How can we rise from cultural bhakti to spiritual bhakti?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So what is the difference between seeing bhakti as a cultural activity and bhakti as a spiritual activity? The primary difference is philosophical understanding.
When we do bhakti as a cultural activity, it is a part of that’s what our parents have done, that’s what people like us do, that’s why we do it. It’s good to do it that way but then when we don’t have philosophical understanding sometimes parents say that oh you should go to temple and bow down to God. Why? Good things will happen to you.
You will get good marks in your exam. And somebody may say that oh I went and bowed down to God and did not get good marks. So what is the use of worshipping God? Or somebody may say that I didn’t go to the temple, still I got good marks.
Even without going to the temple, I got good marks. So what is the use of going to the temple? So without philosophical understanding, the purpose of connecting with God remains very vague and unclear. That’s why our connection with God will stay very unsteady.
So it is, if you consider the cultural practice and the spiritual practice. What will raise us from the cultural to the spiritual is the philosophical. So philosophy doesn’t mean that we have to have intricate understanding of philosophical technicalities.
But it is the basic principles of life if we understand them properly. Then we can move forward steadily towards Krishna. So the more we become philosophically sound, the more it’s not that we give up the cultural but rather our practice of the cultural becomes motivated with a spiritual consciousness, permeated with spiritual consciousness.
And then we become steady. We become strong in our practices. And then we can practice it even if the culture around us is not supportive.
Even if the culture is hostile, still we practice it. Because we are not just doing it to conform with some standards. We are actually doing it to respond to our deepest calling.
To our deepest aspiration of the heart. Thank you. Hare Krishna.