​How can we connect to people’s emotional concerns without diluting our message?

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so now in this context of celebrations there are some certain areas in which people’s emotions lag so if we get there then we can get a mainstream presence but then in getting there we may have to dilute our own essential message so how do we manage that? yes every tradition has two aspects one is that which connects it with its essence, with the past that is its fidelity fidelity is faithfulness and the other is that which connects the tradition with its surroundings that is flexibility so fidelity connects the tradition with the past flexibility connects the tradition with the present now if the tradition is connected only with the past not with the present then the tradition becomes a museum a museum is something which people come and see but it is not of any practical value it is no longer a living tradition and the bhakti tradition is not meant to be a museum it is meant to be a garden a garden where the bhakti vata which is planted and the fruit of love of god is harvested so we need to connect with the contemporary people also that requires flexibility so this flexibility is very much a part of when you talk about tradition and faithfulness to tradition flexibility is itself a part of our tradition Chaitanya Mahaprabhu he taught pure devotional service but still he did not make an issue to campaign against the past conscious brahmanas who said that Haridasa Shahu cannot enter nirvana Chaitanya Mahaprabhu whenever he was travelling anywhere in the world although he was a devotee still he ate only at the houses of brahmanas when he was staying at the house of when he was in Kashi he was staying at the house of Tapana Vishwa but he would take food at the house of who was the other devotee of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Chandrasekhar Acharya Chandrasekhar Acharya yeah basically ok he was staying at the house of Chandrasekhar Acharya and taking prasad at the house of Tapana Vishwa because Tapana Vishwa was a brahmana Chandrasekhar Acharya was not that was what was expected of people at that time sanyasi was expected to take food at the house of brahmana only Chaitanya Mahaprabhu would not do that now he is himself God but still what Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is demonstrating is that we all have to choose our methods we cannot fight everyone and everything at the same time so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu focused on teaching Gaudiya Vaishnavism on spreading chanting of the holy names and inviting everyone else to chant but the brahmanical orthodoxy that was there he did not challenge it at that time and later on Narottam Das Thakur challenged it when he initiated brahmars also that created a furore but eventually it was accepted so the point is that flexibility means choosing one’s battles that means there are whole world there are hundreds of misconceptions and we cannot battle all the hundreds of misconceptions at the same time so we may decide to choose ok this is the misconception which I am going to fight this is the misconception which I am going to fight so Bhaktivinod Thakur he chose not to speak anything against the British Government in all his writings you won’t find practically any criticism of the British Government now he was aware, he lived at the time when after the 1857 rebellion 1857 independence struggle whatever it was the Britishers very ruthlessly crushed it afterwards so he was there in all the atrocities that occurred and there is a vague mention of it in Swalik’s Jeevani but nothing in detail so why? because at that time his position in the British Government gave him a position by which he could reach to the intellectuals of his time so he chose not to fight the rebellion of the British Government so the point is that these are strategic decisions he was aware that the British Government was doing some damage but he chose not to speak against that so Prabhupada also he chose not to get involved in in say the whole Bakhtisarjan Rakul told he is not getting involved in the independence struggle he said that we don’t have to get involved in that now that is we all have to choose you could have said in principle that an Indian Government might be more favourable for spiritual culture than a British Government which might be true also but the point is he chose, Bakhtisarjan Rakul chose and Prabhupada chose not to fight that battle so flexibility means that understanding that we cannot fight all battles and we choose our battles and choosing our battles means we leave some battles unfought so now at different times in history different battles may be more important to fight the same battle may be more important one time and another time it may be less important Bakhtisarjan Rakul focused on the fact that at least under the British Government we were able to practice Harinam Sankritan freely, he said when the Muslim Government was there we were not able to practice that also so he chose to focus on what was the best most effective battle to fight at that time so we need to recognize that in the Krishna Consciousness Movement individual leaders under the guidance of their superiors while individual leaders need to be given freedom to decide in their situation which battles to fight you know situation in America is very different from the situation in India now what a preacher needs to do in America is very different from what a preacher in India needs to do so if we try to legislate and make everything monochrome now everything everywhere has to be exactly similar it’s not going to work every place the practical realities are very different so now what may be required that may vary there is of course a challenge that in the name of flexibility we may change the essential principles in the name of flexibility the connection with the core may be weakened or may get lost so then there has to be whenever any adaptation is made there has to be some vision of the system of protection we may go to this extent but we will also be doing this by which we stay connected to the core so that inbuilt safety mechanism should be also envisioned while okay we are going to do this to attract people but what are we going to do to connect them further etc so if we have that in plan it’s very difficult to make a very general statement about what will dilute and what will extend in one sense any extension can be called a dilution but it need not be a dilution if that extension helps people to come closer to Krishna so it’s like if we have a pyramid, pyramid at the top is a single point but you go down down it is bigger and bigger concentric surface so we see Krishna also offering a pyramid like this from 12.8 to 12.12 12.8 he says just think of me and live in me absorb your intelligence in me absorb your mind then 12.9 says it can’t do that then practice sadhana you can’t do that then work for me if you can’t do that then give your fruits for some charitable cause like that he goes way down actually so that way Krishna is also offering us that flexibility so as long as the intention is to connect with Krishna and intention is to connect others with Krishna the extent of what all can be done will have to be decided by the local leader at each place so sometimes what may seem entirely unnecessary or unreasonable at one place may be very necessary at another place so the local dynamics play a very important role and we shouldn’t think of faithfulness to tradition means that we we cannot change anything at all in fact just as times change we have to change now for example in Prabhupada’s time no internet was there so now internet is such an important way in which people are being used so for example according to Pew Research Foundation the prominent prominent statistics survey doing institutions especially on religion they found the last around 10 years more than 50% of young people who came to Christianity young people means between the age of 20 to 40 they came through online outreach 50% 50% of young people their preaching happened through online so if we decide we are not going to go online because it’s all maya well there is maya over there but that is where people are searching for it it’s the language of the world people search things over there so originally what happened Buddhism and Jainism they were small religions and they were propagating the local languages Pali and Prakrit so the Brahmins at that time didn’t take it very seriously we are Brahmins and we will speak in Sanskrit and then what happened is they were giving their talks in Sanskrit but the local people wouldn’t understand Sanskrit much and the local people were hearing this Buddhism and Jainism in Pali and Prakrit and they got converted and eventually Buddhists and Jains became so big that Buddhists and Jains wrote books in Sanskrit and from 5th century BCE to 5th century AD if you look at Indian literature more books in Sanskrit are written about Jainism and Buddhism than about Vedic teachings because Buddhists and Jains became big so what happened by not speaking in the language of the people the Brahmins lost the war so we have to speak in the language of the people now language is not just a medium of speaking online outreach is a language so similarly whatever influences people’s emotions that is their language so we may have to enter into that with proper cautions in place but without entering that we may just be left out so I would say that for the local leaders to decide and it’s not at all advisable for one person who is at one place to judge somebody else and criticize other people why are they doing this, why are they doing that no, everywhere there are devotees who are sincere, who want to serve Krishna who want to get people to Krishna and they need to be given the discretion sometimes some people may stretch too far and then some enquiry can be made, some discussion can be had, some expression can be sought but without that flexibility our tradition will become not a living tradition, it will become a museum piece so faithfulness to tradition also means faithfulness to the flexibility of the tradition the tradition itself has an aspect of flexibility and faithfulness to tradition means faithfulness to the flexibility of the tradition also does it answer your question? do we have time or should we stop? stop? one question this is called being a teaching movement we teaching and out teaching to the people in our core we believe in it at the same time we are doing training to graphic literature, scriptures reading certain part of the literature but at the same time we try to teach and instead of out teaching we try to organizing and getting people to Krishna so how it goes?