Is it good to practice bhakti due to our cultural upbringing?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So then people worship their deity, because that’s how the cultural upbringing has been. We hear the stories, and then we feel attracted to certain individuals, and we start worshipping their deities.
Yes, that is the way in which many people do worship their deity, and it is good. We are fortunate if we are brought up in a culture where we learn about the Lord and his activities, and we start taking the inspiration to worship him. There is, for spirituality, there is the cultural aspect, and there is also the philosophical aspect.
So, when we hear the stories, the past tense, that may attract us, but then, if there is not adequate philosophical understanding, then, as we grow older, we think, are these stories really true? Maybe they are all imaginations, they are all just mythology. Many doubts of different kinds will come up. And when those doubts come up, people often don’t have answers.
So, then, we may become skeptical. Or, nowadays, we live in a culture where skepticism may attack us. For example, there was this movie, The King, which basically lampooned religious rituals.
And the whole idea is that people who are spiritually, philosophically uninformed, they will find it difficult to deal with the doubts which come from within or from without. So, if we have cultural upbringing, that is wonderful, but along with that, we also need to get philosophical grounding, cultural upbringing. Now, a plant is there, to bring it up, upbringing is there.
But then, if the ground itself is not fertile, it is not a vegetable, the plant cannot grow for very long. So, we need philosophical grounding to complement our cultural upbringing. So, that philosophical upbringing, if we get proper philosophical grounding, then, we get our questions answered.
And then, our faith becomes strong. So, we don’t just worship because it’s my culture. It’s good to worship because it’s my culture.
But, more than that, we worship because it is the universal longing of the human heart. And that’s why we see in the Krishna Consciousness movement, Krishna Prabhupada started, it is not just people who have come up in culture who are worshipping a deity. There are devotees from various parts of the world and they had no cultural upbringing of any conception of God in any form.
And yet, they have devoted themselves to the deity worship. Why is that? Because of the philosophical understanding. So, for going beyond the insecurity that comes from a non-philosophical faith and for going beyond the sectarianism that can come because this is just my culture, to understand the universality and the global bhakti, we can complement our cultural upbringing with philosophical understanding.
Krishna Prabhupada started ISKCON. On one side, to offer the culture through deity worship, that is the Pancharatra and to also offer the philosophy through the system of self-education, that is the Bhagavad Gita. When both come together, then we can advance very steadily and smoothly and swiftly in our evolution.