Can the Gita’s verses be translated differently from what Prabhupada did?
So can we re-translate or re-interpret what Prabhupada has given actually speaking, Prabhupada has not come to terminate the parampara Prabhupada has come to perpetuate the parampara and Prabhupada has not come as a cult leader we are not building a personality cult around Prabhupada Prabhupada said that Krishna came in my vision and said things like that occasionally, but Prabhupada said I have heard my spiritual master and I am repeating my spiritual master so if we divorce Prabhupada from the previous acharyas, then we will just simply become an organization which is a personality cult centered around one particular leader Prabhupada did not want that, Prabhupada connected us to the tradition and that's why we have to see Prabhupada's words in connection with the words of the previous acharyas so if we find in a particular situation that Prabhupada said something and the previous acharyas said something else then it is our responsibility as living practitioners of Gaudiya Vaishnavism to reconcile it properly and we cannot just say that because Prabhupada said it, we reject all the previous acharyas nor can we say that because the previous acharyas have said this, we reject Prabhupada so we have to see according to our intelligence in the guidance of senior devotees, according to time and place circumstance we have to present things in a way that are intelligible for people and in this case, there is no question of even reinterpreting Prabhupada because as I said, Prabhupada himself has set the standard of giving multiple translations so he translates the Bhagavad Gita in one way in his Bhagavad Gita and he uses different translations in his lectures, in his conversations so we shouldn't reduce scripture to a frozen book.
Scripture is a living book and living book means it has to be understood and explained in a way that is intelligible to people so there are different translations of the same verses that can be done and Bhaktisthan Chakratakur has done different translations, Vishnachakratakur has done different translations, so if anybody tries to change the Sanskrit that is wrong, you cannot change the Sanskrit but the Sanskrit, the English rendition, that can be done in different ways and in fact, many times it is necessary the Catholic Church has a whole body of scholars who re-translate the Bible every 50 years why? because language changes the language itself changes and when language changes, we cannot use if today we start using di, dao, dai, we will say I have come from the 18th century we can't do that so language changes we have this very utopian idea of faithfulness to tradition everything will stay as it is the world changes, tradition has two aspects to it, faithfulness to tradition means there is there is the presentation, tradition itself has a dynamic aspect of flexibility and faithfulness to tradition also means faithfulness to the flexibility of the tradition so flexibility means Prabhupada himself presented certain things different from the way Bhaktiswami Svitaka presented Bhaktiswami Svitaka in all his temples he had gaur gadaadhar deities Prabhupada presented gaur nithaya deities we feel Nityanand Prabhu is very merciful and he needs people who are people are very fallen so we need manifestation of Nityanand Prabhu so we cannot change anything and everything but there is a whole approach to understanding scripture and that approach is often, we do violence to that whole profound approach profound method of approaching scripture when we think that everything has to be kept literally as it is it cannot be kept as it is things, times have changed simple thing is that Prabhupada practically he did not even use phones he would normally use letters now we use emails, we use SMS so there are so many things according to circumstances we do like this Prabhupada set an example of how to share Krishna Consciousness and we have to follow that principle and share Krishna Consciousness how exactly we do it that will vary according to circumstances so especially in today's ethos see we see that this is an important topic and there are a lot of misunderstandings that's why I am spending so much time that see we all have to choose which battles to fight Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is God himself but he chose not to fight the battle against the caste system it is time, he did not insist that Haridas Thakur be allowed to come inside Jagannath temple those who are not born in Hindu family they are not allowed Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said okay he made Namachari but Chaitanya Mahaprabhu decided not to fight that war he decided not to fight that war of going against the caste system activity in terms of temple worship so that's actually strategy sometimes we decide I will fight this war, sometimes I will decide not to fight this war so today there is a situation that there is a very aggressive feminist movement in today's world and not only feminist movement there is a whole ethos that women, when women should have equal opportunity and male female equality that is a big issue in today's world and any hint of discrimination that just inflames people and ultimately if our philosophy is you are not the body you are the soul you know we don't have to get into this whole issue where we alienated a large number of people by presenting certain things so we don't have to do that, see we are not here to fight any and every war there are thousands of things which are wrong in society and we have to decide which is the most important thing, so we don't have to, so by highlighting things like say women are less intelligent actually first of all we don't, we have to understand also what it means but sometimes those people highlight it and then say women are paapa yonaiya, we do violence to the Bhagavad Gita because there is so much wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita and people just close the book when they see oh Bhagavad Gita it is women are sinful, get lost I don't want to read such a book and what happens, that is not the central message of the Gita, that is just an incidental thing, it is not even very important to the central message, actually what Krishna is doing over there is if we go deeper into the message of this verse maami paata vyaapashyati epi suyi paapa yonaiya sthriyo vaishya swa shudras tepi anti karam krishna, see there is an important principle here everything that is present in scripture is not the teaching of scripture everything that is present in scripture is not necessarily the teaching of scripture, I will give an example suppose you know Hiranyakashipu is speaking in the 7th canto of the Bhagavad Gita that you know if we just stop yajnas then yajna is what feeds Vishnu and then Vishnu will starve and Vishnu will die and somebody quotes this so that is a statement in the scripture but is it a teaching of scripture? no, it is not a teaching of scripture it is a statement in scripture, everything in scripture is not necessarily the teaching of scripture see please let me complete what I am speaking so in this verse what is Krishna saying? Krishna has a particular emphasis he is saying his emphasis is that anybody can practice bhakti and attain perfection bhakti is so inclusive you start from there is a contrast which starts from 9.20 till 9.34 Krishna is contrasting bhakti with other methods and he says bhakti is easy to perform, bhakti gives the eternal result, bhakti can be performed even by those who are sinful even if one falls down, still one can rise and practice bhakti so there are five ways in which Krishna is contrasting bhakti with other paths and the stress of this verse is that anybody who practices bhakti he will get elevated and he will get liberated so while talking about that he is simply referring to a social conception that women, Vaishya, Shudras, Papalona, they are generally considered unqualified and he is saying that even those who are considered unqualified they can, not only are they qualified but they can also attain perfection so Krishna is not teaching that they are unqualified Krishna is simply offering a tip of the head to say that this is what people think but even if you think like this still you can attain perfection so every message has a stress so the stress of the Gita in this verse is not to enforce this truth as a teaching of the Gita Krishna is saying this is a conception that is there at that time and even if it is true people can also attain perfection I am not saying whether it is true or not I am simply saying here that this is not the essence of the Gita this is not even the essence of the Gita this is not even the essence of the verse so we have to make sure our purpose is not just to speak the truth our purpose is to speak the truth in a way that attracts people to the truth our purpose is to attract people to Krishna's message and some incidental things from the Gita if they are going to create such a big issue we don't have to make that into a big issue so we have to know what is important and what is less important so this is a very small thing in the Bhagavad Gita and if by separating Papa Yonah and Sri as two separate categories now when I am talking about feminists I am not just talking about aggressive feminists there is a lot of sympathy among men also who feel that women should not be discriminated against so we have a whole body of people whom we will alienate by interpreting things in a particular way and in our own tradition when there is a flexibility of interpreting, why do we have to make it a big issue? So the important thing is we have to present scripture in a way that attracts people to scripture and while presenting that what is more important we have to stress more, what is less important we have to put it aside I'll conclude with this once one devotee asked to Prabhupada, Prabhupada when we talk to the scholars and then we tell that Maharaj Ugrasen had some billions or trillions of servants that's what is told in the Bhagavatam so the scholars start laughing they say how could so many people have lived in Dwarka where were their houses where were their toilets how were they living over there now Prabhupada could have given any answer Prabhupada said Krishna is omnipotent, Krishna can do anything Prabhupada gave a very amazing answer Prabhupada said among all the thousands of verses in the Bhagavatam was that the only thing you found to tell the scholars? so you know we say one of the offenses to the holy name is to instruct faithless people in the glories of the holy name now one understanding of this is also when we say to instruct faithless people in the glories of the holy name it means to give people instructions that they cannot have faith in if I tell people things which is going to be very difficult for them to believe then I am actually decreasing their chance of coming to Krishna so I don't have to tell such things initially as their faith develops as they experience the potency of bhakti as they become transformed as they understand the overall wisdom of the Bhagavata they will be able to understand other things also so we have to present the things that are most important, that are most relevant and other minor details which are not relevant which are not central to our message we need to subordinate them so that we fulfill the purpose of scripture.