Making bhakti spirituality relevant to today’s social concerns – The Monk’s Podcast 120 with Yogesvara Prabhu

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aspects, any other topics which you would like to raise. It’s always a pleasure to be with you.
Thank you. Today, I thought we could discuss on the topic of Western culture. Now, broadly speaking, in India, at least, in India itself, you can see there are two very rapid, two very widely diverging attitudes.
On one side, there is much of India that is enamoured with the West. On the other side, there is a lot of criticism of the West because the Western culture is eroding Indian values, Indian culture, Indian spirituality. And that rhetoric is also very strongly there within our movement.
In fact, that is one of the, you could say, rallying cries for taking up to spirituality and protecting Indian culture, Indian values, Indian spirituality. So, while both these approaches are there, and ever since I actually started going abroad, I think 2014 was the first year I went abroad. And since then, I’ve been going to, I was going almost, before COVID started, almost eight, nine months a year outside India.
So, I got to observe things which have nuanced my perspectives also. But I thought broadly we would take this topic of how to have a view of Western culture that is both faithful to our tradition. At the same time, it is also, you could say, realistic with respect to today’s world and also compassionate toward those who are in today’s world.
So, that was the background. You can share your thoughts and then you can take it forward from there. Well, I mean, I agree with your introduction.
At the same time, I find myself hesitating to call spirituality Indian or Eastern or Western. I think part of what Prabhupada came to do was to erase those kinds of material distinctions. There’s a risk in bifurcating a culture, bifurcating a progressive civilisation into Eastern or Western, as if the rules or the truths are different depending on where you come from.
And so, the first thing I would say is that I think it’s unfortunate that because of we live in very tense times. I mean, I can’t tell you how much heartache I feel when I read the kind of bitterness and cruelty and violence that just seems to be growing all the time. The reports are just spiralling out of control.
So much anger and hostility, and partisanship. I mean, I’m a New Yorker. I grew up in New York.
And I’ll admit I might have been a little bit sheltered. And my experience is not, you can’t make a universal American experience for growing up in the 1950s, 1960s. There are individual men and women and children who had their own particular experiences.
But at least for me, I remember a time when we used to keep our doors open. I lived in an apartment building. And yeah, people were friends, you know.
And Democrats and Republicans were friends. We’d sit down and have dinner together. Their children would go to the same schools or the same places of worship.
They’d have picnics or whatever. They’d go on vacations. There wasn’t the kind of polarised bitterness and hostility that we’re seeing today.
So things have definitely deteriorated. I mean, Kali Yuga is doing a great job. You know, all of the predictions in Bhagavatam are coming true.
So we want to be sure that we don’t add to the hostilities by ascribing spiritual culture to one ethnic or national background. You know, bhakti, you find bhakti in Islamic Sufism. You find bhakti in the Kabbalah traditions of Judaism.
You know, the notion of devotion to the Supreme Being is not Indian or American. That’s universal. So that’s where we’re going.
That’s where we’re striving for that. You know, just to echo this point, I thought of a provocative title for this talk that is Western culture materialistic and is Indian culture spiritual? So, I mean, many Indians would find that provocative. Right.
So in France, there’s a saying, is your hat white or is that white thing on your head a hat? I mean, look, I don’t think we should call it Western civilisation. You know, it’s not civilised. I mean, you want to call it Western barbarity, you know, Western, you know, tragedy, you know, fine.
Look, you know what I like? I like what Gandhi said about it. Somebody asked him, what do you think of Western civilisation? He said, well, at the time, I thought it was a good idea. Now, I was talking with one senior Prabhupada disciple about this, and he made this very striking point that actually when Prabhupada came to America, probably he experienced the worst of Western culture in one sense that the counterculture period was quite radical.
And of course, we could say as compared to 1960s, things may have gone further south since then. But he said that what would be called as what traditionally held the West together, like America was founded to a significant extent on Protestant values. The original Americans who came were quite Protestant and America is even today considered to be among the Western world’s most religious countries.
Now, we could always define religion in various ways. But what you said about Western culture, I mean, Western civilisation, I think that also is a relatively recent phenomena. Maybe before Freudian revolution or sexual revolution, there was a lot of spirituality even in the mainstream Western society, isn’t it? Well, you know, America was founded by people fleeing religious oppression in England.
And their original initial idea was, let’s find a place of our own where we can build a culture founded on rational thinking, on a sense of the dignity of all life. Of course, the first thing they did was to steal the land away from the Native Americans. So we’re not going to go there.
But the fact of the matter is that that was the initial impetus for America. But I think you have to go back to other routes as well. You know, if you look at the foundations of economic theory, for example, going back to Adam Smith in the 1700s, and then John Stuart Mill in the 1800s, and then John Maynard Keynes moving into the 20th century.
The basis of the economic foundation of what we’re calling Western civilisation was the notion that people make best choices for themselves and that the best system of society, of government, therefore, is one where everyone is employed, everyone has a working vocation, and people can follow their own self-interests so long as they don’t step on anybody’s toes. You know, life is for pleasure and for self-fulfilment and, you know, just regulate it, you know, give it a structure. So the idea of Western civilisation initially was a society based on effective labour and reward and something that allows people to pursue their best interests.
But here’s the problem. If you don’t know who you are, how do you know what your best interests are? So there, along with the, somewhere along the line, this antipathy occurred between what is traditionally called religion and what may be called secular or rational society, and religion was relegated to churches and synagogues and mosques and places of faith, and the structure of society became, at least in America and other Western nations, non-theistic. It needed to be a neutral platform where everyone could express their particular faith.
Now you go to some of the more traditional Middle Eastern nations and that’s not the case. But the idea basically was, let’s create an environment, a Western civilisation as you and I are calling it, where everyone can make their own choices based on their personal preferences as long as they respect the rules. But that was the basic idea.
Along the way, something happened. When you polarise interests like that, eventually they’re going to become in conflict with one another. You know, we often distinguish, for example, between, I guess you might say, personal fulfilment and happiness on the one hand and work and career on the other hand, as though these two things were separate.
You know, but they’re not separate. A contented life is not something that you turn on and off like a faucet, you know. But what we’re calling, what you and I are calling Western civilisation has artificially separated the different sides of life.
That’s fascinating. So, you are not, generally the vision of Western civilisation that is criticised is that there is a lot of ethical degradation. So, you are tracing that ethical degradation more to the separation of religion and rationality by which the intellectual impetus for following ethics was no longer there.
Is that how, I mean, was that your flow of thought? I don’t think it was a sacrifice of ethics. I think ethics has always been part of the consideration in the forming of nations, at least civilised nations as we’re calling them. It was more a sense of how do you create a neutral environment, a level playing field where everyone can pursue their particular interests or faiths and where it’s not a dictatorship that insists that this is how you will believe, this is how you will act.
That was the initial impetus. So, it’s not a question of bad agents, of people necessarily acting out of some malicious intent. It’s the nature of the exercise when you try to separate the interests.
What Prabhupāda did was so revolutionary because his proposition was that you can have a more God-centred culture or civilisation without stepping on people’s toes. That there is a way to create an environment where there’s freedom of flexibility, there’s still freedom of choice, but the government is informed. The government knows how to provide the basic structures that will allow people to pursue their core interests.
Now, that’s where the challenge came in. The notion of core interest, the definition of what it means to be a human being became radically different. It was no longer the kind of pre-modern cultures where an appreciation for the mystery of the universe was universal.
I mean, you can still see it reflected, for example, I know when I first went to India, I was amazed. I would take, this was back in the 1970s, I would take a taxi somewhere. Everybody knew Krishna, everybody knew we’re not these bodies, we’re eternal souls.
There was a basic understanding of certain fundamental truths. All of that got sacrificed along the way when that, I’m going to call it pre-modern notion of the dignity of life, the sanctity of life, the eternality of all beings was sacrificed on the altar of economic progress. I mean, that’s my premise here.
My premise is that what we’re calling Western civilisation is a phenomenon predicated on economic progress. I mean, Marx understood this perfectly. Marx understood that, be careful here, be careful.
As long as you define the fulfilment of a human being as economic progress, then you put the power in the hands of the owners of the means of production, and they will not be able to resist exploiting their workers because that’s human nature. He really, he nailed it. He had other things wrong, you know, and he had this rather utopian view of what humans would be capable of doing if there was a classless society and so on.
That didn’t prove out to be very, very accurate. But, you know, you have to study history. If we’re going to understand how we got to where we are in the world today, you have to study history.
And you and I talked about this last time. It began with the first renaissance, you know, when humankind began turning its eyes toward the greater universe and applying our imagination to understanding from an empiric, rational, logical perspective, how does the universe operate? And then it led to the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment was this intensification of scientific enquiry and the beginnings of technological, you know, evolutions. And with the refinement and the acceleration of technology, now you’ve got stuff, you know.
Science is so convincing because it has technology to create stuff, you know. And that stuff gives you the impression of a more satisfactorily pleasurable life, you know. You’ve got fancy cars, you’ve got washers and dryers, you’ve got electronic equipment, you’ve got all these things.
That’s all thanks to science. What has religion and philosophy ever given us that has improved the fate of mankind? Nothing but heartache and warfare and strife and divisiveness. So, you have to go back to the roots to understand the dilemma that you posed at the beginning of this discussion, you know.
Is, you know, Western civilisation good or bad? So, some of that background is helpful in our discussion. Okay, maybe then I’m just trying to put the pieces together. Maybe I’ll start with, say, from an Indian perspective, because a significant portion of our audience is Indians, either Indians who are based in India or Indians who are based abroad.
So, when we talk about, say, Western culture, one of the biggest matters of concern, or you could say two, three things are related is the breakdown of the family, the loosening of, you could say, sexual restraints, which are all related. And the third is the turning away from God and traditional religious practises. So, and in general, much of this is what is associated Westernisation.
Say, means when Indians think about Western culture, I mean, if we hear a typical class criticising Western culture, that’s what it is centrally about. So, it’s basically the disruption of the family structure, say, these three things. Now, where you are coming from is that maybe we could start with what is, what was positive or good about the Western, the way the Western civilisation emerged, or what were the ideals on which it began? Is that where you’re coming from? Sure.
Yeah. So, that’s where I think you’re coming from, where you’re saying that the idea of a socio-political environment, where people are allowed to pursue their interests. Now, look, don’t condemn, don’t condemn Western civilisation.
That’s a big mistake. That’s a big mistake. You know, that is just to complement this point.
You know, I met a friend in, I met an influential Indian in America. And he is now trying to rediscover Indian spirituality. And he told me his story.
And he said that he was born in a lower caste in India. And he couldn’t even go to schools. He was brilliant at math.
But he was, so his math teacher invited him to his home to have food with him. But because he was from a lower caste, he couldn’t even come to, they came, he came to the house, but he didn’t eat on the same table. They offered him food separately.
And he said, I was always looked down upon, although I was good at math. And then finally, he got a scholarship, he came to America. He was brilliant.
And this was not now with thousands of students from India going to America, 1970s, when it was rare. So, he said, when he came to America, his PhD guide came to receive him at the airport. And he said, I was completely stunned by that.
He says, this is something which is unimaginable in India. And he realised it’s a very different kind of, different kind of operational values. So, so, you know, so that is one thing which is, which was also, you know, I realised this more after I started travelling abroad and actually interacting with people.
So, in terms of, at least in principle, accepting the intrinsic equality of people and respecting their say, intrinsic self-worth. And then, as you said, giving them the freedom to pursue their self-interests. Those are things which are usually not so much in the, in the Indian mind, when you think about Western culture.
Well, you know, I think we need to be cautious here about universalising one person’s experience as if that typifies all experiences. For every one case of someone coming to America and their PhD advisor comes to greet them at the airport, I can give you 10 examples of people who came and immediately they were shunned and left feeling inferior and taken advantage of. We have a godbrother who is a PhD and a brilliant professor out of the Midwest, who’s one of the few Hindu families in his town.
And people treat him there like dirt. He has to leave. It’s so bad for him.
So, we have to be careful about universalising that experience. There are individual pockets and individual histories here. But certainly, we would not have the Krishna consciousness movement if it were not for constitutional safeguards, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly.
You know, these are all legally mandated. And Srila Prabhupada, just months before he passed away, won a critical court case in the New York State Supreme Court with the judge after hearing all the evidence against Krishna consciousness, against ISKCON as a brainwashing cult, rendered his verdict, which was the accusations are false. This is a valid religion with its roots going back thousands of years in India.
And its members have the legal right to practise their faith in America. So, clearly, there are benefits to what we’re calling Western civilisation, and in particular, constitutional republics where human rights are recognised. Now, they’re not always enforced.
I mean, look at the trauma that African Americans have to go through in this country. Black and brown people in this nation live in constant fear. I’m 71 years old next week, and I’m still shocked at how little I understood the depth and scale of the racism and the bias in this country.
I mean, we’re living under a rock somewhere. So, you know, they don’t have it right. It’s not like it’s going well.
But in principle, in principle, we have a system that’s very robust, you know, what we’re calling Western civilisation. What we’re really talking about is the American democratic free market system of government. We’re not talking about all Western civilisations.
That would be an endless conversation. But I think the people you’re referring to who compare India and America, that’s really kind of the essence of the argument here. So, the challenge is that we’re sitting in this ethical and moral no man’s land where we want to give everyone freedom, but doing so means taking the bad with the good.
And we’re just beginning to understand that some other mechanism, some ethical, moral, what you and I would call a spiritual mechanism, needs to be reinforced because, you know, we’re just going to destroy the planet, you know, in the name of equality. Everyone has the right to do whatever they want. Okay, so we’re going to destroy Earth because everyone should have, you know, the freedom to go and do what they want to do.
So, that compass, that moral compass is missing. And that’s, I think, a critical component to what Prabhupada attempted to do. He never envisioned success as everyone walking around in saris and dhotis.
That was not his vision of success. So, you know, that itself is for many a strong statement that Prabhupada didn’t expect, envision success that way. But I think that’s a whole different subject.
But I appreciate this point. So, when you use the word ethical and moral no man’s land, it’s a very striking phrase. So, what you mean that there are values that are accepted, and they are thought also, but how those values are to be actualised in society, there is no map for doing that.
Is that what you mean by the ethical and moral no man’s land? Yeah, what I mean is that, let’s take an obvious example, right? Everyone should have the right to eat whatever food they want to eat, as long as they’re not cannibals. Okay, so that means that you can eat meat if you want to eat meat. Now, that’s been extended to anyone has the right to open up a slaughterhouse, as long as they follow certain regulations.
And what are those regulations? Well, you have to ensure that the meat is not poisonous. Okay, so to do that, people inject hormones, and all kinds of harmful chemicals into their stocks. And so what people are ingesting is just as harmful anyway.
So, now we can begin tracing effect, right? You can’t really have a moral and ethical compass, unless you establish the non-material foundations of consciousness, that life is not the product of matter. This was the brilliance of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s teachings, the Goswami’s teachings, the teachings of the Acharyas, Srila Prabhupada’s foundational message, you are not the body, that is such a revolutionary idea. This one idea, you are not the body, is a key that can transform this world into heaven on earth.
If this one idea were properly understood, if that were properly understood, instead we’re, you know, we’re creating a monster, you know, it’s described in the Gita and the divine and demonic natures, you know, that life is produced of sex, it has, it is nothing but material, there’s nothing but matter in the universe, this physicalistic science thing is so harmful, because it robs people of their spiritual dignity. It says you are nothing but your body, you’re nothing but physics, you’re nothing but particles and wave functions, that’s all you are, it’s horrible, it’s, you know, I try to control myself, because I have a physicist in my family, but, you know, the fact is, it’s so powerful, again, science is so powerful, because it can point to things, look what we did, you know, look what we produced, we understand the workings of subatomic particles, and that electronic watch that you’re wearing, that quartz watch, or the, you know, that digital watch that you’re wearing, whatever, 80% of all the functions there are thanks to our discoveries about the functioning of subatomic particles, and the behaviour of electrons, and so on, your computer, this conversation we’re having right now by Zoom, it’s all thanks to science, what has religion ever produced, right, so that’s the basic argument, so what we have from our tradition, Mahaprabhu, the Goswami, it’s up to the present day, Bhaktivinoda Thakur, and so on, and then more recently, the work of Sariputta, and Bhaktisiddha of Dhammadhamaraj, and the BI, and so on, is this directing our attention into the confluence of these ideas, that there are points of tangency here, that the notion of the eternality of self, the non-material quality of consciousness, that’s not a religious idea, that’s the key right there to the success of Srila Prabhupada’s mission, if we could grasp that, then we can begin applying it in fields of, you know, governance, poverty, environment, hunger, and begin applying this idea to more informed legislative policy making, not at that stage, we don’t have enough people yet, who have examined this so carefully, that they’ve learned to evolve the language that’s needed for demonstrating the contribution that Gaudiya Vaishnavism can make in the larger world, that’s work that still lies ahead of us. So, where you are coming from is that the western, what we call as western culture was formed on certain principles, where people should be given the reasonable freedom, we could say, to pursue their self-interests, and the problem with that is, unless people really know what the self is, they can’t pursue their interests in a way that doesn’t end up betraying or going against the very ideals that they were pursuing.
Very well said. So, then you brought this point that what Prabhupada offered was this wisdom by which we could say that the spiritual aspect of life can, you could say, underlie or spiritual purpose of life can underlie all aspects of life, and that’s how we can have, what are the cherished values of the west, I think one of them is equality, liberty, you could say, these are some of the cherished values, how if they are founded on spiritual wisdom, then all that can be fulfilled. So, that’s what the direction in which you are going.
So, have I broadly, I mean there are a lot of nuances which we discussed also, but are we in, did I summarise reasonably well till now? Yes, as long as we also add that it is not Hindu, it is not Indian, it is not American, these ideas are reflected in the best efforts of Indian governance, American governance, European governance, there’s an intuition there, but because it takes place without that greater spiritual background architecture, an awareness of consciousness as non-material, it always ends up becoming divisive. It’s the American form of democracy versus, you know, Middle Eastern forms of democracy versus, there’ll always be tension and strife and conflict as long as that universal foundation is missing. Now, strides have been made, strides have been made, I mean even since World War II, we have rules of land warfare, we have human rights declarations, we have laws of the sea conventions, you know, we have workplace equality legislations, all this is relatively recent.
So, there are some steps being made to achieve a more equitable playing field for all people, but the dimension of consciousness is still missing. Okay. So, if we consider that a basic feature of any civilised society would be to say, prevent radical injustices, to as I said, provide an equitable playing field for everyone within reasonable limits.
Like you said, you can eat anything, but not cannibalism. There are certain absolute norms, but within that there can be certain, there should be a reasonable amount of freedom. So, generally the idea of, okay, if I understand I am not the body, I am the soul, or that my essence is spiritual, then, two things, in principle we understand that, okay, that will make us less materialistic, less say, less craving for worldly pleasures at all costs.
So, in principle that is understood, but in practise, how would this be translated into any kind of social policy or any kind of guidelines for society? It would be more of a matter of individual assimilation and application rather than state implementation, isn’t it? Well, again, you are asking a very, very broad question. We would need months to explore that in depth. What we can say is that it will require very, very careful study and consideration.
How these principles can be implemented in a way that is effective and meaningful and just, fair, in a secular environment. So, that is the tension there is that we are trying to maintain that ecumenism, you do not want to damage that basic core. I mean, the founding fathers knew what they were doing.
They had a good idea that people are basically selfish and they need rules and regulations to keep them in check. So, you have the Declaration of Independence, you have the Constitution, you have the Bill of Rights, there are these codified documents that are basically meant to do that. But, how to implement it in such a way that it actually achieves that higher spiritual purpose, that is a tough one.
Let us take, for example, the same example, meat-eating. You know, I roll my eyes every time I hear someone say, we need to close down all the slaughterhouse. But, what are you talking about? If you really want to see the Krishna consciousness movement lose its non-profit status, just go about advocating those kinds of ridiculous programmes.
Now, we are really living out our image as a cult. We start talking that kind of fantasy. How is that related with the non-profit status? You are saying we will start being seen as a cult? Yeah, because as soon as we start acting as a cult instead of a dignified religion that is willing to accept that everyone has their own particular, you know, if we start insisting, as my point, this is how it has got to be done.
We are going to close down the slaughterhouses. We are going to shut down all of the abortion clinics. We are going to, you know, you name it.
We are going to insist that everyone starts chanting Hare Krishna. That kind of fanaticism is not going to get us anywhere. But, how to do it? That requires a much more nuanced understanding of what are the issues.
What are the issues behind making, for example, a shift away from animal slaughter to some other thing that will still satisfy meat eaters? You know, there is this thing called, it is not called fake meat, but it is created from meat enzymes. A new field of development in protein, cultivating the proteins in laboratories so that you do not have to slaughter animals. So, that is an interesting question, though.
Is that something that as a devotee I would endorse? I am kind of on the fence about it, but I certainly think there is an advantage to these intermediary steps. You know, excuse me for talking about my mom. As you know, because I have told you before, she passed away this past November, and I still hurt.
I still grieve. I still miss her terribly because she was my best friend, and she was super smart and very funny. One of the last things we did before she died was watch a documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Now, my mom was a big RBG fan. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was one of the more enlightened members of the Supreme Court in the past hundred years, in this documentary said that she had learned two things from her mother. The first thing she said was, my mother taught me never act from anger because that is just going to earn you enemies.
The other thing was, don’t try for big sweeping changes. Try for small incremental changes. Then you can grow it in the future.
Those are wise words right there. Those are very, very important. We need to cool our jets a little bit in Krishna consciousness.
We need to learn how to adjust our expectations so that inroads can be made rationally, realistically, and in such a manner that you can actually maybe earn, well, let’s call it bipartisan support. That means really understanding the issues deeply. What are the economic ramifications of changing the rules of the meat industry? What are the social ramifications? What are the psychological ramifications? What are the medical ramifications? You got to know this stuff inside out.
So, it’s going to take a while. Okay. So, now, just taking, I appreciate this point about being slow and incremental.
I think one of the leaders of Russia after the communism fell, he said that communism should have first been tried in a small area instead of being tried in this vast part of the world, USSR and China, which eventually led to huge amount of disasters. I think it was Boris Yeltsin or Gorbachev who said that. I think the same point with respect to us, our attempts to say implement Krishna consciousness till now, I mean, at the individual level, definitely, I think thousands and thousands of devotees would say that the quality of their lives has improved tremendously by bringing Krishna into their lives.
But at the same time, wherever we have tried to do it at a level of an institutional programme or a community, we have had many learning experiences, some successes. So, what you’re saying, I think it is also the voice of experience. Because in the early years, when we start practising bhakti, we start thinking that we just have the solutions to all problems.
The chant Hare Krishna and be happy or just understand you’re not the body and the soul. But what you’re saying is that, that’s why you said earlier this point that it will take long discussions to decide that the basic understanding of our spirituality, how that will be translated into any kind of social policy or to bring about organisational change. So, just taking this, did I summarise what you’re saying? Well, what you bring to mind is that, you know, we can’t even get our own act together, let alone, you know, reform society.
I’m asked to speak before temple gatherings, Sunday feasts and the youth groups and so on. So, from my own experience, I can tell you that there’s so much, there’s a lot of sadness, there’s a lot of disappointment, there’s a lot of heartbreak out there. Because people have this intuition that Krishna consciousness is right, there’s something good and wonderful here.
But when they try to enact it in their lives, they’re just adrift. And from what I’m told, many people feel that they don’t have good guidance, they don’t have people they can turn to. There’s so much antipathy and bitterness and divisiveness in temple communities.
Now, I don’t want to paint a picture like that, is that that’s all of this kind. I can only talk to the examples that I’ve been invited into the places where I’ve been. I know that there are some extraordinary, wonderful projects like, you know, you’re at Radhanath Swami’s eco village or Chowpatty.
My goodness, things are, you know, or Bhaktivedanta Manor when I was there. Of course, there’s always problems. But there are examples of healthy ISKCON and Krishna conscious projects all over the world.
So I don’t want to paint a picture of doom and gloom. What I’m saying is, we’re in a bit of a dilemma. Because we have global aspirations, and yet a lot of the issues that stand in the way of realising those aspirations are being neglected.
There isn’t enough, I think, effective, I’m going to call it pastoral care, I’m going to call it training to be good human beings. I’m sorry, it sounds like I’m criticising and I try not to, but I’m going to do it anyway. What can I do? You know, I roll my eyes listening to classes sometimes.
I don’t know what people are talking about. I don’t know where their heads are at. You know, the real important issues are being neglected.
So we’ve got a long way to go. We’ve got a long way to go. I thank God for people like Rajvi Hari and his son, Gopinath.
And thank God for my son, Namalika. You know, there are people out there who recognise this, and they’re doing things. There was something called ISKCON 3.0, a series of discussions with ISKCON leaders and others, how we can, what are the issues that need to be addressed? How can we address those issues? And what are the intended outcomes? So, you know, it’s happening.
It’s happening. And what I find myself telling people more and more is, don’t despair. Don’t live with sadness.
And, you know, there’s much goodwill. There’s much good effort. There are people around you who care.
There are support mechanisms that you can refer to. So there’s a lot, but there’s the point is there’s a lot of work to do on the ground floor, you know, because before we get to these lofty aspirations, let’s make sure the foundation is strong. Yes, that’s so true.
You know, when you talked about that lot of work to be done inside our movement, I like the phrase ground floor itself, because at one level, the foundation, if you want to say, the spiritual truths on which we are basing our lives, those foundations are strong. They’re timeless. But how those foundations lead to the superstructure.
I like that metaphor, what you’re putting. Now regarding this point, I feel that whatever little travelling I have done, there are very inspired and dedicated devotees in almost every community. And there are some communities which also have very visionary leadership.
And there are devotees. So I would say that there are many communities also which excel in one particular area of outreach. But whether, you know, it’s excelling in say temple building, excelling in food distribution, excelling in say, youth preaching, excelling in certain areas.
But presenting Krishna consciousness as a holistic programme, where all the needs of devotees are taken care of. And then, you know, we present Krishna consciousness as a viable means for exploring for people who don’t yet want to be committed also. That somebody is in the mainstream society, but they can draw something from Krishna conscious, from our tradition, from the bhakti tradition, to add to address their concerns.
I think that is very much missing. So that is maybe it’s done to some extent at the practical humanitarian level, in terms of food outreach or environment concerns slightly. But the intellectual contribution.
So if I put the intellectual contribution of our movement beyond conversion into the movement, there is not much work done in that. And I feel that other devotees are academically inclined, they are doing something, but sometimes they are hand strung by the limitations of being in the academy also. Yes.
One of the things that I love about talking with you in these podcasts is that we go far and wide. We discuss so many things on so many levels. It’s wonderful.
It’s actually very exhilarating to spend time with you, Chaitanya Charanpalli. So again, I’m grateful to you for inviting me back as often as you do. I’m sorry.
I mean, I appreciate your point, but I’m also sorry that we are having a very broad ranging rather than a, you could say, a focused discussion. But I think maybe we are laying the foundation or laying the groundwork for a series of podcasts on various issues. Instead of having, say, diverse topics, we could go deeper into this flow of thought overall.
Sure. That’s fine. I would love to do that.
Here’s my response to what you just said, though. What Prabhupada created was not one-dimensional or two-dimensional. It was multi-dimensional.
So you have the level of the community, let’s call it fraternity, the community sangha. People come to Krishna consciousness, or they attend a class, they read a book, and they explore it, they examine it. They say, okay, this makes sense to me.
I like this. I like the food. I like the chanting.
The devotees are nice people. The deities are very pretty. Okay, I’ll try this out.
So there’s that kind of, call it a simple level, a level of kinship with Krishna consciousness. So it becomes a kind of a lifestyle. Then there’s the level of its application, you know, Western civilisation, India versus America, and so on.
You know, you can explore it in terms of its place on a world stage, culturally, sociologically. Then there’s, vocationally, people can look at how their lives integrate, how to balance, you know, their material life and their spiritual life, and so on. Then there’s this other dimension which we’ve begun to touch on here, which is, and what interests me, which is, where does this go? If you take this out, if you take this farther out, what would that be like? In other words, it’s good to have a sense of the target.
It’s good to have a sense of what that would look like, so that as you’re planning your itinerary, you know what your destination is, you know where you’re going. So it’s not a matter of, okay, now I’ve accepted Krishna consciousness, now I’m a devotee, now I’m chanting, and then it stops there. It plateaus.
That’s not what it’s meant to be. Prabhupada was constantly pushing us, pushing us, pushing us all the time, all the time, and you have to feel comfortable with that. It’s not an easy thing.
He didn’t come, let me rephrase this, on one level he came to establish something that anyone, Hindu, American, German, Irish, whoever, can have a happy life, a content life, you know, of serving Krishna and following certain basic principles and, you know, coming up to the mode of goodness. If there’s anything that’s consonant between that level of Krishna consciousness and what you and I call in Western culture, is that both are gearing toward the mode of goodness. Western culture, in its finest moment, moves toward that light of the mode of goodness, where there is a common ground of mutual respect for the dignity of life, or at least human life, some sense of need to pay attention to the environment, and so on.
There is some common ground there, but where it goes ultimately, that’s a discussion that’s needed. So, yes, I accept your invitation. Let’s separate this thing into different topics, they’re all worthy of discussion.
So, you know, coming to this, I think the question where we got a little, caught maybe even more in ISKCON concerns was that how do we actually apply the principle that the insight that our consciousness is not material in terms of social, socio-organised, socio-political or socio-cultural organisation. So, let’s keep the specific implementation separately. But in principle, you know, how would that make a difference? In principle, say, you talked earlier about, if a society, if we are going to say rate a society, maybe rate is not the right word, but maybe if a desirable social order is that which provides a basic level, basically a level playing field for everyone.
It may not be ideally, but at least more than what is at present in the world, and what has also been there in most of recorded human history. So, in principle, how would, say, we could say the values of democracy or the values of justice and freedom and equality, how would these values be furthered by a spiritual self-understanding? Let’s focus on principles right now rather than on, say, facts. Great.
Well, in principle, arguably the most tangible contribution that devotees can make to that challenge of, you know, moving humanity forward toward a more civilised place is by becoming spiritual counsellors, mediators, people who are trained to sit with disputants, people who are engaged in whether it’s conceptual battles or armed conflict or legal battles or policy differences, and facilitate the discussion, not taking a position. Now, hear me out on this. This is critically important, really critically important, and it goes to the whole heart of Srila Prabhupada’s movement.
We have our beliefs, we have our truths, but our worship of Krishna, that’s our own internal business. Our role in the world that Prabhupada came to establish was stepping outside the certitude of those convictions long enough to be able to listen to what’s going on between other people and find a way to establish common ground so that there will be fertile environments for introducing what we have to offer. You can’t try to proselytise Bhagavad Gita to someone whose stomach is growling because they’re starving hungry.
You can’t talk about Srila Bhagavatam to people who are at war with their neighbouring countries. You can’t introduce Krishna consciousness in a situation where people are struggling so hard just to put food on the table, to pay their bills. We have to recognise that there is a priority to things.
There’s a sequence to how things can be done. So the answer that I have, the best answer I can give you, your question is that everyone involved in Krishna consciousness should, first of all, get therapy because they should know why are you here, and secondly, they should take mediation training so that we can become the arbiters of a mutually agreeable outcome for others who are in situations of dispute. Why is that important? Because for Prabhupada’s mission to be successful, people have to start asking us, what do you think? I see how effectively you’ve managed to resolve this issue between these people.
You must know something. What do you feel? Now you have permission. Now you’ve earned their trust.
You’ve earned the opportunity to present Krishna consciousness. There’s a difference between shoving it down their throats and people being so impressed by what devotees are capable of doing that they voluntarily ask, what’s your perspective on this? Now we’re making some progress. We get to that point, we’re making some real strides.
Beautiful. So I also felt this constantly that there are some people who, as you said, will be willing and receptive to taking up Krishna consciousness, if you may use it, and become a member of the movement. We take it as a full programme, but the number is not likely to be huge.
So if we want to expand our influence, that means what you’re saying is where people are, we need to show that we can add value to where you are and then it is. So when we are talking about conflict resolution as the example which you’re taking, so this could be based on devotees being in the mode of goodness, broadly speaking, because of the practise of bhakti as well as by some specific training. And then we bring something valuable, something distinctive.
So to the extent we address people’s existing issues, in a way that at one thing they are able to, not that we offer them a solution, but they are able to come to a solution and they recognise that we played a role in doing that. So what is it that makes you tick? How are you able to play that role? Yes. So that’s what will attract.
Absolutely. So now, if I may just play a devil’s advocate over here. In one sense, the world’s problems are endless.
And in Prabhupada, there is that famous discussion between Prabhupada and Bhakti Sadanand Sri Thakur, when India was in the midst of a significant political ferment in 1921 when he first met him. The Indian independence movement was quite, that was one of the peaks, 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. There are three peaks in the Indian independence movement.
And 1940s eventually led to the independence. So the early 1920s, so Bhakti Sadanand Sri Thakur said that Krishna consciousness is the urgency, everything else can wait. And Prabhupada himself, on many occasions, didn’t seem, say too much in favour of humanity and outreach.
In fact, in principle, what you say is right that you cannot teach a hungry person. Hungry person, their hunger has to be taken care of before they will be ready to receive Bhagavad Gita knowledge. But at the same time, once as devotees, we start getting entering into these fields.
Those fields are themselves endless and they’re endlessly complex. And in one sense, problems in the material world are also endless. So it’s very easy to get lost in solving problems at the material level itself.
Yeah, that’s a big mistake. That’s a big mistake. Srila Prabhupada was not against that outreach into the issues of society.
It’s that he had his priorities. He had to establish priorities. So he didn’t want people trying to do those kinds of more sophisticated services prematurely.
If you’re not prepared, you’re just going to fall down and hurt yourself and make things worse. But it’s not at all that he was against us making inroads into those deeper levels of social involvement. But you know, probably there are things that are almost, how to say this, taboo.
There are these subjects that are taboo in this country. One of the subjects that’s taboo is our attitude toward the LGBTQ community. It’s almost a taboo topic.
Another topic that people feel very awkward about is women gurus. Another topic that people are feeling very, very awkward about is abortion. I’ll come right out and say this.
I am pro-life and I am also pro-choice. I do not believe that you get people to change their behaviour by legislating that they must change their behaviour or else they’re going to be thrown in prison or their businesses are going to be blown up. I think that’s the kind of totalitarian government that Krishna consciousness is attempting to dismantle.
You get people to change their ways by offering them compelling arguments, by being compassionate and understanding of their situation, and being flexible. So there are taboo topics here. And some of these taboo topics include a willingness to embrace the Ruth Bader Ginsburg, if you will, incremental change.
As having value. We want sweeping reform. It’s not going to happen.
Incremental change means a willingness to be flexible. I don’t know if I’ve ever given you this example. If I have, I apologise for repeating myself, but I used to have an office in the Empire State Building.
And I was on the 52nd floor. And in a strong wind, we used to actually feel the building move. You’d feel the building swaying.
And someone told me it swayed like a foot and a half or two feet in any direction. That was intentionally built into the architectural plans and the construction materials by the original designers, because they knew at that height, if the steel amalgam that was holding up the building was too rigid, in a strong wind, it would snap and the building would collapse. Societies are like that.
Cultures are like that. If they’re too rigid, they’re going to snap. There has to be a degree of flexibility in order to allow for growth to happen.
And we’re not always willing to acknowledge that, because it means taking intermediary positions that appeal like we’re compromising our own principles. They’re not compromising our principles. They’re steps toward implementing them.
But that takes some maturity, how to do that. You know, this is a very, what shall I say, this is a very, you often take some radical positions. But I, especially with respect to all these topics you discussed, I know politically they are hot potatoes and more than hot potatoes in the West.
Somehow those are not mainstream discussions in India. But maybe we could discuss these separately also. But I think what you said about the point that abortion is not just an ethical issue.
It is also a sociological issue. And it’s the way the polarisation has come about is that if you are pro-choice, then it’s like you hate babies. And if you are pro-life, then it’s like you hate women.
And the reality is much, much more nuanced than that. So, I mean, I am open to having those kind of discussions specifically. But what you, if I understand right, the point you are making is that Prabhupada actually wanted, in the initial stages, he wanted us to ground ourselves into fundamentals.
But eventually, he wanted us to get involved at a deeper level with social issues. So, can you give some examples of Prabhupada actually either exhibiting this kind of nuanced engagement with contemporary issues or any other quotes or anecdotes? The one thing that, I mean, I’ll start if you don’t mind. One thing I found quite eye-opening was reading Prabhupada’s discussion on Darwin.
The unedited discussion in Veda base as compared to what we get in Life Comes From Light or what we get in, what we hear, some sound bites in many of our classes. Actually, in that, it’s a long discussion and Prabhupada is not dismissing evolution entirely. Whenever there is some evidence being presented, Prabhupada is actually making attempts to explain that evidence within the framework of the Vedic worldview.
So, that is one example. And of course, in some ways, trying to nuance our position on evolution is also seen as selling out in some ways. So, that is also a topic.
But are there any other examples you would like to give? Sure. There’s hundreds of examples of how Prabhupada was involved with the affairs of the world. It was every day he was addressing those issues.
In Geneva, I remember a gentleman coming from the International Labour Organisation, which was a division of the United Nations that had its headquarters in Geneva. The ILO was founded after World War II in an effort to create a more equitable workplace environment and to establish proper trade with neighbouring nations. So, the man walked in the door and the first thing that Prabhupada said was, people want the best goods at the best price.
So, why should there not be food trade? I’m thinking, where is this coming from? He didn’t say Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, we surrender to. He’s saying, no, people want the best goods. If this nation can create, if Germany can create, Switzerland can create, why not allow free trade? So, this was long before the kind of tariffs that we’re seeing implemented now where there are these, at least the last administration was trying to establish all kinds of restrictive taxes and so on on goods coming in.
Anyway. So, you’re saying Prabhupada made the statement that people want the best prices? Sure. Look, he was a very practical person.
Prabhupada was always a very practical person. I brought him a book by a palaeontologist named Desmond Morris. I recently read a book called The Naked Ape and in this book, Morris argues that humans are actually nothing but sophisticated animals.
You mentioned that in our earlier podcast. Prabhupada appreciated that point. Yeah, he’s correct.
He’s right. Use that book. He’s very appreciative.
So far as evolution, there’s descriptions of the chronological appearance of species in Bhagavatam. Perfectly conforming with some of the concepts that we have in the Darwinian ideas of the development of species through natural selection and survival of the fittest and so on. Prabhupada’s point was, no, the appearance is the same.
The deeper principle, as you said a moment ago, is that these are housings for souls evolving up the chain until they reach human life. So, he did not dismiss. He said, Prabhupada had no problem with science.
This is such a big mistake. Prabhupada was quite impressed with what science can do. His spiritual master engaged science and technology in ways that had never happened before.
He rode in cars. He wore watches. He sent his disciples to Europe by boats.
He did things. Prabhupada came. He was ready to use everything in Krishna’s service.
He travelled by aeroplane all over the world. You name it. If I may just pause.
There is this principle of yukta-vairagya, which is very much there in our tradition of engaged renunciation. And with respect to practical resources, there is no denying that Prabhupada was very, not only open, but you could say even very progressive or very resourceful in terms of, say, using air travel for travelling or other things like that. But it’s one thing to use the, say, you could say the products of science and technology, but it’s quite another thing to use contemporarily developed intellectual positions.
It seems if we look at, say, books like Dialectic Spiritualism, where Prabhupada is engaging with some philosophers, some western philosophers. Prabhupada doesn’t really go deep into those discussions with those philosophers. That book, I have my problems with that book.
It was set up from the outset as a kind of us and them polemic, where certain portions of philosophers’ ideas were presented to the Prabhupada, usually in an imperfect and incomplete way. And Srila Prabhupada knew that he was being expected to respond with, well, this is what’s wrong with that. This is why the Vedic perspective is better.
Or that part’s okay, but this part is not. It wasn’t undertaken in the form of what you’re asking about, which is the engagement between Krishna consciousness and issues of our day. And was Srila Prabhupada, is that our business? I mean, what you’re asking basically is, is that our business? Did Srila Prabhupada in some way exemplify engagement with the issues of the world on these levels, other than the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita? Am I understanding you correctly? Yes, I’m just trying to, yeah, with Prabhupada exemplify, are there precedents of either Prabhupada doing or encouraging, you can say that detailed nuanced engagement with world issues? The question is sincere, Prabhu, but it’s misplaced, if you’ll excuse me.
Okay, the value, the value of policy and Krishna consciousness is not whether Prabhupada did it. If it were up to only we do things that if Prabhupada did it, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. That his whole purpose, his whole message to us was, now take what I’ve given you and go farther with it.
Now go out there and do something with what I’ve given you to say, what good is it being an American if you can’t come up with some great new ideas? He didn’t want us to be mechanical robots just doing what he did. That’s a big mistake. First of all, in logic, it’s a fallacy, you know, it’s appealed to authority, and it is an imperfect justification for action.
Well, Prabhupada never did it. Prabhupada didn’t do a lot of things. He was focussing on concepts and basics, and you want to judge, you want to limit his mission to just the things that he had the time and the capacity to do? How foolish you are.
You’ve missed the whole point of his mission. The whole point of his mission was to challenge you to go further, and you’re refusing to do it on the pretext, well, Prabhupada never did it. How foolish, shame on you.
I’m not talking about you. I’m saying someone who takes that position, they’re defeating Prabhupada’s mission, they’re not helping him. You know, Prabhu, probably among all the discussions we have had, you are challenging existing conceptions of Krishna Consciousness most in this podcast.
A lot of what we consider the bulwarks of what Krishna Consciousness is, you’re challenging those, and I’m happy to have this discussion, but maybe this is probably the most foundational among. So, what are they going to do? Take away my neck piece? No, not that they’re going to take away. I’m just saying that it’s important that we have this discussion.
So, there is one side which says we have to be faithful to Prabhupada, but what you’re saying is we are faithful, you could say, in spirit of taking Krishna Consciousness to various areas, but just because Prabhupada did not take Krishna Consciousness to those areas, doesn’t mean that we can’t take them there. Of course, if your faithfulness is so fundamental, fundamentalist, so literalist, that your faith is only to do what Prabhupada did, well, okay, that’s your prerogative. Go practise your Krishna Consciousness in that way.
His movement won’t advance like that, but God bless you. Go and do what makes you comfortable. I think those who have a deeper appreciation for Prabhupada’s mission will have a different position.
Now, this is where if, say, I may address concerns. There is one senior devotee in our movement who’s writing a book on abortion, and sound arguments, but it is more like a, it’s a morally open and shut case. So, now, when I try to present, at one time I was thinking of writing a whole book on this topic, that was about 10 years ago, then I realised how it’s not just a logical issue, it’s a sociological issue, and without addressing the various other aspects, just like giving out a moral edict.
In one way, in some ways, when some devotee has an idea, write an article or write a book, it is in one sense their idea, like find more intellectual justification for the party line. If I may put it in slightly provocative terms, but sometimes what happens is when we start going deeper into a discussion, then we start realising that what we thought was like a certain truth, this is what we have to arrive at, maybe that truth is not that certain, not just from an ethical perspective, but even from the perspective of what should be the stand of our tradition, what would be the stand based on our tradition. So, this lack of certitude, or rather in one sense, deeper intellectual examination of issues, in one sense doesn’t lead to greater certainty, maybe it leads to greater ambiguity, uncertainty.
Now, in some ways, that’s good. Okay, that’s good. That’s the point I was going to make.
In some people will immediately say this is just, you have become contaminated by the ideas of demoniac mundane scholars or whatever. So, some people will see it as a compromise, but others would see it as more as you could say humility, that the world is not as simple as we thought it was. And we need humility in how we can be of any service to the world with the resources of our tradition.
So, if I understand you, you consider uncertainty not a sign of uncertainty about certain issues, not as a sign of compromise or lack of faithfulness in the tradition. Uncertainty is healthy. You know, what Prabhupada brought was not religious dogmatic absolutism carved in tablets and handed down from a mountain.
What Prabhupada presented was a tool of observation and analysis by which we can filter all of these experiences of our life and the world around us through the lens of the spiritual journey of the soul to God. Wow, this is amazing. And the notion that there’s one right way to interpret that only one way.
Look, I’m willing to admit that there are cultural differences. There may be places where rape, incest, abuse are considered, you know, just the world going about its business. And if somebody rapes your mother, or abuses your sister, or rapes your daughter, well, that’s the culture.
And, you know, that’s their karma. And yes, she may be my mother, she may be my sister, she may be my wife, but that’s their karma. And they should have the baby and live out their karmic reaction.
And if they want to live like that, you know, okay, I find it heinous. I find it despicable myself. But there may be people who want to think like that.
And you know what, maybe their reaction is in their next life, they’ll be born as a woman, as somebody’s mother, wife, sister, daughter, and they’ll get raped, and they’ll get murdered, and then let them see how they feel about it. For myself, I cannot accept this kind of, I will call it stupid. I will call it prejudicial, short-sighted, and ultimately cruel misrepresentation of Prabhupada’s teachings as somehow, you know, the true path to God.
I find that absolutely outrageous. And I would encourage people who do not agree with such positions, if that’s what’s prominent in their particular community, leave the community. I’ll go out on a limb, and I’ll say that rather than living in duplicity, and dishonesty, that you feel one way, but what you see around you is going the other way, why live like that? Move away.
Practise your Krishna consciousness in an environment that’s healthy for you. Why should you be obliged to go along with something you don’t agree with? I never heard Prabhupada ever espouse that position, you know, chant Hare Krishna or die. What is that? You know, it’s tragic, Prabhu, that we’re 65 years into our growth as a society, and as far as I’m concerned, we’re living in the dark ages, about very basic issues that should have been established a long, long time ago.
Now, I know they’re complicated. I’m not being, you know, big-headed about it and saying that there’s only one way to see this. I know that there’s many ways to see it.
But I believe that there is also a level-headed, respectful way of allowing room for diversity of opinion, diversity of understandings, that should be possible without ostracising someone. If someone has a different point of view, I’m not talking about different from my point of view. I’m not talking about everyone should believe the way I do.
I’m saying if someone has a different point of view from mine, okay, I’ve been in environments where I was invited to be part of a committee, for example, an executive committee, and there were things being said, I said, oh god, this is so stupid. I can’t stand this. This is so, you know, people with blinders on, they’re just unwilling to, so I resigned.
I tended my resignation. I stepped away. I didn’t want to create waves.
I don’t want to be, you know, someone to rock the boat. Let them do what they want to do, but I don’t want to be a part of it. I left Temple Life for that same reason.
I’m not proud of leaving Temple Life, but I am proud of having had the common sense to know that if I stay here, I’m going to die. If I continue on in this environment, I’m going to shrivel up and just, you know, blow away in the next three years. In order to be a good, better devotee, I have to step away from this environment.
I’ve got to put myself in a healthier place where I can start exercising my Krishna consciousness as I know my spiritual master wanted me to, without these moral, ethical, and spiritual conundrum constantly causing me anxiety and stress and tension, and I’m going to lose all faith. Stay in that kind of an unhealthy environment and just be prepared to bloop. We used to call it blooping.
Just be prepared to go away permanently. Well, don’t risk that. That’s tragic on a grand scale.
Thank you for sharing that so candidly, Krum. So if I understand right, you started with things like say, rape, incest and abuse. So I thought what you’re talking about is moral relativism, because you said there are cultural differences.
So what you are trying to say at one level is that we don’t endorse moral relativism entirely, but it is better to have an environment where there is diversity, rather than to live in an environment where there is moral absolutism. And there, say, you could say our bhakti and our even humanity may shrivel, because we constantly have to accept things that we find unacceptable. Was that the link between your points? Yeah, I mean, again, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, incremental change.
I volunteered to write a code of ethical behaviour for ISKCON, which is up before the GBC, and I hope they approve it. But in order to get it approved, I had to change almost every one of the articles that I had written, in large measure, because I was told, you know, this is too much, you’re asking for too much, cut back on that. Don’t say that we agree as a society to respect everyone, and embrace everyone regardless of their sexual orientation, sexual preference, sexuality, sex, gender.
You can’t say all of that, because there are places, and this is a legitimate concern, certain countries in Africa and elsewhere, where homosexuality is illegal. You can be prosecuted for being a member of the LGBTQ community. Okay, well, that’s one concern.
The other concern is places where, culturally, it’s not acceptable. All right, I didn’t like it, but I accept it. Okay, let’s get something established.
Let’s have some code of ethical behaviour. And then, over the course of time, we can make amendments, we can make improvements. Maybe us first generation devotees have to all die out, first of all, before it happens, and the next generations will have a more enlightened, informed position on these issues.
So, I know that things take time. It’s hard for me, maybe because I’m getting older, and I want to see things happen before I go. But I have faith in Paolo Paz’s movement.
I have faith in what he did. I believe that, inherent in what he presented us, there is a self-correcting mechanism. No matter how badly we try to mess it up, eventually, it will rectify.
We’ll find that middle road, that solid path, and eventually, we’ll get to where we need to be. So, this topic of ethical behaviour for our movement or for some kind of guidelines for devotees, this I’ve seen that there is a lot of absolutism that is assumed to be the default conclusion of scriptures, whereas actually, it can be very nuanced. So, I think this would be very, very helpful if we have something like this.
And I would say maybe this is also an example of a more nuanced engagement with current issues that are in the outside world or also they are confronted by devotees who are in the world today, who are functioning in the world. And just tracing back maybe one or two points and we’ll conclude, I will continue for the next session. So, when you made the point that Prabhupada, there are some devotees who may think that following Prabhupada faithfully means only doing the things that he did and not doing anything else.
So, in contrast with, we see a need, that we see a contemporary social issue and then we develop the resources to deal with that issue in an appropriately sophisticated or nuanced way. So, maybe we can look back in the tradition because in one sense, Prabhupada was with us for a very short time and Prabhupada was basically laying the groundwork for the movement. For example, during Prabhupada’s time, there were no Zoom talks.
There were no technology available like that. So, Prabhupada laid the groundwork and we’ll have to be maybe intellectually improvising, not just technologically improvising. So, maybe Bhaktivinoda Thakur could be an example of a more nuanced engagement because he doesn’t, he’s not that dismissive about various schools of thought like in Tattvavivek and some of his other books.
He actually engages with western schools of thought at least to some extent. So, I’m just saying that going beyond what Prabhupada has done, are there any or say engaging in a nuanced way with social issues, are there any examples of precedents that we could cite for that purpose? Because if we go before Bhaktivinoda Thakur, I think we are practically in the mediaeval times and we don’t have much record of devotees writings or engagement on social issues at all. We have only their devotional writings being preserved.
So, any thoughts on this, Prabhu? I’m not quite sure I understand the question. Okay. So, rephrase it.
Yeah, like a more intellectually nuanced engagement with contemporary issues. You said that Prabhupada didn’t necessarily do that, model that in a very detailed way. So, Prabhupada, you gave examples of Prabhupada giving surprising responses which were contrary to the, you could say the mainstream narrative of what Prabhupada’s position would be with respect to say the, with some certain issues like Darwinian takes on nature.
But for that kind of engagement, are there any precedents in our tradition or are there any, is there any foundation for doing that without that being seen as needing to compromise and relativism? Right. Look, Prabhupada’s concern was that we were going to go too far with this. You know, I’ve come, first of all, the answer to you is yes.
Read Krishna Samhita and some other works by Bhaktivinoda Thakur and you’ll see a more nuanced intellectual engagement with issues such as evolution and historic time frames. Yes. Prabhupada was concerned that liberals like me would take things too far.
So, he laid down a rather conservative view most of the time. And that’s understandable. You know, a guy like me wants to stretch the envelope sometimes dangerously far.
And we need to be, you know, roped in. We need to be limited in how much damage we can do. I know that.
I recognise that. But I also recognise at the same time that the conservatives whom I have come to respect in my old age are also limited. You know, their job is to protect the tradition.
The role of the conservatives is to say this is how it’s been, this is what our foundational ideas are and no one should be allowed to tamper with that. And that’s vitally important. We can’t afford to lose the integrity of the core of our tradition.
So, their job is to protect that core, to promote best practises and so on. But because that’s their job, you can’t also expect them to be the source of innovation. You look at the history of religious traditions and communities, the innovations never came from the clergy.
They always came from the laity. They always came from the congregants, the people who have the flexibility to go out and say here’s how we can bring our contribution to the larger public. And by the way, I don’t know a religious community in the world today that is not going through the same exercise that you and I are talking about.
The Buddhist community is looking how it should be engaged in the world. The Christian community is looking how it’s only recently in the last 10 years, the Christian community has embraced environmentalism just in the last few years. Yeah.
Jewish culture, they’ve always kind of been involved with the world. That’s something else. But Islam is also asking, you know, there’s a progressive wing, if you will, within each of these religious traditions and they’re all asking the same question.
How do we get our message out to people who are not a member of our inner core? How do we express ourselves and who we are in the world? So, Prabhupada took that stricter position precisely because he knew that we were a bunch of dancing monkeys and we were going to have a tendency to misappropriate his teachings for our own purposes and we wanted to protect the body. Every page in every one of his books says Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, you’re not the body, devotional service, every page of every book. Why? Because he knew.
These knuckleheads, they’re going to take everything I’m giving them, they’re going to twist it up and they’re going to come out with some strange thing and call it Krishna consciousness. But that was the foundation. That wasn’t the ultimate vision of what things should look like.
You know, when you’re a child, your parents take you in hand. You know, oh, you’ve been naughty. Go to your room and sit there and think about what you did.
But that’s not supposed to be what you live by the rest of your life. You mature. You get wiser.
You get more experience. And then you can start making a greater contribution. I don’t know why this pathological fear of growing in Prabhupada’s mission and making these greater contributions.
I don’t understand. I think you touched that up that there is a fear of going too far, but it’s like the fear of not going too far. We are actually going nowhere.
You have a way of summarising things. You got a gift. I appreciate the point you made that you respect the conservatives.
But yeah, it’s true that the clergy is the laity. You could say that I can use that word. That’s who actually in one sense needs the innovations the most because the clergy is more or less living in a, you could say, in a more cloistered environment where they don’t have to interact with the world so much.
Some of my best friends are, you know, sanyasi, GBC, fundamentalist, funny daddy. I love them anyway. Oh God.
Actually, it helps in one sense, as you said, to place the challenges of our movement in the broader context of challenges that every tradition is facing. Yes, of course. I was reading about how Buddhism spread in the West.
Let me conclude with your feedback on this. So it seems that when the Dalai Lama started becoming popular in the West, he had written several books and he had taken, because he was primarily guiding monasteries and things like that in Tibet and other places. So he had taken quite absolutist positions on several issues like homosexuality.
And then his books were published in the West. Those things were systematically, of course, he was alive. So things were edited out of his books when they were published in the West.
So I think what you said about cultural differences also, cultures make a difference in what can be said where. So I think this is a, if you would like to respond to that, then I’ll try to summarise. We’ll set the scene for a future discussion.
This was all very important. My experience has been that most of the people who take these kind of hard-line fundamentalist positions about what is the right way in Krishna consciousness are newbies who never met Prabhupada, who never spent one moment with him in their whole life. And those of us who had the privilege of spending a lot of time with him saw a different kind of approach to things.
I don’t begrudge people their elementary, cautious, safe, call it what you like. They may be concerned or afraid of risks, of stretching things too far. I’m dealing with these people, Chaitanya Charan Prabhu, I’m dealing with them almost every day.
Some of them, you’re not going to be able to change their mind. The best you can do is offer a different perspective and try to live your life according to your own moral, ethical, and spiritual compass. And again, my faith in Prabhupada is unshakeable.
I think that we will see our way out of the clouds because what he did is in itself curative. There’s an internal mechanism that will eventually guide us to the right thing. So, I don’t despair.
I roll my head sometimes, my eyes, I can’t believe what’s going on, but I don’t despair. Thank you, Bhuvan. Yeah, I think it’s a very realistic as well as optimistic way you have presented it.
Ultimately, you said earlier there’s a self-correcting mechanism and still Krishna is in charge of the movement. So, yes, thank you. So, I thought over, I’ll try to summarise, but one thing that struck me, which could be a key point, that is there one right way to be Krishna conscious? And that itself, that there can be many ways of being Krishna conscious, I think that comes through maturity, through experiencing devotees practising bhakti in different contexts, different backgrounds, and just coming to know about the challenges of living in the real world and dealing with real issues.
So, I mean, I’ll try to summarise. So, we started today by discussing primarily about, say, Western culture. And then you talked about how the basic premise of Western culture was that how could people be provided engagements, how could they pursue their self-interest without a tyrannical form of government while giving them a level playing field.
So, that is one of the signal contributions or at least the aspirations of the West. And then we discussed about Indian perceptions of Western culture briefly. And there were two separate issues.
And the major theme that we explored deeper was that if we are to make a contribution to mainstream society, it will not be in terms of, say, giving straightforward moral directives, like, say, ban all slaughterhouses or just that, or simply simple spiritual truths, you are not the body or the soul. But actually, we’ll have to engage with the current issues and understand those issues so that we earn a place of respect in the dialogue in the mainstream. One way, one example you gave for this was that devotees could become mediators or conflict resolvers based on whatever goodness we have cultivated by the practise of our bhakti and based on acquiring certain of those skills.
And then when we offer something of value to people where they need it, then they will become more open to what we are trying to offer them, what we as a tradition have distinctive to offer. And then we discussed how certainties are, actually you said something that Prabhupada did not come to give like a set of moral absolutist dogmas inscribed in stone. He gave more a process of tools for analysing and experiencing our individual journey, the journey of the soul to life.
And that is a beautiful thought. So, if we take the second premise, second principle that Prabhupada gives us tools for analysing and experiencing life from a spiritual perspective, then that means that the different devotees may have different positions on these issues. And we in our movement itself have a lot of challenges in implementing spiritual truths in actually institutional or social context.
So, we need a lot of work. One possibility of work could be ethical, providing some ethical framework, ethical policy for devotees or what are the ethical guidelines for devotees. And then another you said is that if as devotees, we are in an environment, maybe a community or environment where we find certain moral absolutes unacceptable to us, then we need to step out.
Otherwise, we will be in the name of conformity, we may end up losing our faith. So, when you talk about to think that following Prabhupada faithfully means doing only the things that Prabhupada did, that is too simplistic an understanding of what being faithful means. So, Prabhupada, because we were, when he was there with us, devotees were relatively young.
So, it was more like a childhood phase. So, that is when Prabhupada was very protective. And Prabhupada did not want us to stray too far away.
But Prabhupada also wanted us to push forward Krishna consciousness in whatever way was possible for us. And we saw some examples of say intellectual resourcefulness in Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s Krishna Samhita and some of the other books. So, the important thing is that we, you talked about twice, two, three times or incremental slow change.
And that movement from certainty to uncertainty is not necessarily a moral compromise. It could also be a growth in maturity or humility. So, if we, so rather than presuming that there is one right way to be Krishna conscious, we need to actually understand issues and then devotees more at an individual level, not at the level of the institutional authority, but at an individual level, innovation and resourcefulness comes from the, more from the laity than the clergy.
So, that is how we will be able to address these issues in the future. And there is always hope, there should not be despair because ultimately what Prabhupada has given us contains the self-correcting mechanism. And that is how we can move ahead.
So, would you like to add anything? I mean, it is a very, I think this was one of the most, you could say, wide ranging discussions we had till now. And we did, we have a, you could say we have a lot to discuss in future too. Something that I would, maybe in closing, I would just say, don’t, don’t hate anybody because they have a different opinion from yours.
Don’t, don’t despise someone because they’re, they’re, look, we’re all victims of Kali Yuga here. You know, this is a terrible time. People are brought up with parents who haven’t a clue what their spiritual identity is.
They have no idea how to be good parents. Young people grow up with all kinds of traumas and sadnesses in their lives. And those things translate into attitudes, behaviours, beliefs, policies, ways of thinking.
Okay, I don’t agree with a lot of them, maybe. We, as Vaishnavas, we have to at least try to be sensitive to why they came to those positions. And unless it’s abusive, I mean, if someone’s beating you up, don’t stick around saying, well, let me try to understand it.
Get out, move away from that. But apart from those extreme circumstances, we are called upon by our faith to love others, to appreciate others, and to find a middle ground for living together in Krishna consciousness. Now, I believe in mediation.
I believe in therapy. I believe in having that neutral third voice as a way to get there. But I guess my point is, try, try, try to never have anything other than compassion for other people, no matter how mixed up they may be.
Everyone is dealing with their own stuff in their own way. And we have to, I’m talking to myself here, you know, we have to understand why they think the way they do, why they believe the way they do. And even though I may disagree with them dramatically, I still should not lose my respect for them or my appreciation that they’re in their way trying to be good followers of Srila Prabhupada.
So, there it is. Thank you, Prabhu. I think that’s a polarisation, you started mentioning earlier, Democrats and Republicans could sit and take lunch together.
I think that polarisation is in our movement also, more and more between devotees from different backgrounds. Yeah, it’s tragic. Yeah, don’t hate anyone because of, because they have open and different from ours.
Sometimes it seems the polarisation becomes more within religious communities, because each side believes that they are actually, they are carrying on a sacred mandate. And they have the right to, they are right and they have the right to protect others, protect everyone from those who are wrong. So, it becomes even worse sometimes.
You know what the Wehrmacht, the German Nazi army had stamped on their belt buckles, God mit uns, God is with us. Really? I didn’t know that. My God.