How can the tension between rigidity and fluidity be resolved in a living tradition?

Anwser Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
in every tradition there is this tension between rigidity, keeping things as they are and fluidity that is adjusting things according to time, place, circumstance if you see the religions which have grown, they have had to have fluidity I will consider two examples say in America there is the Amish culture the Amish are a group of Christians who live in a very insular way, they don’t even use much of technology, they are rigid and they have been staying on generation after generation but then they don’t expand, some of their ranks also go away and on the other hand we see, if you want to really see fluidity same Christianity which has come to India Christians have adopted so many Vedic forms there are some Christian scholars, whatever names are there in the Biblical tradition they studied Sanskrit and they have found Sanskrit equivalent names so even when people become Christian they change their name to another Vedic name only so that it doesn’t create hostility with the parent culture because say somebody is born as Ayur and then suddenly you become Thomas Elway or something like that, that creates a tension in their community so they become Christian in their faith but they don’t change their name in a way that will provoke the community and there are many, so in fact one of the, I read a statement about it was basically the agenda to Christianize India and they said that Christianity if it is to triumph in India, it has to become more Christian in spirit and more Indian in form so they have done it in many big ways there are Christian monks who wear saffron now in India and at the time of Christian initiation or when people become Christian, instead of having that sacred water or in addition to sacred water, they follow the Indian tradition and recite some mantra in the year and they also perform home fire sacrifices there are South Indians who are very attached to Vishnu Saraswarna so there are Christian Sanskrit scholars who have made Jesus Saraswarna in Orissa there was so in Orissa there is the tradition of worshipping the mother goddess so the Christian missionaries go to India and they say that you know, we are worshipping Mariamma Mariamma, Amma is mother and Mari is Virgin Mary so they change the name and they have songs in their tribal languages according to one survey, actually the Bible has been translated into more Indian languages than the Bhagavad Gita has been translated so what they have done is in a sense from the point of view of conservation of Vedic culture we say it is alarming but from the point of view of their vigor in preaching it is, they are very vigorous so without that adaptation they will not be able to stay in India for long so same way there is adaptation that is required there is fluidity for any tradition to grow, fluidity is required and you see fluidity is a part of what to speak of the Vedic culture even the Gaudiya Vishnu culture you see the Indian history when Buddhism came Buddhism actually was preached in Pali and Prakrit which were the local languages of the masses and the Brahmins at that time they said that we are pure, we will teach only in Sanskrit and then what happened was the common, the Brahmins were speaking Sanskrit but the common people they couldn’t make sense of the rituals and whatever Buddhism and Jainism were taught in the local languages they were influenced by that and once they were influenced by that a lot of people converted to Buddhism and Jainism not only that, actually especially from something like the 1st century AD to 5th century AD till Shankaracharya came a large part of India was ruled by Buddhists and Jains and many Buddhists and Jains after they became mass religions there were Buddhists and Jains who also became scholars in Sanskrit and in the 1st to 5th centuries actually the number of Sanskrit books about Buddhism and Jainism that were written are more than the number of Sanskrit books about the Vedic religion so by reaching the masses they eventually reached the classes also so the point I am making is that this fluidity has always been there and even in Gaudiya Vaishnavism if we see when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s followers went to Manipur and they preached in Manipur, so at that time the Manipuri Vaishnavas, they became followers of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu but they did not adopt the Bengali dress or the Bengali culture they still had the Manipuri dress, Manipuri culture and they became Manipuri Gaudiya Vaishnavas so they had their own distinctive brand of culture and if you see in India also I am from Maharashtra, so in Maharashtra Krishna Bhakti is quite different from Krishna Bhakti in North India which is different from Krishna Bhakti in Tamil Nadu different from Krishna Bhakti in Bengal so the local variation has always been there and it is just necessary for people to feel at home in some spiritual practices so the fluidity if you see from one perspective Sri Prabhupada himself was extraordinarily fluid if he hadn’t been he couldn’t even have come to America because the conservative culture said that Sanyasi should not cross the ocean Prabhupada not only came to America as a Sanyasi he performed marriages as a Sanyasi he he gave Ramana Diksha to women he did many things which are first of all just giving Diksha to people who were not a part of Arya Varta outside Varanasi that itself is radical so then after that what has happened is that there are three broad schools of thought now that is Prabhupada did some changes but then Prabhupada gave a standard in his books so the idea is what Prabhupada gave in his books was a standard and now that his culture has become stabilized so we should go back to the standard that he gave in his books the adjustment that he gave for the time and place circumstances that’s one school of thought we could say that is extreme conservative the second is that as Prabhupada was an Acharya he could do adjustments so therefore we should stick only to the adjustments he has done and nothing more a third is Prabhupada did adjustments and he taught us that adjustments are essential for making Krishna Bhakti vital and we should also in a mode of being faithful to Prabhupada make adjustments according to time and place circumstances this we could say is the liberal understanding so now there are leaders in our movement who all feel strongly about all these three positions so to a large extent it depends on on where within the spectrum of Krishna Bhakti one’s inspiration comes from see within Krishna Bhakti also there are there can be multiple values one value could be say fair mindedness sensitivity there is one set of values another set of values could be conformity preservation sense of belonging to a group group identity and conformity all these are a part of Bhakti so what happens with the liberal, with the conservatives their focus is on they value say group identity conformity, preservation they feel this is the most important whereas those who are on the liberal side they feel yes in the tradition that we have to be fair to everyone we have to be sensitive to everyone so they value fair mindedness and sensitivity more so with all four we can say they are devotional values only they are all compatible with devotional values but some people consider these values more important others consider these values more important some people feel we have to be fair minded, we have to be sensitive people are coming from very different culture and they have different conceptions, we have to be sensitive to the way they feel so those who focus on this the idea of being fair minded and sensitive they tend to become liberal those who focus more on group identity and conformity they tend to be conservative so now whether we like it or not a tradition that does not have fluidity in it that tradition sooner or later simply becomes a relic in a museum it just cannot continue so for it to continue there has to be fluidity but unfortunately there are some people who also feel that we are not made them popular so even if not many people come still we are being pure so it’s a matter of that some people no matter whatever arguments are presented they will just filter it through their perspective and other things will be neglected so therefore what needs to be done is that there will be devotees who are inspired to share Krishna Bhakti in a way which they feel will be relevant and appealing to their audiences and in whatever way is practical in their situation they have to do that the problem comes when rather than doing what it takes to attract people to Krishna we spend time in criticizing each other if actually we do some adjustments but maybe do them we could say somewhat below the radar not make a big splash about them just do whatever adjustments are required and help people to become devotees or help people to come raise their consciousness come closer to Krishna and once there is some vibrant example of devotional results coming as a result of some adjustments then the hostility will go down so in a sense it is that in some cases talking just doesn’t help talking only makes things worse so it leads only to arguments sometimes only actions is what helps but we have to do actions in a way that doesn’t provoke others too much it’s not easy but basically fluidity is essential and there is of course the fear that fluidity will lead to dilution and it is a valued fear but then yesterday I was speaking that we have the fear that we may relativize the absolute but instead of that we can go to the other extreme and we can absolutize the relative and that is also unhealthy thing so if somebody can actually do whatever adjustments are required and manifest the result of people with raised consciousness people who have become devotees then that action, that fruit will actually help people help remove the animosity that is there in the debate to that living example that is seen that will settle the verdict much more persuasively than any amount of arguments thank you