How can devotees staying in the temple be engaged according to their natures?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you so how can devotees staying in a temple be engaged according to their nature in general in the early stages of a project may be the project is just coming into existence or is manifesting in a genuine way at that time it will be difficult to reserve any devotees for services according to their nature so at that time all the devotees can and should focus on achieving the project’s goals but it is like when a bike is moving you know it cannot be too much this side or too much that side but see it has to take some turns it has to turn this way or that way sometimes the devotee may have to extend more towards institution’s needs and sometimes the devotee may be more towards individual’s needs and both are important so now my experience is not so much in other issues so I will focus more on intellectual needs of devotees and though I think those principles can be extrapolated to other areas also where devotees have some special needs we will see one of the reasons many of the first generation scholars of ISKCON Satyaraj Prabhu, Garuda Prabhu they are all Yogeshwar Prabhu they are all brahmacharis at one time in the temple and I have talked with some of them and one of the reasons why they left the ashram means that they felt no prospect for growth in the ashram not just study was one thing but yeah I’m distributing books and that’s what I’ll do like I’m giving some classes I’ll give classes now in our current educational structure within ISKCON it’s good for basic education but you know imagine a college in which the say first year junior college student and triple doctorate student both attend the same classes and that’s what is going to go on throughout the life people will feel intellectually unfit so our bhagavatam class is like that where everybody needs that right to be adjusted and that’s why the overall lean comes down to be usually not very lean it comes down to be something which doesn’t fulfill the needs of intellectual oriented individuals so it’s in terms of firstly the input of what they get to hear and study and also in terms of output of what they can do now some of these devotees many of these devotees went into academics because there actually there is a structure along with the good study and then when many of them have achieved a replicant amount of success in academics ISKCON is probably among the institutes among the various hindu groups ISKCON is the is among the youngest organization which has a active intellectual significant intellectual presence in fact there are so many young hindu scholars that some some ISKCON scholars in hinduism studies and some hinduism scholars are saying that hinduism studies in america in the west has become ISKCONized i mean there are too many ISKCON scholars so ISKCON’s perspective is getting too much into it not necessarily true but that’s the perspective so devotees have to feel a sense that they are growing in their life now in one sense the growth can be say when they have preaching programs and the number of people come for the preaching programs are increasing number of devotee people are becoming devotees are increasing that’s one kind of sense of growth and success they will get another kind of sense of growth and success maybe is institutional you rise up in the institutional ladder maybe a assistant to a preacher then one becomes a preacher or one becomes a preacher of preachers or maybe like within the institution you become department head, health authority, temple president, whatever so often those who are intellectuals they are not so much interested in the institutional ladder in terms of posts but they are more interested in deeper study and more substantial outreach so some preachers will be crowd pullers in terms of having very charismatic speakers and they in one sense by necessity are required to keep things simple bring humor entertain it’s not necessarily a bad thing if they are given the philosophy also but the serious preachers often do not get so much crowds and often the deeper they go unless they also have the skill to present deep things in a way which is interesting to the audience often they lose the audience so it’s a challenge so what we need is a group of scholars who can interact among each other and then they can prepare material which can be used by other preachers or by the general devotee committee because that way what they are preparing it can be made like you have a step up transformer step down transformer so the preachers are regularly interacting with students with people in the outside with devotees general devotee committee they’ll know how to step that down and bring it together if we don’t create some facilities then the devotees will feel stagnated and they will just leave in terms of they may try to seek intellectual treatment elsewhere there have been quite a few scholarly ISKCON devotees as I said they went to academia some others went to Gaudiya Mata because to a large extent if they want to study Gaudiya Vaishnavism they tend to get the feeling that ISKCON doesn’t study Gaudiya Vaishnavism so much because we just focus on the basic philosophy we don’t study the Acharya’s work so much because now the culture is changing and Acharya’s books are more available and devotees are studying Acharya’s books then they feel inspired so what could be done for them you could at one level you just give them more time if they want to study but that itself will not be very fulfilling because after they study they need to share they want to share it also so whom do you share whom do they share it with so in general these devotees who are studying Shastra deeply either they have to have or if they want to become teachers if they want to become writers it’s a different career so if they want to become writers then they have to train themselves in writing if they want to become teachers then they also have to learn how to present things in a way that keeps people uh interested, attentive that sort of things some public service people they need to learn otherwise they will be unable to connect with the audiences so outside devotees may go for academic studies academic is a whole big universe what they study in that and it has its pros and cons that I will not get into right now if somebody is goes to other way they will be going to go to Yama now we don’t do not want either of them they want to go to academies okay with the blessings of devotees they can go but what can we do within the movement one is that one of the main it depends if somebody goes into academy one major purpose very important purpose is to change the textbooks themselves there are four modes of sharing knowledge when it comes to institution there is insider insider there is insider outsider there is outsider outsider and there is outsider insider so for example our Bhakti Shastri is insider insider the discover yourself course is insider outsider now outsider outsider is the academic way of study in their language and their way of work analysis also but with the number of people who are going to come inside an institution is always going to be limited and our goal is not just to get people to become devotees we also want to have in the Jawaharlal Nehru Kabaddi community a positive awareness of Krishna consciousness so for that if we can influence the outsider outsider communication also that is helpful so in general if a devotee goes into academics one of the criteria of academics is objectivity so you cannot go there to prove that Krishna Consciousness is the only way or something like that what you are going to do is that yes okay these are the strengths of Krishna Consciousness and you compare this with other strengths you may also have to be self-critical I pointed out these questions are not answered in this philosophy or these answers are not satisfactory for example you know some a devotee may have a for all of the jiva we don’t have a very satisfactory answer so it’s not a problem to say that in the sense that every philosophy has its own consistency so the outsider affecting the outsider outsider mode of communication doesn’t necessarily change in terms of people getting inside but it does create a positive awareness in society so now outside structures do have whatever be their deficiencies in terms of spiritual potency or in terms of devotional approach still there is a substantial intellectual content so devotees may get an intellectual satisfaction although there is a spiritual danger in that so now in general within the devotee community if one wants to study if you want to go into academics then there are various fields and to some extent the path has been crossed with Malk, Shahnaz going to academies and other devotees also going in so and they also wanted other devotees to come that is fine but specialized field and it has its own challenges so there will be no immediate returns in terms of numbers increasing of devotees but what will increase is when we will be books written papers published and gradually the mainstream perspective will change one of the things this is one of the things Jews have done very well Jews are among the smallest religions in the world but they have huge influence because unlike Hindus who have gone primarily into career fields engineering medicine Jews have gone into mostly fields that shoot public opinion say journalism law acting all the creative arts acting, movies and this is significant many of the academy award winning artists are Jews so because of that they have their influence in the mainstream culture is far more than the numbers and then they are able to because they are saying journalism then they are able to shoot public opinion in a way which is significant in terms of mass influence so we have not done that till now I’m not saying it’s gone Hinduism in general has not done that so one way one forum could be that we have some a group of devotees who are interested in this way they live close to a temple attend the morning program and select get spiritual nourishment and get their basic needs physical, spiritual practical fulfilled in the temple but then they have their own services in terms of they are focusing on literary work in terms of writing or producing material or studying Shastra but then they will need to be under some senior devotee who they can discipline that is important because if they are intellectuals they will need someone whom they can intellectually also discipline and then he can overall he will also have to give them a lot of independence but he can give them some freedom like okay you do this, you do this and he can do it in your way and then it is difficult to quantify this but if there are siddhis, physics, short time devotees like that who strongly want to do it better actually let them be together and let them work that way and then we can all decide okay one devotee says I want to study Bhagavatam other devotee says I want to study Hindu Goswami literature other says okay I want to go into science other says I want to go into comparative religion whatever and then they can network with other devotee scholars in different parts of the world who may be in this field to take guidance and focus accordingly so that could be one way of doing things otherwise each devotee if there are not so many devotees then one doesn’t need a forum like that and the devotee can be given some time apart from the normal services and the devotee can be told that some other devotee who is also intellectually in that direction that devotee can guide what you are studying how you are moving forward and then in general it can’t be very intuitive in terms of expecting results but over a period of time you’ll see that devotee will become more learned so there’ll be the classes will become deeper the devotee’s writing skills and written output will also come up and then very important is first is to say what are the steps first is to decide the area to be launched second is to then get the facility to study area is more than I decided to study Gaudiya Vaishnava Siddhant and how I’m going to study is it that I’m going to go to academies is it that I’m going to learn Bengali and study the Bengali within their own language then I decide the appropriate forum for study and after that there is a plan for output so this is one thing which as a clinical scholar is a big movement it shouldn’t be so difficult somebody is truly a good Gaudiya scholar the devotee can become a travelling preacher and a devotee can give classes on Gaudiya Siddhant now it is always we are talking about scholarship is not a six months or one year sometimes it takes years, decades probably to become a good scholar but then that devotee can be a travelling preacher and take our overall movements movements Gaudiya Vaishnava Siddhant movements scholarship or movements philosophical understanding deeper so some forum for output has to be there also as of now the easiest forum for output could be just Bhakti Shastra teacher so at this level I would say that if some devotee want to be shastrically inclined and the easiest way to accommodate in the system would be encourage them to become Bhakti Shastra teachers tell them that you just train yourself for this so some devotee they just not have the inspiration to go and follow up new people and do all those things they say I just want to study everything I don’t want to do all that thing then some extra confidence and both of us were like that we are not so much he is still I don’t know whether he is counselling he is not into counselling so but you can teach reasonably well so without making any major shake-ups to the system without having to do much accommodation if you want to engage them then Bhakti Shastra is the best vision that is available right now and then what we should do is we should give this devotees adequate opportunities that means even when senior devotees are available for Bhakti Shastra they may be senior but they may not be so systematically shastric in studying and actually also the many senior devotees they would much rather give more like inspirational classes than systematic classes so that’s why this is one forum where I do feel that devotees can be very numerous and then these devotees will decide okay I want to be Bhakti Shastra teacher they can simply say go with the commentaries or later on you can have Bhakti Agra also of course how Bhakti Agra will be implemented because the devotees also don’t have so much time to comment they will hear Bhagwatam that’s a different discussion but this teaching this course is the immediate way devotees can be encouraged and then by that it’s more or less within the system only and by you will also get to test all three stages you know the area of study the forum for study and the output of study and if they excel in this then after that they can be given some okay somebody wants to study more things and present more they can go to Bhagwatam they can go to CC something like that and in general some devotees may want to study say go with the Bhashya or Sandarvas but their content is not really relevant for today’s ISKCON audiences because it’s too philosophical for example one Sandarva simply focuses on or largely focuses on proving how Krishna is superior to Vishnu okay it’s important point but how important is it you cannot have a series of classes on that so of course there are many other things I am giving a very simple understanding but it’s not all of it very not much of it is relevant some of it is definitely somebody doesn’t want to take a major step in starting himself through probably a be a good testing ground and afterwards these devotional episodes come to me and I need to start and people are studying about this basically if I am given time I am not able to engage myself when things come up oh you know like when he doesn’t go and test you on something hmm like you are doing something yeah there is one more thing one of the rules in the Kriyayoga hmm he doesn’t tell anyone he has got a lot of achha and kamasya you know apart from that you do some research and whenever there is need he explains to those in the audience and he likes to chant and pray and study a lot he studies when he wants to seek Tushar