Hierarchy in Bhakti: How important is it? Los Angeles Bhagavatam class 3.23.2

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so today morning we are discussing in the Srimad Bhagavatam the third canto, the section about Kapila’s teachings here Devahuti is beginning her enquiries from her son Kapila, who is a manifestation of the Lord and there the mode in which before, actually before that happens the mode in which Devahuti serves her husband Kardama that is described so I will focus on a particular theme this whole topic can be the description of how a wife should serve her husband that can be quite triggering in today’s world so I will talk on the theme of the role of hierarchy in bhakti so how important is hierarchy why is it important and how is it to be understood in today’s world now at one level if we look have a cursory look at actually Prabhupada’s teachings things can seem very hierarchical say for example the authority figure is the Guru and the disciple and it is said that the disciples should be ready to change their life completely to satisfy the Guru and it is only in pleasing the Guru that we can make spiritual advancement and while this is something which is true but the question is is this the only truth now we can look at both Shastra and we can look at Guru if we look at Shastra let’s consider one example which is very much there in the Bhagavatam itself Narada and Dhruva now here we will see that the hierarchy is not emphasised that much Dhruva is wounded devastated by the harsh words that his step mother has spoken to him and he leaves home in search of God and when he meets Narada Muni on the way Narada Muni tells him don’t take this insult so seriously you are a small child and children sometimes fight children have squabbles and say I will never talk with you again and then a couple of days later they are playing a game he or she is my BFF best friend forever they don’t take quarrel so seriously and he says that if you think you are not a child if you think that you are advanced person then people who are evolved people who are wise they also don’t take quarrel so seriously they understand honour dishonour these things just come and go so he says just go back home and live peacefully things will be settled so what does Dhruva reply this is a 5 year old child over here says your words are true but they find no place in my heart because my heart has been wounded I need a kingdom and a kingdom bigger than my father if you can help me find that kingdom please guide me otherwise let me go on my way now Narada Muni does not take this as a personal affront who do you think you are challenging my authority don’t you know that I am the guru of Vyasdev you are just a kid I have lived for more millennia than what you have lived for years he does not at all go in that direction in fact he appreciates and there is a verse over there which is very striking he says ahok kshatriya tejasam maan bhangam amrushyatam just consider the glory of the Kshatriyas that they cannot tolerate dishonour now he says we should all be ready to be humble and tolerant and he is not condemning he is appreciating the idea is that Kshatriyas by their inability to tolerate dishonour that does not mean that they attack those who have dishonoured them but that inspires them to always act honourably so intolerance of dishonour or inability to tolerate dishonour this can make them vindictive and they can say destroy anyone who dishonours now that is what can happen but this is not the direction in which Kshatriyas are supposed to go instead they avoid zealously any action on their part that will be dishonourable so in this way the inability to tolerate dishonour is a feature of Kshatriya psychology and Narada Muni accommodates that he doesn’t say that you didn’t obey me, get lost Narada Muni gives him a way so it could be considered rebellious but it is not rebellious he is just being honest, he is being candid this is where I am at he says that the words you have spoken are true but I am not at that level they don’t find a place in my heart so Narada Muni basically gives him two levels he says you are a child or you can be a saint the child don’t take insult so seriously so both child and saint don’t take insult seriously but what he says Dhruva says is I am in between I have a Kshatriya psyche although I am a child but I have Kshatriya psyche and dishonour is unbearable Krishna also talks about this in 134 in the Bhagavad Gita for one who has been honoured dishonour is worse than death so the point I am making over here is that hierarchy is not the sole thing that is insisted on the important thing is spirituality that when Narada doesn’t say you have to obey me this is where you are at this is a path for you from where you are so there is some extent we can say hierarchy is there in the sense that Narada Muni gives guidance and Dhruva follows but it is not an absolute top down it is not just it’s not just like a domination it is more of discussion it’s like okay if you can’t do this then you can do this there is a discussion over there so and we see this similar mood in Shila Prabhupada also when Shila Prabhupada started our movement it began in New York and then after that came to the other coast San Francisco and if you look carefully at the way the devotees practised overall New York was much more conservative at that time now the devotees were involved which was strictly following rules whereas the devotees who came to San Francisco Shamsundapur, Mukund Maharaj they were much more liberal relatively speaking their focus was not so much on following the rules so strictly as it was in doing broad outreach doing big programmes and Prabhupada accepted and valued both now of course if somebody went too much beyond boundaries Prabhupada would put his foot down but Prabhupada was not simply hierarchical and not only that we could see this is in the 1960s and then if you look at it in the 1970s you see at that time Prabhupada with his disciples and Prabhupada with his life members now the life members in India especially they were already elderly people well established in society many of them had their own spiritual affiliations many of them were gurus of disciples of Advaitic gurus and Prabhupada’s mode of interaction with them was not the way he interacted with the disciples with his disciples mostly he gave them instructions but with the life members it was much more of engagement so they were at a particular place in their lives while Prabhupada would sometimes confront them with respect to impersonal readings but Prabhupada did not focus so much on that Prabhupada engaged them, they contributed financially they used their contacts they got things moving in India so that the temples could be built so in that sense Prabhupada was pragmatic about how people could be engaged now why am I talking about hierarchy over here I am giving this broad picture because the topic here is gender hierarchy that the way it is being talked about is that the wife should serve the husband and Prabhupada did talk about that many places in his books but at the same time when Prabhupada engaged devotees he encouraged and engaged everyone so when he engaged everyone his focus was thus that everybody should be enthused to practise bhakti that everybody should have the opportunity to connect with Krishna now so the way Prabhupada dealt with women in India who were born and brought up in a particular culture where gender roles were clearly defined and divided and the way Prabhupada dealt with women his female disciples in America where the gender roles were more diffused and so Prabhupada’s dealings were different in India the gender roles were more defined and divided Prabhupada’s dealings were different in the west especially in America the gender roles were more diffused not that that defined or divided they were more interchangeable you could say not exactly interchangeable they were more diffused and mixed to some extent and Prabhupada engaged devotees the point was Prabhupada when he talked about protection the point of protection was not restriction so much as facilitation that everybody needs to be facilitated in their service and not so much restricted restriction will lead a person to feel suffocated and then they will go away so I’ll take a broader picture now about this in the Bhagavatam also there is the description that according to Desha Kaala Vibhagavit that according to time, place, circumstance things need to be explained so that this same Desha Kaala Vibhagavit that time, place, circumstance this comes twice in the teachings of Narada Muni that I quoted and it also comes in Bhishma’s interactions in the first canto so let’s try to see from a broader perspective what is the role of hierarchy and how important hierarchy is so what I talked about till now is that hierarchy is important but it is not rigid, it is flexible according to time, place, circumstance so now look at broadly see there is different political philosophies throughout history now political philosophy means the idea about how states should be organised, how administration should be run and what would be the driving or defining value to that so now there are many political philosophies I will focus on three to explain their defining values and then we will talk about where bhakti falls within these so we could consider there are the conservatives then there are the leftists the left and then there are the liberals I will explain why I am putting the left separately in the conservatives the focus is quite a bit on hierarchy now why on hierarchy because there is an existing system and within that system you have a particular place so hierarchy leads to a sense of duty on a positive sense for the world for the world to function everybody has to play their roles in society and any functional society will have to have some ordering system and within that you fit here, this is your role so duty or responsibility this is what this is where you are, this is what you are meant to do that is the primary emphasis within within the conservative thought system, now within the leftist thought system the primary value is equality that often the leftist is a reaction to the conservative that when there is hierarchy emphasised then they feel that oh you know there is discrimination there is exploitation so that is the negative side of hierarchy that when there is hierarchy there can be domination there can be tyranny and there can be exploitation that comes because of that so within the leftist equality, everybody should be equal now equality now this is something which innately appeals to us that yeah actually everybody should be equal nobody should be discriminated against so when there is equality the positive of that is that there is opportunity there is a rigid hierarchy then some people at the top may get all the opportunities, people at the bottom may not get all the opportunities so that is their value but the problem with equality, see here what we are talking about is that each of these values has its importance but then that value becomes the sole value Krishna talks about this as in 18.22 knowledge in the mode of ignorance it is a very curious concept because normally we think of knowledge and ignorance as opposite things isn’t it, when knowledge increases ignorance decreases that is the normal expectation but when Krishna is saying knowledge in the mode of ignorance what it means is the more our knowledge increases the more our ignorance also increases that means we get knowledge of only a particular fraction of reality so so so one thing is made into everything so when one thing one thing is made into everything so for example this is how biases come up that say I may have had a negative interaction with a person from a particular community maybe particular religion, particular race particular nationality, particular region maybe that person cheated me that person was very calculative money minded, manipulative and that person cheated me now my experience is real but from that experience when I generalise and say all people people from that community are like this then that is a bias no community is a homogeneity no community every community has different kinds of people, so bias means what happens one thing is my experience and everything means it’s a universal truth so from my experience when I extrapolated to universal truth, absolute truth that’s when it becomes a bias so when I’m talking about knowledge in the mode of ignorance say when hierarchy is made the sole value then the problem is it can very easily lead to tyranny now if equality is made the sole value that can lead to incompetence why incompetence? because by the nature of the world talent is not equally distributed isn’t it? some people are say better at music than others now if we say let everybody have equal opportunity to sing, that’s fine but not everybody is equally good at singing when some people start singing everybody wants to continue hearing and they say let the hearing never stop let the singing never stop some other people start singing and people think when will the singing stop isn’t it? so when we cook for a feast now not everybody is an equally good cook equality, when equality becomes the only value it can very easily lead to incompetence because everybody is not equally good at all things so coming to the point of gender, gender equality is considered to be like an unquestioned value in today’s world and yes as compared to gender discrimination that is natural understanding but there is a difference between the genders and say the male biology, the female biology is different, only say women can have children and women are naturally more interested in people, in relationships men are more interested generally in things Prabhupada talks about the male female psychology being different he is talking about it from one perspective that is of the hierarchy but there are fundamental differences so in the Scandinavian countries they have complete they did social engineering to have total equality in terms of education so women grow up with the idea that education is that you can do everything that men can do and yet they found that even when all social opportunities are equal there are men who generally gravitate towards jobs like engineering women gravitate towards jobs like nursing women gravitate towards jobs where they can more interact with people so now this does not apply to all women, there will always be exceptions but there is basically in the in the Dharma Shastra it is described that there are male and female and there is the masculine energy and there is the feminine energy now it is not that males have all the masculine energy and females have all the feminine energy no with respect to individual males and individual females it could be that say there could be a small amount of feminine energy in a male and there could be some amount of masculine energy in a female so the individuality, the variation will always be there, but overall there are certain trends the point I am making over here is that equality when it is made in the supreme virtue it is not with respect to gender, it is with respect to everything it denies reality because talents are differently distributed and actually if you consider a talent in one is a blessing for everyone if you consider a sports match basketball or cricket or athletics when one player makes a spectacular move the whole audience thousands and thousands jump up and applaud because not everyone can do that and when that person does something spectacular during dancing somebody does a spectacular dance so many countries have this, America has got talent, Britain has got talent, India has got talent, why? because all Indians don’t have the same kind of talent so when some kid is a prodigy and say 5 year old kid sings with a spectacular voice it’s stunning, it’s thrilling so if we make equality the absolute virtue, the problem is it will lead to suppression of talent, it will lead to competent people who could and should be leaders, not having the opportunity for leadership so this is what happened in the leftist governments, in the educational system they tried to have that all students should get equal marks and what should be equal marks? the top student, the bottom student let’s average them and what is the average? that is the marks for all students in class but the result of that the top students started thinking even if I study, I am not going to get any special marks, so why should I study? and the bottom students started thinking even without study, I am going to get better marks than what I deserve, so why should I study? so equality alone is not enough now liberals, they focus on their primary value is autonomy autonomy means, I should be allowed to do what I want to do now autonomy to some extent, it’s positive is that when there is autonomy people can take initiative, people have space, otherwise people can feel suffocated, now autonomy and equality are slightly different, so leftist sometimes left and liberal are equated but the left and liberal are not exactly the same thing, liberal means I need to, I am liberal I want to have my space to do what I want so people can take initiative and do what they want, but the problem with this is, if everybody wants autonomy say if you are cooking for a feast and everybody says I will cook what I want and everybody cooks sweet rice and nobody cooks rice there will be problem now when we work, we live as a society and if autonomy is the only thing that is implied, is emphasised that will lead to chaos because we have to work together unitedly so the point I am making is that I don’t want to go further into this political philosophies but the principle is, there is a value, that is of value but the problem is when that value is made the supreme value then it becomes a problem, so like for in India the caste system was there the caste system has hierarchy, but when the hierarchy was made the only thing then it became exploitative it led to discrimination so for a functional society all three are important so the idea is basically if we move upwards as in our spiritual perspective, so hierarchy equality autonomy ultimately they are meant to heal us heal means ultimately we have to develop love so for us, the Bhagavatam also very clearly says, Varanashram what is the purpose of Varanashram that the only purpose of Varanashram is to satisfy lord Vishnu and if anything any kind of hierarchy if it does not lead to the development of love, like in this verse all those are described ultimately intimacy, love has to be developed so whether we start from hierarchy as emphasis, whether we start from equality as emphasis, whether we start from autonomy as emphasis the essential point is we need to develop love for us love for the lord, that is the most important thing, one of the purposes that Prabhupada also said of the Krishna consciousness movement is to help people come closer to each other and closer to the lord, so if we emphasise any value, either be it hierarchy equality or autonomy, so much that ultimately love is not developed then that will be a problem so now what does that mean for all of us conclude with one last point that for us on the journey to love what do we do in today’s moment now I came from India I was introduced to bhakti in a very very conservative hierarchical kind of brahmachari ashram, then last 10 years I have been travelling abroad especially in the western world now seeing that every place has its own mood its own ethos and Prabhupada in one sense wanted it like that Prabhupada wanted each centre to be largely autonomous, Prabhupada wanted to a large extent Krishna consciousness to be decentralised and when there was too much centralisation, too much hierarchy, for example when some of the devotees decided to make a corporation and said we will centralise all the funds at one place, from everywhere the funds will come and then we will allot the funds and Prabhupada actually had the UBC suspended at that time he said, all the temple president deal with me directly, he said too much centralisation it will kill the initiative for devotees, so for us in our present situation we may be in a particular part of the world where the hierarchy may be more or the hierarchy might be less but I will talk about three broad principles by which according to Desha Kalapatra that we can find the way in which we can develop love for Krishna the first principle is listen listen ishravan we need to listen so that we can understand how to practise so listen also means to some extent here to obey in any field that we go initially we need to learn and that learning happens by listening so listen basically to how to practise bhakti the principles of bhakti, the practises of bhakti, we need to listen so at least initially in any field we go some amount of hierarchy is required but while we are listening you know we can also be learning, now listening, learning means what here it’s not just learning is about ourselves what are what are the talents that I have been given, what are the gifts that I have so this is the theme which you have talked about last time also when I had come that we all have our guna and our karma so guna refers to the things we feel good doing when we have the quality for doing something we feel content doing those things when somebody has a talent for music then say when they are just learning some music, singing some songs even hearing some music they feel content somebody has a gift for cooking this is what I am meant to do then the karma is things we are good at see this is where we talk about competent lot of people may find music good, they feel good but that doesn’t mean that they are good at music themselves so if ideally we can find something in the intermediate of both of these what I am, I feel content doing and what I am competent doing then that is the area where we can find our life long service the service where we can make the most contribution and traditionally the purpose of hierarchy see the guru was meant to be with the disciple and observe the disciple and understand what was the nature of the disciple and thereby engage the disciple now nowadays we live in a environment where between the authority figure and the subordinates that level of interaction might not be there but still we learn by our observation, we learn by consulting others, so when we are listening it is meant to also help us for developing our self-observational skills so basically what happens is when we are listening listening means we are following, obeying initially that also this takes us from rajas or tamas to a certain level of sattva so otherwise what happens is that where if without listening to authority we start looking at learning about ourselves we may equate ourselves with our lowest desires I want to do what I want to do but what do I want to do, I want to watch TV and drink and do things like that, well we don’t want to identify ourselves or reduce ourselves to our lowest desires a certain level of discipline a certain level of inner cleansing purification that helps us to learn I understand more about myself and then beyond that we can start looking for opportunities opportunities to take initiative to serve according to the gifts that we have been given so ideally speaking the purpose of our movement is not just to impose hierarchy it is to inspire devotees to take responsibility for serving Krishna and there is one anecdote in the memories of Sri Prabhupada where Rochin Prabhu is in London and he asks Prabhupada, London at that time is the headquarters, I will conclude this anecdote that the headquarters of European outreach and devotees from Europe, from Netherlands, from different parts from France, from England, they are all reporting to Prabhupada how the service is going so Rochin he says to Prabhupada that Prabhupada everybody has something to do for you, please give me some service and Prabhupada this is the time when our movement is transiting initially Prabhupada knew everyone personally as the movement started becoming bigger Prabhupada couldn’t know everyone personally so Prabhupada says what would you like to do Prabhupada says whatever you tell me I will do no, what would you like to do maybe this is a test from Prabhupada whatever you want I will do Prabhupada became grave and he says he says understand our philosophy find out what you like to do and do it for Krishna so find out what you like to do and do it for Krishna so this is where each one of us needs to take initiative we want to serve in a way that we can sustain our service so that is the hierarchy important the hierarchy’s purpose is ultimately to firstly help us develop love to help us direct ourselves towards Krishna, to love Krishna and then to guide us how we can live in a way that we can love Krishna now to what extent that hierarchy will be relevant in our particular context, how we can negotiate that hierarchy, that is something which every individual needs to find their way, the Gita says don’t disturb people’s minds but engage them according to a way that is doable for them na buddhi-bhedam janayet ajnanam karma-sanginam joshyet sarva-karmani vidvan-yukta-samachara so based on our particular upbringing now each one of us may find that for us hierarchy may be very important I need someone to tell me what I should be doing, I can move forward, for some of us equality may be more important for us autonomy may be more important so within bhakti there is scope for all of these values but from wherever we are, our focus needs to be on healing ourselves we don’t become campaigners for maintaining hierarchy we don’t become activists seeking equality we don’t become missionaries or canvassers of autonomy we are proponents ultimately of the path of love, proponents of bhakti and each person can take the individual initiative to find out how best they can advance towards the path of developing love and the institution and the authorities therein can also help that individual to help to move towards the path of love, so I’ll summarise what I discussed so we started our topic was about importance of hierarchy in bhakti and I broadly discussed three points so first of all I talked about non-hierarchical examples in bhakti so three things Dhruv Maharaj and Narada Muni then Shila Prabhupada in New York as contrasted with Shila Prabhupada in San Francisco and Shila Prabhupada with disciples as contrasted with Shila Prabhupada in life members so there is, there are examples of non-hierarchical interactions also not that the hierarchy was eliminated but it was substantially subordinated and then I talked about the political philosophy and how we want to avoid knowledge in the mode of ignorance where each political philosophy it has its driving value so we don’t want any of these driving values to become the sole value in bhakti so that is what can lead to problems we discussed three three were first we discussed the conservative world view where hierarchy is emphasised and the problem positive of that is that when hierarchy is there there is order that can be maintained we discussed the positive of each of these I won’t go into this then we discussed the left world view where equality is emphasised equality also has its positive but it has its negative where incompetence can result then we discussed the liberal world view where autonomy is emphasised that has positive but again it also has its negative so what our focus is that from each of these ultimately we want to go towards the we want to heal ourselves go towards the path of love and the way in our particular situation within our moment we can go towards the path of love we focus first on listening listening to understand basic principles and practises of bhakti then so listening about bhakti then learning about ourselves in terms of our guna and our karma what are my gifts and then after that we are looking for opportunities according to our particular place and our particular situation how best we can serve in this way from wherever we are and whatever be the hierarchical structure we can find our way to move towards Krishna thank you very much Hare Krishna any quick questions or comments yes Devarath Hare Krishna very wonderful class harmonising so many different principles and I just have a question regarding kind of the state of ISKCON nowadays it could be a potentially controversial question but I feel you are doing a really good job kind of harmonising these confidential controversial subjects there seems to be a very strong factionalization in the movement nowadays fractionalisation amongst these different value systems and many times what we see is not an attempt to kind of communicate but echo chambers amongst those particular groups where they are kind of just echoing the systems which they believe in without kind of creating room for other people to speak and if there is someone there they are basically singled out or ostracised in that particular discussion how do we create a culture in which these different value systems can communicate work together and ultimately become effective in expanding the movement for Srila Prabhupada because Srila Prabhupada often said the only thing which can destroy this movement is an outside influence but internal influences yeah it’s difficult question difficult situation I will talk about three things first first is that if you look at history what is happening in our movement may be difficult and distressing but it’s not unprecedented every tradition has this kind of confrontations and conflicts so we take solace from that in fact in the Christian tradition the current Pope is considered highly liberal and there are people who the conservatives are way against him in the Christianity they have the idea of lost sheep and then the Jesus and the representative of Jesus they are supposed to find the sheep and get them back so they are the conservatives who call the current Pope as a lost shepherd not the lost sheep but the lost shepherd so the idea is that this is common in fact the polarisation in the church is so much nowadays that that generally in any religion people want to marry within the faith the Bible says don’t be unequally yoked but the polarisation is so much that that say conservative Catholics not even Christians conservative Catholics will not marry a liberal Catholic so my understanding is to some extent first of all not only is it unprecedented we live in a world that is polarised so it’s almost if I consider America, Florida or Texas and here California or New York it’s almost significant difference so we cannot live in a transcendent bubble unaffected by the way the world is so it is unprecedented it is not unprecedented it happens everywhere it will happen in our moment also that’s why there is no need to be too distressed about it now the second point is that always everywhere there will be moderates there will be extremists and when the extremists are there I am not using the word extremists in a derogatory sense extremists are basically those who have extreme adherence of an ideology they may not be violent, verbally violent, physically violent or they may just be not care for anyone else but there will be moderates and the moderates need to link together so there will be a risk that so a moderate conservative can actually talk with a moderate liberal, a moderate leftist so we need to have those moderates and those voices need to come forward and from there the discussion will begin now the danger in that is that the moderates of a party if a moderate liberal wants to talk with the conservatives the problem could be that the conservatives say that you are too liberal and the liberals will say that you are being too conservative but then that is the service of every person we all in one sense have to be like a mridanga, mridanga is beaten from both sides but has to give out good sounds so like that whoever we are when we are we are trying to share bhakti in an environment that is more liberal then the people will say hey your tradition is too conservative and people from within will say that in trying to reach out to people you are being too liberal so there will be criticism but that is the expertise of the devotee the moderates that how they can balance that but we need moderates and the last point I will make is that our history of the tradition is change has always happened from the periphery it has rarely happened from the top down so if you consider when the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition was lost after Chakravarti Padana Das, Bhaktivinoda Thakur was not born in the Gaudiya tradition he was born in the Shakta tradition and he was outsider the Gaudiya tradition had become largely largely ritualistic with the caste, jati, goswamis they focussing mostly on rituals and maintaining their positions again it had become reflective of the caste hierarchy so Bhaktivinoda Thakur was in the fringes he was outsider who studied the tradition and who started presenting the tradition he took nominal initiation from a caste, jati, goswami but he got his primary inspiration from a Vaishnava who was not in that hierarchy and he continued his outreach and then he brought about a change if you look at Shila Prabhupada also, now Prabhupada was at the periphery of of the Gaudiya Math so when the Gaudiya Math fractured for whatever reasons, Prabhupada started it again from the periphery so by using the word periphery I am talking about that our tradition is testimony to the fact that an individual can make significant contributions so rather than worrying about the state of the movement we can focus on trying to do the best in whatever corner we are at and from there things will grow Prabhupada says that there is, or Prabhupada talks about the world geopolitical scene but that applies to our movement also, Prabhupada says there is no use of crying for world peace without the awakening of divine consciousness in the individual so we try to awaken the divine consciousness that means we say from where we are how can we move toward developing love for Krishna and then if we create models that work, so there could be a model which focusses on hierarchy and that works there could be a model that focusses on autonomy and that works so rather than criticising those who are emphasising autonomy and saying that you are deviating or those who are those who are emphasising hierarchy that you are deviating okay, our movement is big enough, let different people have different models and let’s see what works if genuine devotees who are dedicated, who can practise bhakti in the long run are developed then that’s wonderful I think if we can focus more on the vertical growth rather than the horizontal conflict then what will happen is whoever is successful they will get their space and then others may also follow so in one sense we can say we as a movement are in uncharted territory that the exact situation that we are in is different from what during Prabhupada’s time there were two broad kinds of people as I mentioned that the disciples who were extremely dedicated and the life members who were mostly affiliated and today what we have mostly are congregation members now we cannot because they have their jobs and careers and families we cannot expect the same thing that my disciples I mean they were full time disciples temple resident disciples so we don’t have that in today’s world at the same time the congregation members are definitely way way more dedicated than what the life members were so how exactly in this uncharted territory we should move now we need to pray to Prabhupada and Krishna and seek for guidance but rather than claiming that my way is the only way we follow the way that we feel inspired by we feel inspired to follow and if things work then others will also adopt it Isn’t it wouldn’t it be appropriate to think that the GBC is the governing body of ISKCON and that whatever their mandates may be in terms of organisation and management shouldn’t we follow that particular principle yes of course see there are two things thank you for bringing that point Sri Prabhupada did institute the GBC now if you consider in terms of hierarchy Prabhupada had Prabhupada was one person who was both but currently in ISKCON we have the gurus who are one chain of authority and the GBC is another chain of authority and both are working in their ways to carry on Sri Prabhupada’s mission at the same time the ground reality is that the gurus may have many many disciples the GBCs may also have many zones so how much can the GBC specifically guide how much can the GBC oversee Prabhupada certainly didn’t want the GBC to micromanage now I have talked with several GBC leaders and you have probably more experience than me but to a large extent the GBC has been caught in fire fighting for most of the time that some crisis comes up and we try to resolve the crisis now like setting a vision the vision casting has largely happened more from individual leaders in their particular zones whether they be gurus or temple leaders that has come from them and I can’t think of many initiatives within our movement that actually came from the GBC down and then spread across this is not to minimise the importance of the GBC the point is that the GBC is there is a particular state in which the GBC is right now so certainly if certain some boundaries some extreme boundaries are crossed then the GBC does come down and mandate and take care of things but whether the GBC can actually do that in today’s world just like whether the gurus if a disciple asks a guru what service should I do does the guru actually know the disciple and their nature sufficiently do the GBCs know the dynamics of each place sufficiently so from what I’ve heard is that three kinds of the GBC and local temple interactions that are like actively involved this quite often when say the at least I’m talking from my experience in India that sometimes where the the GBC is also the guru and the temple president is the disciple then the GBC gives a vision and very strongly implements it then that’s very actively involved then there is they are regularly informed and that means and then they give consent that’s where reports come up and then there are GBC also who are like just they are like basically like travelling preachers they come and they visit they talk with a few people at that time so I’ll say that if the GBC expands substantially now they are trying to create the regional secretaries and other things so then maybe that will work but how exactly things should be and how exactly things are right now that’s varying significantly and so I think that a lot of initiative depends on the individual leaders at particular places and then finally on individual devotees to find out how best they can serve you would like to add something this is just my thoughts yeah I think that’s that has a place what you’re saying I agree with that but then I think that another principle would be something that you mentioned about love so there should be a principle of love also in terms of how we deal with even the GBC situation and in interrelations so I think that principle of love is a very important factor and then I think that love should be focused on the love that Prabhupada gave us in terms of his teaching and what he actually wanted us to institute and carry on and press on so I think that love is an important issue because if you love each other as you’re mentioning then the cooperation is a normal thing we’re talking about a husband and wife if a husband and wife don’t love each other then how can they coexist how is it possible to be in the same place in the same house with a woman or a man that you don’t love there’s no function there it’s a dysfunctional situation so I think with us also love is an important ingredient in terms of our activity and it should be love based on the principles that Prabhupada gave us because he gave it to us out of love out of love for us he gave it to us that way so I think love is a very important issue and I don’t mean like sentimental love, I don’t refer to that I think love means like you talked about activity and principles and conservatism and liberalism so all those things they may be in a particular person but if the person like in America if you love America whoever you are, the love of America push on America the greatest, the best strongest, everything if you love America and if you don’t love America then you won’t do that that’s beautifully put quick reflection on this there are two things, three things rather there is action and with respect to the actions that different people may take this is answering your question also they may be very different so the way say outreach might be done in India might be very different from what it is in America now that action arises from certain intelligence the intelligence involves assessing the situation so we may disagree with actions we may even disagree with the judgments, the intelligence but at a basic level love means we agree with the motivation you know you are here to serve Prabhupada, I am here to serve Prabhupada but what happens is quite often from questioning actions to questioning intelligence we start questioning motivation itself and we start saying you know you are here to just gain cheap followers you are here to aggrandise your own power and you are simply using Prabhupada and ISKCON to boost your own position now is that possible? unfortunately it is possible but is that probable? well if a person has been practising if somebody simply wanted power they could just go outside the movement and gain power also somebody so I think if we can at least have enough love to trust that a person’s motivation is good this person wants to serve Sri Prabhupada then what happens is that there can be agreement with respect to actions that’s great but that’s we are in such different situations it’s not going to be possible but at least your actions are intelligible to me okay this is what you are thinking I don’t agree with it but when we start doubting the motivation itself then the actions even become unacceptable so within the chain of disagreement I would say that there needs to be some attempt that there are actions which are lovable oh I love what you do there are actions that are appreciable okay this is good there are actions that are intelligible okay I understand where you are coming from there are actions which are acceptable that I don’t understand why you are doing this I don’t agree with your judgement of the situation but I accept that you are well intentioned so let’s see how this goes but quite often we go below this and this is where name calling starts happening, ad hominem attacks start happening because we start questioning the motivation of people but let’s try to avoid questioning the motivation that’s where I think your point emphasis on love comes in am I reflecting your point bro? thank you thank you so much do we have there are 2-3 over there I don’t know Mataji thank you I loved your presentation it was well thought out and beautiful I thought love was the right word but love might be thought of as liberal so it also needs respect or honour okay yes so I was using the word love in more sense of devotion so it’s more of bhakti so maybe I could use the word devotion so instead of I had used the acronym HEAL H E A L we could make it HEAD you want to be headed in the right direction so ultimately love can be seen as too sentimental people can have the idea that anything goes in the name of love it’s a well taken point our purpose is ultimately devotion I thought you meant bhakti thank you yes Adibo Guru the questions presented were extremely intelligible your answers were extremely intelligible however being involved and delved into both Krishna consciousness and Christianity I can see the correlation Gurudev according to bhakti yoga would be the head of the shepherd for the lost sheep because the devotee would be in essence the sheep you have your staff the Christians have their Jesus with the staff according to some of the principles of Christianity the tradition the old tradition the new tradition is that Jesus was one of the greatest gurus or sannyasins that ever existed the disciplic succession I’ll get to my question the hierarchy of disciplic succession from to Kaur to Prabhupada to the gurus that we have today and the disciplic succession from Adam to David to Jesus all these come into play as far as I can see bhakti meaning love and then agapi meaning love so we have a hierarchy in all systems of traditional religion I would think and then the basis of all of them would be divine love now he was asking about is this a comment or is it a question the question would be in the hierarchy in the scheme of things the GBC the guru the disciple how would you describe lovable accountable intelligible acceptable if it doesn’t start with Krishna Radha preem itself for love then what is the purpose of the tradition yes true so our Prabhupada very clearly said to the international society for Krishna consciousness it is not the international society for Varanasi family establishment it is not the international society for feminism it is not the international society for male male chivalry so the idea is that we have to keep what Prabhupada established if you look at the seven purposes of his that Prabhupada gave they are very broad Prabhupada was very far sighted he did not get caught into any particular distributing books building temples living a simpler life and then fostering the correcting the balance of material and spiritual values so that purpose of developing love for Krishna fostering Krishna consciousness and broad pathways for that is what Prabhupada has focused on Prabhupada does not focus on Varanasi Prabhupada does not focus on gender roles Prabhupada even does not talk about within the seven purposes of his he does not talk about many of the things which have become like political hot potatoes today they have become huge sources of conflict so within the ambit of living faithful to Prabhupada and pursuing love for Krishna I think there is a scope there is enough scope for different devotees to pursue Krishna consciousness in their own ways one of my friends is a Prabhupada disciple he told me don’t quote my name but he said Prabhupada build a house in which the whole world can live so he said Prabhupada build a house in which the whole world can fight now what he meant by that he was not being sarcastic he was saying that you can fight inside the house you don’t have to leave the house there can be different devotees living in different places trying out different ways of pursuing Krishna bhakti so thank you very much Shri Prabhupada Ki Jai Gaur Bhakts Gaur Premani