in, like, say, with popular music, in the past, it would be very difficult to get a record contract.
You know, there are a number of record companies that you could get a contract with, you know, and they would really have control over you in terms of, you know, your art, you know, artistically and so on. But you’re kind of stuck with that. And, you know, there would be great talent out there.
But if they didn’t see that talent, then you were never discovered and so on. But in this age, you know, people can get their music out and put it up on Instagram. And, you know, and from what I understand, you know, a popular musician may find a whole new path to popularity nowadays.
And so maybe that there’s a similar trend in terms of reaching people. That’s true. I think, you know, in one sense, we could say this started earlier also in publishing, because now we needed a publisher in the past.
And of course, now also people may choose publishers. But if you have the capacity to produce good content and you have capacity to reach people, then anybody can write their own book and put it on Kindle, put it on Amazon and reach audience. Yeah.
That’s also there. Yeah. So in one sense, we can say that it’s not so much structures are being removed, but structures are being redefined.
Yeah. Because if you go back to the point of example of Amazon, there are a lot of people who are concerned about, say, the way the ethics of employment in Amazon, that people are being exploited, workers are not, too much work is demanded, they are not paid enough or whatever. So we could almost say that you cannot really reject, remove structures.
But some structures, some hierarchies may become dysfunctional because of societal changes or because they no longer serve the needs as they were serving earlier. Yeah. It seems like there’s always, you know, we tend to choose this structure or that structure, but really to really serve people requires flexibility.
Like that seems how the world is, you know. People argue, like conservatives argue for small government, liberals argue for large government. But the fact is, it’s got to be able to shift according to the circumstances, you know.
Beautifully put. Even with the city of podcast, what you mentioned, it’s a non-institutional form of outreach. But then even the podcast market is also, it has its own hierarchy.
It’s like somebody at the top, they will naturally get, they will appear on the search engines, they will, they will, they will spread more. And because you got from Joe Rogan, that also help you to reach a larger audience. And what that did, just to substantiate your point, was by doing that, we immediately also shot to number one ranked spiritual podcast on Apple podcast.
So it was, if someone went to search for a podcast on Apple podcast, they would see us, you know. That happened because we were on Joe Rogan. So yeah, it self-perpetuates itself.
Or it’s like snowball effect, that is true. Okay. So, yeah, that is one thing that about post-modernism, you really can’t get away with structures.
So you mentioned about liberals and conservatives. In one sense, liberals may say that, oh, we want to defend the police or whatever. They may oppose structures, but eventually they create their own structures.
And sometimes their structures are quite, quite, quite overbearing in one sense. In a, you say, we may say that society will not, capitalism will not equitably reward, will not bring about social equity, economic equity. But then to provide welfare, to provide, bring about justice and equity, you have to create a whole complex structure through which affirmative action or India reservation systems, they can be accumulated.
So in one sense, we can’t get away from structures entirely. It’s happening with Wisdom of the Sages right now, actually, because in one sense, it’s just been myself. But, you know, we realize that there’s a lot of people, you know, that are out, thousands of people that want to practice bhakti and either they’re kind of isolated out there or, you know, again, even if there’s an institution in, you know, like a, say in Iskcon Temple or something in their area, it may not appeal to them or they may not, it may alienate them in some way.
And so we’re realizing that we actually have to provide a network of support for these people. They’re actually going to, you know, just listening to a podcast won’t be enough. You need to have someone that you can ask your questions to.
You need to have someone that you can share your struggles with or share your, you know, victories with and have some friendship and a little bit of mentorship. And so we’re reaching out now, we’re developing right as we speak and we hope to launch very soon where people within the Wisdom of the Sages audience that want to practice bhakti can join reading groups online. And there they would have a, like, you know, a place to not just read but also to check in with one another and share their thoughts and share their questions, etc.
And so now you start to build a structure, right? And furthermore, we want to, like, we want to tie together all those groups and draw research from those groups as to what issues are most challenging to them to continue their practice. You know, and those may be, you know, psychological issues. Those may be relational issues.
They may have to do with raising a family. They may have to do with depression or anxiety. They may have to do with addiction.
It may have to do with institutional concerns or, you know, philosophical concerns. A wide variety of things that may be obstacles to people continuing the practice. What we want to do is create a whole other tier in this institution, you know, that in a sense that we’re creating, that can really provide answers and content for those people so that they might be able to continue their practice better.
And so, yeah, in one sense, the more that you want to help someone, you do have to create an institution of some sort. Yeah. In one sense, you know, when I was also interacting with the Bhakti Center, and I think at that time you had also mentioned about the core and then the cultural way people can come, the yoga way people can come.
So it was quite well structured. So we could say it’s more like what you mentioned about you finding the structure. It’s not so much like when structures outlive their utility, then we have to find their appropriate structures.
Flexibility. Flexibility, yeah, flexibility. So, if somebody asks, are you Iskcon devotees, how would you answer that? Someone ask me? Yeah.
If I’m an Iskcon devotee? Yeah, if you were introduced to them, if you’re speaking on the monk’s podcast, not on your Wisdom of the Sages, and there is some person who you know is quite new, they come from Jorogan or something like that. So would you, if they ask, are you Iskcon member, are you Iskcon devotee? Yeah, I identify. I identify with the institution.
Sure. You know, I don’t claim responsibility for everything that it does. But I do identify with the institution.
But I’m not bent on making you a part of that institution. I see my role is to bring the best of that institution to people rather than to necessarily exactly bring people to that institution. If bringing them to that institution is going to serve that, great.
And if it’s going to hinder that, well, then let me just take the best from the institution and bring it to you. That’s nice. In one sense, the bring the best also involves a certain level of individuality.
You understand what is the best for that person. And you also, you are doing some editing or selecting what you have experience of the best. So then that is, actually we could say that, that’s almost the responsibility of every person who is trying to share wisdom.
Isn’t it? So that it’s not just giving the traditions wisdom, but tradition, but giving the most relevant or accessible or transformative aspect of the tradition. So the way you phrased it right now, was this something which you, very nice phrasing that bring the best of the institution to the people, not bring people to the institution. So is this something which you also over a period of time realized that, okay, this is what I am doing or this is what I should be doing? Because in general within ISKCON the idea is we get people to come to the temple, we get people to come to ISKCON.
That’s the definition of preaching. So was this like a consciously decided strategy or it just subconsciously happened based on the way you are interacting with people? I think it was subconscious and it’s becoming more conscious. Okay.
You know, I think the last time we spoke, we talked a little bit about my history and we mentioned that back in 2003 I brought an idea to Radnaswamy about creating a cultural center in New York. He responded with enthusiasm and I said, what’s the next step? And he said, you become a yoga teacher, which I had no experience or, you know, ambition to become. But that sent me out into a world that I had, you know, I had been a monk for 14 years prior to that.
And for the first time I really stepped out of that, even though I was regularly like as a brahmachari, you know, involved in the world and going to rock concerts constantly to sell books or going to colleges, you know, but actually it really kind of got me out of a bubble. It put me where I wasn’t just entering that world, but I was like making friends in that world and developing relationships in that world and learning in that world. And that’s, you know, honestly, I think if we want to reach people, we have to understand them.
And it’s when you’re living in your bubble, you may not even realize you’re living in your bubble, but it’s harder to understand people, at least in the field that I served in. It was important for me and Raghunatha also, the two of us, you know, we’re always reaching people outside, you know, always connecting with people outside, always befriending people outside, always, you know, serving people outside of the institution. And so I think we kind of subconsciously maybe understood it in the past, but I think with Wisdom of Sages, it’s becoming all the more conscious.
Okay, that’s true. And that’s true in the sense that I can say that for me also, it is, especially when I started coming from traveling toward the West, I realized that most of the Western outreach programs which happen, they don’t happen through the institution. They happen through quite often the individuals who are inspired by the institution, but the individuals are taking some initiatives and that’s how things happen.
So, now specifically if you talk about the Bhagavatam, when you’re talking in the Bhagavatam, I don’t really see that intrinsically the Bhagavatam talks about an institution. In fact, we could say that the idea of an institution is almost, at least a religious institution, is absent within the Bhagavatam. Yeah.
Sometimes the sages step into the political institution and instruct the king and then they leave. They have no official position. So, one aspect, one thing which might be considered a religious institution, although we could say it is more of a social institution also, is the Varanashram or the caste system.
Or how it has become and is perceived as the caste system in today’s world. So, is that something which you address or you don’t get too much into that? No, you can’t really read Bhagavatam without addressing it. We certainly do.
But the way that I understand that too, like in my own, Prabhupada had some vision for Varanashram Dharma in the Western world. How that vision manifests and exactly what it manifests and how long it takes to fully manifest, I don’t know. But in my own life, the wisdom of Varanashram, not necessarily the application or misapplication that we see in the world of it, but the wisdom of it has been to some degree applicable in my own life.
And so I value it. And if I’m going to share it with someone else, I’m going to share it in that way. In other words, how an individual might benefit from these teachings.
For instance, when you take a vaisya, what do I understand a vaisya to be? From my readings, certainly there’s a description of it like farming and so on. But my understanding is that the vaisya is not necessarily the worker on the farm, but the owner of the farm, who’s employing people that are working on the farm. And the vaisya is someone that has the aptitude and the ability, the intelligence, the drive to make money.
And I may have that aptitude, I may not. Personally, I don’t. But I know people that do.
I know people that they have that mind for making money. And that skill, that mindset comes with strengths and weaknesses. And I think those are patterns that we see globally, throughout different cultures and so on.
But that truth about these categories of psychology, you could say, it’s real. It’s not just something that they were creating to manipulate or something like that. But if you look at it, these are psychological patterns.
And what is, for instance, what is the weakness of someone that has that ability? Commonly, it’ll be their greed. Unless you’re trained, unless you had certain values instilled in you from an early time, then you might see what I see like in American culture right now, where people who have the ability to make a lot of money commonly become very callous, they become very proud. They think that the success of their life is the amount of money that they can make.
So even if I’m worth $5 billion, if I’m sitting at a table with someone that’s worth $10 and $20 billion, I feel somehow inadequate, and I think I need to make more money. And either I’m willing or I’m so callous that I’m unaware of the suffering that I’m causing to try to earn that money. Whereas if it was instilled into me at an early time in my life, and if I saw it in others, and it was clarified to me that with my ability, the weakness that I should be aware of is greed.
And my focus as a goal or my focus towards success is not to make more money than the next person and do whatever it takes to do that. My focus is to be that person that cares very well for all their workers, or that person that is known for giving in charity to noble causes. If that becomes instilled in my mind clearly, then not only am I helping society, but I’m also helping myself progress in yoga.
Because where the mind may say, make more, I’m going to train my mind, and that’s called yoga, right? I’m going to train my mind to serve. And so I see duty as the first step in mastering the mind, or the first step in yoga. And Varnashram provides duties that are suitable for our individual psyches in a brilliant way.
So all that being said, that’s how I explain this to someone. It’s beautiful, Prabhu. It benefits the individual, it benefits the society.
But maybe if it’s presented that way, there’s an aspect of it that appeals to the postmodern mind. So it’s more in terms of values and you could say the benefits that come from values. Yeah, that’s right.
Yeah, that’s one aspect of postmodernism, that it is quite utilitarian. People are not so much interested in philosophical spirituality as pragmatic spirituality. That whether a soul exists or not, or whether God exists or not, people are not interested in so much of a debate on that as, okay, if God exists, how is that going to make a difference in my life? Sure.
Which is great. That’s fair enough. We should be happy with that.
Like if someone opens the door like that, then if we’re not able to step up and explain how it benefits them as an individual, and it benefits society, then we’re really not worthy messengers of it. And we really don’t understand it very well. We’re not worthy messengers.
I would rather have someone come to me with that attitude. Like whether God exists or not, I’m actually not even so concerned with. I want to know how we benefit from what you’re sharing.
I’d rather have someone there than someone that’s like religious and just totally reject me because it’s a different religion and they can’t even like see the commonality of it, which might be your modern, when you define modernism in the beginning, that would be their attitude. Rationality. So I argue about the rationality of my belief system and you argue about the rationality of the belief system.
I never thought of it in these terms, that actually utilitarianism, sometimes we use that in a negative sense, that, but utilitarianism can actually be unifying. And we see that quite a bit in the environmental movement today. That environment, because environmental concerns have brought a lot of diverse people together, religious, non-religious, people from different religions also.
So, I had a podcast with Gaurang Prabhu where he is working, ISKCON has been recognized as a FBO, they call it, faith-based organization. And then governmental organization, non-governmental organization, faith-based organization, they have put a category. So it’s interesting utilitarianism can actually, maybe I avoid the word ism, but the utilitarian approach can actually open minds and unify.
Because people see the practical benefits. Perfect. And so let’s try to present the practical benefits, individually as well as socially or collectively.
That’s true. And in my sense, that will also address the first concern about experience. I want to experience, how does it feel? What does it do? So, taking this point forward, if we consider, in one sense I am realizing that although you are presenting the Bhagavatam, but you could also say that the Bhagavatam is in one sense the message and the Bhagavatam is also the medium for the message.
Because in one sense, we use the book Bhagavatam to talk about a whole way of living. And not everything that we talk about the way of living is directly based on the Bhagavatam. So, because we live in very different times as compared to the Bhagavatam’s times.
The times that Bhagavatam is describing. So, taking that point forward, if with respect to experiential aspect, I think the Bhakti tradition has a lot of potentials for providing experiences. The Kirtans can be immediately joyful and coming in a devotee community where there is a healthy amount of service attitude, that can also be very wonderfully inspiring.
I agree one hundred percent. And I think actually people are starving. There is a beauty in the culture.
And I think people, at least people that I am aware of or people where I live, I think they are starving for that actually. There is a beauty in the culture. There is obviously something satisfying and even necessary in someone’s life in terms of like socially gathering with people that share their values.
And those very basic things that kind of define a community like eating together, telling stories together, playing music together, dancing together, preparing food together. Those things are so central and so well developed and beautiful within the Bhakti culture that they also have a lot of experiential power to draw someone to that path. Beautiful.
So, now if we move forward in terms of experience a little bit, what are the aspects of the experience that you find are obstacles and what are the aspects of experience that are opportunities? So, at one level experiential approach is good, but then we also have the principle that, that which tastes like nectar in the beginning will taste like poison in the end, happens in the mode of action. That which tastes like poison in the beginning will taste like nectar in the end, happens in the mode of goodness. So, there are some aspects of Bhakti where the experiences may not be particularly joyful.
Kirtan may be joyful, but japa might be quite, quite demanding at times. So, how much do we emphasize consciously the experiential aspect and how do we deal with when the experiential aspects that turns out to be unhelpful or even harmful in some ways for a person who is deciding whether I want to take this path. Okay.
So, if I understand your question correctly, I want to share with you what I’ve observed say within the community of the listeners of Wisdom of the Sages about how experience, how a personal experience of Bhakti has been positive for them and then what challenges are there in their personal experience. And I’m going to separate those because when I talk about what the challenges are and it seemed that you defined it in terms of the practice, particularly practices like, you know, when I say Pratyekshravanam, Kirtanam, etc. But we had a very interesting experience recently and that was we had our 500th episode of Wisdom of the Sages.
And so, we did something, we did something we never did before, which was we, it was a two-hour podcast where we just heard from the listeners about how listening to Srimad-Bhagavatam on a daily basis has affected their lives. And so, we went back and forth between, yeah, it is, I recommend, I really recommend that people that are interested in Bhagavatam and Bhakti and teaching Bhakti or reaching people with Bhakti, I recommend that they watch this episode. It’s just called 500, it’s our 500th episode.
Oh, okay. It was a combination of us reading letters that people had sent in and then people speaking live on Zoom. We went back and forth for two hours.
Now, in almost every case, I don’t know how many letters and it must have been, I don’t know, at least 20, maybe more, 30, something like that, you know, testimonies were shared. And in practically every single case, the testimony had to do with a particular challenge that this world is bringing to their life and how the philosophy, how the teachings, how the wisdom of the Bhakti tradition empowered them to deal with it or to overcome it. Across the board, that’s what it was again and again and again.
So, that’s how I see the experience. I mean, sure, there’s experience in terms of being in a kirtan or the experience of chanting japa. And those are important things and we should do all that we can to provide satisfying experience in those realms.
But it seems to me like what’s really affecting people is you helped me through Bhagavatam helped me have the right mindset that I needed to have when my father passed away. Before I was hearing this, I would have felt certain things and it would have been an entirely negative and depressing experience for me. But because I was hearing Bhagavatam, I was able to step up.
I was able to serve in that circumstance. I was able to gain deeper realizations about life because my mind had been trained by hearing Bhagavatam daily. There’s one story I share, it’s heartbreaking for me, but it’s a lady, she’s a friend of mine, she listens every day.
Her husband went through a motorcycle accident. It was about, I think, 10 months ago or longer that the accident happened. He’s still in the hospital.
He’s gone through 50 surgeries. He lost a leg. Over 50 surgeries.
They had two children. She was pregnant when the accident happened. She’s had her third child since then with her husband.
Doctors were telling her that he’s not going to make it probably. It’s a long shot that he’ll live. Then they’re coming and saying, oh, maybe it looks like he’ll live.
Then they come back again and say, we don’t think he’ll live. It’s just like months and months of a type of torture and fear and trouble. On her own.
She was just saying, because I listen to Bhagavatam every single day, this is the thread that I’m holding on to and it’s giving me strength and giving me sanity through the obstacles that this world is throwing at me. Again, it was so many. The whole thing was that.
To me, it was a testimony as to the power of the Bhagavatam. It really, in my mind, showed that if we want to reach people with this message, it can be framed this way. Let us consider how we frame the message of bhakti.
The potential to share it, perhaps the most effective way is to help people understand how it addresses the struggles that they go through in life. And when they experience that, then it’s no longer just all theory. But they say, this is for real.
This stuff works. These ancient texts have wisdom that transcends time and their faith increases. Beautiful.
I mean, as you said, it’s tragic in one sense. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s also beautiful in the sense that this is a place where you could say spiritual wisdom tangibly meets human need. Yes.
And that’s where transformation can be seen and it can be appreciated. So, there is this, at one level, one concern that when we focus on the practical application, there is a tendency to downplay or neglect the philosophy. So, of course, we can say that there are technical aspects of philosophy.
For example, Achintya Veda. What exactly is Achintya Veda? What is in India itself? There have been many, many systems of philosophy and how our tradition’s philosophy is development over from other traditions, other philosophies in the past. We don’t go usually also into technical aspects of the philosophy too much.
But is there a danger of, say, we becoming something like a self-help or a therapy group instead of actually teaching Bhakti spirituality? Sure. And that’s why, like I said before, I think we need to be flexible. For instance, you know, because we’re reading Bhagavatam, so much comes up.
We have to get into the theology. There’s no way around it. Not that we don’t want to.
Lord Vishnu is appearing and the devotees are taking his darshan and offering their prayers and it just happens again and again and again. So, the theological aspect is always going to be there. But we find that, I find, I think Raghunath has found, that’s not such, you know, perhaps this, for a lot of people, when you describe the postmodern mind, you know, the way that you present it, it sounds like if someone were deeply invested in this, they’re pretty cynical, it sounds like, you know, they’re pretty cynical.
And it almost sounds like they’re taking it to a level that’s very impractical. That’s an interesting point, you know. We also say that if we call somebody a Mayavadi, but actually the number of Mayavadis are, actual hardcore Mayavadis are very, very few.
And a large number of people whom we might simplistically label as Mayavadis, they may simply have some influence of Mayavadi conceptions. So, I would say that, yeah. They’re not deeply invested.
Not deeply invested, yeah. In fact, there is a logical problem also with postmodernism that, some people say postmodernism itself is self-contradictory. Because one of the fundamental tenets of postmodernism is that there is no absolute truth.
All truths are basically just instruments for gaining power. But then the obvious counter question comes up is then, isn’t postmodernism also a construct for gaining power? So, because by deconstructing everything else, the postmodern thinkers put themselves at the top. So, yeah.
So, nobody’s, people are not very, we could say they are influenced by it, but they’re not invested in it so much. And they will be influenced also to varying degrees. Right.
Exactly. So, my, at least my experience would be that there’s certainly plenty of people out there, more than we’re reaching, that aren’t so, that may be affected by postmodern thought, may be influenced by it in both ways that would be favorable as well as unfavorable for their interest in bhakti. But in either case, they’re not so deeply invested in it that once they get enough taste of it, once they hear enough, that they begin to open up.
And this is what, again, what I’ve really found is that and we discussed this last time we spoke too, is that, you know, we’re reaching a lot of people say in their mid-30s to mid-40s when they’ve gone through the different ups and downs in life. They’ve given up on maybe, you know, maybe some of their, you know, at least when I was young, you know, I was more deeply invested in ideas like this. But then the practical world hits you, you know, and you’re trying to raise a family and you’re trying to make some money and you’re trying to, you know, take care of yourselves and get through life and you’re dealing with some tragedies and you’re dealing with some different kind of struggles.
You give up on a lot of your idealism, you know, that you had previously. And you hit a stage in life where you’ve gone through a lot and you really want to make, you really want some deeper meaning in life and some deeper way to see this. And for a lot of people, bhakti is right there for them.
And, you know, they’re not so invested in there. They’re actually eager for some true wisdom in life, you know, in a true spiritual practice and a true spiritual experience. So, I think there’s a lot of people like that, you know, a lot of people like that.
And we just need to expand our reach and people are eager for it. That’s beautiful. In terms of, if I may put it this way, is that if you have a demographic of people, so there might be certain levels of overlays which they may say, oh, I don’t want to be a part of the institution.
But it’s not that they are going to be, it’s not that their mission in life is to tear down institutions. They may have some reservations and if the underlying concerns are addressed, then those reservations may often go away and they can connect easily or with relatively less difficulty. You know, interesting, recently, Devamatava Prabhu, I read something that he wrote, which was a critique of ISKCON’s disciple course, where he felt it was largely kind of like a pledge of allegiance to an institution and he found that it sounds like what he was describing was that he says there are many people that he’s, you know, ministering to, I suppose you could say, that when it comes time for that, it becomes a real obstacle.
You know, and maybe that’s evidence of part of what we’re talking about today, that postmortem. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and that… Can you repeat exactly what you said, sir? That our disciple course actually reinforces the sense of identity with the institution? Is that what… Yeah, in other words, I believe in his opinion, a better disciple’s course would be a course that teaches shastrically what is a guru, what is a disciple, focuses on that, rather than it seems like there was a large, I’m not even so familiar with it, but it seems that there’s a large element of institutional… What’s the word I’m looking for? But like… Kind of like instilling a certain institutional consciousness in the prospective disciple.
And he felt a lot of people that he was reaching were… Did not feel… He’s experienced that a lot of people that he was reaching were very averse to that. And the best response would be that they’d be kind of like, okay, I’ll kind of just ignore that. And other people were like, I don’t know if I want to be involved in this.
So he was finding that kind of experience. It seems to me that one might question at this point in our conversation, well, what about the Bhagavatam itself? Yeah. In other words, is the content of the Bhagavatam problematic for the postmodern mind? Or maybe the better question is, are there aspects of the Bhagavatam that can be highlighted for the postmodern mind that will appeal to them? And I feel that there are, if I understand postmodernism correctly.
That’s interesting. Now, there are certainly aspects of Bhagavatam which are objectionable to the modern mind in terms of some of the cosmological, chronological aspects. But what about the postmodern mind? I think maybe some aspects of social justice, some statements about women and things like that.
Yeah. Well, you know, my understanding is that just on the very basis of Bhagavatam, as compared to any other Vedic literature, in one sense, the basis of it is suited to the postmodern mindset in that it’s a text that’s responding. Vyasadeva’s mission, when he went back on the order of Narada and redid the Bhagavatam, he revisited the Bhagavatam and re-edited it and re-presented it in response to, particularly to the Vedas, but I suppose also to the Upanishads.
To the conceptions of karma and jnana that were there in the previous Vedic literature. That in one sense, right off the bat, at the very start of Bhagavatam, it’s mentioned, dharma projjhita kaitavotra, that this text is going to reject religious activity that’s materially motivated. Right? In many ways, I think we can see Bhagavatam as like we’re concerned only with substance here.
And the substance ultimately is divine love. That’s how I understand the whole way that the Bhagavatam opens up, which to me is the most really fascinating, the connection between the first and second chapters of the first canto. I find it to be just brilliant.
Just absolutely brilliant. In that you had these sages who were compassionate by nature, who saw a dark age coming, who turned to the one amongst them that they found to be the most pure and simple, as well as learned. It wasn’t simply the most senior person that they sought out with an institutional mindset.
But they mentioned a sutra, he’s saumya, he’s pure and simple. And therefore he was endowed with all the guhyam, the secrets, the deeper stuff that not everybody that just approaches this literature has. But because he had genuine qualities of simplicity and purity, that he had deeper realization.
And then they ask, what brings the highest shreya? What brings the highest good for people? And what brings people to atma-supersidity? And so then when Suta Goswami in the second chapter, when he responds, that is bhakti. It’s divine love. It’s actually divine love, and divine love only that delivers atma-supersidity, that delivers complete satisfaction.
And then he qualifies it, that divine love should be, there should be absolutely no selfish motivation. You could even say no institutional motivation. It’s just like there’s a purity in that, that I think the post-modern mind might find appealing.
That we’re looking for purity. Yeah, we’re looking for someone that’s, not religious but spiritual. They turn to that person that they saw as the most deeply spiritual.
And then his answer, okay, it’s bhakti and it’s pure bhakti, that we’re looking for. And the way that I read the second chapter of the Bhagavatam and how it opens up and where it goes immediately is that he says bhakti is the way, it’s divine love. And then almost like there’s a type of scriptural or you could say even like almost practically like institutional response to that message.
Where the first thing is, well what about renunciation? Like isn’t the, if I’m understanding Upanishads right, doesn’t the deepest happiness in life come through the rejection of material enjoyment and the walking away from material life. And in answer to that, you know, the response is, vasudeve bhagavati bhakti-yoga-paryojita, janayaty asuvairagyanam ca yad hoitakam, that by rendering devotional service to God, to Krishna, through bhakti, divine love, one immediately acquires causeless knowledge and detachment from this world. In other words, that’s not even our focus here.
When you focus on the truest substance you don’t even have to, it’s like it’s a by-product that detachment develops. And then someone might ask, okay well what about, you know we’re reading the Vedas and the Vedas seem to indicate that by following dharma, by following duty very nicely that you get all the good things in life. Isn’t that where happiness comes from? And then the next verse, dharma-svanu-sthita-pungsa, that the occupational activities, the duties, the religion that one performs, following my religious rules very nicely, if they don’t bring out some real substance, it doesn’t provoke attraction, rati, something real, personal experience.
What is rati? If not a personal experience in someone’s own consciousness or someone’s own heart. If it doesn’t, if your religion doesn’t bring you to some rati, to some genuine attraction to God, then not only is it rejected, it’s a, you know, in strong terms, it’s completely useless. So it’s like, to me that’s saying your religion is useless if it’s not bringing you to a point of personal experience.
And then the whole Bible time is based off that. It seems to me just like again and again and again, it’s showing how divine love is superior to ritual, it’s superior to religion, it’s superior to even renunciation. You know, divine love is always the highest principle.
And how we understand an individual is how deeply they’ve experienced or are realizing that. And so the Bible time is throwing out again and again like kind of in a sense cautionary, I see them as cautionary to how we were, you know, someone in the religious mindset, you know, is prone to condemnation. You know, like that, you know, it’s like, you know, whoever does the ritual right or whoever’s from the community that’s been trained the most or whoever, you know, is from a particular, you know, sex or gender or whoever’s from a particular community, the religious mindset tends to go that way as like who’s superior.
Like flipping it. No, look for the substance. Don’t look at the structure, but look at the substance.
Indra, the king of heaven, right? Like in one sense, the leader of the devas, perhaps like the most successful religious man and materialist, you know, religious materialist. He’s a person to be glorified. But Bhagavatam again, again makes a fool of him, you know.
Humiliates him, you know, quite throughout, you know, throughout its cantos. Things like that I see is like, you know, messages that the postmodern mind might embrace. So again, this brings it to earlier point that that the structures are not denied by the Bhagavatam, but repeatedly those structures are subordinated to their purpose and that, that is something which can appeal.
In fact, you can say that so many places the Bhagavatam, it inverts traditional structures. We have Ambarish Maharaj, who is a householder, a grahasta and a and a kshatriya, who is shown to be superior to somebody who is a who is a sannyasi and a brahmana. Similarly, we have Rutarasura who is a technically an asura, but he is shown to be superior to a deva, like Indra.
So, that way that’s beautiful. So, so many places, you know, maybe the most, I’m sorry, please go. So, even the topmost of people in the traditional Vedic hierarchy, they are shown to be subordinate.
But one interesting point in the Bhagavatam is that, that the Bhagavatam doesn’t, although it shows their inadequacies in quite strong, stark terms, it doesn’t utterly reject the hierarchies. That means, although many times brahmanas are shown to be, brahmanas are shown to be self-serving, like Shukracharya was, but then after that, it shows that still, even Vamadeva respects Shukracharya and asks him what was wrong with Bali’s sacrifice. Yeah.
So, Indra is shown to be quite a power hungry and abusive kind of person in the Govardhanila, but at the end, he is still told to return back to his position. He is not rejected, condemned. It’s very interesting.
Yeah, so it’s, there is a deference to the structure, in one’s overall deference to the structure is maintained, but at the same time, the inadequacies of structure are not denied in any way. They are, leave alone denied, they are quite explicitly highlighted also and required. So many examples, right? For instance, Jatabharta and Maharaja Rahugana, right? Like Maharaja Rahugana initially comes off as like the most arrogant type of leader, right? He is at the top of the power structure and to the point where he has become callous to those that are below him in the power structure.
He is, sarcastic you know, he is arrogant. All negative qualities and all the kind of qualities that the post-modern mind would be quick to jump all over. But we see that when Jatabharta who in this pastime is practically like a mentally disabled, at least appears to be a mentally disabled person, right? Like, not even in the Varnashram, you know, he is technically born in a Brahmin family, but he is like, he appears to be practically, you know, like, a mentally incapable person.
But when he begins to speak, Maharaja Rahugana wakes up, you know? The power of his words penetrated him. So although he was the villain, you know, at one point, actually, perhaps, the real lesson for us to learn from this Leela is his, the change that he went through or like how he was able to face his own ignorance and with humility re-approach Jatabharta, you know, from a place of humility. You know, and so I like your point a lot because it’s almost like it seems to me that if I’m understanding the post-modern mind right from you, that that cynicism is eating the post-modern mind up, you know? Like, I don’t want to get too deep into the politics of it all.
But it seems to me like I can almost not identify with either side of a political issue anymore because even if I agree with the politics on one side, I often really disagree with the way that it’s being approached, the attitude that it’s actually lacking in divyagan. Like, and when I say divyagan, like if you go to like say a social leader like Martin Luther King, I see his whole approach was based on divyagan. Divyagan.
He was a religious… He was like a spiritual… He was coming from a spiritual place. He was saying that we’re all equal. On a spiritual level, we’re all equal.
Let’s recognize that and let’s base our judgments on that. You know, that’s what a brahmana is supposed to do. Right? Bring our mind to the spiritual truth that we’re missing and highlight it.
But I see a lot of the you know, the kind of social positions that people are taking on either side lack it. They lack that and perhaps that’s the way of the postmodern mind eating itself up. So bhagavatam again and again it’s taking the proud and humbling them but we all need to become humbled actually.
You know, that bhagavatam is trying to help us out. It’s not just that oh you know you know the brahmans are the enemy or the religious leaders are the enemy or you know the kings are the evil kings are the enemy or no we all like embody those qualities. You know, even when we may not be a king or a brahmana and with we have to learn to respond to our shortcomings with humility.
You know, perhaps the most you know if there’s one leela that might best appeal to the the mind of the the postmodern mind or you could say like the mind concerned with with social injustice is the story of the wives of the brahmanas from the tenth canto. You know, very clearly the you know the husbands who were brahmanas and who were deeply learned you know trained institutionally had a position of status in society were you know were religious were seen as highly elevated religious figures in the community where their their realization was so lacking you know the depth of their spirituality was so lacking and then that’s contrasted with their wives who were not trained who were not learned who didn’t have the same status in society but they had the the actual spiritual substance and purified consciousness purified heart and and and how they’re glorified and but then again we see that the that the brahmanas that their husbands it’s really interesting how that chapter ends where they say to hell with our learning to hell with all our rituals to hell with all of this stuff what does it mean when we’re missing the whole point and our wives they saw the point so they they actually had that humility but I forget exactly what it says in the like the probably like the last verse of that chapter but oh it says something about their fear of kamsa you know like they still didn’t have deep spiritual realization do I I don’t know if you’re familiar with it yeah what it says is that that although they appreciated that what although they recognized that their wives were exalted devotees yeah and they realized that they had chosen wrongly but still they don’t didn’t go toward Krishna immediately yeah not realizing so in one sense they they were at a particular level and they they stayed you could say stuck at this with that level even if the the inadequacy or the folly of that level was exposed to them right right because they didn’t have the spiritual substance too many years of you know they had the they had the gyan but not the vijnan on that level you know whereas the wives had the vijnan true you know there’s so much you know to me honestly where I find like some of the most interesting content to from my own contemplation as well as sharing with others really has to do with Paramatma which Bhagavatam is going to speak so much about you know with with this conception of who or what is Paramatma you know that that that’s interesting the material world exists the idea that just as the sun and its rays penetrate the universe you know that the soul spreads its consciousness throughout the body but that there’s not only one soul in each body but that there are two souls in each body and and it’s their body because their consciousness is spread throughout it and so in a similar way this universe is the body first first first Paramatma is Mahavishnu right who’s the Paramatma of the entire material world his consciousness penetrates the entire material world then from his body come unlimited universes and within each one of those he becomes each universe becomes his body he’s the soul of each universe and his consciousness spreads throughout that universe and then on the third level Paramatma is what we usually speak of when we say Paramatma right within each individual body within that universe he enters as well as within every atom right so if I understand right what you’re saying is that this conception of divinity is actually far more sophisticated as well as far more you could say accessible or even attractive we can say rather than conventional religious conception of God and even if somebody doesn’t really connect with Krishna as God the conception of Paramatma is something which can actually be appreciated by almost at a non-sectarian level even if somebody considers Krishna to be like a sectarian deity but the conception of Paramatma is actually quite non-sectarian isn’t it it is and that’s my point that’s where it goes right in other words that the recognition that that within every body there’s a soul that is of identical quality with myself and that just as I have gone through I should assume I should take for granted that I’ve gone through countless transformations in my journey throughout the world I’ve lived in all the different species and within the human form I’ve likely embodied many different mentalities right some of them kinder and some of them more cruel you know some of them more realized and some of them more ignorant I’ve lived through it all right and now I’m currently in this body in this circumstance um but a message has been shared with me to help me understand it better if if I have that mentality and I’m seeing the soul and the super soul within every living being then it should I should actually start embracing this that this knowledge this gyana should should help me reflection on this gyana continued reflection daily reflection on this gyana can mature into vigyana where I actually begin to feel genuine affection or compassion for every living being and when I stand in their presence I’m not seeing just them but I’m seeing God within that same body and how my consciousness stays elevated due to that faith and that that insight to me this right here you know right here is where you really have a um an idea that’s true truly revolutionary you know that that that in a a real substantial way addresses our social ills and and it begins to expand that you know addressing our social problems has to do with our our circles are too tight right you know going from like one family exploiting another family to run race exploiting another race to one nation exploiting another nation um to to us as a as a nation or as a corporation exploiting the earth you know and then to us you know as a species exploiting other species causing you know incalculable pain and harm that with this with this conception of the soul and the super soul within every body um and the sacredness of that energy as unique from material energy there there there and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and it was off the leash, and it was in the water, and as I was approaching the water, it was coming right at me, you know? And in that moment, I was thinking, like, you know, of the sages that wander in the forest, you know, the sannyasi, right, who puts themselves in Krishna’s hands, right? And when they encounter a tiger or a snake, a cobra or whatever it may be, you know, it’s not just that they’re looking at that animal and thinking there’s a stranger inside that body that doesn’t know me, that has no affection for me, and I have no idea how they’re gonna respond. But even more so, they’re responding to the paramama in that body, and thinking there is a person in that body that’s my friend, you know, that knows me and loves me and that I have a relationship with, you know? Now, if we can see everybody with that kind of vision, you transform your own consciousness individually, and you transform, you know, communities and nations with that knowledge.
And I think my understanding of what Srila Prabhupada wanted us to do was to share this divya jnana, right? To share this, this is, let’s, if we’re talking about, like, I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual, well, then the first question is define spiritual. And to me, this is what spirituality is, right? This is where spirituality becomes very practical. Even setting aside the theological aspects of that, but just the very practical ideas that are presented there, that within every body, that there’s the soul, which spreads its consciousness throughout this body, and then there’s the paramama, whose consciousness is spread everywhere.
In one sense, every, you know, he is in everything, and everything is in him. It, through the different stages of the paramama, this is spirituality in my mind. And in my mind, this is a type of spirituality, which could be very appealing in a postmodern world.
This is so true, bro. Somehow, the concept of the super soul, we could say that we have really underutilized it hugely. Because I don’t know, I never thought about it.
The idea of tuning your consciousness, receiving some higher wisdom, and there is a lot that goes on in today’s world. There are several books which are, which people, the authors say that we are simply instruments. And there are some higher beings who are writing these books through us.
So now, of course, whether there are higher beings or not, that could be a debatable issue. But the point is that tuning into some higher wisdom, tuning into some divine presence, or some higher presence, people are quite open to that, especially if they can learn something from it. So both in terms of the concept, this concept of paramatma is non-sectarian, and both in terms of, and in terms of interaction.
We infuse every living being with the dignity because of the divine presence. And then we interact with them also in a more of a mood of learning. We look at ourselves also in a more holistic way, a healthier way, because we see ourselves as parts of the divine.
So, do you have, now, of course, in the Bhagavatam, you cannot downplay or deny Krishna. He’s directly there. There are very clear and personal manifestations of the divine.
Now, there are some, maybe this is the last one or two questions we’ll discuss. So there are some teachers or some, you could say, Indic scholars or Hindu scholars, they say that the potential for yoga, not just yoga practice, but even yoga philosophy, to reach a broader audience is greater because it does not have a sectarian deity within it. It has the states of consciousness and then you can go dhaan, dharan, samadhi.
So the entire process seems much more objective and non-sectarian, not objective, you could say, at least it’s much more non-sectarian. Whereas bhakti yoga seems quite sectarian because we are focusing on a particular deity, a particular conception of that deity. So, have you faced any challenge in presenting Krishna as God? Or how do you deal with that? Well, we do present Krishna as God and we find it may turn some people off, but we’ve found that there’s a lot of people that it doesn’t.
But I think it’s a great focus that you brought this to. Because one might say that, and there’s some truth in that. And I want to address that in a moment.
But the first thing I’ll say is there’s another side to it too. There’s a beauty in bhakti. There’s a cultural beauty in bhakti that’s very satisfying.
That people are looking for, which is missing from a more, I’m not sure what term you would want to use, but from like a purely yogic perspective. The depth of the beauty that’s in bhakti is appealing. No question.
So that’s one thing. What to speak of when you have a family and you have children and like the festivals and the beauty in the culture, the beauty in the music and the kirtan, et cetera, the beauty in the temple worship. Like all of these things have a very wide appeal, I find.
But aside from that, I appreciate what you’re saying. And my point is this, and I think we discussed this when we spoke last time too, let’s separate the esoteric aspect of bhakti. Let’s take that and I’ll say Krishna as a person, Bhagavan, let’s categorize that as the esoteric aspect of yoga.
And we’ll put that there for people that want it. When you’re ready for that, if you feel ready for that, we’re gonna present that to you in context of the more, I don’t know if practical is the right word or more tangible, the more rational, let’s say rational side of, not that I’m saying that it’s irrational, but it might seem irrational to people. So then let’s, this idea of, for instance, paramatma, and the idea of becoming the sage of steady mind.
Let’s present spirituality in these terms, right? So much Gita is about samadhvam, even-mindedness, again and again throughout the chapters. So much Bhagavad Gita is about samadarsana, seeing equally, seeing the Supersoul and the soul in every living being. Again and again, we come across this.
And so much of Gita is about, it’s different terms used, but let’s say antahsuka, like that happiness is within, that happiness doesn’t come from anything external. I like to use those terms to define spirituality. Right, that I’m, no matter what the externals are, whether there’s ups or downs, I realize that that’s how the material world moves.
And I’ve learned to come to terms with that and not be shaken by that, samadhvam. Samadhvam yoga ucyate, Krishna’s gonna say, right? Such even-mindedness is yoga. And then Krishna’s gonna speak about, beautiful section of the Bhagavad Gita is you take about 5.18 through about 5.26 or 5.27, all three of these aspects are touched upon there.
Seeing God in every living being, realizing that, finding all my happiness internally rather than chasing it externally, and having an even mind under all different circumstances. And then it’ll even go on to say, and then one who goes on to like care or serve for every living being. I see this as a very practical, in other words, very approachable definition of spirituality.
Amazing. This is the Sthita Dharmoni. And now this is the key.
This is how I tie it all together. I think I’ve underestimated that, even though Bhagavad Gita is constantly going on about it, for the religious or the esoteric. And but when I go back to the, you wanna bring Krishna into the picture, who is dear to, if the esoteric goal of our bhakti practice is to become dear to Krishna, well, the Gita is gonna, again, Krishna’s gonna say himself, who’s dear to me? One who is not envious, but is a kind friend to every living entity.
One who does not think of himself as the proprietor, but free from false ego. Who is equal in both happiness and distress. Who is tolerant, always satisfied, self-controlled, by whom no one is put into difficulty, and who is not disturbed by anyone.
This is Trinatapi. This is, it’s right there in the Gita. It’s Vijnana.
It’s the embodiment of knowledge. This is again both. Of spiritual knowledge.
Sorry to interrupt you. This is both universal and practical. All these three points.
Both of these are there in it. Exactly. Universal for the individual, and for the broader society, the benefits are there.
But this is my point. But I understand, now to get to the esoteric point, it’s like these aren’t even, although these are glorious and beautiful, it’s not even the goal themself. But this is the platform from which you can approach Bhagavan.
In other words, if you haven’t developed genuine even-mindedness, genuine detachment, if you can’t see God and everyone, your mind will be in a state of disturbance. If you’re searching for happiness externally, your mind will be disturbed and not capable of deep absorption. And it’s that deep absorption in Krishna’s name, form, qualities, and pastimes that facilitate the arising of Krishna Prema.
It’s not just when we chant the name, or when we chant the syllables of the name, but it’s actually when our mind is deeply absorbed in the Sudhanama, that Prema arises in the heart. And so my idea of spirituality in my own life is to focus on these qualities that are given in Bhagavad Gita, not only because I want them to be happier in this world, and not only because I think they serve society well, but also because they’re the key to deep absorption in Krishna’s name, form, qualities, and pastimes from which one develops love for Krishna. Wonderful.
In one sense, we could also say this is sattva before we accomplish in the sattva. And sattva is actually, sattva is actually for most thoughtful people, it is appealing. Yes.
Even people who are in rajas, they may not necessarily, their idols may also be in rajas, but still they appreciate sattva in general, unless a person is really very heavily influenced by tamas. So- You know, in all those verses from the 12th chapter, at the end of the 12th chapter, it’s saying, it also says one who’s engaged in my service. So that’s there, so we’re not ignoring that.
But he didn’t have to say all these things, Krishna didn’t have to say all these things, but this is what endears one to Krishna, he says himself. That’s true, that’s a very emphatic chapter, in fact, in the sense that, that section, that Krishna is not saying directly that one who chants my holy names or one who worships my deities is dear to me. This is of course true, but there he’s focusing on one who is, you know, one who is not disturbed by others or one who doesn’t disturb others.
That’s equanimity. So- Yeah, that’s straight out of P, you know, that’s, right, right, you know, I show all respect to others, I don’t need any respect for myself. You know, I’m tolerant, I’m humble.
That’s, that’s- Amazing. That’s our, you know, Srila Bhaktivedanta Saraswati said, that’s our siddha pranali. You know, that is our path to the perfection of Krishna praying.
But it’s appealing, you know, but if you stick, if you stick Krishna fully into the picture too early, or if you don’t gain the faith of someone prior to that, then they’re likely to respond to it, you know, they’re incapable of accepting it. But if we can really present people, you know, knowledge of Paramatma, you know, indicate, again, the individual and the universal benefits of it, you know, and the qualities that one who sees Paramatma develops, all these sattvic qualities, we can gain their faith. And then when we say, but the yogis did this, not just for peace itself, but they did it because there’s a far greater treasure.
Okay, now I’m willing to hear, what is that treasure? And that’s Bhagavan. Beautiful. This is amazing, this is quite, I would say amazing and striking.
Can you repeat the three things? One is even-mindedness, equanimity. These are three things I pulled out of Gita, but, you know. Divinity in everyone.
What was the third thing? Divinity in everyone. Samadhvamsa, Samadharsana. Divinity, equanimity, and what was the third one? Antahsuka, happiness within.
Inner happiness. Oh, yeah. Inner happiness, yeah.
That’s true. There’s antahs. So, I was thinking about, inner happiness also, you can talk a little bit about finding meaning and purpose in life.
It’s not just inner happiness in terms of remembering God and being internally happy, but if we are aligned with our nature, if we are doing what is natural for us, that also itself brings happiness in life. So, to find our meaning and purpose in our lives. Sure.
There’s a lot that can be connected this way. It’s almost as if, the Bhagavad Gita contains so many nuggets of wisdom, and we just, it’s almost like we have to pick up this idea of, there are jewels which are, there are sacred stones, or precious stones which are, which are precious for everyone. But there are, you can say there are also certain stones or certain things, which are valued in particular traditions, particular cultures.
So, we could say that the Bhagavad Gita has some truths. It is like a, it is like a ocean filled with jewels, or a ore filled with precious substances. Now, different people could be attracted to different substances within that ore.
Yeah. So, it is for us to find, okay, will this be attracted to this person, will this be attracted to this person? And then, we take that and provide that, and then they’ll be attracted to the whole ore eventually, because we are connecting them to the ore ultimately. But they may not themselves go into that ore, so we have to take it out and show them what is there.
What is there in it for them. Yeah. Then they develop on their own, you know, if they develop that faith, then they want more, you know.
Let me read these few verses, Prabhu, and let’s think about if these would appeal to a postmodern mind, okay? Yeah, sure. Beginning at text 18 in the fifth chapter, the humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal vision, a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog-eater, and an outcast. Those whose minds are established in sameness and equanimity have already conquered the conditions of birth and death.
They’re flawless, like Brahman, and thus they’re already situated in Brahman. A person who neither rejoices upon achieving something pleasant nor laments upon obtaining something unpleasant, who is self-intelligent, who is unbewildered, and who knows the science of God is already situated in transcendence. Such a liberated person is not attracted to material sense pleasure, but is always in trance, enjoying the pleasure within.
In this way, the self-realized person enjoys unlimited happiness, for they concentrate on the Supreme. An intelligent person does not take part in the sources of misery, which are due to contact with the material senses. Such pleasures have a beginning and an end, and so the wise person does not delight in them.
Before giving up the present body, if one is able to tolerate the urges of the material senses and check the forces of desire and anger, then one is situated and happy in this world. One whose happiness is within, who is active and rejoices within, and whose aim is inward, is actually the perfect mystic. They are liberated in the Supreme, and they ultimately attain the Supreme.
Those who are beyond the dualities that arise from doubts, whose minds are engaged within, who are always busy working for the welfare of all living beings, and who are free from all sins, achieve liberation in the Supreme. Those who are free from anger and all material desires, who are self-realized, self-disciplined, and constantly endeavoring for perfection, are assured liberation in the Supreme in the very near future. So to me, this is, I don’t know if you know the American word, but we call it the sweet spot.
This is where you can really get some traction right here. In baseball, you have cricket there, but in baseball, the bat is shaped, it keeps getting wider as it goes, and there’s a point near, not the very end, but near the end that they call the sweet spot. If you hit the ball with that part of the bat, it really flies.
So I think these kind of areas are sweet spots, where we can appeal to that postmodern mind. And if you gain someone’s faith on that level, they’re not so deeply invested in postmodern thought that they won’t be able to take the further steps, that they’ll even become eager to take those further steps. Pandita Samadarshana is a verse, which 518 is something which I always talked about, but that whole section is so beautiful.
I didn’t realize that. You went from 518 to 526? I think I went to 527. 527, yeah.
Yeah. Oh no, 526. 526.
Yeah. I think 2728 talks about, it’s a summary of the next chapter. That’s right.
About yoga. Yeah, so I was thinking maybe, you know, there’s these verses which are relatively non-sectarian and appealing. Maybe these sections from our scriptures could be highlighted.
And we could even make small booklets or like focus podcasts based on these themes specifically, which could actually appeal to people. So. I think there’s no one better qualified than you to do it.
You’re prolific. Actually, in my Gita Delhi writings, I have been addressing these topics, but I don’t, I am not so sure whether I actually analyzed it in those terms. This will be very helpful for me.
I’ll definitely work on this. Okay, so do you see this as a, maybe one last question here. When we talk about these themes, do you use the word God, do you use the word Krishna when you’re talking about, or it depends on the context? Does the word God have a negative connotation? Or not much? I think it can.
But again, it’s like, I’d like for, with Wisdom of the Sages, I feel like you can kind of earn a certain faith in a listener that at a certain, you know, they become ready to hear it. If they’re gonna hear it within a broader context, it’s making sense, so people will be more open to it. But yeah, I think that word can be challenged.
We don’t always use that word. A lot of times when we refer to God, or rather than saying God, we, you know, it was just, today we came across a verse, it was Kardama Muni praying to Lord Vishnu. He’s doing his meditation, and then Lord Vishnu descends on Guru Rudra.
And Kardama Muni refers to him, I believe the term was Asesha Mula, which literally means like the root of everything. And commonly when we refer to God, we’ll use a term that kind of highlights this aspect, right? In other words, why God? Because God is the root of everything. So in other words, we’ll say, rather than saying, we’ll say connect with God.
But sometimes, or maybe even more often, we’ll say like connect with that divine source, that root of everything. Because now you’re tying it into why. You’re not just, you know, just surrender to this being, but you’re surrendering to this being because they are the root of all existence.
Because when that being is attended to, when that being is served, you’re actually serving as when you serve a root, you’re serving every branch and leaf and twig and flower. So that therefore we reconnect, you know, with that Asesha Mula, the source of everything. So sometimes if we don’t use that term, we try to speak in those terms because it makes more sense of it.
Beautiful. I don’t know, I’m somewhat overusing the word beautiful today, but I’m really appreciating that. It’s so much is there, which is in one sense overlooked.
Overlooked. Yeah, this is right here. There’s a, what is that phrase in English? Hidden in plain sight.
Okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah, Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam.
Yeah. I think we, there are aspects, when we become a little institutionalized, we think what appeals to us appeals to everyone. Even like say the missionary aspect of Krishna consciousness, that doesn’t appeal to external people so much.
We’re spreading this all over the world. They don’t care. They want to know what does this do for my life? Is it genuine? So many things spread around the world.
Or the more theological or esoteric things, like well, Krishna’s God. That’s not so appealing to someone. But a lot of the stuff that we’ve been speaking about today, I think that is our sweet spot.
As you’re saying, it is hidden in plain sight. It’s right there. Paramatma.
Come on. How many verses mention Paramatma, talk about Paramatma in the Bhagavad Gita? There’s only 700 verses. And again, even right at the very end, it’s coming down to that.
Surrender unto him utterly, oh Arjuna. So many places. And what to speak of even-mindedness, samadhvam, it’s just again and again and again in the Gita.
I understand these things as very important. Important for our own practice. And they are that platform that people find meaningful or appealing in their life.
So, should I try to summarize too, or are there some? Always, I always enjoy your summaries. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to do it so well today. We did discuss a lot of topics, but let’s try.
You can always add things. Okay. We discussed about the relevance of the Bhagavatam or presenting the Bhagavatam to a post-modern audience.
And so post-modernism has many aspects, but I started by talking about three things. It’s experiential emphasis. Then it’s opposition to structures.
And it’s structures in general, and specifically religious structures. And then it’s emphasis on feelings as basis for deciding things, as compared to facts. So I think we discussed, started with the first discussion, structures and institutions.
So, we don’t have to be anti-institutional. We don’t have to be pro-institutional. We can, we do, rather than thinking that we are to get people to the institution, we can get the best of the institution to the people and thus help them move onward in their journey.
And it’s not that, even if we said the Western world is influenced by post-modernism, it’s not that people are heavily emotionally invested in it. There might be some starting misconceptions, and if those are addressed, then they can take up the practice of bhakti. So, we discussed about Varanashram as an institution, and as a religious, there are not many institutions directly mentioned in the Bhagavatam, but if we say Varanashram is one, then rather than going into the technicalities, we can talk about the values.
What are the values that will guide particular members of society? And then, if we can present the benefits or the utility of particular teachings, then that can appeal, and that can actually go beyond boundaries or walls that might divide or obstruct. So, being utilitarian, it is not necessarily bad. In fact, it can be more unifying because somebody is too theologically bound, then it may be difficult to bring them together also.
So, while being utilitarian, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to simply go into self-self because we are directly speaking based on the Bhagavatam itself. So, then with respect to another point about the religious structures or structures as being tools of power, we discussed about how the Bhagavatam repeatedly shows the inadequacies of those structures, whether it is conceptual structures like Vairagya and Jnana, or even institutional structures like the position of the Devatas above the Manavas, or the position of the Brahmanpathis as being more evolved, more spiritually evolved in the Brahmanas. It has been in so many places like that.
So, the hierarchy, the conventional hierarchies are not rejected completely, but their limitations are also sufficiently, or you could say unhesitatingly pointed out. And then, I think the last part, so this concept of Paramatma is something which can be so broadly appealing. So, even if somebody considers Krishna to be a little bit of a sectarian God, but Paramatma, God’s presence within the world, within our own heart, that is something which can be universally appealing.
And that appeal is both in, we talk of universal and practical, that this is not sectarian, this is something which people can relate with, and it’s practical in the sense that people, it can change the way people act. So, three points you mentioned about, Antah Sukha, Samatva, and did you use the Sanskrit word for, Paramatma itself, you can use the word, divinity within everyone else. So, becoming even-minded and finding happiness within.
So, these are sections of the Gita, and these are also emphasized within the Bhagavatam quite often. And so, rather than thinking that we have to say, learn something new to attract people to the Bhakti, it’s like, we go, we look at what we have itself from new eyes, or based on our own experience, our, so, you mentioned earlier a point that if we don’t interact with people practically, then sometimes we don’t realize which structures need to be revised, which, so it’s not the structure that will be rejected, but structures have to be revised so that they serve the purpose. So, that, if we actually interact with people, and then we can learn a lot, and about how to present your experiences about how this lady, her husband, passed away after multiple surgeries, and how the Bhagavatam- He hasn’t passed away.
He hasn’t passed away, fortunately. Oh, sorry, sorry. He’s still alive.
Multiple surgeries, okay. So, you mentioned he had an accident, okay. He had an accident and multiple surgeries, but this has helped to cope with that.
So, where we can show how spiritual wisdom meets human needs, that’s where it can transform. And within the Bhagavatam, there are, so, if we consider Bhagavatam to be like a wellspring of wisdom, a mine. So, based on our understanding of interacting with people, our understanding of the Bhagavatam, we can find out those nuggets within the Bhagavatam which are going to appeal to different people and serve their needs.
And so, overall, present the exoteric before the esoteric. So, we don’t deny the esoteric, but the exoteric in terms of the sattva, sattvic values which everybody can appreciate, which can add quality, add value to everybody’s lives. So, when they get that, then they naturally become eager to explore further also.
So, any other points you would like to add? No, that was a great summary, Prabhu. Thank you very much. Wonderful, Prabhu.
You know, I thought, I was thinking there was one story that I thought we might share today, but it didn’t come up. But, you know, it seems like the Bhagavatam is again and again kind of, the tales that it shares are cautionary. Like, in other words, if I want to be a sadhu, the type that pleases Krishna, the type that has deeper insight, the type that has the mind that’s able to become deeply absorbed, so much of it has to do with how I honor every living being and avoid the dangers of institutional thought or religious thought, wherein one becomes prone to condemning others.
And the Bhagavatam is going to show, you know, like, you know, Jada Bharta is condemned and then he’s proved to be superior. You know, Vrchasura is a demon, but he’s proved to be superior to the religious man. You know, Daksha, particularly Daksha, you know, like another, like, you know, the incredibly successful and exalted religious figure.
You know, he condemns Narada, who’s superior in his devotion, you know. And he condemns Shiva, who appears externally to be such a tamasic person, you know. And in that lila, you know, where Sati, you know, takes her own life.
That is an incredible story. It’s maybe one of the most entertaining passages in the entire, you know, I think it takes up about four chapters or so. But that’s, in that chapter, like, all the religious people, like, you know, these high-level religious leaders, they’re all exposed as lacking in the depth of their vision.
And again, this one, all the women are the ones that turn out to be correct in the end. You know, like the big men, spiritual leaders, you know, their lack of, they all become embarrassed and humiliated. And it’s the women, actually, you know, and a couple of men like Brahma and Shiva himself that actually come out of that entire story, you know, like, with their reputation intact.
But I always, I just want to share one thing with you. And this is what I think, I read this verse, and when I read it, I said, I think this is maybe the funniest joke in the entire Bhagavatam. Joke, okay.
It’s a joke. It seems to me like it’s gotta be a joke, right? Where, you know, there’s so much, you know, Daksa, his own daughter comes to his sacrifice, but he’s so deeply absorbed in his materialistic external condemnation of her husband, Lord Shiva, that he’s incapable of even welcoming his daughter with affection, right? That’s how hardened he’s become by his religion. And, you know, the wife gets it.
No, we should welcome our daughter. She’s not, she hasn’t been hardened by religion in this way, you know? And, but anyway, the way that, you know, then Daksa, who’s already in previous chapters, totally condemned Lord Shiva, you know, offended him, you know, with horrible statements, totally misunderstanding who he is, totally judging him externally, not understanding him internally. He goes on and further insults Shiva.
She takes her life, because she can’t bear, right? This woman is of such integrity that she can’t bear being in a body that’s related to this offender of such a great soul. And so she takes her own life, you know, in this, you know, in her own self, you know, emulation, you know, she sets fire to herself like through yoga. And then the whole, and then all of Lord Shiva’s very tamasic followers just make a complete mess out of everything, including the cutting off of the head of Daksa.
And then all of these religious figures, they have to go to Lord Brahma, who’s the only one with a cool enough head to, he’s so deeply situated, you know, in dharma and righteousness, that he recognizes you’ve all offended a pure devotee, Lord Shiva, you’re judging him externally when actually you don’t understand who he really is. You need to go and apologize to him. So they all go and apologize to Lord Shiva.
And Lord Shiva doesn’t see friends and enemies and he accepts their apology. And then they begin to perform the sacrifice again. They clean up all the mess that’s been created by their institutional, narrow-minded, external religious thought.
They put everything back together. And then Lord Vishnu, at the end of the sacrifice, he appears. And then every individual begins to offer prayers to Lord Vishnu.
You know, Lord Shiva offers prayers, Lord Brahma offers prayers, Daksa himself offers prayers, the different sages, the different priests, the wives of the priests, everyone offers their prayers. And then the wife of Daksa offers a prayer. Okay? And I would imagine it would be very likely that she’s standing right next to Daksa himself.
She’s saying this prayer. And her husband now has the head of a goat. And this is what Daksa’s wife prays.
She says, my dear Lord, it is very fortunate. Think of the depth of her conscience, all that she’s just been through and witnessed and everything, but her devotion is intact, you know, and her realization is intact. She says, my dear Lord, it is very fortunate that you have appeared in this arena of sacrifice.
I offer my respectful obeisances unto you, and I request that you be pleased on this occasion. The sacrificial arena is not beautiful without you, just as the body is not beautiful without a head. And she could have been pointing to Daksa like right next to her.
Of all the things that she could have said, she says that the sacrificial arena is not beautiful without Vishnu, just as a body is not beautiful without a head. So in any case, that’s just another example of where those who have status-based institution, you know, and institutional pride, they become humbled again and again and again in Bhagavatam. And it’s always those with genuine divine love that are exalted in Bhagavatam.
And hopefully that message is appealing to the people. And I think it is. I think that message is, and we just need to highlight it, that’s all.
It’s beautiful, you know, maybe in the future, we can go over specific pastimes and discuss. Let’s do it. But it would be wonderful to analyze some major pastimes.
I’ve also been teaching Bhagavatam Applied, sort of series where I’m trying to look at the Bhagavatam from contemporary perspectives. So I did an elaborate series on this Daksha pastime. I had focused more on the theme of conflict resolution, and how conflicts escalate and how they can be avoided.
But this theme of, what is the word you say? Status, no, institution-based status, or pride, institutional-based, that is so true. And in one sense, the post-modern mind gets a special pleasure in seeing the high and mighty fall. That’s right.
That’s right. Everybody can get a little pleasure in that, but a post-modern mind delights in that. Yes.
There’s so much in the Bhagavatam. So Bhagavatam is full of it. So true.
So, thank you, Prabhu, wonderful discussion. I so much enjoyed spending this time with you today. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Look forward to having you again in future also soon. And I look forward to bringing you back on Wisdom of the Sages.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Prabhu. Hare Krishna.