How should we preach – gently or forcefully?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so some people advocate forceful preaching some people advocate gentle preaching we can say that there are different different people who have different natures and rather than talking about gentle preaching or forceful preaching we have to look at effective preaching now what is it that has effect what is the effect? the effect is going to attract people towards Krishna there may be some people who are attracted to the forceful presentations and there may be some devotees who feel inspired to present forcefully and if that is how they feel inspired that is okay Prabhupada did present at times like that but Prabhupada was also at other times very accumulated at one time he went to a he went to a Akhada, a place where people do bodybuilding and some of you could have said you are wasting your time you are not the body you are the soul why are you wasting your time in so much body exercise that could have been one way but Prabhupada said it is a Hindu lecture he said yes what you are doing is good he said we are teaching we are training people to become Brahmanas and you are becoming Kshatriyas both are needed in society and he says in the Akhada there was a picture of there was a image a deity of Hanuman he says you are doing these pushups or situps your ideal is Hanuman, Hanuman was always chanting the names of Ram so while doing your pushup Hare Ram, Hare Ram, Ram Ram Hare Ram so Prabhupada what was he doing he did tell you are wasting your time on bodily construction he said okay while you are doing bodily exercise try to spiritualise it so both approaches are valid and the important thing is what has an effect what is effective so quite often if one is very pure one is very advanced one is very elderly Prabhupada was very elderly so he could speak certain things which if you and I speak it may have a counterproductive effect so rather than just talking about how we speak we should look at what is the effect on others of what we speak now if others are becoming attracted to Krishna that’s wonderful so to some extent I would say that sensitive preaching is like you are doing surgery before doing surgery we anesthesia the person with our gentle words, kind conduct we help them to feel comfortable, feel safe and they do surgery cutting preaching is like doing surgery without anesthesia now sometimes that may be necessary if there is a war going on and there are hundreds of soldiers who are wounded and they all need surgery at that time the doctor may not have the time to give anesthesia to everyone then to give surgery then they may just do the surgery without anesthesia but generally that’s an emergency procedure and it really requires an expert surgeon to give surgery without anesthesia now another problem a big problem is that at least there in that situation even if the surgeon is doing surgery without anesthesia at least the patient knows ok I am sick and the surgeon is doing good to me but in our case most people don’t even know that they are sick it’s like somebody comes to a hospital and before anyone somebody starts doing surgery to them hey what is this? so like that somebody is coming new to the program and we start speaking strongly to them it’s like they don’t even know they are sick they are not even hired as a surgeon and we start doing surgery so our intention may be compassionate also but we have to see our Adhikar our level and we have to preach in a way that actually helps people come close to Krishna does it answer your question? correct