Dasha Mula Tattva 1 – Understanding its historical and philosophical significance

Question inaudible Timely and succinct presentation of its essence to be relevant and intelligible for you.

In fact, the Bhagavad Gita itself is at one level such a summation. If you see in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna several times says that this knowledge has been spoken earlier. In the start of the whole chapter he says that Question inaudible Question inaudible So, in 4.1 and 4.2 he says that this is the ancient knowledge which was given in the past and now I am repeating it.

And again later in the 13th chapter he says that Question inaudible This knowledge has been told by the sages with respect to cause and effect, to the Vedanta. So, what is Krishna's contribution specifically? Krishna makes that knowledge relevant and intelligible for you. Relevant means, how does it matter? Many people, many Indians who went to the west they taught Aham Brahmahasini.

They said, yes, that is I am spirit. But what is the practical implication of that? That should go first. The converse of it, the converse of Aham Brahmahasini is you could say Aham Deva Namaste.

You know that I am not my body. I have read the teachings of many spiritual authors before I have been introduced to Skaun. And no one of them talk about you are not the body.

They say you are spirit. But the practical application of that in terms of detachment from body is not stressed. So, things have to be made relevant and intelligible.

And if you are not the body, what does it mean? Does it mean that I just neglect everything connected with my body? Does it mean that I don't care for anything material? No, there is a practical way to live where we harmonise. To realise I am not the body begins with living I am more than the body. The journey towards realising I am not the body, I just cannot wish away my body identity.

But what I can do is, it begins by living I am more than my body. That means, there is a dimension to my life which extends beyond my body. And therefore, bodily needs and bodily desires should not consume my entire being.

There should be more to my life and I should give time and attention to my non-material side. That is the practical application of understanding I am not the body. So, now moving onwards, if we consider the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita essentially offers a summary of spiritual truth in terms of the situation that Arjuna faced. That in terms of the war that he was about to fight, what is better? Is action better or renunciation better? That was the decision which Arjuna was not going to take. And Krishna explained to him that there is not necessarily a dichotomy between action and renunciation.

See, one of the most common modes of thinking in the mode of passion is in terms of or. This or this. But the standard mode of thinking in goodness is in terms of and.

Passion fragments. Goodness integrates. So, in mode of passion we think, if I want to live in material world, I just have to become materialistic.

And if I don't want to live in the material world, or if I want to be spiritual, then I need to be just spiritual. And I should not be doing anything material. But the whole bhakti philosophy is not matter or spirit.

It is matter and spirit in the service of the supreme spirit. So, we don't just, in Advaitic Vedanta, the focus is on rejecting matter and accepting spirit. But in Bhakti Vedanta, on Advaitic Vedanta, Vaishna Vedanta, the focus is not just on rejecting matter and accepting spirit.

It is using matter and spirit both in the service of the supreme spirit. The focus is on Krishna. And Dashapur Tattva reveals this focus very systematically.

But before we go to Dashapur Tattva, we were talking about the Bhagavad Gita. In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna has this dichotomy, action or renunciation. So, Krishna tells Arjuna, you should practise renunciation in action.

Not renunciation of action, but renunciation in action. That means, act with a mood of detachment. Now, I have just gone to America.

So, in Colorado, at a college programme, one student asked me, what is the difference between detachment and irresponsibility? So, I said, detachment is after we do the action. Irresponsibility is before we do the action. So, if I don't care about how I am doing the action, that is not detachment.

If I come for a class and I don't prepare anything for a class, and I think, oh, I am detached. Whatever comes out, everything is fine, because I am detached. That is not detachment.

Hey, I am cooking for Krishna. And I say, oh, I don't care what the object tastes like. Ultimately, if it doesn't taste good, everyone will get really detached.

If I start thinking like that, that is a complete misunderstanding of detachment. So, detachment is after I do the action, I don't obsess over the fruits. I don't crave for the credits of the fruits.

But it is not that I don't care for the action or the fruit. Yes, we care for it, but we care not for getting it for our own sake. We care to get it so that we can serve Krishna.

So, this is action. This is renunciation in action. So, the Bhagavad Gita integrates the existing schools of thought that were there and presents them in a relevant and intelligible way.

So, similarly, if we see Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, when he appeared, he integrated in his writings the various schools of thought that were present. Primarily, there were Advaitic Vedanta and Vedic Vedanta. So, he integrated both of them together as Achindya Veda.

And this integration was extremely important contribution in understanding in a relevant way what the conclusion of the Vedic scriptures was. So, here, before I will be in the next class, I will have a PowerPoint talking about what is the position of Gaurav Vishnu, Siddhanta in the overall Vedic schema, how it relates to the existence of philosophy and that stuff. But before that, here, the point is that at that time, at the time of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, what were the schools of thought that were present? If you see, Islam was politically ruling the country.

But Islam was never intellectually contended for people. So, it was primarily, although there was non-political control, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Chaitanya Bhagwat, its definition of degradation, what is degradation? People were so degraded. What is the definition of degradation? People were so degraded that they were studying the Vedic scriptures without chanting the name of Krishna.

So, even the degraded people were studying the Vedic scriptures. So, that means, the scope is itself that degradation means if one studies the Vedic scriptures, but does not understand the Bhakti conclusion. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was so angry with Devananda Pandey because he does not respect the Vaishnava bhava of a Vaishnava.

Who was that Vaishnava? Shiva Shankar. Shiva Shankar went into ecstasy of hearing the Bhagavatam. And Devananda Pandey, the atheists did not appreciate it.

The disciples did not appreciate it. They thought this is just sentimentality. So, now he was a Bhagavatam speaker.

And in today's culture, you think somebody is a Bhagavatam speaker, so much better than somebody being an atheist, somebody being a materialist. So, yes it is. But at that time, the primary focus of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's pastimes, there are some interactions wherein he also transforms some Muslims over there, the world of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's Lekshas and Yavanas.

But that is very few. Its primary target audience at that time is those who are following the Vedic culture, but are not understanding the conclusion of Vedic wisdom. They are following the Vedas, but they are not understanding its conclusion.

So, for those people, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu showed that see, in any kind of discussion that we have, there are, there has to be some foundation on which you can have a discussion. If there is no common foundation, suppose, say somebody wants to convey, say Dhritaram Mahaprabhu is one of our devotees, and he is Dr. Michael Cremo, he has written books about the problems of the theory of evolution, and he is offering an alternative to that. So, when he is offering this, suppose he says evolution is wrong, because my spiritual master says it is wrong.

Now, who cares what your spiritual master says? So, the point here is, there are different things that different people consider authoritative. So, within the Krishna Consciousness movement, if we quote Prabhupada, that is fine, people will accept it. He is an authority.

Now, if we go, if we consider the broad Gaudiya Vishnu tradition, there are Gaudiya Mahants, there are other Gaudiya organisations, they may not accept Prabhupada's authority, in the same way, in a small way, that is natural. So, if they are to be convinced about some philosophical point, it is not only Prabhupada's statements, we believe statements of Bhakti Shankar, from Bhaktivinoda Thakur, from the other sources of wisdom that are considered mainstream, the Gaudiya tradition. Now, for example, Baldev Vidyabhushan, normally they said that whenever we speak something, we should quote from our researches.

Baldev Vidyabhushan wrote a commentary called the Govindapaksha on the Vedanta Sutra. And in the full commentary, he doesn't quote any Gaudiya Acharya at the moment. He doesn't quote any Gaudiya Acharya.

You must be thinking, what is this? How can you write a book on Shastra without quoting your own philosophical points? See, every book has a purpose. If we go historically, Baldev Vidyabhushan wrote the Govindapaksha only when the authenticity of our tradition was being challenged. So, there were the Ramanandis who had, who were challenging the words of Radha Krishna in general.

Radha Govind was being challenged. And then, the Gaudiya Sampradaya who had Vidyabhushan over there, they were asked to provide the intellectual the scriptural basis for this. They said that, okay, if you say you are a tradition, where is your Vedanta Sutra commentary on the tradition? So, there are sometimes these technical conferences.

And they say, if you want to present a paper in a technical conference, you have to have some entry level qualification. Either you have to have a PhD or you have to have a Master's degree. Without that, you cannot even present a paper.

You are Kalminju. So, like that, for any tradition to be allowed to enter the discussion itself, a commentary on the Vedanta Sutra was an entry level qualification. Now, Jaitanya Mahaprabhu said that, the Bhagavad Gita is a national commentary on the Vedanta Sutra.

Now, this is an authority statement of Jaitanya Mahaprabhu. But, when people don't accept Jaitanya Mahaprabhu as God, they will say that this is just your way to evade the responsibility of presenting a commentary. So, therefore, Jaitanya Mahaprabhu has said there is no need for a commentary.

But, if people say, how do you say Mahaprabhu is the commentary? Where is your philosophy in the Bhagavad Gita? Where are your philosophical conclusions in the Bhagavad Gita? And how do you derive your philosophical conclusions from Vedanta? So, for this, you have to write a commentary. Now, when you have to write a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, on the Vedanta Sutra, the primary target, who is the target? The target are other schools of thought who primarily accept the Vedic texts as authority. So, they accept the Upanishads as the authority.

They accept the Vedas as the authority. They accept the Puranas, where we classify both the Puranas and the Puranas and the Brahman and Bhagavan, all of it in Shruti. And the Vedas and Upanishads are Shruti.

So, Shruti, Shruti, these are the primary sources of authority for the broad Vedic tradition. So, when Baldevidya Roshan is writing a commentary on the Vedanta Sutra, he is writing it for the overall followers of the Vedic tradition. And for them, the Gaudiya Acharyas are not followers.

So, the authenticity of the Gaudiya is not there. So, why will they accept the authority of the Gaudiya Acharyas? So, therefore, for convincing them, he has to quote from authorities that they accept the authority. Therefore, he quotes primarily from the Shruti and the Smriti.

And by quoting Baldev, so, the Shruti and the Smriti are the common platform on which discussion happens. So, whenever there is a debate, sometimes when people ask, how could Krishna have, why was Krishna so unfair to Karna? Can you give some reason which ultimately, whatever he does is for the good of everybody. How do you know God exists? Then he has somebody asking, then he is not inviting Krishna as unfair to Karna.

Why does Krishna dance with the Gopis? Krishna dancing with the Gopis is a common question. And suddenly from that question, people say, how do you know God exists? It's such a common question. So, now, if people don't accept the existence of God, then to talk about the contradictions of God and to explain that, it becomes very difficult.

So, in any discussion that is going to take place, it has to be a common foundation. What do both accept as social authority? And once those social authority is accepted, then what are the conclusions that can be derived from those social authorities? That is the question. So, for example, I was giving, say, a devotee scientist is presenting our philosophy in a scientific way.

Some points of our philosophy. Then when the devotee is presenting in a scientific way, means that they will have to present from the sources that science considers. If we have trial and error scientifically minded audience, we cannot just quote scripture.

They are not accepting the authority of scripture. So, we first present them from the sources of authority that they accept. So, for example, we may quote about the story of Newton accepting the existence of God or some other scientist talking about that.

For example, Ramanujan said that an equation for me has no meaning unless it represents power of God. So, in this sense, we quote an authority which they accept. Now, the challenge comes when we want to help people accept the conclusions or essential points are not necessarily derivable from the sources of knowledge that they currently accept.

That means, we will discuss as we move forward in the Srimad Satyagraha in more detail, but we can infer that God exists through logic. We can discuss the teleological argument. We can discuss the cosmological argument.

And from these, we can conclude the existence of God. But, we cannot conclude based on these that God is a blue-complexioned boy, 16 years old, who plays a flute and plays with the compass. This is something which cannot be concluded by logic or logical inference.

So, there are two modes of theology. One is called as rational theology and the other is revelational theology. Theology is the study of God.

Rational theology is the study of God which derives primarily from reasoning. And, revelational theology is that study of God which derives primarily from revelation. Revelation means wisdom that is considered to have come directly from God.

So, in the biblical tradition, that would be the Old Testament, New Testament. In the Islamic tradition, that would be the Quran. In the broad reading tradition, that would be the Vedas, the Quran, the Vedic verses.

So, what is the Quran to be the source of knowledge? Now, when we speak to new people, they are not interested in the revelation. They don't consider revelation a thought at all. So, then we have to use rationality.

So, what we do is, through rationality, we bring them to revolution which is beyond rationality. Now, in this journey, from rationality to revelation, we need to present revelation in an intelligible way. Progressive and intelligible way.

Ok, God exists. Ok. We will present some arguments.

Ok, that makes sense. If God exists, then God can also be knowledge. Otherwise, what is the point of creating everything? That knowledge would be scriptures.

That makes sense. I am just going in a very sketchy way right now. But I am just talking about how something like our Gita course is there.

Introductory Gita course where we go point by point. That is an example of systematic theology. Systematic theology is primarily, it is theology presented rationally.

See, there is, there are two modes of learning. We could call them analytical learning and the other is synthetic learning. Synthetic, now the word synthetic can sometimes mean artificial.

It is synthetic fibres. But here, the word synthetic means something different. Analysis means breaking things down into its components.

Synthesis means bringing things together. So, synthetic in that sense is integrated. Synthetic is not artificial.

So, to understand the difference between analytic and synthetic way of learning, consider how we learn our mother tongue and consider how we learn some other foreign tongue. Suppose some of you are working in a company which is going to send you to Germany and you are told that you need to learn German. So, normally, how would we learn? We would join some courses and these are nouns, these are pronouns, these are adjectives, this is the way a subject and a predicate comes together, these are called third language, fourth language, whatever it is.

That is we study the analytic way. But, when we learn our mother tongue, we don't learn in an analytic way. A mother doesn't tell her infant, this is a noun, this is a pronoun, this is an adjective.

So, mom, da, little brother, father. So, it is naturally children hear their parents speaking and they start repeating those nouns and they start associating certain meanings with those nouns. Actually, the process of linguistic communication is very complex.

It's, if you think of it, deeply there are, okay, if you, what I am saying now is a little technical, if you don't understand it, don't bother about it. So, the thing is that when we speak, there are three different components which come together. One is called the phoneme.

Phoneme is the sound. So, A, B, C, D, O, R, E, E. These are the sounds that I have. So, then, there is hieroglyphy.

Hieroglyphy is writing of the sound. So, now, the sound a, this is something audio. It is something which is a sound that is produced.

Now, I connect this sound with a script. So, A, I write like this. Or a, I write like this.

And then, the combination of sounds which is associated with the combination of letters. So, I say and. I pronounce it as and.

And then, I associate it with A, N, D. These three letters. So, there is the audio representation, there is the written representation, and there is the semantic content. Semantic content is the meaning.

These three are different things. How a particular meaning is represented through a particular sound and how a particular meaning is represented through a particular script. So, now, these three are linked together in the process of learning language.

The meaning, the audio representation and the textual representation. And, for example, Devanagari is one way in which Sanskrit is written. That has become the mainstream script.

But, there are alternative scripts also for writing Devanagari. If you consider English, we decided that English is A, B, C, D, E, F, G, they have 26 letters. That's fine.

But, someone else could invent some other letters, some other visual symbols for A to Z. You know, A could be Z and Z could be A. It is very confusing. But, the point is, the point which I am making here is that language learning is quite complex. So don't get into the complexity, just understand that it is complex, that's all.

The similar… So how do we learn all these? We don't go into analysis. If we live in an environment where the language is spoken, then these things get subconsciously assimilated. So if we are, for example, when we use I, you know, I, we use I with a particular reflective word.

You know, I will go there, he will go there, she will do this, but then if I want to use we, we may use a different form of a word, for a singular, for a plural, and those for whom the language is not a normal talk language, then how do you, which pronoun do you, which verb do you associate with singular, which verb do you associate with plural, it becomes very complex. But those who are talking that language naturally, then because they are talking it, say okay, this word is used with this word, this word is used with this word. You know, one of my devotee friends, he has now become a very nice teacher, senior devotee, counsellor, he said what attracted him to ISKCON was, a dude who spoke English to an essay.

He said, I want to learn English, I come in this group, I learn English. There is, on my Gita Daily website, I write this Gita Daily every day. So there, there are several students who come because I had GRE to 350.

They read my Gita Daily just to improve their vocabulary. There is one student who has made a list of all the words he has learnt, and then he circulates this to his friends. And they say, oh, I have learnt so many words from this, that's how they keep coming to the Gita Daily.

So, yeh na kehna prakaar hai na, mana kishna hai. Somehow or the other, come towards Krishna. So, the point is that, when something is learnt naturally, then there may be a lot of subtlety and complexity, but because we see it in experience, we see it in action, we assimilate it subconsciously without needing or doing analysis.

So, all of us have been using language, but these three components, the semantic, the phonemic and the textual, we may not even have thought about these three differences. But we just assume it and we use it. How does it work out? Because we have learnt it naturally.

So, like that, philosophy can also be learnt naturally when we live in a devotional environment and live with those who are trying to live according to philosophy. And such natural learning, there is no substitute for it. Without that natural learning, in associating, Sadāṃ prasannāṃ mamābhīvi samvidhau.

Sadāṃ prasannāṃ, in the associating of devotees, mamābhīvi samvidhau. My glory has become manifest and they become relishable. They become accessible and they become relishable.

There is no substitute for that. At the same time, we also understand that there are many people who will not start practising immediately. If we consider, with respect to the Kṛṣṇa consciousness philosophy in practise, we can consider, say, one circle, those who are practising it are insiders.

Those who are not practising it are outsiders. But this is an inadequate separation. Because among insiders also there are degrees.

And among outsiders also there are degrees. So, for example, someone may say, anybody who is not a devotee is a demon. Then, at one level, we may say it is broadly true.

Kṛṣṇa says, dābhūta sarva-loka is dāiva āsurai. But then, when He talks about dāiva, when He lists the qualities of dāiva, ābhayaṁ sattva-saṁsuddhir, 16.123, He does not talk about bhakti as one of the qualities. So, dāiva and āsuri are qualities that comprise our character.

So, somebody is fearless, somebody is truthful, somebody is relatively self-controlled. These are qualities which comprise the individuals. So, it can be that someone may be intellectually not much of a believer.

That person does not care about God. But in terms of lifestyle, that person must be sāttvika. Or there may be people who claim to be believers, who claim to believe in God and they go into temple.

But their lifestyle may be very rājasika or even dāmasika. So, we cannot just simplistically classify people based on some superficial external parameters. And Kṛṣṇa Himself, He classifies people.

In the Veda, He says, yes, there is prema-maitri-krupa-peksha. He says that, īśvara tad-adhīneṣu pāliṣeṣu-dviṣu-ca prema-maitri-krupa-peksha yaḥ karoti-samadhiḥ He says, you are the īśvara tad-adhīneṣu, become devoted to the īśvara. Then those who are īśvara tad-adhīneṣu pāliṣu-dviṣu-ca prema-maitri-krupa-peksha, so prema for the īśvara, tad-adhīneṣu, those who are devotees, for them maitri.

And for those who are pāliṣeṣu, those who are ignorant, for them krupa. And viṣu-sūtra for them upeṣa, neglect. So essentially, Kṛṣṇa says that there are different ways to deal with different people.

So there are insiders and there are outsiders. But among outsiders, there are some who are sympathetic to the bhakti-wisdom. There are some people who are apathetic, they don't care much.

And then some people are hostile, they are antipathetic. So there are sympathetic, apathetic, antipathetic. And there are degrees.

In your offices also you will see. And some people, okay, they don't mind, you do your business, let me do my business. They are apathetic.

Some people, they just value, value is meant to be criticised. And some people, they just tell me what you do. If you forward something, maybe they read it and they may comment, I like that, I didn't like that so much.

What do you mean by this? You will see that there are different grades of people. So when we want to present our message in a way that is intelligible for outsiders, rather than rejecting all outsiders as demoniacs, rejecting all outsiders as karmis or whatever word you want to use, if you understand that, if we use the analytical approach to present things, then they will also be able to learn and come closer to an insider perspective. An insider perspective means they start practising and they start learning through the practise.

So dashamudh tattva, what does it do? Bhaktivinod Thakur is the first Acharya in our Sampradaya who interacted or who brought the Gaudiya philosophy in interaction with the modern world. The interaction of physical devotions was the last among the mediaeval commentaries on the Vedanta Sutra. The commentary started from Shankaracharya.

Of course, Shankar also had his own commentaries. But Shankaracharya's commentary became the defining commentary for a long time. And then subsequently the Vaishnavacharyas countered it with various commentaries on the Vedanta and Vedanta Sutra.

And the last salwa was fired by Vandev Diyabhushan. It is a devastating critique of other schools of thought, especially the impersonalist. It's a very erudite book.

But by the time of Vandev Diyabhushan itself, the whole battlefield topology had changed. Battlefield topology means what? The basic ways in which the war was being fought. Suppose someone says that okay we are going to fight with the sword.

And in the sword you fight and you have won the previous general has come. And the previous general won the war by fighting with swords. Now this time when the enemy is coming, the enemy is simply attacking with a bow and arrow.

You say no, being faithful to our previous general, we will all fight with swords. When you fight with swords, before you touch your enemy, your enemy will kill you. So if the enemy is using a different weapon, the faithfulness to the previous general doesn't mean necessarily using the same weapon that the general has used.

It means fulfilling the purpose of that general. So if the enemy is attacking with a long range weapon like an arrow, trying to fight back with a short range weapon like a sword, it's just not going to work. So one of the main reasons why the Europeans were able to colonise the world, British and Indian Company was they had mechanised weaponry.

They had cannons, they had machine guns. And those just, the traditional forms of weapons such as bow and arrows, they just didn't match. So the problem is that when the whole battlefield topology changes, the way in which the battlefield is being fought changes, then the warriors need to adapt.

And if the generals fighting don't adapt the strategy, then they will be hopelessly defeated. So I told earlier, based on Chaitanya Charitantra's example as well as Vedanta Sutra's example, that Chaitanya Charitantra defines degradation in terms of studying Vedanta or Vedas but not understanding their bhakti conclusion. So Baldevidya Pushyant, he writes a commentary on Vedanta Sutra without quoting Vedanta Acharyas because he leads to substantial warrior philosophy based on certain sources of authority.

So now by the time we come to Bhaktivinoda Thakura, this is the time when the whole battlefield topology has changed. The period from roughly 1885, no, from 1810 or something like that, 1810 to 1910, that is called as the Bengali Renaissance. Bengali Renaissance was a period of great intellectual fervour wherein many thinkers, Indian thinkers tried to respond to western, especially British critiques of the Hindu tradition.

So I will use the word Hindu over here because that word had become mainstream. Sometimes people ask, are you Hindus or you are not Hindus? Now, well, we are certainly not Muslims. If we had to put ourselves somewhere, we can say, to say that Vrindavan is, to ascribe a geographical dimension or to ascribe a geographical location to Vrindavan which is transcendental, that is incorrect, that is true.

From the philosophical point of view, that is incorrect. But if you have to put Vrindavan on the map of the world somewhere, you can't put it in Pakistan. It has to be put in India.

So, if we are going to put Krishna consciousness somewhere on the cultural, religious map of the world, it has to be put within the Hindu tradition. If you see the Chaitanya Samyama also, the word Hindu is used. The Prabhupada, also if you know, one of my devotees is a scholar, he has done an analysis of various Prabhupada statements about Hindus.

And Prabhupada, in order to emphasise that Krishna consciousness is not sectarian, he emphasises that we are not Hindus. But at the same time, there are talkative times, when he does talk, he says we are Hindus. So, the point here is that every identification has a particular purpose.

So, and that identification can be used to further connections and bonds. When Jaitanya Mahaprabhu meets Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, the first thing that Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya appreciates about him is, oh, he is a Jnasi and he is absolutely advanced in Krishna. But then when he comes to know he is from Bengal, he is so happy because he is a Orissa.

And although the people in Orissa are neighbours, but still there is a huge difference in the cultures, significant difference in the cultures. And it's like if you are from South India, you are from Andhra, and then you go to the devotee community, you meet somebody from Andhra, you feel nice when you talk in Telugu with that person. So, there is a slight amount of commonality and that furthers it.

So, Bhaktira Samad Maharaj is one of my primary guides. So, he has learnt 25 languages. Not fully, he has learnt Bengali, no Sanskrit also, Bengali you can get full trust also.

But he has learnt 25 languages, at least initial greetings. How are you? How is your health? Basic questions. And people feel so close, just because if you talk a few words with them in that language, they feel so close to you through that language.

So, the thing is, when we are having dialogue with someone, we will be later on talking about interfaith. And what I talked just now was about the common sources of knowledge. There are times when we focus on the differences, there are times when we focus on the commonalities.

And we need to know what to focus on when. If when we are supposed to focus on commonalities, at that time we start focussing on differences. We will create unnecessarily barriers.

So, Bhaktivedanta Thakur himself writes at one place that, we should not try to prove the controversial superiority of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's doctrine over everyone else. So, ISKCON essentially is the interfaith statement. Interfaith statement is what is our position with respect to other religions.

So, within that they quote this. Our purpose is not that we want to prove that we are right and everyone else is wrong. We accept it's an elaborate statement and I will discuss that later on in due course.

But suffice it to say here that when Bhaktivedanta Thakur is presenting Gaudiya Vaishnavism to the audience of his times, this is the audience which is, whose intellectual universe is quite different from the traditional Vedic intellectual universe. Just like today we say that if you have to present something, often you have to present it in scientific terms or not in scientific, logical terms. Present it logically.

We don't have to necessarily quote scripture to convince new people. We present it logically, people accept it. We have these movies like GK or before that OMG.

These were critics of religion and the critics were based on logic. They were not analysing the studies or going there to analyse the teachings. They were using logic to try to criticise religious teachings.

And for whatever reasons, it appealed to a lot of people. Now when we, if we just give a response at that time, you are blasphemers. No, you are going to go to hell for blaspheming in Deity worship.

Why is that? That's not a moral way to speak at all. If something is presented using logic, we have to counter it using logic. When we are able to give logical answers, then it makes sense.

Another one I guess, I remember on some website, somebody had quoted from something about the movie PK. And some devotee from somewhere had written, Hey, you know this is a part of the great bhakti culture. If you criticise it, you will commit apradha.

And if you commit apradha, you will go to hell. So don't criticise, don't make apradha like this. Now who are you speaking about apradha to? Does that person even know what is an apradha? So we have to know the level of the person, what is the source of authority the person is accepting and then present according to it.

So Bhaktivinod Thakur was, he was presenting audio-visualism at a time when the modern attitudes had started transforming India's intellectual landscape substantially. This transformation in Indian intellectual landscape happened primarily from Bengal for many reasons. First reason was that Bengal was the place where the Britishers got their stronghold first.

They came elsewhere, but the first territory they conquered was Bengal. And from Bengal, they conquered various other places also. And they tried to convert.

Now I will go a little bit into history right now. Then in the future classes we will go into philosophy. Technically speaking, the conquest of India was not done by Britain.

It was done by the East India Company, which was a private company. And this company, it came here primarily for commercial purposes. When it came for commercial purposes, they saw that in India people are very possessive about their religion.

People are very touchy about their religion. So initially the East India Company banned any Christian missionaries from coming here. They said that if you try to touch the religious sentiments of these people, they will become rebellious, they will become unmanageable.

And therefore, we should not get into that. So in the initial years, they offered all their deference, at least at the administrative official level. Deference means respect for the religious traditions.

In fact, when the Jagannath Yatra would take place, at that time the government of the British India Company, they would have a, what do you call, a royal guard of honour. A guard of honour, just like when a president or a minister comes, there are soldiers who are saluting and they are standing in order. And there is shooting of, what do you call, shooting of, not shooting of bullets, gunshots, say three gunshots, five gunshots, ten gunshots.

So they were very respectful towards the, they were respectful to the local culture, not because they respected the culture first, because they felt this would be best served for commercial purposes. But at the same time, during this time, Britain itself was undergoing a huge intellectual battle internally. Just like now in Britain there are two parties, in America there are two parties.

The Republican Party and the Democrats. The Republicans are primarily hardline Christians, many of them. And the Democrats are liberals.

So, similarly at that time, in Britain itself there are two parties. And this is not just political parties, but overall the intellectual landscape was divided. So, one of them was Christian, in Britain the Christianity that is present, mostly Protestant Christianity.

And there were other thinkers like John Stuart Mill and others, who were primarily rationalists. And they were criticising even Christianity. Because they said Christianity is also irrational.

So, there was a battle going on over there itself. Now, although both of them were internally opposed to each other, externally both of them attacked Hinduism. Why? Because the Christians felt that Hinduism is a pagan religion.

You are polytheistic, you are idolatrous. Idolatrous means you worship idols. And a polytheist means you worship many gods.

So, both these are considered to be like cardinal sins in Christianity. Thou shalt not worship any god other than me. So, to worship many gods, that's a cardinal sin.

And thou shalt not make graven images of me. So, they considered identities to be like graven images. So, they strongly criticised Hinduism.

And also the rationalists. They said Hinduism is irrationality magnified infinitidens. They said Christianity is bad enough with one god who is imaginary.

The Hindu imagination is 33 million gods. So, it's irrationality squared infinitidens. Infinity to the power of infinity.

So, both of them were together criticising Hinduism. Amidst this, the hope of the rationalists was that India would become rational and irreligious. The hope of the Christians was, Christians were trying to present Christianity rationality.

Rationally to their own people. And they were trying to present Christianity as rationally superior to Hinduism. To the Hindus in India.

So, in 1857, there was the mutiny. And it was quite a bloody affair. In terms of the massacres that happened.

And from both sides. The British forces were also brutal on many occasions. And on some occasions, the Indian forces also were quite brutal.

It was not a war that was fought on Kshatriya principles of honour. The Indian forces. Because the Indians were also Hindus, Muslims combined together trying to fight against them.

So, there was brutality that happened. After that, the government felt that the East India Company will not be able to manage. And more or less, the power for managing India shifted from the East India Company to the British government.

The Queen, she became the official head. The Queen of England, she became the official head of the Indian state. And that time, it was that the political party which was supporting Christianity, protesting Christianity, that came to power.

And then they started saying that be sure this land has been given by God to India. India has been given by God to England for the sacred task of spreading the message of Jesus. And they started doing aggressive proselytisation.

So, when this happened, although the government did not directly, the government did not directly promote Christianity. But India gave it a lot of favours which it was earlier not giving. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur, he lived in this period.

His primary period of productivity was from 1870, roughly 1865 to 1905. Those 40 years was primarily what he wrote. And during this period, we will see that we won't have time to go over his literography.

Literography means that which all books he wrote, when did he write those books, in what context did he write those books and what was he responding to. See, books are not written in a vacuum. Some books, we can clearly see.

For example, if I write a book called OMG re-answering the questions. It's clear that this is a book I am responding to a particular situation. So, or for example, Tiradhar Maharaj written The Journey Home.

Now, if he had written this same book 20 years ago, it will be different. Because now, presently memoirs and books which are written telling one's own story, they are immensely popular. And when I had the opportunity to edit that book for Maharaj, I had the first thing that struck me and I told this to Maharaj, Maharaj, your voice in this book is completely different from the voice there in the Vyasasana.

In the Vyasasana, Maharaj is speaking like an Acharya, like authority. But in The Journey Home, he is speaking like a seeker. A seeker who is just sharing his experiences with others.

There is no, there is not, nowhere is we should do like this or we should not do like this. It was just that I did like this and this is what I learnt. So, in the whole Journey Home, there is only one reference to ISKCON.

Only one reference. You know when it is? When Maharaj introduces Prabhupada. He is the founder of ISKCON.

Maharaj doesn't even say that I joined ISKCON. Why? Because he is targeting especially the postmodern crowd. And the postmodern crowd is very much against organised religion.

Institutionalised religion. They feel institutionalised religion is just evil. So, to target that audience, Maharaj completely downplays his connection with the new institution.

He doesn't even say that I joined ISKCON. He has said that after I met Prabhupada, I went to Vrindavan, I went to America and stayed and lived a life similar to what Ganchyam Baba had lived. Worshipping the deity and caring for the cows.

And then I came back and started developing the community in India. So, the idea is every book is written in a particular cultural and intellectual view. In a particular environment.

And understanding that environment helps us understand what the book is targeting and what the book is actually meant for. So, Bhaktanur Thakur, as I said, the literography means which books he wrote and when did he write those books. So, one of my devotee friends, what he has done, Bhaktanur Thakur also wrote his autobiography.

In his autobiography, he also writes which all books he read. This book influenced him this way, this book influenced him this way, this book influenced him this way. So, what he does is, okay, Bhaktanur Thakur published this book in 1875.

And then he looks at Bhaktanur Thakur's autobiography. Which books was he reading in 1875? Then he looks at Bhaktanur Thakur's letters. What letters did he write? Then he looks at Bhaktanur Thakur writing a magazine, Sajjan Patrika, Sajjan Toshan.

So, okay, what was he writing on that? What were the kind of letters that were coming to him at that time? How was he responding to those letters? And based on that, what was the overall thought process going on at that time? And seeing that thought process, you understand what is he writing in this book? And why is he writing this? So, the shool kathwa, why I spoke all this background, is that it is a very contemporarily important presentation of the Gaudiya Siddhanta. As I said, Bhaktanur Thakur was the first person who presented Gaudiya Siddhanta in a way that could be, that was intelligible for the modern audience. So, what is he doing over here? He is, science, you know, often you have points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Science has that difference, point wise division.

So, and this is there also in our tradition, it is not just science. Ramanujacharya says there is a chatur shloki Bhagavad Gita. Sridhar Swami says there is a chatur shloki Bhagavatam.

There are of course some other Bhagavatam Acharyas who say that saptashloki Bhagavatam, it is not chatur shloki, they add two shlokas from before and one shloka later. There are some of our Gaudiya Acharyas who talk about Trishloki Bhagavad Gita, 15.16 to 18. So, each and every point is that dividing things into some succinct nutshell points, that is a time-honoured Vedic tradition.

And it was this tradition that Shri Bhaktanur Thakur utilised when he presented the Darshan of Gaudiya Siddhanta. So, what was he doing? He was taking the Gaudiya Vaishnava Siddhanta which was being taught in the Gaudiya Vaishnava philosophy, the Gaudiya line from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu onwards, downwards, downwards. And the traditional scholars, they knew Sanskrit and they spoke in Sanskrit.

And when they spoke in Sanskrit, there were people who were impressed with Sanskrit scholarship. Now today, Sanskrit is the language of India's official piety. Now official piety means what? You can impress people if you quote some Sanskrit verses.

Even people who are not devotees, if you just quote some Sanskrit verses, oh, you know Sanskrit. It's a good thing, people say. But how many people use Sanskrit as a conversational language? Hardly anyone does that.

So, what happened is, the Hindu scholars thought at that time, including Gaudiya scholars, that if we are to, now the intellectual presentation has to be done in Sanskrit. And they were writing books in Sanskrit. But most of the people, they were learning English.

And they were reading about Hinduism also in English. Because they were not learning Sanskrit. And the English translations of the Sanskrit literature had been done primarily by Western scholars.

Be they Christians or be they Rationalists. And that's why they were getting a very negative conception of their philosophy. Of the broad Hindu understanding.

And of course, the Gaudiya understanding also. So, when this was happening, at that time, there was like a big intellectual gap. The traditional scholars who were presenting Gaudiya Siddhanta or Vedanta Siddhanta in general, but they were presenting in Sanskrit.

And they were unintelligible for the general mass of people. Now, by general mass, I am not talking about ordinary people. This was a technical word, it was called Bhadraloka.

Bhadraloka means, these were people who were educated by the Britishers. And the difference between the Britishers and the Muslims who invaded India was that many of the Muslims made India as their home. Many of the Muslim emperors, they came and lived in India.

But none of the British kings ever came and lived in India. Non-British kings or queens. In fact, if you read from the British point of view, going and staying in India was like a punishment for those who did not perform in Britain.

They considered India as tropical, it is primitive, it is idolatrous. And they said, yes, it's a burden that we have to fulfil. Just like, today we may sentence somebody's punishments to Andamadri Kumar.

So, they thought it was like that. So, they never, they wanted to be in India for commercial purposes. But there were very few, there are what we call Anglo-Indians.

Anglo-Indians means, the descendant of some parents, like the Britishers. One parent is British, one parent is Indian, like that. But they are a small community, relatively speaking.

Now, the way the Britishers ruled India was by creating a class of Indians who sympathised with western values. And they created this whole bureaucratic class. Just like, for Nawab Zain Shah, Sanatan Goswami and Rupa Goswami were acting like a buffer between them and the Hindu community.

So, the British, the Muslims also had that. But the Britishers made it in a more systematic and organised way. They created the whole ICS.

And ICS was just one of the government services. So, now these people who were educated in western modes of thinking, they were called as Bhadralokam. Bhadralokam, Bhadra means good.

So, they thought, yes, we are educated, we are progressive. And the Christian machineries, they would criticise Hinduism like anything. And their hope was, when we criticise Hinduism more and more, the Hindus will reject Hinduism and become Christians.

And all of a sudden, Hindus did become Christians. Michael Mandusudatta and others, they did become Christians. But many Hindus, rather than becoming Christians, they responded by presenting Hinduism in a new way.

So, various organisations that came up at that time, whether it was Arya Samaj or Brahma Samaj or whatever, all these organisations came up as attempts to respond to western critics of Hinduism, be they rational or be they Christian critics. So, Bhaktivinod Thakur belonged to this cultural elite. He was educated in the British education system.

He was a member of the British government. And at that time, just like today, if you say you are a software engineer, there is a certain amount of glamour. Of course, there are so many software engineers now.

But still, you get a big salary. There is a certain amount of prestige to be called a software engineer. So, at that time, to be a part of the Bhadraloka was considered prestigious.

And Bhaktivinod Thakur was a member of that cultural elite. So, he understood the way of thinking of traditionalists. He understood the way of thinking of the modernists.

And he integrated both mindsets to present the Gaurav Vaishnava Siddhant. This is the Shivam Sattva. He takes the traditional points of Indian philosophy in general and of Gaurav Vaishnava philosophy in specific.

And he presents that in a point-wise way. So that people can succinctly know what is the philosophy that you are presenting. What is the philosophy that we are presenting.

So, what the philosophy is, what those ten points are, we will discuss in our future talks. Here I will summarise. Then you can have some question answers.

I started by saying that we will talk about historical and philosophical significance of the Shimultaka. I started by saying how every philosophy, it stays alive by making relevant and intelligible presentations. Like Arjuna, he was choosing action or enunciation.

So, Krishna said enunciation in action. In passion we see in terms of or. In goodness we can see in terms of and.

This and this. So, even the Achintya Veda Veda presentation of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is also a contemporary presentation. It is Advaitic Vedanta, Advaitic Vedanta.

It integrates into Vedanta, Chaitanya Veda Veda. And we see that. So, it's spoken in a particular cultural context where the definition of degradation was studying Vedas but not understanding the Bhakti conclusion.

So, we need to have a common platform where any kind of discussion can take place between two discussants. So, that's why when Baldev Jayabhushan writes the Govindabhasha commentary on the Vedanta Sutra, he doesn't quote Gauri Acharyas. He quotes Shruti and Smriti because that is what his target audience is going to accept as authority.

Now, Bhakta Rathakar, Prabhupada says that in one lecture that Bhakta Rathakar is the founder of the modern day Krishna Consciousness movement. The modern day. He was the first person who presented Gauri Arjuna in the modern times.

And while talking about modern times, I explained how there was the there was the Christian as well as the rationalist critique of Hinduism. So, rational theology and revelational theology. Rational theology is that it is based primarily on reason.

Revelational is that it is primarily based on scripture. So, there was on Hinduism, one criticism was coming from rationality. Another critic was coming from Christian revelation.

And Bhakta Rathakar countered both. He was one among the many Indian spiritual teachers who tried to counter it in different ways. And when he did that, he was positioned as a member of the Bhadraloka, as a member of the cultural elite of those times.

And how he presented Gauri Arjuna's Siddhanta in a way that was intelligible and which laid the foundations for subsequent Acharyas, subsequent generations of Gauriyas to present the same message that we will discuss in our future talks. Thank you very much. Are there any questions?