How do we balance not repressing ourselves and avoiding things unfavorable to Krishna consciousness

Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, how do we balance the idea of not repressing yourself and at the same time avoiding things that are unfavorable to Krishna Consciousness? And especially, how do we guide this towards this balanced new people? Ultimately, Krishna Consciousness has to be practiced by each individual. And we have to help people find a level at which they can practice comfortably. Comfortably in the sense, not that they go into the comfort zone, but comfortably in the sense of sustainable.
It is… So, when we talk about comfortably practicing Krishna, sustainably practicing Krishna Bhakti, our purpose is that based on that person’s level of experience, level of realization, we have to give them, take one step forward. From where you are, take one step forward. So, one of the offenses to the holy name is not instruct faithless people about the glories of the holy name.
One way to understand that offense could also be that if we instruct people in things which they can’t have faith in, at their level, giving that instruction itself is not healthy. So, there are many aspects of Krishna Consciousness and everything has to be told at the right time. Sometimes, we are not very discreet about what we present when.
Say, suppose some new iPhone comes up and the new iPhone promotion is there. Say, iPhone X or anything after iPhone X is there. Whatever.
So, iPhone X comes up. Now, imagine the promotion or the advertisement, the commercial of the iPhone X is there. First thing they start, $1800.
Will any commercial start with the price? Any promotion of any material starts with the features. Okay, this feel, this lightweight, this feature, this feature, this feature, this feature. And at the end of it, somewhere down, you will see, okay, this is the price.
Now, of course, if somebody else wants to do something else, somebody has bought a phone and they are very proud of the phone and they want to brag about how wealthy they are. They say, you know, this phone is $1800. So, that is simply to brag.
So, similarly, when we are presenting Krishna Consciousness, in any kind of outreach, first we have to tell what is the product and then tell the price. But often, we tell the price first. And we are very proud.
Know this, know this, know this, know this. And people say, okay, no Krishna Consciousness. So, we have to start with the features.
What is it, what is there for them? And when they feel the benefit of Krishna Consciousness, then they will take steps forward. So, broadly speaking, in the initial stages, if the success can be defined at different levels, differently. In the initial stages, people just keep coming for the programs.
That itself is a success. They come once, twice, thrice. That’s a success.
If after that, they get their friends also for a program. I mean, they like it so much that they want to share with others. If they come to the program and want to do some, can I help in any way? They want to do some volunteer work.
That’s another level of success. If they want to follow the, what principles can I follow? Then, we can encourage them to follow in a way that doesn’t disturb their life too much. Because most of us today, our movement itself is mostly a congregation-based movement now.
So, all the devotees are practicing bhakti. They are living in the outer world. So, they have to interact with, and to some extent, integrate with the outer world.
So, what happened, our movement started as almost a temple-based movement. When the movement started, even those were grahasthas were also living in the temple. So, it was a very, very sharp demarcation between those who were devotees and those who were not devotees.
But now, it is various levels of integration are there, not for that kind of demarcation. That’s why, it’s not that people have to necessarily leave the world to come to Krishna. They will be, they will live in the world and through there they will come to Krishna.
So, it’s rather than telling people that you have to reject this or reject that, what you have, you build on that. And as far as repression, this is broadly a big subject. But I have to say that there is, sometimes we separate, this is material, this is spiritual, this is material.
But it’s too broad a classification. So, in material, there is sattva, there is rajas, there is tamas. So, we could say that there is pro-devotional, non-devotional and anti-devotional.
So, the pro-devotional doesn’t have to be given up at all. That can be channeled. The non-devotional, it depends on, the anti-devotional that are there, some things, depending on how much they are ready, those can be regulated or removed as much as possible.
So, it has to be done individually, case by case. And always the stress has to be on connection. Just connect with Krishna.
The idea is that if we start filling our consciousness with Krishna, then other things will automatically go out. If we try, people give those away, it will be difficult for them. Just always focus on trying to connect them with Krishna and they will find out for themselves what best level they can connect and how much they can disconnect from the non-devotional, anti-devotional things.
Okay? Does this answer your question? Thank you. So, was there one last question here somewhere? Okay. So, thank you very much.
Srila Prabhupada ki…