Do we need different teachers for different areas of life?
Third question about you know if the Acharya's teachings are for a particular aspect of our life then will we need other Acharya's for other subjects yes Prabhupada never claimed that he is going to give knowledge about physics or architecture or mathematics or whatever in fact what to speak of all these other subjects even for the Bhagavatam when the Vedic planetary was to be made when the devotees started asking many specific questions Prabhupada said you find a Vedic Pandit and ask him so Prabhupada it's only later that that we have put a hallow of almost like omniscience around Prabhupada Prabhupada never claimed that that he was omniscient or anything like that Prabhupada so it's not that we have one Acharya in one part of our life and another Acharya in another part of our life we have one Acharya who tells us the purpose of our life and once we have learnt that purpose to do the practical things for fulfilling that purpose we may have to learn other things from different people you know there were devotees who were Prabhupada's servant and they drove Prabhupada now Prabhupada did not teach them driving isn't it? they may have learned it from someone else so now that devotee, I will say one devotee knows driving, I will say one devotee has learnt computers and then somebody other devotees are also using computers in our temple so then that devotee starts teaching computers to others now now how did that devotee learn computers? it was not from Prabhupada the spiritual master so if that devotee had learnt it before coming from bhakti from a non devotee and is now teaching devotees and now we go to non devotees and learn from non devotees what is the difference? we cannot really artificially equate the material and the spiritual even the Bhagavad Gita Arjuna did not win the Kurukshetra war because of the knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita alone he won the Kurukshetra war because of the knowledge of archery which he had learnt from Drona and he had perfected through a lifetime of practice but the inspiration to fight the war the motivation for fighting that war that direction was given by the Bhagavad Gita so the Bhagavad Gita doesn't claim to provide material knowledge it provides spiritual knowledge about the purpose of our life but how to fulfill that purpose? we require material knowledge now what the problem can come if we are taking knowledge from material sources and then we start learning from them not only about how to do things but which things to do if we take from them the knowledge about the purpose of life that will become a problem but Jiva Goswami also says right in the Tattvasandarbha itself that there is a large part of the Vedas is lost today so normally when we talk about the material knowledge in the Vedas we talk about Karmakand and it is for less intelligent people and we derive that quite often but the fact is we have to live in the material world and material knowledge is required so much of the knowledge for functioning in the material world that was given in the Vedas that is not available today so we may have to use other material knowledge so material knowledge is not a replacement for spiritual knowledge so whether we use Ayurveda or whether if we have to take treatment whether I use Ayurveda or Ayurveda it doesn't matter whatever I take I move forward in my life so if I consider health, if I consider finances if I consider say cycling or vehicle riding or building, construction it's nobody expects that the pure devotee will give knowledge of these things sometimes the pure devotee may also give some insights but it's not that they are going to give exhaustive knowledge of these things but when we come to subtler things like say money management or relationships or say speaking at that time we may say can we get spiritual knowledge can we take this knowledge from other sources then it is we have to be little more careful we can take say for example if you want to learn about sensitive speech so now what is a matter of sensitivity in different ages may be different so we have to learn about the current culture to know what are their blind spots and then we don't have to unnecessarily trigger their blind spots so we don't have to unnecessarily provoke them so that knowledge we may not get from scripture so to some extent some aspects of what sensitivity means that we have to learn from the contemporary sources so it's not wrong in principle but usually this has to be done cautiously under guidance from seniors and we shouldn't confuse the means and the ends we get the ends of what we are going to do, what is the purpose of what we are doing that from the Acharya but the means we may take from different sources now if I am going to do online preaching I am not going to learn about how to set up a website for Prabhupada's books, I may have to read some books for that purpose so the more subtler the knowledge becomes they can become knowledge of relationships or about speech, good speaking of sensitive speaking or that then the subtler it becomes then often we take not only the techniques but we may also take the goals so we have to be more cautious so the grosser the material knowledge the easier it is to differentiate what is the means and what is the end but the subtler the knowledge becomes then the means and ends become often more tightly interwoven and we may get a little confused so never while taking material knowledge from any material sources we shouldn't let our faith in those material sources supersede our faith in the Acharya with respect to the goal of life now if I start learning English from Prabhupada's books well that's fine if Prabhupada's books are edited but if I go to conversational English you know one time one devotee Satsvarupa Maharaj writes in one of his books that when Prabhupada used a word that was not there in the English dictionary only so then one of the devotee editors he said a pure devotee has used the word we should not change the pure devotee's word, we should change the dictionary and get the word included in the dictionary so then so then what happened is they said ok sentiment is fine but let's go and ask Prabhupada they asked Prabhupada, Prabhupada was very practical let's change the word so we don't have to over exalt Prabhupada in a sentimental or a non in a way that is not according to our tradition itself so nowhere does our tradition say that an Acharya gives exhaustive knowledge about everything you know Vishwanath Chakratakur was living at a time when Muslims were just destroyed but his Bhagavatam commentary doesn't talk about how we should combat the Muslims just focuses on giving Bhagavatam so that other knowledge can come from other sources so Prabhupada is among the first Acharyas who integrates social commentary with scriptural commentary and that is required to some extent because his audience is living in a society which is very different from the traditional society so he has to do some social commentary but a social commentary is contextual and we don't have to absolutize that so we can learn from other sources but we can learn the means not the ends is the answer your question?