Bhagavatam-daily 46 – 11.07.36 – Respecting people opens their heart to Krishna’s message

Krishna while progressing, doing our duties and functioning in this world. Thank you.
So, as they have taught me in the previous verse, the Avadhut Brahmana has listed his 24 gurus and now he is going to, he says he will describe how he learned from them. yato inam shikshami, as they have taught me, as I have learned from them, tathava nahu shatmaja. So here, the Avadhut Brahmana is referring to Maharaja Yadu quite respectfully, nahu shatmaja.
Oh, descendant of Nahush. Nahush was a great king in the Yadu dynasty who actually attained heaven and even attained the position of swarga. Of course, because of pride, he fell from there and then he was delivered again when he had a conversation with Maharaja Yudhishthir.
So, Mahabharata describes the story, but the important point is that his connection with an illustrious ancestor is being stressed over here. tat tatha purusha vyagra, purusha vyagra, this is a name that is referred to, that is used for Arjuna also in the Bhagavad Gita. vyagra means tiger, purusha vyagra means tiger among men, nibodha kathayamite, that for your information.
Listen now, I will speak that to you. purusha vyagra, it’s interesting that the Avadhut Brahmana is speaking very respectfully to Maharaja Yadu. Now, sometimes if we come to spiritual life and we renounce the world, say, or we renounce worldly positions, aspirations, whatever, then we sometimes tend to become very dismissive about everything material and we start talking very dismissively, derisively, disrespectfully of material things.
However, that gratitude doesn’t necessarily stem from a deep realization of the insignificance of material achievements. It may well stem from our own insecurity and external aggressiveness may cover in your insecurity. Oh, I didn’t get all those things.
I didn’t, I gave up all those things. So, they must all be useless. So, that sort of insecure, sketchy reasoning can actually not only reflect our own lack of conviction, but that can also adversely affect our outreach.
When we are going out to share Krishna with people, people are not bound to come and hear when we say that they are in ignorance and they are suffering and they need to hear about Krishna. All that is all right, but they don’t feel often that they are suffering. And even if they feel that they are suffering, they don’t necessarily really believe that we have the solution to their suffering.
It is up to us to earn their trust. And for earning their trust, we need to show them respect. Now, Shrila Prabhupada, we often reduce Prabhupada to his most confrontational, provocative soundbites.
Fool, rascal, this, that. That was Shrila Prabhupada. Uncompromising, smashing.
But if we interact, yes, Prabhupada did use those words, but we can’t reduce Prabhupada only to that. If we interact with Shrila Prabhupada’s disciples, especially in the initial days when Prabhupada could spend time with disciples, they saw Prabhupada as a person who valued them. The hippies, they had rejected society and largely society had rejected them.
So, in such a situation, society considered them as disgraces to America. But Prabhupada respected them, appreciated them, valued them. He saw them as precious parts of Krishna.
He saw them as representatives of a spiritual master sent by him to, so that he could assist them and assist, so that he could serve them and thereby serve his spiritual master. So, Prabhupada was not blind to their depraved or degraded ways, but he focused on their spiritual potential. He could see everyone as souls, ultimately parts of Krishna, but most souls were not interested in Krishna.
He saw in the hippies a spark of interest for Krishna and Prabhupada fanned that spark. How? We may think fanning the spark simply means making them hear about Krishna. I speak about Krishna, long lecture, that will make you purified.
No. Yes, Prabhupada would speak lectures, not long lectures, short lectures and he would have long kirtans because he found that the hippies could not take long lectures. So, short lectures and then long kirtans he would have.
But along with that, Prabhupada served them all. When they started coming and staying in Lower East Side, Prabhupada would cook for them. Prabhupada would serve them food.
Now, not only that, they would just think that this is like a hotel and they would walk away from there. But Prabhupada would wash their plates afterwards. Now, even from ordinary worldly hierarchy point of view, this seems wrong.
Prabhupada was like an elderly grandfather and in an ordinary family, it is the young people who serve the elderly, especially somebody who is in the 70s. So, it was inappropriate. Even from a worldly hierarchy point of view, what to speak from a spiritual hierarchy point of view, Prabhupada was not just an old man, he was a sanyasi.
And according to traditional standards, a sanyasi does not even eat food that has been cooked or touched by anyone other than a very clean person, either a brahmana or an initiated person or otherwise a person who is maintaining clean and high standards of purity and consciousness. So, a sanyasi will not even accept and eat the food which is touched by such a person. What to speak of a sanyasi serving food to such a person and washing the plates of such a person.
So, now, there were some moments when Prabhupada felt angry. For example, at one time when a person just disrupted a class, Prabhupada just softly spoke to him, this is the darkest of the dark, but he spoke in an undertone, so only the closest disciple sitting right near the first row heard it. But then immediately Prabhupada concealed his instinctive reaction and then spoke in a compassionate way to that person also.
So, the point is that Prabhupada was respectful even to the hippies. And now respect doesn’t mean that Prabhupada offered obeisances to them, but basic human courtesy and much more than human courtesy also. Prabhupada’s compassion was far greater than his convention.
Convention means that a sanyasi should not associate with lechas or take food from lechas. Prabhupada was cooking and serving and washing the plates of lechas. So, the point is that if you want to share Krishna’s message, we need to not just speak Krishna’s message, but we need to open people’s hearts so that they will receive Krishna’s message.
And that opening of the heart happens when we earn their trust. And earning their trust takes a long time, but when people see that we value them, we appreciate them, we respect them, then that itself is for them a recognition that okay, this person means well and then they become open to hear us. So, valuing, respecting, appreciating doesn’t mean that we just not speak about the philosophy and the proper standards of living and all that.
We do speak that, but we speak that sensitively, respectfully. And if Prabhupada was so respectful even to the hippies, then what to speak of people who are achievers in the society. When we don’t show them the proper respect that they expect, then that unnecessarily agitates and alienates them.
And we make sharing Krishna’s message all the more difficult. So, Prabhupada answers, he says that, I offer my obeisances to you. And then he says that, okay, now please put aside everything and just surrender to Lord Chaitanya for that is his, for he is supremely merciful and his mercies are only saviour.
So, we give the message later, but first we open people’s hearts and earn their trust by our proper behaviour. So, here Yadud Brahman demonstrates that by his example of how, although Yadud has come to him as a seeker and although Yadud Brahman has renounced everything material, he doesn’t say you are a householder in a pit of stool. He doesn’t say that.
He doesn’t condemn his royal position. Rather, he respectfully addresses him as Purusha Vyagra,