How we see it 1, We they mentality & other religious typicals, The Monk’s Podcast 102 with Shyamananda Prabhu

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a pleasure and delight to have you so what do you think we should discuss today just something I read on Quora and also I think I like that particular theme when we talk in terms of students studying theology every religion or every religious path is kind of studied, researched or observed on various parameters who is the founder of that particular religion what is the sacred book what are the set of rules and then there are other sundry things which sometimes become more important than even the essence of the message and that is does it divide between us and them like those who follow and those who don’t and then the prospects of following that particular path that is whether you get rewarded with residence in heaven or you are condemned in hell so these are some things which kind of piqued my interest one small thing ISKCON also was seen as a new religious movement and that was very strange because Prabhupada never claimed I am bringing something new his standard answer was I’m trying to remind you what you have forgotten and remain true to that so these are some of the broad subject which maybe we’ll discuss in one setting or we can have two or three parts for that so basically I would put questions for you and then both of us can see where the discussion leads us yes certainly yes please go ahead all right so does ISKCON have a founder in the sense of Buddha is seen as a founder of a religion Muhammad is seen as a founder of a religion and Lord Jesus is seen as a founder of a religion we would say yes and no or we could start with no and yes no in the sense that there the tradition has been from its traditional perspective it is co-eternal with existence from a historical perspective it goes on for thousands of years thousands and thousands of years and if you consider whether we talk about the Bhagavad Gita or the Bhagavatam which are our core books they themselves describe the tradition of Krishna Bhakti which is going back further into history so it is we doesn’t have a founder in that sense now Shri Prabhupada did use the word founder Acharya to describe himself what we could say is that he is he founded a particularly particular to say organised or institutionalised expression of a tradition that goes back to that traces itself back to divinity so we could say that so that’s that would be my answer no and yes what about you all right I am always impressed and that satisfied me intellectually when in many conversations and reports also in lectures Prabhupada would say that religion can never be manufactured by man you would always quote dharmam tu sakshat bhagavat pranitam in as much as an individual cannot enact state laws although to be concerned to be consistent individuals can make state laws in today’s modern democracy we can say something like that but no one individual can say today I don’t feel like following this particular law the laws to be given by the state only from that clear-cut understanding religion means the laws of God dharmam tu sakshat bhagavat pranitam and as you rightly pointed out along with the creation comes the instruction manual along with a manufactured product along with your gadget with your iPhone comes the instruction booklet so that is a Vedic understanding that along with the creation the rules to be observed for our Vedanta Krita Veda Vidya I am the one who has given the Vedanta I have compiled Vedanta and therefore I have to be seen as the maintainer the Tirupartha Pradu Sakshi Nivasa Sharanam Surya I am the shelter giver and the okay Sharanam is the shelter giver what could Nivasam mean somewhere where you rest in or inhabit yeah so it’s not just a shelter giver but also the shelter yeah yeah in that sense so in that sense the follower of Bhagavad Gita would put Krishna as the founder of this understanding of Sanatana Dharma yes that’s true so now you want to put Krishna as the founder then that brings the question then when Prabhupada said he’s the founder Acharya what exactly does that mean then in that sense an Acharya has three broad connotations the simplest level of the basic level Acharya is a Sanskrit teacher they’re always called Acharya of Acharya Sanskrit in the sense many culture which is coded in Sanskrit language somebody who has an ashram somebody who teaches students very basic level second level Acharya is somebody who follows a particular system of Vedic tradition and there are many of such Acharyas there could be many and the founder of Acharya or a Sansthapak Acharya is a very high force where somebody has suggested enacted or emphasised upon following a particular set of codes as long as that institution exists that’s that’s a third understanding of Prabhupada as a founder Acharya is a very very precisely clear and a very important one it’s a very exalted place so he’s not just a teacher he didn’t just teach his followers to chant dance cook or perform litany worship he was not simply somebody who presided over establishment of temples he was someone who kind of translated ancient codes or ancient rules and regulations to fit the modern milieu the modern environment and insisted that this is how things should be done as long as this institution exists that’s why he’s called the preeminent instructing teacher okay should we move on to the next broad-based topic yeah please okay so Iskcon was kind of put in that bracket of a new religious movement till Western scholars intervened and among those who intervened a few names I may be missing out a few Dr. Edward Dimmock then I think Gloss Foster Meyer Francis Clooney and then it was it Edward Dimmock who wrote The Wonder that was India? L. Basham. Basham Basham okay Dr. L. Basham so so these are the scholars who would then tell either American law enforcement authorities that suddenly a group of Americans chanting Hare Krishna in the street is this a cult is this a pea movement is this a show is this a protest what exactly is that? Funnily our Jagannath Rathyatra was described as oh this parade doesn’t involve breaking glasses. So far from knowing that it is a ancient religious rite or a tradition this was how the Western lens was seen Iskcon.
So now now this is a very important topic nowadays so we have Krishna as a founder and his book Gita as the book so my first question or the first point is is the Gita only the book or it is part of the book? Well the Gita itself quotes other books and the Gita doesn’t really say that this is itself the soul book and Gita gives certain truths and I would say that the truths that are given in the Gita are what are important what makes the the book is important because it is conveying truths now of course the tradition will consider the book itself as divine as sacred because it’s considered to be like the manifestation of the divine but there is no exclusivity seen in the teachings of the Gita as far as I can see that it doesn’t claim that it is the soul book you should read nor does it claim that the teachings that are found there are not found anywhere else and that’s why all it has made all other books redundant. What do you think? Yeah to quote one favourite quote of mine from a very exalted Maharashtrian saint Santipukaram. He says in old trusting Marathi that oh people read Gita along with the Bhagavata.
So of course anybody part of Iskcon knows that Gita is Krishna’s teachings and Bhagavata is the various incarnations of Krishna or to put into one line I heard one single devotee saying there is something which Krishna speaks about himself and in some book others speak about Krishna. So Gita Krishna talks about himself and how great he is. Now some may not agree with that.
So the Bhagavata describes other greats telling you how great Krishna is. Okay beautiful. Yeah so Gita, Bhagavata, Kaliti, Patranam.
Read both of them. Akhanda Chintana Vithoma. Vithoma of course is the name of Krishna, Panduranga in Pandharpur.
So all along right from say at least for centuries devotees of Krishna would take the Gita along with the Bhagavata and as you rightly said this is the book because in 700 concise verses it gives you so much but it doesn’t put other books kind of considering them less important or redundant as you rightly said. Yeah another point would be if I consider the Gita’s teachings, the Gita also you could say doesn’t have one teaching. It has multi-level teachings and its teachings also progress from one level to another and if we look at those teachings either through specific technical terms or we look at them from overall conceptual vision.
So technical terms like say Karma Yoga or Bhakti Yoga might be specific Vedic terms but the idea of working with devotion or working in a mood of selfless contribution we could see those concepts themselves are universal. So in that sense the Gita provides a universal framework for living and different texts, different paths, different individuals can fit at various levels within that framework. So in that sense the Gita is an inclusive book not an exclusive book.
Okay. So let’s clarify what I mean by that is exclusive means this is the only way and there is no other way but rather the Gita says is actually mama vartamanu vartante manushyaha partha sarvashyaha that all people are on my path. So rather than saying that only those who follow the teachings of the Gita are on the right path, the Gita says, actually the Gita is describing a path that is inclusive.
Now different people may be at different levels on that path, different people may be going different directions on that path but Krishna says all people are on my path. So in that sense that’s what I meant by it doesn’t exclude anyone, its ambit, its scope includes everyone. That’s how it is inclusive not exclusive.
Alright. So somebody who discovers the Bhagavad Gita or somebody who comes to know about it, reads it, gets affected in a positive way, does the Gita, like today’s people can just reasonably ask that does it divide humanity whether somebody accepts Krishna and worship Krishna or someone who doesn’t do that? This is something which is very striking about the Gita. We could say the Gita has two distinct value systems.
One is the value system based on the modes and another is the value system based on devotion. So based on the modes it talks about people in goodness, passion, ignorance. Now again the nomenclature may be specific but if you understand the description of the nomenclature any thoughtful person will understand that say a person who lives in goodness is going to contribute more to the society and actually going to do greater justice to their own abilities also, live a better life and a person in ignorance is going to live a destructive life.
So that’s one value system where it’s universal and in one sense in the value system analysis based on the modes, the Gita doesn’t focus on divinity. That means irrespective of your conception of the divine, irrespective of one’s attitude towards the divine, there is a behavioural framework for analysis in the Gita and it could from this behavioural perspective we could say that there could be an atheist who might be in goodness in terms of their behaviour and there might be a theist who might be in passion or ignorance. So the Gita in that sense from the perspective of the modes, does not actually divide anyone.
It gives a very objective criteria for again placing everyone at a particular, at the appropriate level in the hierarchy. So before I go ahead maybe you would like to comment something on this then I can talk about the other value system, the devotional value system. You finish on both so that we get a balance between both these Okay, then the devotional value system is where the Gita focusses more on what is being, what is your attitude toward the supreme divinity.
The Gita reveals that divinity to be Krishna and in that divinity, the Gita’s idea is that those who are devoted to the Lord, they are considered to be the most enlightened beings and they are considered to have achieved the summit of the purpose and perfection of life to whatever extent we can become perfect. Now having said that the Gita also has a section in the 12th chapter where it talks specifically about how those who are devoted also have to manifest virtues. So in that sense the framework of the modes and the framework of devotion, for somebody to be considered on top of the framework of devotion, they cannot do that if they are also, they are not manifesting virtues also.
So the two frameworks at the peak of both of them coincides. That means Krishna also says the way to transcend the modes, the best way to transcend the modes is by practising devotion unflinchingly. But now why is this concerned with we and they? Because within the devotional world view, there might be the idea that these are devotees and these are as if they are non-devotees.
A more uncomplimentary term for it would be godly or ungodly, divine and demoniac. There could be different ways of looking at it. But the point is that the Gita doesn’t have, while it uses the, for the broad purpose of analysis, divine and demoniac natures, but the Gita is a part of the Mahabharata and most of the characters in the Mahabharata actually fall, they are not directly explicitly divine nor are they explicitly demoniac.
Some are, but most of them fall in the middle of the spectrum with various shades of black and white. And the Gita does point to that. Rather when it talks about the three modes and how these three modes mix with each other and also talks about how sometimes those who are devoted, may sometimes do wrongful actions and how that is to be seen.
So in that sense, I don’t see a typical V-Day mentality in the Gita. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I just remembered something from a very distant field of economics and politics. First it was the western developed nation, the first world and then the underdeveloped nations and they thought that, well, this is not a very good term to use.
So they started calling them LDCs, the least developed countries. That also was seen as, you know, why put a remark on somebody’s development? So then it was developed and developing nations. So even in dry, rural matters of economics and politics, people don’t like this thing.
So when we say, these are the saints and these are the saints in training, something like that. Devotees and potential devotees. Exactly.
So, yeah, I’m just very happy to see this two value systems. Just see if I can understand it. As you said, one talks about the monks, which act no matter what, whatever you say.
Like somebody can be a professed devotee, quote unquote, putting on the ropes or the clay markings or the neck beads or having chanting beads. At the same time, maybe struggling very hard with the load what you’re passionate about. So I just made a point before we began this recording.
Somebody gets admitted to Harvard Law School, reputedly one of the best law schools. So should we say he has a chance to be tutored in the best law school or after graduation, he will prove to be the best attorney or the best lawyer, so to say. So somebody accepts the Bhagavad Gita, does it mean that he will be the best, like Topal said, my followers will be gentlemen.
So is it understood that just by accepting it, he is bound to be the best gentleman ever or he has a chance of becoming a gentleman. That’s a beautiful report. So there is no, because we see in art, the Bhagavad Gita culminates in Bhakti Yoga and the Bhakti path has been elaborated in the various Bhakti texts and they give a long trajectory for a seeker to become a seer and that involves a significant level of purification.
That’s very nicely put, seeker to seer. So in that sense, we can’t really say that it’s just like accepting or believing something whitewashes a person. It is not that way.
It is the beginning of a journey. So your Harvard example is very good that there is a certain amount of, we could say, fortune getting into that university, that kind of Ivy League institute. Now what the Bhagavad Gita talks about is that although the path of devotion is the highest, it is also, we could say, the most liberal in the sense that it welcomes everyone.
So the only qualification for beginning the path of devotion is the desire. If there is a desire, then one will get the grace and one will start the path. So in that sense, like Harvard opening its doors for anyone to join.
But it is just because anyone can join, doesn’t mean anyone is going to graduate. So the Bhakti path has this. It is very, very, we could say, I want to use the word of non-demanding or accommodating in terms of anyone whom it invites.
But it is also very demanding in terms of who it elevates or who gets elevated. So everybody is invited into the Bhakti path, but they have to pass the tests. They have to actually reject lower desires, get purified, manifest virtue and then they rise to the topmost level.
Any thoughts on this? Yeah, that was very nicely put. I just got this kind of one-liner that invitation is for everyone. Elevation is for those who put in the effort.
That’s beautiful. Yes, that’s nicely put. Everyone is invited, but that doesn’t mean everyone will be elevated.
Yeah. Some people say that the notion of heaven, which is like a nice place. So can we categorically say there is no Veda mentality? Because we do see among current practitioners of Bhakti, the very word term when you use non-devotees.
So is it more of a functional designation rather than a philosophical designation? So I sometimes am not even comfortable with the word non-devotee. Sometimes you go non-practitioner or something like that. But the Veda, although at a functional level, every country or every group will need that.
Say for example, an Indian citizen and whatever be the word you know, illegal immigrant or America, the political word is undocumented citizen or something like that. Undocumented person or whatever. So there has to be some functional designation to convey belonging and non-belonging.
But there’s a difference between that functional designation and a philosophical evaluation or philosophical proclamation. Isn’t it? True. Very true.
What comes to my mind is, have you finished your point? Yeah, I finished it. Yes. That in a hospital, the administration at least has to see the consultants, the ward boys, the nurses, the patients and those who are recovered patients.
Now you can’t say because this hospital loves everybody, we are all one. Based upon the infection, based upon how much bacteria or viruses have infected your body, you will be treated as a high risk patient, low risk patient, ICU patient or a recovered patient or soon to be discharged person. So once you are discharged, you are no longer a patient.
But as you said, for the sake of functionality, that differentiation has to be made, but it is not held against a person that, oh, you are sick, therefore you are condemned or how dare you fall sick. Not in that sense. Interesting.
So there are two things that came to my mind. One is the we-they mentality. When it’s talked about, it is more of a not just, it’s not a moral evaluation, but it’s not just a moral evaluation also.
It’s almost like a matter of privilege. We are the chosen people and maybe you are the condemned people or whatever. So in one sense, everybody is included in the circle of God’s love because everybody is eternally considered to be a loving part of God.
So in that, so the we-they is more of a functional marker of where one may be presently on the spiritual journey. So there is some difference between say spiritual and religious and that spiritual but not religious is a very common way of looking at, of differentiating in the Western world today, in the postmodern mind. But one idea is that every system needs some kind of hierarchy for functioning.
At the same time, there has to be some sense of equality. So when one becomes more religious than spiritual, then the hierarchy, the vision of hierarchy trumps or supersedes or eclipses the vision of equality. This is a Brahmana and I am pure and you are a Shudra and you are filthy, you are untouchable and just stay away from me.
So when the religious vision supersedes the spiritual vision, then the hierarchy overpowers equality. Whereas when the spiritual vision arises above the religious vision, then hierarchy may be seen but equality is what is emphasised. That’s why we have this verse, Vidya avinaya sampanne.
So the person, the Brahmana, the seer is acknowledging for the functional level, this is a Brahmana, this is a Chandala, this is a person who is having this kind of behavioural habit, this is a person having this kind of behavioural habits. But he sees that they are all parts of God. So I think this is a, so there is a Vidya mentality in a functional level.
But if the functional itself becomes the overall vision, then it can lead to an exclusivist mentality. Any thoughts on this? So a practitioner does, yeah, so the practitioner does keep the we or the idea alive in his or her mind but doesn’t allow that to cloud his lens at which he sees the world. Can you put it like that? Yes, true.
Another way I thought is that, there might be, we might, the labels we understand that they are actually super, they are peripheral and ephemeral. Temporarily, it’s not that this person is permanently going to be a Brahmana, this person is permanently going to be a Shudra. Temporarily they are there.
I think the story of the Bharat Maharaj when he becomes Jadbharth, he says, today I am a poor person and you are the king and tomorrow I may be the king and you might be a poor person. Don’t be so proud of, don’t be so carried away by your positions right now. Last point I had is this that, now that you have decided to join any kind of path, there is some bonanza, some gift which is offered and more or less it is in terms of a heavenly atmosphere, heavenly existence after this existence or eternal heaven or whatever.
What is the heaven that Gita promises? If at all it promises anything like that? The Gita’s cosmology is quite sophisticated and there are multiple levels of existence. So, we could say that there is the terrestrial level that is where we are living, then there is subterranean level below us, then there is a celestial level and beyond it all, there is a transcendental level. The Gita’s cosmology is that depending on the kind of actions, the Gita’s cosmology is associated also with the seeker’s consciousness.
So, depending on the consciousness, a person may get elevated to various places within the cosmology. So, and then of course, I think, that’s what would be my first answer. There could be many more but I think you can comment also then at this stage.
I like this very much, the differentiation between heaven. So, there is a subterranean heaven. Well, all the while I was told that subterranean means basically Pluto’s kingdom, all hellish.
But as we read the Bhagavatam, the situation is hellish but the enjoyment is heavenly. For example, in today’s world, there could be a completely drug-ridden, mafia-driven, high-crime area which may offer you profuse gambling, illicit sex or all kinds of buffets, I mean non-veg food items or whatever, music, song, dance. But at the same time, it is one of the worst crime-infested areas of a particular city.
So, this is what came to my mind when I read about the subterranean heavenly planets. People are very angry, cursing each other, fighting at the drop of a hat. But at the same time, some huge level of material sense gratification is offered there.
Then you put it nicely as a terrestrial heavenly planet which may come and may go like Kashmir, Ooty and some of the places in India. There was this poet who saw Kashmir and he says that if at all there is paradise on earth, there it is. Here it is.
Now, the last 30 years, Kashmir has been anything but a paradise with over 85,000 dead. So, in this terrestrial atmosphere, you may have something being paradise or something may not be. Celestial paradise is also kind of time-bound because we hear about the benefits of being born there or keeping a body there.
But also in the Incando, we read about that realm being attacked by equally powerful, same celestial personalities but not the devatas, not the demigods. So, all the three levels of heavens are kind of discounted in the Bhagavad Gita that one may not keep them as the main goal of his or her spiritual path or spiritual pursuit. Rather than that, that fourth one, the transcendental realm of heaven, is it even precise to call it heaven seeing the paltry definition of heaven we see in the other three cases? Yeah, it’s a good point.
Sometimes there is a limitation with respect to the vocabulary. So, I see that Prabhupada in the Juhu temple, he called it as heaven on earth. Now, I asked the project managers why Prabhupada used the word and he said that Prabhupada here in this sense, he went along with the idea that people consider heaven to be a very wonderful place.
So, for new people, spiritual world on the earth is not as attractive as heaven on earth. So, sometimes we may differ to the commonly understood meaning of a word, even when that word has a different sense within the technical or philosophical sense. So, we could call it like, I somehow, I also like this idea that we use the word heaven and then we qualify it.
So, you can call it subterranean heaven, celestial heaven and then we could say transcendental or spiritual heaven. I think in one of the poetry poems of Bhaktivinoda Thakur also, he uses the word heaven as an equivalent for the spiritual world. I’ll have to find that but I’m almost positive about that.
So, as long as we qualify… Any things, one of the quick things which come to your mind about Krishna’s definition of the terrestrial kingdom? Martyaloka is the word he uses. No, no, I’m talking of Krishna’s own kingdom. How does he differentiate it from the mundane conception of heaven? Oh, okay.
The first thing is eternity. In the Bhagavad Gita’s conception, even heaven is not eternal. Heaven is also temporary because even in heaven, although the lifespan is very long, but it is not eternal.
It’s so long that it may seem eternal to us, but it’s not actually eternal, whereas the Krishna’s abode is eternal. So, the spiritual heaven is actually the only eternal and then it’s not only duration, it’s also in terms of constitution or composition. Heaven is also considered a part of the material world, whereas the spiritual world or Krishna’s spiritual heaven is considered beyond the material world.
And because that which is spiritual is eternal, so the two are related. The duration and the duration composition and also if you want to talk about one more thing is disposition, that the residents in heaven still have some desires for, we could say, sensual pleasures, although it is pious sensual pleasures. Bhaktivinoda Thakura used the word religious materialists.
Oh, really? Pious materialists he uses the word, religious materialists he uses it. So, there is a religious materialism, then there is religious materialism. So, the heavens are filled with sensual pleasures within the ambit of religion and the reward for your performance of religion, whereas the spiritual world is more centred with simply pure loving service.
So, duration of existence, the disposition of the residents and the composition of the place itself and the residence. These three are the defining differences I can see. Do you see any other differences? Not to my mind right now.
So, I have one last point or if you want to add something more. No, I am good. Okay.
So, seeing the situation today, 21st century, year 2021, where people are, with the pandemic going on, people are questioning so many things, especially work is undergoing a sea change, recreation is undergoing a sea change. Similarly, I read an article where a church pastor was asking his colleagues a question that are we doing enough to help people in the current pandemic? What he meant was are we offering wisdom which is suitable in today’s times where people are facing a big crunch vis-a-vis resources, time, high stress levels, decline in health levels and especially not finding a purpose in life. So, I would tell my thoughts first and then you can add and summarise everything.
So, I was thinking that there are more calls for being united. For example, only for a temporary purpose, laboratories or private companies united to find a vaccine. There are calls for don’t try to commercialise it, don’t try to use the vaccine as a weapon.
So, we don’t know how much the politicians are actually uniting it for a better cause, but at least the calls are there. So, seeing this situation, we saw that the Gita doesn’t divide people. The Gita doesn’t make a promise of trying to make a comfortable position here itself.
You nicely put these three levels of so-called basis of material sense gratification. How would someone accept the message today or why would somebody accept the message today? I have one or two points. One is that as regards the purpose of life, the Gita teaches that there is a lesson to be learned even within a pandemic.
Is it a curse of God? Is it the wrath of God? Is it? I would say the Gita tells us that this is part of the cosmic plan. It comes in the category of, is it Adiv Gautik misery? Misery is given by other living entities. But when we say the virus is not exactly a living entity, so is it technically Adiv Daivik or Adiv Gautik? What would you say? I have opened Pandora’s box here, I would say.
But I will quickly address a couple of points here. If we don’t go into, in my understanding, these three miseries, they are not necessarily water tight compartments. They are themselves related.
But for analytical framework, we would place them in different categories. So, if we presume that they were a result of just a natural mutation, then they would be Adiv Daivik. But if research discovers that they were due to either human incompetence or human malevolence, that means somebody made them and then they just escaped or somebody made them for the cause, some researchers made them for the cause of, then they would be Adiv Gautik.
And of course, because it’s a disease infecting the body, so then we could call it Adhyatmik. But then I am not sure whether miseries, because generally when misery is caused by the body, misery is coming from the body and the mind. So, I am not sure whether all diseases would be necessarily Adhyatmik alone.
Because we might also want to consider the source from which it is coming. So, I am not sure whether you could categorise it in one way. What are your thoughts? Correct.
I am really happy to see this. For me, it’s a new way of looking at not seeing everything one at a time. So, coming to that question of the Gita explains, Krishna explains in the Gita how this material nature is a very, very, very powerful agency.
Krishna calls this agency his own. Mama Maya is mine. He is not a God who is only interested in hurling thunderbolts or hurling punishments.
So, either he did it or we invented it on our own heads. So, since the Gita heavily emphasises the responsibility of everyone in what happens to their life, do we understand it? Is it the right way to understand? Oh, okay. I would say that we will need a separate session to discuss what is the Gita’s vision of the problem of evil, if you want to go into that direction.
So, is it because of some say original sin or what is the cause? But broadly speaking, the understanding is that ultimately we have to take responsibility. That is the whole mood of Gita. In the Gita, if you consider, Arjuna has to fight a war against his own relatives, against his venerable elders, something he just doesn’t want to do.
But the Gita doesn’t, although the Gita talks about karma, it talks about karma more in terms of dharma. What is the action to be done? The Gita doesn’t go so much into the analysis of why does Arjuna put in the situation where he has to fight this painful war. So, the Gita’s focus is more on the future than on the past.
You are in the situation now, how can you make the best of the situation? So, rather than getting too much into why problems come, there is the understanding of karma, but that is not the focus of the Gita. The Gita’s focus is that, the Gita also says, how karma works is very difficult to understand. So, the whole mood is that focus on acting in a way that you make things better.
And the Gita does categorically acknowledge that we, by choosing responsibly, can create a brighter future. So, if you consider, the conclusion of the Gita is, wherever there is Krishna and Arjuna, there will be victory, there will be opulence, there will be morality, there will be all good things. Now, we could say that why is Arjuna needed over there? Wherever there is Krishna, wherever there is God, all goodness will naturally be there.
Isn’t it? But the Gita includes Arjuna over there because the purpose of the Gita is not just to proclaim God’s position. It is to transform man’s disposition. So, the Gita is very clearly stating that, the Gita’s purpose was to get Arjuna to act responsibly.
And in that sense, even in this pandemic, whatever be the cause of it, which we can try to find with our intelligence as much as possible, more important than that is that if each of us takes responsibility, tries to become spiritually stronger, then we all can be a part of the solution. We all can make things better for ourselves and for our small corner of the world. That’s very beautifully put.
There are people like, you heard of Jane Goodall, she’s a wildlife expert, she’s in her late 80s or something now. And her simple thing was, wouldn’t it be nice to treat animals a little bit more, in a more kinder way? So, now this is coming from somebody who is not professing religion. But the way humanity is making progress in physics, chemistry and biology, there has to be something similar progress in the way we treat other living beings.
And sometimes as we see now, not only for their good, but also for our own good. This is a beautiful redefinition of progress. We often think of progress in terms of our ability to control things.
In the past, we were at the mercy of nature. Whenever the rain wouldn’t come, we would be powerless. But now we have dams and irrigation systems, we are not so much, we have controlled the vagaries of nature, we can say.
But we can talk about progress, not just in terms of how much we can control things, but how we are actually dealing with other beings better. That’s a very thought-provoking definition of progress. So, I have reached the end of my notes, if you would like to summarise.
Yeah, that is beautiful. So, thank you for this very stimulating discussion. I think we got a lot of points which we could discuss further or we could take this discussion.
So, we discussed about the conventional or the common questions that people have about religious traditions. So, and we discussed, I think, four or five questions. First is that, does this have a founder? We could say ultimately it is God, Krishna, who is the founder.
And then specifically, we could have one institutional teacher who is a prominent exemplar of the tradition or that is Prabhupada for our particular movement. Then the second was about, do we have the idea of chosen people? So, we discussed the value system of the modes where there is no kind of partiality or selectivity. It’s completely objectively based on behaviour, even without considering one’s religious or devotional disposition.
And there’s value system based on devotion, where there is the acknowledgement that some people are devotees and some are not. But in a sense, everybody is considered to be having the potential for devotion and then God’s loving embrace, potentially embrace includes everyone. So, like the example of Harvard, so everybody is invited and then everybody gets elevated based on how they apply themselves and learn.
So, it’s both accommodating and demanding. But it is not that just, there is no sense of default moral superiority just because you are an insider and default moral inferiority just because somebody is an outsider. At a functional level, designations are there.
But the idea is, even after one becomes a seeker, there is a long journey to becoming a seer and that has to be acknowledged. Then I also talked about the third question was the conception of heavens and then we talked about subterranean heavens, celestial heavens and then the transcendental. The transcendental is different in terms of disposition, duration and composition.
And then I think the last thing we talked about was the problem of evil, just in a broad sense. So, rather than focussing on what is the source of evil, the Gita’s focus is on what is the cure for evil and the cure for evil is that each of us try to become more responsible and become more spiritual and then we can all become a part of the solution. And then you talked about redefining progress in terms of not control over things but conduct with beings.
Anything else I left out? Anything you want to add, concluding? No, no. Nicely covered everything. Thank you very much.
This is a very stimulating discussion. Thank you. Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna. We meet again. Sure.