Is the idea of focusing on material life instead of spiritual life a deviation from Prabhupadas teachings?

Transcript

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Question from Stuka Krishna Prabhu. Nowhere in Sri Prabhupada’s books does he mention about balancing between material and spiritual life and focusing on moral material life at some time. This question is based on an earlier answer that I had given about how to avoid blaming our spiritual life for not being competitive or successful enough in material life.
This question continues. Prabhupada said that based on our destiny we get happiness and distress that is fixed and we should always perform devotional service consistently. So you are saying that we can postpone our spiritual life.
This seems to be more like the teachings of other spiritual teachers like Ramdev Baba or Ravi Shankar who are more on the mental or intellectual platform not on the pure spiritual platform given by Srila Prabhupada. Prabhupada said that he is giving the jewels and even if number of students for PhD are less or that the number of people are ready to purchase the jewels are less still he focused on giving that the highest message for everyone. So you seem to be teaching something different from what Srila Prabhupada has taught.
That’s why I am confused. Answer In the Bhagavad Gita in the third chapter Krishna tells don’t disturb the minds of others. Prabhupada translated don’t disturb the minds.
Now in the Sanskrit it is na buddhi vedam. That means don’t pierce the intelligence of others. That means people have certain conceptions based on their intelligence.
Don’t shatter those conceptions. That they are they are ignorant they are attached but still engage them accordingly according to their situation in all their work and the wise person engages people accordingly. So one of the attractive things about the processes offered in the Vedic culture is that they don’t offer a one zero sort of system as say offered in the Abrahamic religions.
You accept Jesus and you are saved. You don’t accept Jesus and you are going to go to hell. Of course within the Abrahamic religions also there are there are various levels of which people practice but the point is that in the Vedic culture there is accommodation.
If you cannot worship Krishna you can worship devatas. If you cannot worship Satyoguna you can worship Rajoguna. If you can’t worship Rajoguna you can worship Tamoguna.
So now Krishna himself nowhere does he directly reject the system. He shows logically and philosophically how this system culminates in Parabhakti and that is what he recommends in conclusion. So give up all variety and just surrender to me.
That is the highest. So that means there is something which is taught of in the highest and for the sake of the highest the lower things can be given up but at the same time the lower things are not rejected as as wrong. It’s just that they don’t take us to the highest destination.
Krishna tells Arjuna that you are not the body you are the soul and don’t lament for bodily loss but then that same Krishna when Abhimanyu has been killed and Arjuna is grief struck, Arjuna is devastated. Krishna does not spout philosophy at that time. Krishna exhibits sensitivity in terms of so in a very gentle considerate and mature way getting Arjuna back to the path of duty.
So there is a time for education and there is a time for commiseration. Commiseration means being sympathetic in terms of emotions, being sensitive and sympathetic in terms of emotions. Now we see that there is a standard but not everybody can come to the standard.
So Srila Prabhupada himself did not recommend divorce. In fact he was strongly against it but when some devotees, some of his disciples just couldn’t get along and they said that that’s what they wanted to do. Now Prabhupada did not stop them at that time.
So we see even during Srila Prabhupada’s times there were many devotees who were in leading positions in the movement and that afterwards they felt that they cannot and they cannot practice at that level. At one time they were they were leaders of temple brotherhood and they were GBCs and then they afterwards they were living separately practicing their own spiritual life and and doing some small preaching but not really connected in the community what to speak of being leaders of the community and I wouldn’t like to mention names over here but there are many devotees like that if we read Lila Amrit who were in the forefront of the movement in the beginning and later on they were not so much in the forefront but Prabhupada still kept showing his affection on them. Now some of them had some faults others did not have faults but just they didn’t they felt that they cannot practice at that high level.
So now in principle we can say that the number of students who come for PhD will be less but if somebody comes for PhD and then find that I cannot do the PhD what are we going to do? Are we just going to throw them out of the university? If somebody is not going to have the capacity to become jewel like right now are you going to say that you are not a jewel so get lost. There is a connection that is established and that connection has to be maintained. So people are people cannot change overnight and everybody will have to practice bhakti at a level that they are comfortable.
Now comfortable doesn’t mean complacent comfortable simply means that where they can practice it sustainably. So if they are not at that level then there will be like a rocket which moves up and then it falls back on the ground it’s like a shooting comet doesn’t last for long. So now at what level a person can practice bhakti that will vary from person to person and as far as I want to speak of an example of balancing between material and spiritual life Vishwa Upanishad itself says that one needs knowledge of how to move towards knowledge and knowledge of spiritual life and knowledge of material life.
Prabhupada gives an elaborate purport over there where he talks about the sages have given a balanced program for one’s growth in one’s for living in this world so that one can live harmoniously and gradually become disentangled from this world. So the whole purport is about balance and if we talk about balance the whole system of an ashram is after brahmacharya there is grahastha ashram there is obviously an increase in one’s material life and that is natural that is in many ways essential otherwise one will not be able to execute the responsibilities of grahastha ashram properly and Prabhupada’s example himself is there. Prabhupada in 1922 he was given the instruction why don’t you preach lord jayaraja’s message all over the world so what happened Prabhupada did not directly do that till 1965.
Now of course he had some other plan he did not Prabhupada said that we cannot reject the spiritual master’s instruction but we can suspend it. Suspend it means that because of certain circumstances we may not be able to do this instruction so we can do it later and the Giriraj Maharaj himself writes about this and is watering the seed where Prabhupada told Giriraj Maharaj should write and Giriraj Maharaj started he wanted to write but then he was in Mumbai at that time and Mumbai the devotees were organizing a big pandal program and a lot of programs there so they had a lot of managerial services, fundraising, publicity services and he couldn’t write and Prabhupada met him afterwards and asked him so are you writing he said no Prabhupada was unhappy but when they explained how there was this urgent service and how the temple leaders had asked him to do the service he said yes that is okay then Prabhupada gave his own example and said this point that we may not execute the instruction we may not be if you are not able to execute the instruction still it should be there in the mind you can suspend it for the time being so and do it later but you should not reject the instruction so Prabhupada himself he had he had a vision that he could earn money and contribute to spiritual master’s mission and some of that didn’t work out but the point is Prabhupada did not take up his spiritual master’s instruction directly when he got in 1922 even when Bhaktisanta Thakur before departing gave some instruction Prabhupada did not take it directly the circumstances were not unequal and now when I said that we may be able to practice means there may be more material life and less spiritual life at certain times in our life that does not mean that the basic standards are to be compromised that does not mean that one doesn’t follow one’s initiation vows that means that one may have to choose certain circumstances where one may not have as much association one may not be able to do as much active service as one might have been doing earlier and this happens anywhere in the natural course of action when a person is in the past when there were the four varanas when a person is a brahmachari at that time the level of activity and contribution that a person could do that was in that level a person does not do when the person becomes a grahastha so there is a clear increase in material life at that time and further if we see the whole system is progressive progressive means that people according to time and place circumstances will practice spiritual life at different levels even now there are many devotees who may want to practice spiritual life very seriously but the sheer demands of profession are so much that sometimes they have to spend eight hours ten hours twelve hours fourteen hours just at work and then even that we don’t have time for the family what to speak of doing any extra services and services in the temple and things like that so in such situations some devotees may feel that maybe I can go to the west I can go abroad somewhere and there I can earn faster and then afterwards after I have earned more and then I have got some financial security then I can take a low paying job and a low demand job even if it pays less and then I can focus more on the spiritual life and that is healthy planning the not only is it not wrong it’s actually intelligent it shows that one wants to become serious about one’s spiritual life and one is proactively thinking about how to do that so the principle of dynamism in how one keeps moving towards Krishna that is very important so we one cannot have a one-size-fit-all formula for everyone yes there are basic practices of bhakti there are initiation vows which are fine but apart from that every devotee will practice according to one’s own level and if some devotees are no longer comfortable practicing at a particular level if they’re becoming resentful towards bhakti because of that they’re becoming resentful towards Krishna because of that then there are three levels in dealing with it first is that whatever is the cause of resentment whatever the cause of the feeling of discomfort we address that there are at a philosophical level that is addressed and a practical managerial level that is adjusted as it is possible the second possibility is that that devotee relocates in some other situation and tries to continue a similar or same level of service but in a different situation where the discomfort may not be measured and the discomfort is caused because of a lot of material ambitions then what has to be done at that time so we have to recognize that the process of Krishna consciousness is inclusive it is not exclusive exclusive in the sense that DC Prabhupada did not tell George Harrison to renounce the world and become a become a become a monk or become a temple resident now why was that that was because he was in a position where by staying in that position he could reach to a phenomenal number of people and now he tried to do that initially but the result of that was when he would do it when he would be called to do his as a musician and be called to his performances and as a part of Beatles then especially with the solo programs he tried to inspire people to chant Hare Krishna so he would be on the stage we’re supposed to do a musical performance and he would ask people chant Hare Krishna and people were taken aback that’s what not people had come to expect from him and his popularity charts his ratings plummeted down and critics started panning him his fans started bullying him and there is a book about him about his life written by Joshu Green Yogeshwar senior Prabhupada disciple that book is called here comes the sun in that he describes important meeting a defining meeting that George Harrison had with Srila Prabhupada we see that George Harrison immediately after his interaction with Srila Prabhupada there were several songs and devotional devotional media that he produced but then in the later years we see that he did not produce so much devotional media why was that so when he met Srila Prabhupada he had a conversation with him he told Srila Prabhupada that as per your instruction I am trying to share Krishna through music and song but in the process so many people are becoming hostile he says I am feeling that for every one person that I am bringing closer to Krishna 10 people I am sending away from Krishna and he explained what was happening in his professional life and how people were criticizing him and Prabhupada was very sympathetic Prabhupada said you use your intelligence you know share Krishna consciousness in a way that people will become attracted to it so then afterwards George Harrison he did not continue the same level of producing explicit or direct or exclusive devotional content only he would produce the some level of content that people expected from him to produce and occasionally he would mix it with some devotional content also so the point is that Srila Prabhupada in this case did not insist that George Harrison stop producing music just because he’s not able to produce any just because he’s not able to produce devotional music so he has to live a he has a career he has a reputation and he has to do whatever is required for the performance over there and along with that he also brings in Krishna Bhakti so here we see a clear example of somebody trying to spiritualize ones of professional and profession entirely and not working and settling at a lower level so now that is someone who has achieved a higher level of professional success so if someone is at the early stages of a career right now and that person has not achieved that level of success if there is a very strong craving there is a strong desire to go out in material life and achieve success then if a particular person has the Kshatriya passion or a Vaishya passion to to have power to have position or to have wealth if we try to artificially force them to live like Brahmanas they will not be able to live like that they’ll not be able to live like that in fact many times when people with Kshatriya or Vaishya Vaishya mentalities they are forced to live like Brahmanas then within the Brahmanical institution they bring in the Kshatriya and Vaishya material tendencies and then that creates his own set of complexities because of that so Krishna also says that Nigraha Kim Karishati what can depression accomplish Krishna is talking here about how we cannot suppress our own nature and the point is that there is Bhakti if we present Bhakti as everything or nothing you do everything you take the jewel otherwise you cannot even come in the temple I’ll kick you out lock back lock stock barrel everything will be lifted if we have that attitude then we will alienate people from Krishna now we need to recognize that Bhakti is progressive and on the pathway to Krishna there will be different people who will practice at different levels and as far as the Siddhanta is concerned it is clear now we need to love Krishna purely to go back to him and to go out to attain him and for that we have to practice Adana Bhakti seriously but if somebody does not feel so inspired to practice Adana Bhakti then the entire person studies Shastra understands the philosophy and still has material cravings then what is to be done those things if they are suppressed they will come out in a ugly way later so they have to be purified and there are multiple ways for purification so as I gave some as I explained so many examples the process that Srila Prabhupada has presented that Srila Prabhupada represented and presented that is coming from the broad Vedic scriptures and that is a very wide and accommodating process where the highest is cleared but there is abandoned opportunity for people to fit themselves at various levels if they cannot fit at the standard at the level of the highest standards and Prabhupada was also in his own way very accommodating quite often based on the way we may have been introduced initially into Bhakti or the way we may have what kind of books or what kind of picture of Prabhupada was painted before us in our beginning in the beginning we may get one particular conception of Prabhupada and we may think this is all that Prabhupada’s but a pure devotee is much bigger than our conceptions and a pure devotee can accommodate different people at different levels of practice so what we should focus on is how we can best practice Bhakti ourselves and how we can best inspire others to practice Bhakti and we cannot force anyone that you deliberate and then you decide what you want to do so we can present the philosophy to them and naturally if somebody is not practicing at a higher standard they will understand that it is not going to that they are not going to get the same result immediately it may take a longer time for them but the most important thing is that a person may externally following apparently higher standard but if that person is internally resentful and grudging then very little spiritual advancement will be made but if a person is given some scope and then that person does valuable services then not necessarily directly in terms of the direct contributions to Bhakti but if that person gets a respectable position gets a gets a influence in society and then through that influence shares Krishna Bhakti with the world and that is also a very valuable way of valuable contribution and in different situations different devotees may need different circumstances for practicing Bhakti and rather than judgmentally speaking that this is a this is the only way and everything else is a deviation we need to recognize that there is a progression and different devotees will fit themselves at different levels in this progression and gradually move towards Krishna. Thank you.