Appreciating others’ individuality for redefining preaching, The Monk’s Podcast 151-Shaunaka Rishi Prabhu

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Hare Krishna, Shri Anirudh Prabhu. Welcome to the Monks Podcast. Thank you.

I have started this from about one and a half years ago and so many devotees, right, from Anuttama Prabhu, Garuda Prabhu and others, they suggested that I invite you for the podcast and, you know, when I had come to London and Oxford, we had very thought-provoking discussion about OCHS and what all you have been doing over there. So generally, when we have this podcast, we try to discuss topics which are relevant for devotees and upcoming devotees, but topics which may not be discussed in our mainstream classes. So one topic I thought of today was something like insider and outsider perceptions of Krishna Consciousness of religion in general and Krishna Consciousness in particular.

Sometimes the devotee view is that, sometimes there is like a radical division where devotees, insiders try to see outsiders as evil or demoniac or very negative view and outsiders see insiders as sentimental or brainwashed or cult members. So there are these insider and outsider perceptions. So how we can reconcile them? Maybe we could discuss broadly on that topic today, if that's okay with you.

Yes. Yeah. Thank you.

Yes. So I remember during our meeting, when we had it in OCHS, that you had mentioned about how there was this professor you had hosted and he had come to the temple and he said that something like being in the temple was a very challenging experience for him because he had been trained as a Christian, this professor, Christian scholar, said he had been trained to see Indians or Hindus or other religion people as not being connected with God at all. But he said he couldn't avoid the, he couldn't deny the devotion that was there in the devotees in the morning program.

So that is you could say an outsider changing their perception. So maybe you, can you tell about why you felt it was important for us to consider outsider perceptions and how that shaped your service of say making a pioneering OCHS and other things? Well, we can't live in this world without bumping into each other. So we all live on this planet together and it's Krishna's planet and we're all Krishna's servants whether we admit to it or not.

And even within our temples, within our communities, within our families, everyone is an individual. That's the spiritual conclusion. That's the essence of Vaishna Vedanta.

So Krishna says to Arjuna, never was there a time when I did not exist nor you nor all these kings here on this battlefield. We all exist eternally as individuals. So that's a very important assumption, philosophical assumption, as to how we see the world.

So everyone we see is an individual. They're all making their own way to Krishna or to truth, to their idea of truth. And so in a temple where we're going to see Krishna on the altar, our truth is Krishna.

But I'm standing beside someone who's seeing a different Krishna, whose experience of Krishna is different. So everyone I see in the temple is different and their perspective is different. And then I go to another temple and they have a different guru and a different deity.

It's not Shri Shri Radha Madhava, Shri Shri Madan Gopal. Radha Madhava is God. And we haven't even gone into Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Atheism or anything.

Even just among ourselves, this is an issue. So insider-outsider, what does it mean? It's a kind of a bogus designation in one sense. That if you look at it from a philosophical perspective, it doesn't make sense.

I understand when it makes sense, why it makes sense. But ultimately, no matter how we rationalize it, it really doesn't make sense. Okay.

That's a very striking perspective. Now, I agree with that philosophical foundational understanding that we are all individuals. But at the same time, generally the way Krishna consciousness is taught, there is understood that there has to be some kind of conformity that we stop speculating and align ourselves with the authentic or authoritative understanding that is given in scriptures.

So to what extent does the need for conformity that naturally comes with belonging to any tradition harmonize with or relate with the natural individuality that is innate to every person? So when we take this conceptual idea of individuality and bring this heavenly idea down to the earthly plane, then we hear like Bhaktivinoda Thakur says, we should associate with like-minded devotees. So you can't just associate with anyone and everyone. Everyone's got different opinions.

So common sense dictates that we associate it with like-minded people and that will enthuse us and inspire us to go on our path. So we all club together and we raise a little flag and we fly our flag and we're a little group of stamp collectors or devotees of Krishna or whatever it is, army officers. We've all got our little clubs and we have to understand that's how human psychology works and human emotional need works and also spirituality.

It's the same principles. We need to club together because none of us exist as an individual. We just are individuals.

But to exist, to flourish, we need the association of others. We need that emotional support and ultimately what we're looking for, all our acharyas say, is love. Now all Bollywood films say the same thing and all the fiction says the same thing and all the music we hear says the same thing.

So everyone is reaching out looking for love, a very ill-defined term. But our acharyas are defining it. They're defining it in terms of individuality and the collective and interestingly this concept of spiritual individuality.

When we talk about dharma, we always talk about others. Dharma is never about ourselves. So how do we act in the world? How does a spiritual individual act in the world out of concern for everybody else? So how to take care of others, how to sacrifice, the concept of ahimsa, the concept of seva, this is all about others.

So once when I mean you're making a lot of important points which I would like to just clarify. I like what you said is that we don't simply see we are individuals but overall our existence and functioning is largely through interaction with others. Yeah.

And that's definitely true and love and compassion are there but at the same time the general understanding is that if we are belonging to a tradition, we have the right knowledge and others are off from that knowledge to varying degrees. Yes. I was born into the Catholic church in Ireland and they had the right knowledge and then I joined ISKCON at the age of 18 and they had the right knowledge.

Okay. So who has the right knowledge? So on the belt buckles of the German soldiers in World War I it said gut mit uns, God with us. Yeah.

So he wasn't with the French, he wasn't with the English. So we can all lay claim on we have the right knowledge. How much of it do we have? How many of us have read the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Yathikasas, the Brahmanas, all the Puranas, all 18 of them? But who has knowledge? We may have access, we may have been given shown the door.

Have we actually entered the door? Have we actually gone on the path of knowledge? Have we turned our knowledge into wisdom and to realize knowledge? These are other questions that need to be answered too. So I can. I agree with this point.

I'm sorry to interrupt you. Yes, we all have a long way to go toward realizing that knowledge but the general understanding is that to realize that knowledge it is we who have to practice our own sadhana and go deeper into our tradition. Why does it require openness to other tradition, exploring other traditions or say exploring because other traditions have understanding that may vary from different degrees and nowadays we could say many people don't belong to any tradition.

They just have the postmodern world where but people have different understandings. So transform knowledge into realization it is the Krishna conscious process itself that is enough but when we start talking about outsider perspectives then they in fact they challenge our untraditional understanding of Krishna consciousness. So for example one outsider perspective could be that the Vedas Bhagavad Gita was spoken 5000 years ago or about 2000 years ago.

The dating of scriptures could be there. The origin of scriptures could be there. Even the status of the divinity of Krishna or the divinity of Lord Chaitanya.

So I don't want to go into specific issues over here. My point is that in general I don't see how outsider perspectives, understanding outsider perspectives will actually transform knowledge into realization. It is actually going deeper into perspective.

Again I would go back to the definition of insider outsider. Even in some ISKCON contexts I'm a white man, I'm a Catholic, I'm Irish. I'm not born into this tradition even though I've practiced it for over 40 years but for some people and I've been in South India where I gave a lecture and after the lecture a Brahmin stood up and declared how disqualified I was to give the lecture because I wasn't born to talk about the scriptures, to quote the scriptures etc.

So how do we define these things? For me personally I have two basic principles in life. Krishna is God and Prabhupada is the boss and for me everything else is negotiable. If I meet a rabbi, if I meet a Christian minister, if I meet a mullah I'm perfectly happy to talk to them about their idea of God, their idea of suffering, the issues that we can all talk about fairly easily, their idea of compassion and tolerance and love.

I don't have any difficulty talking about these things with anyone because in the 10th canto of the Gita Krishna talks about vada being of all the processes of discourse is vada and vada means that you get people from different perspectives to come and talk about the truth, sat, what is truth, what is real and some people will be scientific. They're not interested in God, they're just interested in seeing reality in the material context and some people are interested in the spiritual context and some people are more religious, sectarian. Everyone's got their perspective but we need to be open to hearing.

We need to have that open-heartedness but as we go through life we make our decisions and for me as I say just personally after meeting all these people which I've gone out of my way to do, my principles are Krishna is God and Prabhupada is the boss and that's where my focus is and based on that I can talk to anyone and I'm not afraid, I'm not threatened because I've made my decision. My Acharya is founder Acharya as we call him is Srila Prabhupada and so everyone measures up to that and if someone says like in one lecture I gave in Belfast in North Ireland someone stood up at the back and said your Krishna is not God, he's just a goat herd. He didn't even get the cow herd.

Oh God, okay. That's a certain perspective. Now I could have said yeah and Jesus Christ is an unemployed carpenter.

You've brought these persons down to a very material mundane economic level and that's not their worth. So if that's the only value you see in God and Krishna then yeah that person at the moment is not going to be my Sangha. I got it because to me Krishna is God.

Therefore I want to talk to people who have that understanding and that's my club and they're the people I worship, my deities. I want to talk to people about the experiences I have when I worship my deities. I can't talk about that to everybody.

It's a personal thing. It's an experience. It's not about rational thought.

It's not about intellectual pursuit. It's not about religion. It's a personal experience I have of God and it's personal to me and it's not personal even to other devotees.

They'll come and see my day. I remember we were in Spain at a conference one time and devotees from all over, my friends, and someone had given me a little Giriraj and for years I'd always in my heart very silently wondered if maybe if you ever want to come to me I'm here you know and Giriraj came. I was so thrilled and I brought my friends into the room and said look it's Giriraj and he was so special to me and I was so overwhelmed by him and they all looked and it was just another Giriraj to them and I realized this is my experience of God and we all have our individual experience of God.

So I'm an insider in my relationship with my little Giriraj Govinda as I call him but I'm the only one. I'm the only one who has that relationship. Sorry now I understand what you're saying about the individual outsider in the insider outsider discussion being so problematic.

Ultimately if you want to say the insider you could reduce the insider to only an individual and each of us could become almost like island where but and then what you said earlier that we can't exist as island like that we are relational creatures. Yes so now another point I'm sorry it's just just to the reason why that Krishna's why Prabhupada is the boss for me when Prabhupada gave his nectar devotion lectures in 1973 in Vrindavan. This is a series of lectures he gave on this text and it's become become quite famous but one thing that caught me I was a very young devotee and I was listening to these lectures and he said Krishna is your only friend and he said you may say that I am your friend but he said I may not be there at the time of death for you but Krishna will be there.

Krishna is your only friend and I was so impressed because I'd heard of all kinds of gurus and swamis and yogis but here was someone who was most definitely saying don't worship me worship Krishna and there was such integrity in that the the integrity of his message was right there he had disciples who he was conscious he said you may say that I am your friend he was conscious of what they taught of him and how they elevated him but he told them the truth I was so impressed with that integrity and that's why he's he's the boss for me and that's the integrity the character that I'm looking for in people and that's not that's not purely spiritual that issue of character is an issue of dharma of principle that we we decide to follow certain principles and one of our principles of course is Krishna's God and Prabhupada's the boss they're they're my principles and and then we have ahimsa we have seva there's certain things that we add to our life and by adding them to our life our life becomes consciously constrained so they Prabhupada says the sadhu is someone who is strict with himself but liberal with everybody else which means our spiritual sadhana is very individual it we we adopt our principles they're our principles they're not everybody else's and we know that we've adopted them through association with sadhus through association with devotees through association with Krishna through our through practices and then we adopt these principles and someone else doesn't adopt these principles and I remember we have our four regulative principles in ISKCON I'm not talking about those principles I remember one devotee saying I only practiced three and I said oh goodness well and I was guessing which one was the one he wasn't practicing and he said yes I practiced the three no meat fish and eggs oh god so we all have our we all have our principles and they're they have to be individual to us because they define us they define our integrity there is so much that is stimulating thought in this and discussion in what you have said so let's backtrack a little bit and you see the kind of understanding that you are giving of Krishna consciousness at one level it resonates with you could say both intuition and experience yeah we are all individuals and I like you mentioned about earlier about going to different ISKCON temples also I have traveled before the pandemic I was traveling almost nine months a year and every temple is significantly different in its own way although we can say that as Krishna is Krishna is God and Prabhupada is his is the boss that's true so now when you said that Prabhupada is the boss you also said it not in the exclusivist sense that sometimes people say Jesus is the only way that Prabhupada is the boss in the sense that Prabhupada is the person who is taking us to Krishna and and that like I won't be there but Krishna will be there with you so in that sense even the so we can I often whenever I have to speak on interfaith I use the metaphor of mountain like we are at the bottom of the mountain and we have to go to the top of the mountain but there could be many parts of the mountain but if we want to go up we have to we have to take follow the path which we have taken so in one sense Prabhupada is showing us the path of the mountain but there could be other parts of the mountain also and we can connect with people from other traditions and other perspectives and in one sense going back to the earlier point about we being individuals so it's almost like although there is one path which we are taking we could say one path is a Gaudiya Vaishnavas we are taking but still within that path also each one of us has our individual journey yes and it's almost like we are we could say we are charting our own path within that broad path yes well without doubt we all have individual relationships with Krishna and in the end it's it's us and Krishna on our deathbed it's us and Krishna nobody else and Krishna is not not coming to say and and say here I am and you're saying I did everything I was told to do that that's that's not necessarily a personal relationship we're being asked to develop an intimate relationship with Krishna that means very personal it's a personal understanding of Krishna a personal dependence on Krishna a personal emotional relationship with Krishna and and and that's that's something we all have to do consciously so so it's not that we just follow these guidelines these rules these regulations and then everything will be okay that's religion and that's very good and that keeps us off the streets but spirituality is more than that or our relationship with Krishna is more than that and and all of that is is very important you know because we do live in society where relationship is everything to us in Gaudiya Vaishnavism it's all about relationships it's all about our relationship with Krishna and with our gurus our older devotees our sangha with the world around us our relationship with the environment with all the animals etc they're all they're all Krishna's servants and and the environment is Krishna's parkland so our environmental policy is clear don't mess with that you know sustain it maintain it so our our Krishna consciousness should infuse absolutely everything but it's all about relationship so if we if we're focused on our relationship with Krishna and not taking care of the poor people in our city the underprivileged in our city and also the overprivileged in our city who are just as poor spiritually beautiful you know then then we don't understand what relationship means but we do it in consciousness of our relationship with Krishna so without the thought of Krishna my my efforts to help are quite useless such a drop in the ocean no real significance at all but you know all these things I know I mean I I do know how do we put it that see there as I said that what you are saying there are certain things you are known but you are not always articulated in that way so just going backward so in one sense what you are saying is that compassion or a spiritual vision of others is not just about say transforming them into devotees it is also about understanding their individuality and connecting with them as individuals yes because then we have the possibility of sharing our Krishna consciousness with them bhakti means to share the word means bhaj it means to share so then our process of mission of preaching of outreach means to share it doesn't mean to smash or dominate or convert or convince our process of doing that is is very peaceful it's from the heart it's not even intellectual the intellectual is a side of it but the essence of it is a heart-to-heart exchange and that's the development of a relationship and that that could be a relationship we develop with the chokhidar and every day we see the chokhidar and we say Hare Krishna we give him some prasad and that person over a number of years you see him all of a sudden he's at the temple it's just a relationship develops it's personal if we go to a temple and someone is unkind to us we won't go to the temple again we'll we'll miss our opportunity to develop our love for Krishna if we go to the temple and someone open-heartedly says hello welcome to this temple oh you've come to see Krishna Krishna's wonderful come with me you take them by the hand and bring them up they'll be sober well with gratitude um that they'll see Krishna we we've opened their eyes to that love sense of our movement and it and it can only happen if we have a relationship with Krishna it can only happen if our heart is open and it has to be open to others and we have to take that risk of relationship because relationship is always a risk and we start by practicing it among devotees opening up to devotees and devotees opening up to us and learning how to have intimacy and confidentiality in our relationships this is what Rupa Goswami recommends to us we we give we give gifts we share prasadam we share our confidential thoughts so you start doing that among devotees and then you you you are then strong enough to be able to do it among anyone because we realize ultimately that everybody ultimately is a devotee and even if they don't say it don't want to think about it but that's our that's our spiritual perspective everyone is connected with Krishna I remember walking out of a temple in South India one time and uh uh it was such a lovely experience in the temple that I was just overwhelmed and I walked out and and I bumped into someone and turned around and went you know oh namaste namaste and it was a cow I remember feeling yes why not I'm sorry for bumping into you mrs cow you know um you know this is a person and this person has a relationship with Krishna and they're just in a cow body fair enough Krishna likes cows but Krishna likes everyone that lord Ramachandra you know he came down as an avatar but who were the people he interacted with most at the critical time it was monkeys and bears and and vultures and squirrels and you know it was all of nature as as an avatar he was coming down to accept the service from everybody and he wasn't speciesist he didn't see the world like that and that's our example we also can't be speciesist like that he he accepted everyone's service and we have to have the same open-heartedness but we have to know what a relationship is to have that open-heartedness okay so you know as uh there are a lot of thoughts which I would reflect but let me try to take it in one particular direction that um sometimes these podcasts they go in uh they know that during the discussions so many spontaneous points come up which I feel are worth exploring then we may not necessarily stick to the original plan so what you are saying is uh that there's a individual relationship with Krishna and there's a subjective experience of Krishna and to the extent we have our individual relationship with Krishna authentic to that extent we will actually be able to uh authentically share Krishna with others also otherwise if it is if we don't have a personal experience or individual relationship then it will become more like a more like imposition that this is the truth and this is what you have to accept yes so and and in in one sense um it's not either or it's both and so if if where we're at is we don't have we don't have a developed relationship with Krishna but we have some knowledge of Krishna someone's told us about Krishna and we're very fired up then we'll want to share it well don't stop that so run out there and share it grab someone by the lapel and say have you heard about Krishna? Krishna is great Krishna is fantastic come and come to the temple and you'll see for yourself um there was a friend of mine he was an alcoholic and he used come to the temple in Dublin many years ago and he'd be on off alcoholic uh well alcoholic means on all the time but he'll be drinking not drinking trying to trying to chant and be a devotee and then he'd fall off the wagon so um and he used to like to go out and do book distribution when he was in good consciousness when he's in good consciousness he'd come to the temple he'd rise at 2 30 in the morning and he'd chant all his rounds before Mangalati and you know he was really pukka and then he then he started drinking again so he was on O'Connell bridge in Dublin one day and this guy came along and he was at the end of his cycle so he was distributing books but he was drunk so this guy came along and he said to him he said take this book take the book take the book look don't look at me don't look at me i'm worthless i'm a drunk but this book will change your life this book will help you this and he just and the person took the book and was so touched with his honesty and his humility that he read the book and he became a devotee so so it's just bhakti means the sincerity it's not about the material circumstance it's just a sincere so wherever we're at however disqualified we are discordant we are we should make an effort to reach out to others to reach out to ourselves by doing so to advance ourselves but we need to understand that the goal is to develop our relationship with Krishna and as we develop that relationship we have so much more to offer we just need to understand that no matter where we start we should we should do something with our the little enthusiasm we get initially that's Krishna and that that that confidence that this is a good thing that's the essence of faith and that faith gradually as we develop our relationship develops into trust and that trust develops into love that's a just a gradual development of any relationship where it's it's not it's not rocket science it's common sense so the same way we develop any relationship we develop our relationship with Krishna we do it consciously we do it conscientiously we do it devotionally we do it consistently so that every day we have an opportunity to start again like the the brahmins in the vedas when they do their vedic yajna and every day they recreate the yoga peet they don't they don't use the same one they recreate it because they're recreating the universe that's the that's what's happening and they're recreating the universe every day and everything starts again and we have an opportunity to do the same in our spirituality in our relationship with Krishna so yesterday we might have got it right or wrong who knows generally we got it wrong let's let's let's bargain for that but we have an opportunity to start again and make little incremental improvements and every day we can succeed a little bit just a little bit it's not a failure that we failed 90% of the day it's a success that we made 10 improvement because that's not lost the next day starts with the 10% in your bank account so so we have a great opportunity to develop our relationship with Krishna but we have to take it seriously we have to understand that it's serious and therefore our the idea of relationship is very important to us I can't come in front of the lord and say dear lord be merciful to me and then go and kill a cow or a chicken or you know eat meat or something like that and not be merciful to them I can't go in front of the lord and say dear lord please help me come closer to you and let my ego fall away and then criticize someone else's ego some other person who's praying beside me saying oh look at him he thinks he's so great you know we we have to understand that this relationship that really all these relationships are important they're all related to Krishna so I have to relate to them all with compassion but I find my compassion my love in the little incremental development of my relationship with Krishna and when I have that experience then I have something to share and I'm waiting for the day beautiful so actually we have covered a lot of territory in one sense what you talked we started about inside an outsider so now to to some extent if we want to develop our individual relationship with Krishna and as you said it's it's a incremental process that that example you gave up so in one sense authenticity is more important than purity you said that somebody might be alcoholic who's drinking not drinking able to give up not able to give up but they're authentically sharing at that level so this will help you where you are that authenticity is transfer is more in one sense touches hearts much more than of course purity is important but even if you don't have purity if you have authenticity then that can also touch people's hearts well I think that's the only thing that touches people's hearts I think when let's let's look at it another way that the authenticity is the purity the the other is is maybe cleanliness shall we say but the authenticity is the actual purity Prabhupada says in a Purport to Nectar of Devotion he says the only qualification is sincerity as sincerity the word is a latin word it means without duplicity so that's the purity when when it's real the relationship is real and we may be pure in that we bathe every day and we chant mantras every day and that purifies us and we don't eat meat and we don't eat onions and garlic and mushrooms and all that and alcohol so we may be keeping ourselves pure materially physically and mentally and emotionally but that doesn't mean pure spiritually so let's it may be that we look at purity in a different way the purity for me is that it's without duplicity it's actually pure it's the essence of relationship what's the essence of relationship what's that pure focus when it's only Krishna and the difficulty I have is that I have so many other options than Krishna you know like when I went into an exam as a kid I was you know brought up in a religious environment so you pray to God please please please help me get the exam and then you get the results and the results are good and it's I did so well and I'm so good it wasn't about God at all you know whereas if I didn't get the exam I'd certainly blame God but he didn't get the credit I took the credit so we we have so many other options than God but how do we focus on God and God is the cause of all causes God is the essence of our life it's one we love more than anyone else and and I love myself more than God I'm sorry to say so how do we develop those those practices that's sadhana and if we understand who we are in relation to God how how difficult it is to develop a relationship we will certainly have great compassion on anyone who is having difficulty in this world in developing those relationships we see someone who's rejecting God and many people I see rejecting God it's such an emotional rejection you know they don't want a patriarch telling them what to do they don't believe in a someone who's just going to crush them and crush their creativity and you hear all these arguments I don't believe in anyone who would allow young children to suffer and etc and and they're all good arguments but they're a little bit sentimental and emotional and they're rejecting God from that it's not it's not very profound they don't have a relationship with God that's quite clear so so when I see someone like that I see that there's pain in their heart they're actually pained I understand why they're rejecting because they have pain in their heart they're trying to enjoy in this world separate from God and separate from everybody else practically and try to become get as much profit and adoration and distinction as possible and there's a lot of competition for that and they're in competition all the time now that's very difficult to maintain that energy of competition that's that's suffering it really is trying to become the most beautiful person in the world again tons of every woman in the world is trying to do that and quite a few men I'm at an age where I'm out of the race and trying to become the most intelligent person again a lot of competition but ultimately God fulfills all these roles there is no competition there never was so when you see when you when I see myself and I see others trying to fulfill desires in this world that are really not going to make us happy you realize what a suffering condition we're in and even the idea I want to be happy only betrays the fact that I'm not happy it's an aspiration I wish it would happen sometime so how do we develop and we all look for it ultimately in relationships relationships of love and and that's the gift that Prabhupada and our Acharyas have given and I see it echoed in other religions as well as this this isn't it's not exclusive to our tradition you know that they they say that love of God is the point that it's the Christianity I was brought up with I had heard all that before I joined Krishna consciousness coming to Krishna consciousness I found somewhere where they practiced it that was what I was missing who practiced this and then all of a sudden I was opened up to this wealth of literature about love of God that I never knew existed all the Bhakti traditions incredible literature absolutely incredible so it helped me ironically become the Christian I wanted to be so so but you never consciously felt that you were actually rejecting Christianity no I never did so it is okay I was yeah and and again that's the insider outsider thing why should I reject the teachings of Jesus Jesus's teachings helped me qualified me to understand why I should develop a relationship with Krishna how could I reject my guru in that sense this person helped me different priests who taught me also helped me my father helped me he wasn't a devotee he died when I was 15 before I became a devotee didn't know anything about any of this so how could I not give gratitude to all these people that Krishna sent to help me develop my consciousness develop my perspective how could we do that that's very ungrateful very thoughtless actually lacking in generosity of any kind so so that that's what relationship means understanding that all these relationships are there all these people were sent by Krishna to help me and then appreciate them for who they were and and what part they played in our lives so it's the inside or outside of things very difficult for me it's it seems like a false dilemma it's it's creating uh partisanship party politics sectarianism it's not very helpful it's not not helpful in spiritual life and I don't think it's helpful materially either I understand why people do it because if we're if we don't have very strong faith then it's very important that we we make very strong declarations of faith it's very important that we say this is the only way this is the only way you can see the world this is the only way you can practice this is the only truth and that's all a bit bogus because who am I to say what's the only truth you know Krishna is the only truth Krishna by his will because Krishna can do whatever he wants he can come down and or just look at some atheist guy who never practiced any spiritual life and eats meat all day every day and drinks alcohol all day every day and he can just take them back to godhead like that if he wants that's not part of my religion but Krishna is not religious obvious because he's a he's a butter thief isn't he not very religious so Krishna can do whatever he wants I have to allow that fact so Krishna is the arbiter of truth not me not any religion not any institution Krishna that's the essence of Krishna consciousness Krishna is God and that's what it means to be God so Prabhupada started a movement based on the the inspiration of Lord Chaitanya and yes I'm with that that's the revelation that opened things up for me and allowed me to practice and that's how I gained access to Krishna in Vrindavan not even Krishna in Dwarka Krishna in Vrindavan that's the Krishna for me that little blue boy so I'm focused on him and I realized that a lot of people don't get that and that's that's fine by me but I can help them appreciate different aspects of Krishna so that gradually they can come closer at their own pace in their own time by Krishna's will so whatever I can do to help I'm here you know that's I'm Krishna's servant in that regards but I can't say that there is only one way because it doesn't make sense in our tradition philosophically or theologically it doesn't make any sense our Goswamis worked very closely with members of other traditions borrowed from other traditions to advance Krishna consciousness and and we all need to work together in this world this godforsaken world Prabhupada said in the light of the Bhagavata in the 1950s when he wrote that book he said the the leaders of world religions should come together to to help the world it's really to contribute to the common good we should be able to do that as well as be exclusive in our relation to Krishna but it's also exclusive to me and Krishna that relationship is an exclusive relationship and I should be able to share the joy that I feel in that relationship and the fulfillment that it gives the satisfaction it gives to my heart but I know that I can't replicate it in another person's heart they have to do that for themselves and and that's what Krishna says at the end of the Gita he says to Arjuna now deliberate on this fully and then do what you wish to do Krishna's teaching method in the Gita is quite extraordinary it's not dogmatic it's not doctrinaire he doesn't say that Arjuna this is what you have to do this is the only way I sometimes uh I've met some Muslim and Christian friends who have said you know in the Gita Krishna says you know he says something he says this is my opinion and this is my opinion he keeps on saying that but he's God why doesn't he just tell him what to do but he doesn't tell him what to do because Krishna wants Arjuna to choose him because he wants him to choose love because he wants love because the Gita is about love and that requires free choice and and Krishna establishes that absolutely wonderfully so he says I quoted it earlier on that text where we're all spiritual individuals so that's that's the first text of teaching in the Gita and Krishna establishes that we're all individuals therefore we all have choice so he established that first the philosophy behind love of God is that Vedanta so first we're all individuals eternally so that means we have the freedom absolute freedom to choose love of Krishna or not and Krishna maintains that for Arjuna he doesn't take that away in any any way at all it means when Krishna says never was a time when I did not exist nor you nor all these kings he says you were never born therefore I didn't create you all the Indian philosophies all the Indian theologies say that that's a Christian and our Jewish Abrahamic concept that God created us the material aspects of us are all created and we're beholden and we should give thanks to God for all that but our essence our very our very being was not created by God it's eternal so Krishna says you you Arjuna have absolute freedom to choose and then it's interesting at the end of the Gita after hearing lots of yoga and philosophy and theology and even material arguments where Krishna says if you don't fight people will laugh at you you know after Krishna gave him all the options material and spiritual and then in the end says now do what you want and Arjuna chooses to fight because of his relationship with Krishna because of his love for Krishna not because of religion not because of theology because he he liked Krishna he loved Krishna and that that's the teaching of the Gita and that's not dogmatic and that's that's that Krishna didn't say this is the only way it's the only thing you can do he said quite the opposite he said Arjuna you can you can fight because if you don't people will laugh at you that's a terrible reason it's completely yeah but he gave him the option because it is an option Krishna was totally open and honest with him okay and and that's how we should preach if you want this is this is I think you addressed the question which I was having you know I really appreciate how you are showing the at one sense if there is you are focusing on the individuality dimension of Krishna consciousness and then simultaneously you're also highlighting the universality of Krishna consciousness sometimes the individual and universal can sometimes be in contradiction but the way you are explaining it it is because we are individuals that's and because our philosophy acknowledges centrally that we individuals that is what makes us a universal so because we understand that every person is individual earlier talked about going beyond speciesm so we acknowledge not just every human being but every living being is individual yes so so just now when we say that there are many parts but you also made this point that so that's a Christian conception that is not a that we are created so sometimes when we try to be universalist then there is the danger of sliding into an uncritical relativism or just accepting that everything is right so there there still has to be some understanding that while we have to be broad-minded but that doesn't mean that there is no such thing as right or wrong like earlier you talked about atheists their reasons for being for rejecting god is are quite strongly emotional so we we we do say that their concept the rejection of god that in rejecting god that doesn't mean god doesn't exist but we acknowledge their the we acknowledge the reality of their their individual experiences which have led to the rejection of god and if we offer them more positive experiences and more personal relations rather than simply hammering theology then that will that can even transform them yes i it was my experience with my father-in-law who um i i i liked and admired very much uh he was an atheist and and in the beginning of our relationship we used to argue about god and spirituality so much i never let loggerhead never get anywhere it was a a ridiculous conversation um but over time he was an educationalist he used work for the world bank he he developed education programs in india and pakistan and in rwanda and all over the world and um so i asked him to help in our iskcon develop teacher training programs and different things and he he traveled to russia to america to europe to all over the place um to do seminars and workshops with devotees did it all for free and he really liked devotees he got to know tons of devotees anutama like you mentioned anutama rajvihari satchinandan swami and so many people he met and and and taught in fact um so he met all these people and really liked them he loved prasadam he loved to chant hari krishna he used chant hari krishna in the shower we'd all go on trips together in the car and we'd chant hari krishna to your um old english tunes and all kinds of stuff as as a game and he just liked it all so we stopped talking to him about god and he started chanting hari krishna he became a vegetarian he started serving the devotees he went to vrindavan uh he went to delhi to do some work for the government and he said to a friend he said my daughter is always talking about vrindavan where's vrindavan and he said look it's not far away let's go let's go tomorrow so they took a taxi went down to vrindavan he got in the taxi and right outside the door was rajvihari one of his former students who took him around vrindavan and he had a lovely day in vrindavan you know so i look at someone like that all the service they did from their heart and uh was it necessary to talk about god was there a big point there you know the relationship that was developed when we stopped arguing became uh very profound and when he died uh we got letters from all the senior devotees in iskcon radhnath swamy and hirayanandamaraj and you name it and they were all they were all sad to hear it and all praying for him so did he get the benefit of the association of the vaishnavs yes did he get the benefit of prasadam yes was he brought to vrindavan yes everything all the things that we want to aspire for as devotees he experienced yet he called himself so he had this intellectual block or emotional block with the idea of god so just work around it why make an issue of it why why insist on chipping away at it and hurting him and hurting the relationship rather develop the relationship and take it from there and that was just my personal experience in that one instance but i i think it's it's important more to focus on the relationship than the intellectual argument in many cases the intellectual argument is helpful i mean intellectually uh from an indian perspective uh in indian intellectual thought to say that there isn't a god to make a definitive statement there is no god has no intellectual uh viability because you can't prove a negative you can't prove that there isn't a god so how could you intellect so the idea of god always remains on the table so a lot of the uh non-theistic not atheistic non-theistic philosophical traditions in hinduism like non-theistic uh sankya and uh vaiseshika etc they don't talk about god but they don't reject the idea of god and even the the buddha himself didn't say there wasn't a god he just refused to talk about god he refused to talk about all these things because intellectually it doesn't make sense to definitively say there isn't a god and then the atheist can say well but you have to prove that there is a god but if the basis of proof is is rational thought if god is super rational beyond rational thought how could you use rational thought to prove something that's beyond it that doesn't make sense either so there's no onus on me to prove there is a god i have my experience that's it that's all i need so so i understand intellectually but sometimes there's no point even talking about it it's better just to give someone prasadam and sit down and give them a hug it's more effective uh in helping them understand krishna than having a big brawl with them that that doesn't get us anywhere so we have to use our our intelligence and our our emotional intelligence you know you mentioned about your father-in-law the rasamundra pro is also in the podcast and when we're talking about teaching and the whole paradigm of about skills values those things he said that he learned a lot from the courses that your father-in-law taught and he was also a person who strongly suggested that we invite you so now so if i understand right what you are saying is that there is a role for rationality and that's why we have a tradition where books are written and there are polemical arguments also but we don't have to reduce our outreach to rational arguments alone and sometimes we may outreach may require us to entirely bypass the polemical dimension entirely and just focus on developing a relationship uh well it's kind of yes and no my my whole career in oxford of course is based on the academic and the rational yes no actually i was going to come to that and maybe we separate so it's kind of yeah it's kind of i'm i'm shooting myself in the foot here but but the fact is you know truthfully the essence is bhakti and our relationship with krishna because that's purely non-sectarian and non-partisan and it means anyone can do it any child can do it so we don't if we have the capacity for intellectual academic pursuit then yes we should pursue it like our goswamis you know they were very intellectual they knew many languages who were very intelligent very well educated um rupa goswami used the um uh the rasa theory of bharat from the 11th century uh to which was a a literary a system of literary criticism of of literary development he used that to explain god was a very strange use of of this theory so he elevated it to something else so the fact that he was so well educated that he understood this theory he understood poetics and drama and how it had developed in india over many hundreds of years that's a highly educated person and then be able to use those systems to explain the philosophy uh the theology of lord chaitanya that's quite incredible quite quite genius actually so we need to do that um and that that's the reason why i got involved in in education i i had having worked in iskcon for so long and worked in iskcon communications in days when there were only three people doing it in the whole world uh and just a minute sorry sorry i mean i appreciate what the direction you're going in but i felt that maybe the since we have gone in one direction now the we could discuss maybe in a separate podcast because i would like to explore this relational dimension a little bit more yes i know that the rational dimension is very important and we could discuss that also separately but if if you are okay with it i can we can focus on the relational dimension a little bit more right now is that certainly okay certainly yeah okay sorry to interrupt you i don't think anything to maintain my relationship with you okay yeah i think so so you that that our tradition has a vibrant uh you could say vibrant intellectual basis there's no doubt for that and prabhupada also did talk about you know he would take sometimes the devil's advocate and he would have rational arguments many of his morning walks are like featuring that quite prominently so so that definitely is acknowledged but the point i was making is that sometimes we reduce a person to simply their beliefs and then we said that belief is wrong therefore the only way i can interact with this person is to correct their correct their wrong conceptions but instead of doing that instead of reducing our interaction with the person to simply a rash argument or on rational basis we can broaden our interactions and as we interact with people then we develop a relationship with them which could involve various dimensions and then the rational aspect may be addressed appropriately and sometimes it may not need to be addressed so much also yeah so um no i i totally agree that's a very good point it goes back to what i said um earlier and you you had quoted it that something comes from more a christian abrahamic kind of jewish islamic perspective um and also a greek philosophical perspective these things go together and that's how western intellectual thought has developed it it accepts certain assumptions as it's interesting for me to observe how these assumptions are now kind of globally accepted through through film and music and novels and also through social media so i i for instance i i saw the you know senior people in india the text you know someone significant passes away and they write r.i.p uh rest in peace well this is a christian idea that when you die you're dead you're finished rest in peace you're in the ground over but of course from a hindu point of view the person who's died is a hindu and they're going to take birth again possibly so there's no peace involved with that it's going to be squealing little baby you know and and their body's going to be burned so there's no resting in peace there so we we kind of accept practices in our global context we're accepting things a little uncritically and i also i i think that that becomes the case when it comes to religious assumptions as well so you use the word belief and we talk about the word belief but of course in indian in indian context in a vaishnav context um belief has no significance at all belief is very poor a very poor measure of anything i may believe there's an elephant behind me but you can see that there isn't my belief is kind of doesn't matter one way or the other it's the indian context is based on knowledge and further realized knowledge so that's why knowledge is emphasized it's not about belief it's about knowledge it means there is no elephant done you know so it's not about belief knowledge is important and what's also very important and maybe more important is sadhana so how do you how can you tell anything about a person if they're knowledgeable and what their knowledge is you can have a conversation and test that but if you ask them what their sadhana is you can tell an awful lot about a person a lot more than asking them what their belief is so even so again back into an indian context if if i if i'm in gujarat and i talk to someone in tamil nadu about their belief and they tell me in gujarati that their guru is akhil lokesh rasamallai vishnu swami i don't know who they who they're talking about and his his uh philosophy is called rasamallai ananda you know i don't know what that is you know maybe it's something to do with the bengali suite i don't know so you know it's it's so different the talk about belief doesn't mean anything but if i say what's your sadhana and you tell me you know i rise at four in the morning i i do meditation for two hours i chant japa i stay prayer i'm a vegetarian i i serve other people well i don't care what religion you call yourself i know who you are you know you're you're you're an interesting person i should talk to now i can go to a cistercian christian monk and i i know cistercian christian monks and they get up at three o'clock in the morning and they say prayer for two hours and they're vegetarian and they shave their heads and they wear robes so what's what's the intrinsic difference and you can say well they're not baptist but they are baptist because the prayer they say for two hours every day is not fruitive it's actually just glorification they know that you don't ask god for anything you worship god you praise god you love god so what's what's the so i know the quality of the now someone says you know i'm uh i'm a vaishnav i say what do you do uh you know i get up at 12 i have a cigarette have a beer i watch some television you know at 10 o'clock in the evening i'll go out and uh go clubbing and i'll go to bed at four o'clock in the morning when the other guy is getting up i also know that person they may call themselves what they want is their belief is not relevant their sadhana is relevant their practice that tells me their character that tells me an awful lot about them so and then so then who do i relate to who do i call a devotee when when they say that we should have a relationship with krishna with the devotees of krishna with the innocent people and we should ignore the demoniac but who are the devotees are the devotees the ones who are the people with the best sadhana and where are they to be found and i might find them in the nimbarka tradition i might find them in some gaudiya not i might find them in the pusti mark i might find them in the shri vaishnavas i might find some of them in as might find some christians who i find inspiring they may not know about krishna in vrindavan so they can't give me that inspiration but they can inspire me to think more deeply about my relationship with god so for instance the christian example i gave of the monk so there was a monk uh brother on the broth and an irish monk that i knew he was in he was an old man when i knew him a well-known scholar um and he practiced like that and we used to have lovely conversations and i he was he was an old man i was a very young man and he was very encouraging to me always very kind and compassionate and open-minded and he encouraged me in my spiritual life and it it challenged me to see if he's doing all these things and i was a brahmachari at the time i was doing all the same things getting up early in the morning chanting for two hours vegetarian all the same in terms of sadhana so my challenge was what's special about my tradition what's what's the what's the different thing i had to look much more deeply into my tradition to see well why am i practicing this then and and i found something i found krishna in vrindavan this idea of vrindavan krishna this is unique no one has an idea of god like this this this was this was and this so his association helped me tremendously and and i'm i'm ever thankful to him even though he's you know christian he's misguided and he's the wrong religion and all that kind of stuff but i didn't i didn't experience that and i i there were other monks that i i wouldn't have spent five minutes with just they had nothing to offer me but this was this was a rare soul and where do we find these people all over the place was he a devotee without doubt he was a devotee of god but without doubt i what was his relationship with god exactly i have no idea i have no qualification to understand that but but he he inspired me he enthused me he challenged me he helped me understand my relationship with god and that goes back to the story we started with you told the story about my friend who came and had the experience the challenging i just i mean or you want to complete this thought then i have i have a lot yeah please go ahead no no please go ahead okay so so you know the idea that our practice matters more than simply what we believe or we claim to believe or even what we think we believe that is something which is very significant i in one sense i was thinking that when in the 17th chapter of the bhagavad-gita uh arjuna talks about the gray zone between the black and the white the black and white in the 16th chapter the divine and demoniac natures but then he asked the question what about those who don't follow scripture but they have some kind of faith and when and answering that question krishna entirely focuses on behavioral characteristics now what they eat what kind of austerities they do what kind of sacrifices they give it's broadly how they're in functioning in the world so krishna is really not talking so much about what intellectual conception of ultimate reality a particular person has he's talking about how they are functioning in the world so that's just to echo the point which you mentioned so yeah this is totally totally when you see a good person like my father-in-law the atheist but he was a very good person he was very moral very honest um he was a much ironically he was a much more religious person than i i ever was you know he took these things very seriously i was always a bit flippant about things but i had great admiration for him for his principles he declared his principles and he followed them very strictly it's very inspiring to see people like that the fact that he's an atheist is kind of beside the point you know it's not a big issue i didn't associate with him on that level i was wasn't influenced uh by his atheism in any way but you know but when you find someone who practices well and uh you have to respect them and and that goes the other way when they see a devotee who is also very principled then they will respect them and that becomes the basis of our interaction in society because we live in society we are individuals we can be universalists and then the next part of it is how do we integrate in the world so we we have to integrate and we have to to bring our principles with us and not compromise our principles and that doesn't mean that everyone else has to practice our principles that just means we have to practice them the um the uh psychiatrist adler i think in 1946 he said uh it's easier to fight for our principles than to practice them so we'll get all up and you know these principles the most important principles in the world everyone should practice these principles it's easier to say all that and do all that and be aggressive and get out there and and color everyone that actually practiced them seriously and then the other thing is groucho marx i don't know if he was a an american um comedian in the last century he said i got principles and if you don't like him i got other ones and who is that's his name is groucho marx a well-known comedian a funny guy but i i remember i heard that very funny uh very witty but but it's it's witty because it's so opposite to the reality and but the fact is that sometimes we're like that sometimes we have principles and we got other ones they're not really principles at all so we do have to consciously understand what our principles are so that we can declare them in society when we meet other people it they may be individual to us but when we meet other people to identify ourselves we need to be able to tell them what our principles are and then and then once we've done that we have to be seen to practice them or at least to be making an honest attempt at least to try and and like my friend on the bridge who was drunk he was trying but failing but ironically that was the convincing point so so we have to try at least and be seen to try that is but but we do have to first identify what our principles are and as i said i've identified two principles for myself and they lead to other things and other practices without doubt so that the four regulative principles we talk about in this corner they're very important for as i say again keeping us off the streets prophet says by following those principles you distinguish yourself from animals and so if we've decided to be human beings by following it so i'm talking about more foundational principles maybe the concept of the yeah sorry no sorry if i understand right what you're saying is that that there are let me earlier talked about that i have principles and i have other principles sometimes we see this even in like sometimes devotees may also unconsciously do that that based on convenience say for this purpose i'll quote this principle and for that purpose i'll quote that principle yeah and we can all quote from if you just learn enough scripture we can at any time quote a scripture verse to support whatever we want to do also yeah so then that that that can also be problematic oh yes yeah yeah but that that means that that we become untrustworthy that's what it means so if someone is acting like that i can't take them seriously about anything so this is machiavellian idea this idea that the end justifies the means that we can we can use anything and manipulate it anyway at any time again the word i've used consistently in this discussion is bogus it's really bogus it's it's it's self-defeating it doesn't it has nothing to do with integrity it has nothing to do with sincerity uh non-duplicity it is essentially duplicitous so it means the end justifies the means whatever whatever whatever to make it krishna conscious whatever that someone becomes whatever that i can make some money whatever and if if there are no principles behind it then you're untrustworthy and that's that's a an absolute disaster for a spiritual organization or for a spiritual person disaster huh it's a strong word yeah oh it's a disaster absolutely if we if we if we chop and change principles like that for convenience it means that we haven't thought about the subject seriously and we're misrepresenting our acharyas very profoundly and we're misrepresenting krishna very profoundly and and you know the funny thing of course is that krishna himself is a rascal he he tells lies you know he tells his mother he didn't eat the clay but it's all around his mouth you know he he uh he stole the he stole the the the butter and gave it away to the monkeys a terrible rascal so we worship a rascal but that doesn't mean that we'd be rascals we're not krishna krishna is there in the picture we see the pictures of krishna eating eating the butter with a little smile on his face looking at us and uh part of the smile i thought sometimes is because he's saying i can do this i can get away with this and you can't is a little bit laughing at us you know we're a little envious actually that krishna can get away with it so but we shouldn't do that we shouldn't try that we should we should be um respectable uh in such a way that people will take what we say seriously consistent we should be so consistent in our principles that when when uh hari krishna devotee speaks then people listen and that's how you have influence even on executive decision making in society without getting involved in politics without trying to lobby we shouldn't be involved in any form of lobbying any form of political or partisan politics we should act in such a way that people come to us and they want to have a relationship with us because they trust us because there's so few people you can trust in the world and when you find someone then you go there you trust them and then you'll listen to anything they have to say because it's it's all going to be well considered and well thought and it's coming from a good source it's coming from the heart and it means that you're taking them and their needs into into consideration and that considerate approach very very rare in the world very difficult to find somewhere like that and all our temples all our devotees should be repositories of such relationship and that would transform the world that would give people real hope that there is love and there is real peace to be had in the world if we just use the mechanics of society if we get involved in the social more as the kind of relationships that people that politics and economics dictate and advocate then what's what's different what are we offering that's different we can say we're offering knowledge but knowledge knowledge isn't it we have to we have to offer example we have to be acharyas lord chaitanya was quite quite clear about that one of the principle preaching instructions achar over prachar precept is easy anyone can read a sheet but there has to be an impact it has to hit the heart at some stage that's our challenge and it's a it's a very profound personal challenge it's not an institutional challenge the institution is only made up of people it's a very profound personal challenge so overall this is what you are saying if i understand right is that it's the key thing over here is that we learn to that the real connection the real transformation for both us and for others is when we start manifesting i mean our devotion leads to manifestation of virtues and integrity and that that way we develop authentic relationship with others so now if we go back to the one of the earlier points that you mentioned about we said that there were some some monks from the christian tradition from whom you could learn a lot and others you would not have felt similarly that you could learn much from them and the difference you said that is based primarily on recognizing how they are living what and that that is what makes a key difference so isn't there some level that that beliefs are i know the word belief is not so much there in our tradition broadly speaking but still the there is sadhya and there is sadhan so in some ways you are talking a lot about sadhan what are the means we are using that what are the things that we are practicing and which is of course important but sadhya itself is not unimportant sadhya or how we are living or sorry what is our conception of ultimate reality that also has its has its importance we can't just absolutely and and so and that's our faith and in our tradition every single person on the planet is a person of faith because we all have faith that when i get up this morning i'm going to be happy the possibility is there otherwise why would we get up the the scientist is getting up say i have faith today that my experiment will go well i have faith that by this process i'll do something good for the world everyone everyone is a person of faith we're all we're all projecting into something and we all have a relationship with some process that we take seriously so so in that wide contact that universal understanding that everyone's sadhya means where we put our heart and there's so many words in sanskrit for faith and they all have different meanings but ratas say a very basic one but where we put our heart we all put our heart somewhere we all put our faith into something so i'm going to associate with people who have faith in god and and i'll find them when i go to a christian monastery i'll find someone there and some others that their faith isn't very developed now the only reason why i can't learn from them is my ego because i i categorize them and put them into a box you know so as another form of of kind of just ego basically but but there's also people in the iskcon temple that i'm going to do the same with because the way their faith is developed is not enthusing me in any way and and their idea of faith and this is the idea of uh kanishta madhyam uttam in our tradition the stages of development of faith it's a very very interesting paradigm you can put it on any tradition uh it's not only it doesn't only work just for vaishnavas you put it on any tradition it's it's very interesting way of looking at things but we have people who have weak faith people who have strong faith and people who live in love it's just even beyond the idea of faith it's gone somewhere else so we have to to be effective preachers we have to get to the madhyam stage we have to go beyond the the kanishta stage the the just the stage where we don't know very much but we're willing to run around and hit people over the head with a book and say read read read read you know take take take and then they hit us over the head because that's their stage as well in their religion and they shout shout at a megaphone at us and and all that uh and that's all very good and that's that's helpful but to be really effective you have to be at this madhyam stage and i met such people of other religions that there were people of real faith in god very very strong faith in god there weren't people that i had to convert in any way there were people who were already converted they already understood god had a relationship with god talked about love of god had dedicated their lives to god and had practiced for longer than i had practiced so like this brother owen that i mentioned and others kenneth cracknell a messengist priest that i knew they helped me in wonderful ways to open up my vision and understand uh in a much more humble and honest way what my relationship with god could be and challenged me very very mildly but very firmly to go deeper into my own spirituality to define myself to myself so that i could understand my own spirituality so wherever i find wherever any of us find someone who can help us that's why why should we reject that these people are sent by krishna to help us and they're sent from all all kinds of places am i going to take initiation there no i've already taken initiation as done decision is made and and if they say something that uh challenges me then i go to prabhupada and i read and i meditate and i take as long as it takes for it to come out i go to the sangha of devotees and discuss it with them so that i get a perspective on it but i've never found a situation where i've had a challenge that hasn't been met by probable hasn't been met by the principles that i've adopted and i've never been shaken in the idea that the best concept of god i've come across is krishna without that there's just no other idea of god that is so loving so kind so merciful so universal so attractive i like krishna that's beautiful so in one sense you could say you are to some extent your experience is echoing what bhaktivinoda thakur talks about that how when he goes to a place of worship of some other religious tradition at one level he says that that we appreciate that the lord is so compassionate that he has manifested in this particular way to attract these people and seeing the compassionate nature of the lord my attraction to the lord in the form that i know the manifesting that i know is increasing yes so exactly exactly yes i was i was at the parthasarathi temple in chennai some years ago and as i arrived at the temple in the evening a procession was coming up and it was very jolly all these brahmins chanting in front chanting behind and there were there was a deity on a procession cart being held up and i had no idea who the deity was i couldn't recognize anything i couldn't recognize anything of any of the chanting and these were vaishnavas and i was vaishnavas but it could have been a completely different religion just i had no idea what was going on yet we're all vaishnavas and i just in that mood of being vaishnavas i followed the procession i smiled at the brahmins the brahmins smiled at me the people were making offerings i was smiling at them they were smiling at me we were all there to worship god together they could have been christians muslims i don't know i didn't know but i but it's just we were caught up in this idea that we're there to worship god i didn't know why they were there some people were there offering puja to ask for a bmw some people were asking for love of god i didn't know it was so many different religions on the street that day maybe all calling themselves shri vaishnavas but so many different religions now which one do i choose to associate with who do i get to talk to who do i and i'm interested to talk to the one who talks to me about love of god otherwise there's why why why stop and talk if i talk to one of those shri vaishnavas who's looking for a bmw or talk to a muslim gentleman who's looking for a bmw what's the difference that's the same religion that's quite striking so now just to go back to this point that sometimes so we need to recognize that certain people's faith or conceptions may not be in agreement with what with our understanding and if that is that is unhealthy for us we can keep a distance from it but that doesn't mean that we have to uh we have to demonize them or we have to reject them but then we also have of course yeah we shouldn't we shouldn't be unkind to anyone there's no there's we and and not only not being unkind to people but it's very detrimental to promote our faith by by trying to uh uh demonize as you say or trod on or you know rise ourselves up by trotting on the back of someone else that's a terrible thing to do that's very that's cruel that's himsa that's absolutely wrong then there's no need for it you know either your faith stands because of its brightness because of its beauty because of its truth or it doesn't you don't have to beat someone else up because because they're making the same claims you know we're right no we're right no we're right no krishna's right i'm not right you're not right we're just guys we're just guys on the street trying to help other people but i can't say i'm right or my tradition is right i don't know i just have this wonderful experience and krishna's right and and that's something that we can say with a heart and a half and the other thing we say is because our faith is weak but when our faith is weak then we have to insist that this institution is right this way of looking at the world is right this guru is right and it's it's all right and you have to accept the whole package otherwise your ears are going to fall off and your eyes are going to curl up and horrible horrible things will happen if you don't do exactly as i say we our faith is weak so we have to insist that other people think the same way but everyone thinks differently everyone feels differently that's that's the constitutional nature that's the idea of the individual so why do i accept this guru why do i accept prabhupada because of his integrity because of his spirituality it's it's there for everyone to see am i willing to share that with people absolutely you know he's he's my inspiration in everything that i've done he's the person i want to see with a smile on his face at the end of it all so do i do i have a guru absolutely who doesn't have a teacher how can you not have a teacher that's that's very arrogant to go through life and say that i didn't need a teacher ridiculous we're all dependent on we all read books and get inspiration from other people and you know is there an idea of god crystal clear for me krishna and vrindavan no no difficulty absolutely and i'll share that with anyone and everyone but but i won't insist that my way is the only way because my way is my way and then i'll insist that the other person consider consider your way take krishna into account when you have that consideration but consider making krishna your way so i'm not interested in someone joining the hari krishna movement and then we have a numbers game at the end of every year x number of members bloody blah it's really about someone gradually develops their relationship with krishna and they take the time it takes to develop that relationship in a mature way so that once they get involved with krishna it's forever that they don't have to bounce back and forward and however long it takes it takes that's that's between them and krishna they have to ultimately convert themselves they have to accept krishna into their heart like in any relationship you know i can say love jane your first question is who's jane what does she look like i mean can you love jane you have to you have to figure out can you love jane some people may not be attracted to krishna they may be attracted to lord ramchandra or jesus christ or something else or lord buddha and that's that's fine absolutely fine but they they have to develop their attraction to someone they have to have an ishtadeva that will help them in their life without doubt but murari gupta said to lord chaitanya he cried and he said to lord chaitanya i you're always talking to you about rada krishna but i love lord ramchandra and lord chaitanya said well that's okay don't worry and that wasn't the first instance that wasn't the only instance of that so we have to allow other people to have their ishtadev but we can still encourage them we can still encourage their heart and even if their ishtadev is lord shiva and durga and whatever it doesn't matter but if they in their life have a devotee who's a devotee of krishna and they have some affection for that devotee krishna takes that as affection for himself so there's there's no loss we have to understand the bigger picture we're not the uh we're not the answer to the world's ills we're just servants of krishna doing whatever that we can do but what we can do if we do it well is very substantial that's striking at one level this level of transcendental subjectivity where as you said is worship somebody's worshipping lord ram and we appreciate that but if somebody says that you know i adore the impersonal brahman and that's what i want to attain then there is a certain level of we could again differentiate between brahmavadis and mayavadis and but isn't there are the aren't there some conceptions that are that are clearly wrong and they need to be they need to be challenged and countered or even that will depend on the particular context and the nature of the relationship with that person and then yeah it does i i have many friends who are brahmavadis and mayavadis but i find that their brahmavadis on tuesdays and mayavadis on thursdays they don't know what they're they don't know what they think and their bhaktas on sundays okay you know they kind of they drift around from one to the other and if i pick on one and make an issue of it then their ego demands that they have to take it seriously whereas before they didn't take it seriously so if i just ignore it and let it slide now if someone comes out in public and makes a declaration that mayavad is the only way to understand and mayavad is the understanding of the vedas and all that kind of stuff but that's a public forum and in that public forum in that mood of public discourse which should be gentlemanly it should be done with respect then i i can stand up and say actually i think there are other ways that we can interpret the same text and i can challenge them and i should challenge them and i should challenge them robustly i don't have any problem with that irish people we like to be robust probably the only thing probably said about the irish is they're always fighting so so i can uh i'll fight anyone on that level but on that level not in a personal relationship i shouldn't take it into the family i shouldn't go to their family home and start to fight at the dinner table i should be respectful of them and this is their understanding but my relationship with them i i've sat down and had kirtan with many mayavadis and they sit down and they chant hari krishna and and jayashtri ram and whatever uh govinda jaya jaya they have no problem with that because it's all one so why not so so what's the loss i don't on a personal level a one-to-one level i don't have to challenge anyone this is their personal understanding their personal attraction fair enough they don't see it but a lot of them really do appreciate bhakti when they find it when they find someone who is able to share heart to heart so i try and put them in the way of such people of such kirtan of such bhajan and they get very very attached i send them i send them copies of different devotees singing and they say oh i particularly like this one i'm playing it in my car all the time so we have a we have a good relationship and it doesn't have to be about me smashing the demon and uh pulling out the mayavadi out of them and all that kind of stuff it's you know it's not relevant to my relationship with them if they stand up in public and challenge me i'm i'm there i'll meet the challenge on behalf of prabhupada and krishna if if no one else is going to do it i'll stand up no problem and do my little bit for the cause but um but we don't have to make an issue about it otherwise i don't think what most people go through life and they don't think about religion from one end of the week to the next it's not a big issue and we can make it an issue by forcing them into a corner and making an ego issue once you make it an ego issue you've magnified it out of proportion and it just becomes ridiculous yeah that's so striking what you said that that brahmapad is on wednesday and mayavad is on thursday that when people join a particular group it is rarely because of the philosophical beliefs philosophical propositions of the co it is it is not solely because of the philosophy it is because of many other reasons yeah by the culture it might be heritage it might be that their own lineage or whatever so many other reasons a sense of belonging and as you said you pick on them for that particular thing that's when it becomes big for them yeah that's very striking and if you avoid that then there are so many people we can work with and we have many shared causes that we can work on yes we have to give them the facility to convert themselves beautiful convert themselves yes yeah it's a nice way of putting it well i i that's i'm directly quoting prabhupada in a letter to jayavataka swami he he says that that people convert themselves that's that's how spiritual life works oh we don't we don't convert anyone we just introduce them to krishna and they develop their relationship with krishna and that's that's they make the choice to serve krishna to know krishna to love krishna they make all the choices all we do is make the introduction if we if we want to be the converter it means essentially we want to be krishna we're standing in the way look at me look at me i'll tell you i'll show you this is the way but but we just have to introduce them to krishna and introduce them to our understanding of krishna you know our appreciation of krishna our faith in krishna our trust in krishna our confidence in krishna and they'll they'll become enthusiastic about that oh if we and we do that by introducing them to the sangha of devotees to kirtan to prasadam to murtiseva to the holy place which is the temple which is our home maybe we've made it into a holy place so by by just by introducing them to these things they have the experience themselves they they'll have a wonderful experience they'll come to the community of devotees and they'll understand this these are lovely people and when they have that experience they convert themselves that's amazing so in one sense we are not denying the role of that in one sense we are if we are talking about we are a preaching mission and we have to we have to it is our mandate we could say to uh to share krishna consciousness with others but the way in which we do it can be can vary radically yes yes we're redefining preaching and conversion these concepts very radically that these these ideas have kind of uh protestant christian uh connotations when when we think of them we think of them in those ways and early devotees taught of them in those ways and practice them in those ways but we have to as we grow as a society we have to redefine these terms according to vaishnav principles gaudiya vaishnav understanding and when we do then it becomes wonderful that's why we need temples that's why we need the murti seva that's why we need the community of devotees that's why we need the kirtan and there's all kinds of facilities and management and finance that we need to create this facility for devotees so that's that's all there that's all part of the mission but the the spirit behind it is the most important thing it's quite profound and it is a radical redefinition of these terms very much on our own terms and in a sense you know you you often hear people saying hindus don't don't preach don't convert but hindus have always done that hindus have always shared knowledge that's been the basis of everything in hinduism sharing knowledge people coming and teaching gurus and mats and temples and having the spiritual experience we've always done that and people have always transformed there's so many stories of of palmyki becoming a being a hunter and then becoming a great devotee there's all these stories of transformation this is what the whole tradition has always been about but but it's it's how it happens is interesting everyone makes it they're they're confronted with the circumstance and then they make a decision and a choice it's very personal and very individual and it's very it's really tailored for their circumstance krishna arranges it like that it's very interesting when you ask any devotee how did you join it's always a a wonderful conversation to have it's it's and the two questions that are most meaningful for me spiritually with devotees is how did you join and why do you stay there okay that's not that common a question you know i don't know that's a very profound question and it's and that's what that's when you see the person's spirituality because we go through so many tests and and it's kind of like any institution like any community of people is complex it's one reason why i always thought impersonalism is so attractive because you don't have to deal with people you know people are just so difficult but when you realize that complexity and you meet people who are supposed to be pure and not pure and and all these complexities and why do you stay why do you stay in in such an institution with such a mission and that that i always find very enlightening and very heartening it's always very interesting but everyone's story is so individual it's it's tailor-made krishna just made the suit for them okay you know i really probably we could have in that i'm one of the editors of back to godhead so we have often articles on how i came to krishna consciousness i don't think what makes me stay in krishna conscious is a often discussed topic but it if we discuss it it really gets us because we all have had reasons to leave and right now also at each moment we can come up with so many reasons yeah for leaving oh yeah yeah and it's a very it's not a back to godhead question it's a very intimate conversation it needs to be very frank and honest you you need to have a real relationship with someone to be able to ask the question and for the person to be able to answer honestly because you have to admit to so many faults in the institution and faults in our practice and our understanding so it that's not it's not so easy to encourage people to do and it's like you know the propaganda element is join us khan chant and be happy but you know i mean we're really not very happy at all and they're still chanting that's true it's almost like you know we say there are these romantic movies we show all the struggles and then they happily ever after yeah so happily ever after is not really happily ever after so we we in our moment have a is we could have a devotional version of went through all these challenges struggles and then you came to is gone and then we lived happily ever after yeah so after that also it's not that we are not happier definitely we can say we have a greater meaning greater purpose in our life greater joy in our life but still there are challenges also no we still we still stub our toe our parents still die you know all the challenges that anyone has in life we have the only question is how do we respond you know what i was talking to devotee yesterday friend of mine and uh he lost his mother uh mother's in her was in her 90s you know so you'd expect her to die sometime of course but still this it struck this devotee very very hard because grief is grief whether you're devoted or not devoted now how do you deal with it that that's that's what uh that's what our challenge is always so so the why why do you stay thing in spite of the fact that the propaganda value is important it's important to get the message out there but but the practice is very individual and it's a practice of a lifetime maybe more than one lifetime for this it's it's we have to we're in for the long long term and we have to understand that things don't change overnight if we don't change overnight so we all look for the quick fix but that's not what spiritual life is about it can happen like that but it's not the usual thing so do we understand what spiritual life is are we willing to to give up our ego give up our material desires and i struggle with them every day everything we've talked about you know is wonderful conceptually but the practice is you know you have to do it every day you know if i want to be a good athlete i have to do it every day for hours and hours and hours we have to make that commitment and that that's what our Krishna consciousness is and and we need there need to be resources we need to develop resources inside us to help us go on with that that's our spiritual life and there's no doubt in my mind i mean i've i've transformed as a person since i i joined i i've become a person i never thought i could become and i'm so far away from being anything perfect or sadhu like or anything like that but i'm just so much more than i was i'm inside there's this inner satisfaction that i'm definitely on the right path for me like i can't convince everybody else to be on my path because it's for me in my relationship with Krishna i'm so happy i have one i'm so happy because it's transformed me so much and i pray that i can you know give something back to Krishna and and show my gratitude in in some way however that that can manifest by the grace of the devotees by the grace of all all my well-wishers including my my departed parents and all these people who gave me so much they gave me blessings that got me here i'm so grateful to all of them and Srila Prabhupada obviously for the sacrifices he's made for my guru for the sangha of devotees everyone who's and just developing that sense of gratitude has changed me as a person now i spent most of my life being ungrateful unthoughtful not even realizing who i should be grateful to or why i should be grateful and it makes such a difference to understand how many people have given me blessings to get where i am i really am a very much a work in progress we all are and if we're honest with ourselves then we can we can so much sorry to interrupt you that that the fact that we are works in progress that is something which i don't think any devotee will deny but at the same time acknowledging that i'm a work in progress and i'm having flaws and translating it into action in terms of being say respectful and tolerant towards others especially those from other traditions or those with differing beliefs systems or practices that is something which doesn't happen the way you're because you've spoken in this context when we talk about trinadapi suny chena that's a foundational teaching of lord chaitanya but often when we are interacting with people of other faiths or people with conceptions that we consider wrong that humility hardly ever comes out it what comes out as more as a self-righteousness or presumptuousness that may be intentional that may not be intentional but but in one sense extending the ambit of our humility to not just so so we can also say that because i am flawed it's it could be that my conception of the ultimate reality may not also be perfect and the way i am presenting that ultimate reality to the other person may also not be perfect and that's why i needn't approach with such a certain such a sense of what is a certainty of my own rightness yes so that's as i it's somehow that is not thought about so much humility in that direction and one of the things that it struck me after i perform i'll maybe we'll just wind up with this and what you spoke today accorded so many things which i have experienced the initial in the first few years of my spiritual life i thought reaching men giving classes and answering questions which is which is important but over a period of time i started realizing that i learn a lot about what to speak and how to speak by hearing from my audiences that okay you know this is what they're understanding this is where they're coming from i i needed to do it especially when i started traveling outside india um but before that also uh i was i had got a sense of this but once i started traveling outside india i realized that even devotees are so so almost incredibly or inconceivably diverse in where they are coming from how they think they're all they are krishna conscious and they are following the two cardinal thing which you said about krishna and prabhupada but still they are incredibly diverse and if i am to actually interact with them properly i have to broaden my conceptions of krishna consciousness and that comes by by having that attitude of hearing and hearing and learning even from those to whom which may be whom we are we may have the service of teaching them but even then from them also we have to hear and learn yeah so that's amazing yeah so generally at the end of the podcast i try to summarize what we had discussed so if you have a few minutes i can do that or if you would like to add some concluding words right now you could add that and then i can summarize how would you like to go concluding words like hi krishna okay let me let me summarize that maybe you'll be able to get so so today we i think the broad topic we discussed on was you know the centrality of of developing relationships and sharing krishna consciousness not only sharing but also relation krishna consciousness we started with the point of insider and outsider but you mentioned that how you could say that that is a very artificial differentiation because even within is gone different centers different gurus different devotees have very different significantly different ways of practicing krishna consciousness so the ultimate insider would be the individual itself and so so if we are to connect with others that is just because we live in the world so we are interacting with people from different different backgrounds different persuasions different devotees also so we have to understand others perspective so in that sense we could say everybody even our devotees and outsider for us because we have our individual experience of krishna and other devotees have their individual experience of krishna the different devotees in different temples may have relationship with their particular deities so from that perspective you discussed you also talked about your father-in-law how he was atheist but now you appreciate him as a person and there was no without preaching just by interaction with devotees he started appreciating devotees and so the idea is that when we are when we are connecting with people our purpose is not so much to convert anyone everybody every tradition will claim that we know the truth and we have the truth but the point is it is how we live the truth that is going to transfer attract and truly transform others and that is actually going to transform us also so authenticity in one sense is the ultimate purity that some if we are at our level and we speak according to what has worked for us and we share that and that is that is what will attract others and with respect to other religious traditions how depending on what a person is practicing we can learn from others so the the what the person is practicing defines them far more than what somebody is believing now this doesn't mean that you explain how from the bhagavad-gita's perspective you know krishna gives multiple levels of reasons for following for say for arjuna to engage in war but there is a higher there is a hierarchy of reasons and the higher the reason the better say but the point overall is that krishna is not saying this is the way and others are going to go to hell don't follow the way so krishna's approach is very inclusive now this doesn't mean that we become sentimental and say all paths are right but it is rather we try to look at the right in whatever path a person is following instead of simply rejecting their path is wrong because their their beliefs or their intellectual conceptions are opposite from ours are different from ours we see what is good in theirs and we connect with them at that level and he said you know even for people from other other conceptions like a person who may who might be dismissed as a mayavadi may actually not be a mayavadi it's only when we approach at the level of the ego and try to think that we are going to correct their their conception then they make their philosophy then their philosophical conceptions become a bigger matter then they would actually are so by focusing on the commonality commonalities we can we can actually help them to come toward krishna and it's not that we convert anyone but rather we provide others the facilities to convert themselves and what is you know if we see authentic practice committed authentic practice in other traditions then what is unique about our tradition that is the krishna conception of god and the personal relationship which we can have attractive conception of divinity and that is our distinctive contribution and if somebody is in a public forum speaking an contrary conception contradictory conception then we can we can challenge we can challenge them but that can be done in a that can be done in a dignified way not in a not in attacking the person but in objectively presenting the philosophy or present making our points and toward the end you mentioned about how when we are sharing bhakti so preaching itself needs to be redefined it is to the extent i am insecure in my beliefs to that extent i will have to impose i am right and you are wrong and to the extent i can prove that i can get you to agree with me that bolsters my beliefs but if i have authentic relationship with krishna then i have experience of krishna and that is the basis of my belief or my my shraddha we could say and then i can approach you based on what you need and then i can we can find out how best that person can be assisted in their journey so you our humility and acknowledging the false is not just something in prayers to the but it's also in our conduct with all living beings by which we can we can see how we can be of service to them so the doctor was kanishta madhyama uttama and uttama means we madhyama means we do make distinctions but the distinctions are more from how we can serve how we can connect they are not from a position of of placing ourselves in a attitude so that way when we reconceptualize actually our preaching then we can truly benefit the world so anything you'd like to add prabhu no very nice great thank you thank you very much for this uh it's been an amazing podcast and i look forward to having a future discussions again with you sometime soon thank you thank you very much.