Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan A dharmic perspective. The Monk’s Podcast 152 with Hridayananda M part 2

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Thank you so much for our discussion on the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan so in our first part we broadly discussed the law and order dimensions where terrorist or disruptive activities need to be corrected and then also the administrative dimensions where you said that democracy or even the idea of a nation state that is not the only legitimate unit of authority, political authority so what the main point we came to at that point which we can discuss today is that you said systems won’t assure good governance, it is people who run the systems that are good citizens will lead to good governance I want to make clear that by saying there are other legitimate forms of government I don’t mean to justify the Taliban Oh, okay I didn’t mention that point as a way of saying that the Taliban are good people and I really like what they’re doing that was not my point I was just saying that it’s not enough just to say it’s not a democracy as if you don’t need to say anything else Yes, Maharaj, I think you gave examples also in the power of the Greek city-states and others where there was administration which is going on quite smoothly when Yudhishthira’s administration we discussed so there was monarchy which is also quite virtuous so from the perspective of creating good citizens you mentioned that we need a certain level of God consciousness or at least a certain level of sattva and even the American Constitution it implied acceptance of God and virtuous citizenship even if there was explicit distancing between state and religion but that was not meant to endorse or advocate atheism so the challenge that comes up is that aren’t values that are to be fostered a matter of individual choice how does a state Well, yes and no for example if someone has the value that I think it’s okay for me to kill other people or I think I can rape other people I mean everyone is not free just to pursue their own values there are obviously limits I mean we have to be a little sober here we pursue values within systems and there’s no functional government of any kind on earth where everybody can just do whatever they want Yes, that is true and this brings us to the difference between say what is legal and what is moral and nowadays there is a lot of criticism of moral policing where keep your religion Yeah, but that’s also another that’s just another kind of moral policing Oh God, that’s brilliant That’s just because you just have different values your values are that people should have lots of freedom that’s the value and you are policing anyone that doesn’t follow your values so let’s not be hypocrites here The problem is that people this is not a philosophical age people it’s hard to have a rational discussion nowadays because of the age we live in so that’s just another kind of moral policing I mean no one is as much a moral police person as the political correctness people if you say one wrong word, you’re racist, you’re sexist you’re this, you’re that, you have to be cancelled so I think if anyone is trying to be the moral police of society, it’s the the people who are trying to enforce political correctness Yeah, that is true.
It’s sometimes something which somebody has 10 years ago, 15 years ago in their youth those tweets are dug up and they are held to almost crucify the person now so yes, that’s so true so in one sense every state or every system of authority will involve some policing and by calling something as moral policing Generally, the position on the left has always been that you should not impose your values unless I agree with them. Just like for example back in the late 60s young people wanted to just have free sex, they were saying the government has no right to regulate what we do with other people and yet the same people who were saying you can’t impose morality you can’t legislate morality that was one of the slogans, you cannot legislate morality and the very same people were saying that we’re demanding civil rights legislation marching to Washington so basically the position on the left has always been that you should not legislate morality that I don’t agree with but you must legislate morality that I do agree with oh, that’s striking and in the last session you also mentioned that even civil rights movement is based on a metaphysical claim that the equality of all living beings that is a moral claim ultimately not even ultimately it’s a moral claim from the very beginning you don’t have to go all the way to the ultimate sense of it it’s a moral claim from the first moment you say it I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying that’s what it is it’s an attempt civil rights movement or nowadays whatever racial equality is absolutely a movement to impose moral values on other people and so therefore, I mean the very idea of society is the imposition of a moral value because people could say we shouldn’t have society everyone should just do whatever they want people can live in houses or caves or they can do whatever they want so as soon as you say society, you’re already imposing moral values this whole thing about not imposing morality or moral values it’s one of the more mindless slogans of our time that’s interesting can we say that there is some kind of differentiation between say social values and personal values because I think you can distinguish only if and to the extent that your individual decisions do not affect society again, the slogan the battle cry of the American revolution was no taxation without representation if certain kinds of behaviour tax society then society has a rational legitimate interest in regulating behaviour that taxes it so and then obviously for the way a person conducts themselves sexually that is going to affect society that actually is centred around for one thing, it’s a psychological fact that the lustier someone is, the more vain they will be the more selfish because the sex impulse is a very powerful impulse and if advertisers are constantly trying to arouse people’s erotic nature that means you’re going to have a society where everyone is identifying with their body and identifying with your body is the opposite of seeing everyone as equal because to see everyone as equal, you have to go beyond the body and also if you have all this sexuality, all this eroticism then people will tend to be proud and selfish and proud selfish people cannot sustain a moral society and so it’s a very striking point, I never thought of it this way that the more we identify people with their bodies we cannot see them equally in fact, sexual selection is probably the greatest form of you could say partiality or discrimination that is widely prevalent in today’s world they are not just going to say okay, there is this steaming humanity just pick up any sexual partner they will want to look at somebody who has certain attractive features the more you, well men will kind of take whatever they can get at least for one night it’s well, you know, real facts I mean many men, not all of course if you want a moral society if you want people to make decisions not selfishly but thinking of the good of others and if you want the citizens to be honest and respectful then you can’t promote eroticism that’s the last thing that’s going to get you a society of peaceful, selfless citizens you need to promote virtue and values and so therefore society you know, it doesn’t take much study of history to see that generally moral systems tend to come from metaphysical systems because the moral system is metaphysical and so if you say, you know, what’s the basis what’s the justification for a metaphysical system, it has to be rooted in some kind of metaphysical truth like the existence of a God and so therefore if society is very materialistic and just there’s no regulation that allows people just for profit just for profit, just for selfish profit to try to radically eroticise and sexualise human society you’re just going to get a bunch of animals and animals cannot sustain democracy they cannot sustain anything, they’re just animals and so therefore allowing people publicly in advertising in Hollywood, I mean Hollywood they don’t care who lives or dies, they just want to make money and so therefore if you allow that then you can’t expect a moral society you can’t expect people to behave properly you can’t even expect to survive really it’s actually, I mean this moral, complete moral collapse is an existential threat to society actually so Maharaj, this brings us to this the danger of the other extreme yes, we don’t want society to get eroticised but if we consider the Taliban they say that women should completely cover themselves and but that’s going too far who is going to decide what is too far in my life, I am in my life, I mean I’m going to form my own judgments I’m hopefully a reasonably intelligent human being and therefore I’m going to study the matter and come to my own decision after all the one way to you can just castrate everyone allow everyone to reproduce maybe two or three times and then castrate everyone, all the men I mean there’s all kinds of things you can do but if you are and I don’t think you’re really establishing morality you don’t really have a moral society unless people to some extent are acting voluntarily it’s very famous that all these rich people in the Middle East, they all go down to Mumbai to get prostitutes there’s a huge prostitution industry so there’s a lot of hypocrisy going on so by repressing women and treating them like it’s horrible that’s just my reaction, when I was in France that has a significant Muslim population I saw the women all covered like that, I found it offensive I didn’t find the women offensive but something about it just struck me as very unnatural, very abusive and oppressive and just not letting half of society just have a reasonably normal life so therefore plus I mean brutalising society, killing everyone that disagrees with you, basically keeping half the society in a permanent state of imprisonment, which is kind of the situation of the women yeah, to me that’s not a legitimate way to establish morality this is a very important point morality has to be voluntarily chosen to a large extent so then at least by everyone that’s not a shudra even shudras can choose so yeah, I mean a society, a good society is one in which people embrace goodness not one in which people are kept in a state of imprisonment yes so if we look at it from a broad Vedic perspective last time you mentioned how Yudhishthira was not imposing say Krishna Bhakti on everyone and you translated dharma as justice so yeah, dharma means duty, it means justice it means law, for example the ancient law books of India are called dharma shastra so assuming the law is fair then justice and law are in some ways synonymous the point I was making is that where does the ambit of we could say bhakti end and the ambit of dharma begin that means we don’t impose, if I believe in God I’m not going to impose my belief in God on others, we discussed that, that’s one aspect which the government shouldn’t be doing but people have to behave properly they can’t steal, they can’t murder they can’t rape, people have to behave honestly and honourably so are there in the dharma shastras or anywhere guidelines of what all constitutes say responsible social behaviour as separated from the devotional behaviour the Manusmriti is considered to be a very corrupted text over time because precisely because it’s a law book, everyone that wanted a law hired a pundit to write a Sanskrit verse so I mean there are some pretty horrible things there were some people who were fighting against giving women opportunity to be gurus and they were saying something about the Manusmriti so I sent a long list of quotes of pretty horrible things like if a woman, I don’t know, maybe it’s adultery or something she should be thrown to wild dogs to be eaten alive or something so this stuff got a little out of control and I think it’s we have no assurance we have no certainty that we have the original Manusmriti and it tends to be a very severe document, it’s not a philosophical document it’s not especially philosophical and I think the Bhagavatam gives us just more interesting information okay, so now Prabhupada talked about the four regulative principles and he talked about them in terms of the four values yeah, but also just to get back to one other point if you talk about say the Manu Shastra, the Manusmriti it’s giving laws for a very simple society which is good, I mean simple is good it’s a very simple agrarian society but nowadays you can’t look in the Manusmriti and find for example laws of when to regulate insurance contracts or about let’s say should there be censorship of online communication I mean there’s all kinds of modern issues that simply are not dealt with so because society is so much more complex now I think that is last time you also mentioned that the extent of technology determines the level of control or level of the ambit of the governance the signature of governance that is going to be there well life is just much much more complicated nowadays and I don’t mean to say better for example let’s say you’re permanently inclined but a person wants to have a family so the person has to maintain the family why? for children and yet if you want to be a Brahmin in the modern world you have to get a job, but if you get a job you’re a Suja but you want to teach so you’re a Brahmin so it’s a mess the Varna system assumes an agrarian economy and the relatively simple social structures that come with an agrarian economy oh ok so then if that has to be adapted in today’s world that will also require a lot of like you said individual responsible decision making we can’t just draw from those codes it’s not those kinds of laws are not always absolute for example I’ve given frequently when Krishna and Arjuna arrested Ashwatthama and there was debate between Bhima and Draupadi over the severity of the punishment and you have two pure devotees who disagree and so there aren’t absolute Shastra principles for every law like what should the speed limit be on public roads or rates of taxation what are taxation rates? if you make over a certain amount of money per year then you have to pay so much taxes or if you make under a certain amount you’re given an exemption from so I mean to actually govern a society there are thousands and thousands of things that are not covered in ancient once we get into the nitty-gritties of governance it’s very complicated what I was trying to ask over here is this where do we get the guidelines where do we get broad parameters or guidelines for deciding when the attempt to say legislate morality or infuse God consciousness is going towards the extremist area like say what the Taliban is doing we don’t want so one extreme is complete materialism another is religious fanaticism now how on what basis will we determine that okay this is veering toward fanaticism yeah yeah I understand yeah you the leader as a society would have to have very clear ideas of what they’re trying to achieve and then given the nature of the society that they’re trying to govern how can they achieve it for example in the West and this something which has been true for thousands of years people are less submissive people in Asia have tended to be over time more submissive to authorities whether it’s their parents or the government whereas in the West they’re less submissive and so people in the East have tended to think the Westerners are kind of barbarians rebellious and the Westerner people have tended to think that the Asians are sort of too blind obsequious okay yeah just kind of like bow down to their leaders and don’t think for themselves so so there are cultural differences and you know let’s say if ISKCON actually or say devotees somehow got the support of a society a country and devotees were elected to office first of all you’d have to consider what the local culture is you can’t legislate rules or systems that are simply impossible that people won’t follow and so you have to take consideration of the local culture and what’s possible and what sequence what order to do things in how do you want to achieve certain goals when I was younger I thought yeah I could manage things but now I’m thinking I don’t think so so it’s very complicated there would have to be there probably would be a period of at least decades where there was very vigorous debate and discussion both among devotees and among devotees and non-devotee experts and just trying to understand what are the goals we have what are what values should society promote and how do we get there so it’s complicated okay so yeah in one sense we within our movement also struggle to manage our own small population we have to manage the world’s population is going to be huge challenge so that’s a very point that’s a very good point anyway no comment so just going back to the Taliban issue so can we say that that they are going towards extreme so where does that extremism in trying to impose one’s religion come from is it coming from passion or where yeah okay so rather than say us so in one sense what has happened is that there have been examples of religious extremism which as I said even America the separation of state and religion was because of the violence among Protestants and Catholics that was there in Europe so sometimes religion is equated it with its most extremist versions and then if we start imposing religion this is what we are going to get in society so how do we differentiate between what is say an extremist version of a religion and what is a more mainstream or a version that promotes that is based in Sattva Guna and promotes Sattva Guna and God consciousness how can that differentiation be achieved say for example some people consider the Taliban are Muslims so some people may consider the whole of Islam as an extremist religion or many times in I have seen American media Hindus and Muslims are largely morally equated that Muslims commit violence against Hindus and Hindus commit violence against Muslims so for example the Kashmir issue came up now when India removed article 370 so basically the thing is that how do we differentiate when a particular religious group is acting extremistically is it because of the ideology of their religion or is it because the psychology of the particular individuals propagating that religion in that area oh it may be both it may be both I mean there have been many Muslims who were peaceful good people many but the dominant strain that seems to of course I mean there are also secularist secularist movements for example in Egypt when they had elected that President Morsi I think his name was and then the military came in and they removed them because they wanted a more secular government they didn’t want Islamic extremism, fanaticism, violence so so if you look at the Muslim world there is of course variety Indonesia is different Bosnia is different there is a lot of Muslims so it’s but in general in general anyway I’ll leave it at that you have to just look at different places and see what’s going on so then the question is that how do we if we are going to promote religious values or we could say theistic values or God consciousness then how do we ensure that what is being promoted actually promotes sattva guna and is not used by rajo guna or tamo guna because that’s what is is we could say in people’s memory even in India the historical memories of partition and religious extremism that was there and it led to severe violence so how do we promote sattva guna without going in towards religious fanaticism realistically if Krishna blesses this world with powerful Krishna conscious leaders then things will go well it’s for example I am a member of ISKCON so you know clock is ticking time is passing I will have we all will have to leave this world that’s the universal human condition so even now when I’m alive or when I’m gone I have absolutely no influence because I’m gone you know will people in ISKCON will people in other religions or in other movements will there be good leaders God conscious leaders who do the right thing what I have no power we can talk about what the world needs but then whether or not that actually appears in this world is something far beyond our control so I since that’s true it’s quite a sobering truth actually so in one sense you mentioned this point earlier about that there has to be cultural nuances and cultural adaptations so is extremism that is there say the Taliban is depicting that is it because of a particular not just psychological orientation of its leaders but also certain ideological conceptions that because they in one sense they’re trying to turn the clock back to how people lived in the 7th century when Islam was founded so to what extent does practising we could say dharma involve turning the clock back or is it more like turning on an inner compass I would say economically good luck if you want to change it if Aristotle mentioned that human society went through periodic collapses and then grows again and so it’s God only knows I think all we can do is just try our best all we can do is try our best to spread this sublime Krishna consciousness try to persuade people all the many many powerful benefits of practising bhakti yoga under Prabhupada’s guidance and the world is there was a song that was popular when I was a young boy the song goes, He’s got the whole world in His hands He’s got the whole world in His hands, He’s got the whole wide world, in His hands He’s got the whole world, in His hands, He’s got the whole world in His hands. That’s about it you know we try our best we can try to teach, we can try to promote more effective leadership within ISKCON.
We can try to appeal to the world to support Christian consciousness. But when I was young, I had more confidence that something could be done. But now I’ve come to a point where I just see more than ever in my life that everything really depends on God and Krishna, and we just try our best.
Work hard, try our best, but… Oh, okay. At that prayer, the Christians say, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So that’s all we can do is just try our best to help this poor planet.
That’s quite sobering. So in one sense, has the power of, as the world has become more complicated and more interconnected, has the power of individual human agency diminished substantially, or it is just the same as it has always been? I think it’s going in both directions. I mean, someone can become a YouTube star, not only as a musician, but like in the case of Professor Peterson, you can reach millions and millions of people.
It used to be that you had to have support from some major television network or news outlet or something, but there’s been a democratisation of communication. Oh, okay. Some things are better, some things are worse.
Oh, that’s not nice. So then, so broadly speaking, is taking that concept of turning back the clock, is that an integral part of, say, the broad Vedic tradition or Vaishnava tradition in particular? Because in general, every religious tradition does have a very reverential attitude toward the past. Yeah, but not turning back the clock in the literal sense.
Let’s recreate the world exactly as it was 500 years ago or 5,000 years ago. That’s obviously… So the question is, how do we take the essential principles, the most valuable principles, and how do we translate them so that they are intelligible in the modern world? Oh, okay. So then- As far as turning back the clock, I mean, there’s no such thing as turning back the clock.
I mean, obviously you can’t do that. I mean, even the phrase, turn back the clock, is already anachronistic because in 5,000 years ago, I don’t think they had clocks. So even to say, turn back the clock, you’re already being unrealistic because they didn’t use clocks back then.
Maybe they had hourglasses. I don’t know. We know in Vedic culture, they were extremely attuned to the movements of celestial bodies, sun and moon.
So they, like for example, there are statements in some of the supplementary Vedic literature that says that when does a Brahmin perform the Agnihotra? And then it’ll say, just when the sun gets over the trees. Now, in some, obviously, parts of India, they had taller trees in other parts. Or we know that in peninsular India, South India, going more toward the equator, the length of the days are, the closer you get to the equator, the more the length of days and nights are the same all throughout the year.
And the farther you get away from it, the more they’re different. So although something weird happens when you get near the, not at the North Pole, but you start to get, even like in Sweden, where in the summer, the sun just kind of, it rises, but only goes just over the horizon. Then it just, it goes around like that.
So it’s, so therefore, an injunction like that, perform Agnihotra when the sun gets over the trees, it’s gonna be different, can be even different villages in India in the same place. You could have neighbouring villages. One has a lot of tall trees and the other one doesn’t.
So, yeah, turning back the clock, it’s, I mean, that’s absurd. Are you gonna go around the world, sort of like as the naturalizer, the terminator, you’d be the naturalizer, where you go and turn off everybody’s computers and. Okay.
That is true. In one sense, even though some of, like I, before the ISI was there, they were quite active on social media. So they were talking about turning back the clock, but they were using social media of today’s world to recruit people, to make propaganda.
So yes. Who was doing that? Who was doing that? The Islamic State. Oh.
Islamic State was quite active on social media. They were recruiting people from Europe and even India and other places. So that makes sense.
So Maharaj. Yeah, and also they were, anyway, there were all kinds of contradictions. So go ahead.
Yeah. So if you consider right now, the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. So the main concerns that we, say, as devotees, it’s quite close to India and India has already bore a lot of brunt of terrorism.
So the concerns, we could say, is one perspective is law and order. And that has to be, like you discussed, immediately that has to be countered by whatever is the appropriate measure. So like what America did after 9-11.
But from the perspective of religion, that has in the broad Vedic culture, even the Vaishnav culture, has bore the brunt of Islamic intolerance in many ways. Many of our devoted temples, our Goswami temples and other temples were also desecrated. So in general- Well, I think by far, by far the people who have suffered most from the Muslim, the Islamic terrorism, of course, Muslims.
They are by far the largest percentage of victims. That’s interesting. That means one version of Islam terrorises another version of Islam? Is that what you’re saying? Oh, absolutely.
So they’ve been doing that since they started. I mean, as soon as Muhammad, the prophet, as soon as he passed on, there were civil wars, there were fighting, assassinations between Shiite and Sunni. I mean, basically as soon as Muhammad was gone, fighting began between Sunnis and Shiites.
And they’re still fighting. Oh yeah, by far, by far, the greatest percentage of victims are Muslims themselves. So now we could say that at one level, Muslims have been victimised by Islamic extremism.
So then can we just put it, the source of it only to the psychology of people? If we say it’s only because of modes and it has got nothing to do with the ideology of the particular religious system, then- Well, when you have a religion that began in warfare, grew in warfare, and of course was always kind of very enthusiastic at least many people about Jihad. We know about all the atrocities in India. So there is something wrong there.
I mean, there’s something wrong with that picture. Okay. So last time you mentioned one point that the idea of a holy war, because Jihad is also, I suppose, considered to be like what holy war is talked about in Catholicism or Christianity.
And that is very different from Dharma Yuddha. You went to the point of saying holy war is almost a demoniac. So could you differentiate further between that holy war and- Dharma Yuddha just means you fight when it’s unavoidable to preserve justice and the freedom of the people.
Or if you’re attacked, you have to defend yourself. So that’s Dharma Yuddha. Holy war, the idea that you go and you slaughter people and torture people and disrupt other societies to force them to join your religion.
That’s pretty bad, isn’t it? I mean, that’s awful. So, for example, say last time you also mentioned this point that it was not that the Kurukshetra war could have been avoided just because Duryodhana had suddenly become a Vaishnava. So that is more in terms of, he could nominally change his religious affiliation, but he had to, when Krishna went as a peace messenger and offered him peace.
So that was more of he correcting the injustice of having seized the kingdom. Yes, if you look at Krishna’s activities as an ambassador going to Hastinapur and arguing with the Kurus that they should do the right thing, avoid the war. Krishna never argued that unless you all surrender to me, we will attack you.
Okay, that’s very true. If you look at the arguments that Krishna gave to the Kurus, it had nothing to do with everyone in their country converting to Vaishnavism. It had nothing to do with that.
In fact, we know that when Krishna was travelling through mostly what is now India, especially going from Hastinapura or Indraprastha back to Dwaraka and so on, that there were very large numbers of people who loved Krishna, who saw Krishna as this extraordinary divine figure. And so, and some of those people like Bhisma, we have the case of Bhisma who fought for the wrong side. And, but he’s considered a Mahabharata devotee of Krishna.
So, yes, the war was not, I mean, the very fact that Vaishnavas on both sides shows that it was not a religious war. That’s true. So now, if, so the Dharma Yuddha is more for justice than as you said, justice, freedom, basic human survival and basic human rights, you could say.
Yes, because Vedic culture respects the right of people to choose their own religious path. It does not respect their right to abuse their neighbours. And so therefore, when people, Dharma Yuddha is necessary when people, certain rulers are denying justice to the people or just doing really crazy things.
Like Jarasandha who wanted to make a living sacrifice by two Kali butchering all these Yadu princes. So that’s not about religion. It’s about not being a demonic barbarian.
It’s not about, so yeah. I don’t know, I can’t remember a single case in our literature where someone goes to war to change the religious orientation of another country. That’s fascinating.
Yeah. Actually, yeah. If even in Lord Chaitanya’s times, we have Pratap Rudra was fighting with, Pratap Rudra was attacked by Krishnadevaraya and both of them were Vaishnavas.
So in one sense, it was not so much. So even, and that is, of course, much more recent times. So before this, you made the statement that the right to choose one’s own faith, but not the right to disrespect your neighbours.
So in one sense, these are the two commandments of Christianity, love God and love thy neighbour. So in one sense, love God and love thy neighbour. Actually, those two injunctions came from the Old Testament.
They were originally Jewish commandments and Jesus quoted them. Yeah, yeah, of course, yes, Maharaj. So Jesus, but then in one sense, you could say, so what we are saying is love God is more of a, love your neighbour is something which is required to be legislated by society, but loving God is something which is more of a matter of individual choice.
No, no, no, no. Society can’t order you to love your neighbour because your neighbour may be really obnoxious and unloveable. I mean, you can always love your neighbour as a spirit soul, but as a human being, your neighbour may be just really unloveable.
What Vedic society does command you to do is that you cannot commit violence against your neighbour. You cannot steal your neighbour’s property. You cannot abuse.
The members of the neighbour’s family. So those are all moral principles. Those are all moral principles.
So it’s interesting, I mean, amazingly, there kind of was, we don’t think of it that way, a type of, even you could say modern, separation of church and state in ancient India. So that when the king, let’s say a Vaishnava king performed great sacrifices, those sacrifices, of course, you mentioned Vishnu, Yajnavai, Vishnu, and so on, but they’re not, the sacrifices are not explicitly to convert everyone to Vaishnavism. And so there was freedom of speech, for example, when everyone believed that the Pandavas had died in the house of Lakh and that it was a, and that the Kurus had murdered them.
Duryodhana had arranged it with the permission of his father, so everyone kind of knew that. And so people were very upset. They went right into the centre of the city and began criticising the king.
And there’s no hint in the Shastra that the king could punish them for that. They weren’t breaking any law. So there was freedom of religion, there was freedom of speech, and the king definitely supported Dharma in general, but not in this later sense, which of sort of forcing everyone in the kingdom to adopt a particular religion.
And if you don’t do this, we’ll punish you. So that’s interesting point you mentioned there, that the king was not imposing that with religious values. So now we talk about the four regulatory principles, sometimes as foundational to human behaviour, but sometimes they don’t include some things which are like vital for social function, like you talk about robbing or- Example? No, for example, robbing or raping or abusing people.
No, but the four regular principles are not a complete programme for civilised life. They’re for people that want to practise Bhakti Yoga within its scope. But it’s understood, like for example, in the Ashtanga Yoga, if you look at the Yama Niyama, the preliminary rules, it does say not stealing.
Okay. So yes, I mean, it was under, it’s just like Lord Chaitanya, a thief joined Lord Chaitanya’s mission, but he was struggling to give his thieving, but he was told that if you wanna be a devotee, you can’t steal, so absolutely. The four regular principles are meant for civilised people that also want to seriously practise Bhakti Yoga.
So we cannot say the four regular principles, as you said, they’re not exhaustive programme for social administration or ensuring justice in society. No, not at all. The four principles are just, probably assume that the people adopting them in other ways would be civilised human beings.
Okay. Yes, so then, if, so earlier you said that there will have to be a lot of discussion and analysis before, between devotees, as well as between devotees and others before we can actually administer society or whatever part of society we have influence over. So now we could say broadly, there are two ways in which society could be transformed or we could say a more spiritual or goodness, a mode of goodness could be cultivated.
One is top-down, where, as you said, Krishna blesses the world with good leaders, or the other could be bottom-up, where more and more people- Or you could just, it’s all good. I mean, just whatever works. Societies are different.
It doesn’t have to be bottom-up, doesn’t have to be top-up. Usually most societies are a combination. So just whatever is practical.
Oh, so, okay. That means in which particular situation, whatever level of influence as a devotee community has, we can use that to bring about change. Yeah, we all do the best we can.
Yes, Mahan. There’s not one little set formula. People, we’re in different situations.
We know different people. We have different opportunities. So everyone just do the best you can in your situation.
Yes, Mahan. Maybe just one or two last questions about this. So if we consider our, in today’s world, like there is a real threat of religious extremism for India, where I’m in, even for America in future, there are a lot of America haters.
So what would be a conception of a strong ruler in today’s world? A strong ruler, some different people, depending on their political affiliation, consider, say in America, some people consider Trump to be a strong leader. Some people in India consider Modi to be a strong leader. Now we don’t want to go into the idiosyncrasies of specific people, but how would we define a strong leader in today’s world realistically? We can’t expect that leaders are going to be like strong devotees or strongly religiously minded people.
Well, one thing is that since you mentioned the T word, a strong leader, I mean, I don’t see the person you mentioned as a strong leader. I see him as a very loud and loud leader, but destroying regional alliances, I mean, making America great again. Okay.
It’s the president who, because of his narcissism and foolishness, starts to undermine and destroy absolutely vital international alliances. I think as someone who’s not making the country strong, I think he’s weakening the country, putting the country in grave danger. So you could say that one of the points in today’s world is that so much money is being spent on defence, which could be used for so many other purposes, but in one sense, there are real threats also.
So a strong defence, I think that is also required, isn’t it, at least for deterrence, if not for aggression? Yeah, of course. Okay. And I think in the last time session, you mentioned that Yudhishthir, he was an emperor in the sense that the various kingdoms contributed to a large central army or something like that? Or a central fund, and they pay tribute.
And if someone was being threatened unconstitutionally against Dharma, then Yudhishthir, or whoever was the king, the main king, king of kings, would step in and just protect the secondary rulers by enforcing Dharma. I mean, it’s this thing of marching around, attacking, and trying to conquer someone else. I don’t know, it just seems so childish to me.
And they did so. Okay. Yeah.
And yeah. So we have two more minutes. Yes, so maybe I’ll just quickly try to summarise, and then if you want to add a few last words.
So broadly, we discussed today the challenge of how to bring about sattvic and theistic values without going toward theocracy. And then you mentioned, I mentioned that there’s a fear of moral policing, but those who call something as moral policing are themselves also doing moral policing. In fact, the left are quite aggressive in terms of imposing political correctness.
So we cannot really separate that society has to maintain morality, otherwise it cannot have society itself. So when we talk about moral values, they are foundational. So moral values means generally that one’s freedom doesn’t infringe on others’ values or others’ wellbeing.
So one’s own faith is one’s choice, but how one conducts oneself in society is different. And when a religious government, like the Taliban is imposing on people’s value, people’s personal choices, like that women’s dress code and other things. So that is intruding into individual space and that decision has to be made by the individual to some extent.
And we can’t really turn back the clock because that itself is an anachronism. There’s no clock at the time when say Islam was founded. And when we talk about certain- Or not to speak of going back thousands of years.
Thousands of years, yeah, that’s true. So then, so in one sense, adhering to dharma, it requires deep deliberation and requires leaders blessed by Krishna so that they can find out if we are going to have God consciousness, what goals are to be pursued and what are the methods to be used that will have to be deliberated according to time, place, circumstance. And then we talked about- Yes, I agree with you.
Yes, Maharaj. So I think that the conclusion was that ultimately society has to be changed, but whether it’ll be bottom-up or top-down, we start with whatever influence we have and when we take it forward from there. Yes, Maharaj.
Would you like to add any last point? This has been a very thought-provoking and very contemporarily important discussion. No, thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me and I appreciate your points and your memory and I’m glad we have a chance to talk about these things.
Yes, Maharaj. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna.