How can we accommodate those who can’t practice bhakti with high standards?

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so the question is that when this con was entered it was relatively easy to engage people according to whatever the science is when people are living outside at that time they all have their natures and they may not be able to conform exactly to what we in Krishna Consciousness movement are advocating so how can they be engaged in that in a school in a school there is a discussion going on at GDC level how do we define a member of a school how do we define for this 15th anniversary we have so many millions of members so how do we define if we say that only initiated devotees are members that is one way of talking about it but then there are many devotees who are initiated but they are not practicing actively or many devotees may not be initiated but they are very committed so rather than thinking of membership or membership of this con as a rigid clear cut division like one circle so if you are inside the circle you are a member if you are outside the circle you are not a member it’s not like that Ravindra Sarupramu writes in America how they started congregation preaching now for us congregation we go to somebody’s house every week have a program and cultivate them but they didn’t have that model in the west so at that time to become a Hare Krishna devotee means you have to join the temple so he says that when they were preaching in America many Indians would come to the temples but these Indians had come to America for their career and they had no interest in joining the temple very few of them most of them they were not interested so initially whenever these people would come to the temple he said that we would not pay much attention to them they are not going to get serious so they were always looking for new people and here over a period of time he said that we found that although we paid no attention to these Indians week after week month after month they kept coming and then he said that if somebody had asked us if somebody had asked us whether they are members of this con we would have said no but if you had asked them are you followers of this con you would have said yes because they were more connected with this con than any other organization so he said at that time he started dawning on us that there can be people who have no intention of moving into the temple but still they are going to be connected and committed to this con and then the whole model of how such people can be nourished, cultivated, engaged that started coming up and now when I look at ISKCON there are Indians who are practically the prime movers of ISKCON so even after Shri Prabhupada departed in 1979 when survey was done 93% of ISKCON members lived in temples brahmacharis and the pranalsik and the rasis but now more than 93% of people are living outside temples so the demographics have changed drastically and we do not have the same model anymore so currently the understanding of ISKCON membership is not as one line inside of which all are members and outside of which all are non-members it is rather a set of concentric circles and different people will be connected with Krishna in different ways so the main movement that Shri Prabhupada started that will focus directly on spiritual outreach but along with that there are many other people who want to practice bhakti at their own level they want to do something for Krishna at their level and they can be facilitated they can be engaged so there may be people who have a lot of interest in social service and if they can do that social service in connection with Krishna we are not to say that you cannot do social service we have to facilitate that so this is going to be the growth of the Krishna community at this moment Shri Prabhupada also started it in such a way that we do not want things to be centralized too much some amount of centralization is required for the smooth conduct of the organization but Shri Prabhupada said that too much centralization will choke the community at one time the devotees in the early days that is 70-71 the devotees said that we will have centralized financial management of all the temples all the temples whatever funds they get let them all come to a central body and then depending on what project the temples are doing that body will allocate funds and GDC made that decision and Prabhupada came to know and Prabhupada was so upset he sent a letter to all the temple presidents saying that I have suspended GDC and he said till future integration you take instruction only from me don’t follow anything that GDC does and Prabhupada said that centralization will kill devotion he said the purpose of organization is to inspire devotion so don’t centralize so Prabhupada kept each temple like a nuclear center each center if the temple leaders have vision they can develop and by that when they develop like that they can create customized models of bhakti according to what is needed for the time and place so rather than thinking of what ISKCON should do or what ISKCON can do it is better that we do at our level according to our understanding of the time and place we can consult some senior devotees and do what we can so they said that if you have to work in an organization lead or follow or get out of it if we have the capacity if we have some inspiration, we have some vision if we try to get others, you should do this, you should do this it doesn’t work, because people work according to their individual inspiration so if somebody is leading if we feel inspired by their initiative, we join them but if we have a particular vision of how we can practice bhakti, then that initiative is good so Prabhupada writes in the Ishopanishad that every soul has its own initiative mantra phobia he says that whatever initiative we have that initiative should harmonize with the initiative of Krishna so many of the most successful projects that have happened in ISKCON they are often not just in ISKCON, in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition at large they have usually come from the sidelines sidelines means that when Bhaktivinod Thakur he started reviving Gaudiya Vaishnava Bhaktivinod Thakur had not been born in the Gaudiya Vaishnava family Bhaktivinod Thakur had not he was not a traditional caste Brahmin he actually, within the traditional Gaudiya Vaishnava Gaudiya Vaishnava Mathas and all that were there Vamishas were there Bhaktivinod Thakur never had any position so he just created his own audience and he revived Gaudiya Vaishnava similar to Sivaganga Bhopal himself he never had any position in Gaudiya Vaishnava he was at the sidelines and he took up an initiative Bhaktivinod Thakur Bhaktivinod Thakur had built a structure in terms of the vision Bhaktivinod Thakur was more of an intellectual Bhaktivinod Thakur had time to set up an organization Bhaktivinod Thakur started on his own and he built his organization rather than expecting change at the local level he focused on presenting Bhakti at the local level and sometimes if we try to create too much make too much noise about the need for change often the debate over that takes too much energy and nothing tangible happens so if we keep there is definitely a need for accommodating people at different levels so there may be many people who may not be able to chant 16 rounds everyday but still they want to be connected with Krishna they want to do some service to Krishna and they also need to be accommodated it is not that they have to be forced to come to 16 rounds and if they don’t come to 16 rounds we make them feel so guilty that they just want to go away from Krishna no, people will come towards Krishna at their pace and there are two kinds of extremes that may happen that we we feel that everyone should become a pure devotee not just in one lifetime but just in the next few years only but it is not possible for everybody to do that people who practice spirituality at one level we have had very high standards of practice according to certain definitions for some people and then at another level we have had a huge amount of book distribution the book distribution has attracted many people to Krishna but book distribution is like it is like throwing the seeds back now after that the seeds have to be nourished if we don’t do that then the books get distributed but without a conducive environment for people to live according to the books if they think yes what the book teaches makes sense but if I have to live according to it, it is so lofty that I can’t do it so it is like in many places the temples are on hill stations so the temple is on hill station people have to climb up to go to the temple now if the steps are very tall it is very difficult to climb up the steps then does that mean that people who cannot climb up all those steps should not be allowed to go to the temple no there has to be some alternative methods by which people can go to the temple so they may not get the exact same benefit of having done the austerity for taking darshan of the lord but still they get the benefit of taking darshan of the lord so like that we shouldn’t reduce the entrance to ISKCON to only those who can climb up all the steps others can also come, they may not get the same standard but they are on the progressive path they are contributing towards the protection of dharma they are contributing towards the sharing of krishna goswami and they are slowly on the journey towards krishna so it is like we have an express way which is going very fast towards krishna but it is not that those who cannot join the express way we have to push them in the opposite direction isn’t it? that means we become so self righteous that if you can’t practice this, people get alienated people think bhakti is impossible please go away from here we have a central core who are practicing higher standards and moving fast but apart from that there can be other people who are practicing at their level and moving on towards to this mission the problem may come if what they are practicing is made into the standard but that will happen only if the core institution outreach becomes modern but along with ISKCON there are other organizations other sister forums run by devotees which are catering to different kinds of people that is how the circle of krishna consciousness will spread in more and more concentrated circles now that’s my small understanding krishnaji do you want to add something? thank you very much one last question