​How important is it to have a goshala with a temple?

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Transcript

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How important was it for Sri Prabhupada to have a temple with a Gosala how important in general Okay, see there are two different things here.
One is the temple as an educational centre and the temple as an epicentre for cultural growth or for cultural rejuvenation. So, when initially Srila Prabhupada started a temple, now the temple were often storefronts. They were just some places, in this temple there was earlier a church.
So usually, any place where a community begins, the focus should be on education. Because if there is proper philosophical understanding, then there is stability in the practice. It’s just some pious cultural sentiment that is good, but then that may not be very stable in terms of going on in a committed way.
So Srila Prabhupada’s focus was, if you look at the seven purposes of ISKCON which he started, most of the focus is on education and then how to live according to that education. So the temple’s primary purpose should be that it should provide facility for devotees to come together, hear about Krishna and practice Krishna Bhakti. Now when this is done, then there will be devotees who will have inspiration to do different things.
Some devotees may want to start a Gurukul, some devotees may want to do Food for Life, some devotees may want to do Go-Raksha, have a cow protection program. This is something which the communities will facilitate based on individual initiative. Sometimes the leaders themselves feel that this is important for the community, they may take it up as an initiative.
So broadly speaking, it can happen in three ways. One is, the leader takes it as an initiative and then they make it happen. Second is, some other devotees take it as an initiative and leaders facilitate it.
You can take it as a responsibility for yourself and you can do it. And third is, if some devotees are very inspired, they may do it separately also, near the temple or in that area somewhere. They can have it.
Sometimes some people may want to do it in a very focused or specific way. So broadly speaking, overall in the Bhakti culture, cow protection is important. I would say it’s very important.
At the same time, we cannot really have a sustainable ethos of cow protection without raising people’s consciousness. Now we may start a cow protection program, but if people don’t realize its value, then sometimes taking care of the cows, taking care of them itself can become a big problem afterwards. So what the overall temple does is, that it tries to raise people’s consciousness.
And when people’s consciousness gets raised, then they also become more sympathetic to other Bhakti causes. So rather than judging whether something should be done or not, the idea is, in general, Prabhupada’s mood was, if somebody was inspired to do something, he would encourage them to do that. A team of devotees can come together and implement things.
So it’s not necessary or it’s not practical also that every temple will always be able to have a cow protection program associated with it. Maybe not in the temple, but as the community grows, there can be some farm community close by associated with the temple. I think it is increasingly happening also.
So rather than judging whether how important or difficult for us to say, because Prabhupada, he gave principles, but as far as practices was concerned, Prabhupada was very practical. He basically started. And however it grows, whatever is practical.
Prabhupada made ISKCON, especially every center, he made it to a large extent financially and managerially independent. So that the leaders would have the freedom to grow the center according to their initiative and according to the local time, place, circumstance. Does that address your question?