One moon is better than a thousand stars – what does this imply in terms of outreach strategies?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
What does the statement of Chanakya Pandit quoted by Shri Prabhupada that it is better to have one moon and a thousand stars imply? Ekashchandra-stamohanti-nichatarah sahasra-shaha. What Chanakya Pandit states is that if there is darkness at night and we need light, then sahasra-shaha, that a thousand stars in the sky may not illuminate the sky as much as one moon.
So, Prabhupada would use this as a quote for supporting the point that we should not go after quantity while doing outreach, but we should focus on quality and especially that we should not compromise on our core principles in order to attract large crowds of people or large number of followers. Now, that’s a very valid point. After all, Krishna himself says in the Bhagavad Gita that manushyanaam sahasreshviyatati kashchiditi-siddhanam kashchinmaam vittatvataha that among thousands few endeavour for spiritual perfection and even among those who endeavour, few actually achieve it.
So, having recognized this limitation of the human mind and that it is by default tends to be materialistic and that people who are interested in spirituality are going to be less, we as those striving to share Krishna’s message of spiritual wisdom with people also have a responsibility to present things as attractively as possible. So, Prabhupada says, for example, that realization means to speak things in a way that is interesting to the audience. So, how do we know what interests the audience? We have to understand the audience for that purpose.
Understanding the audience we may feel this is the way that is going to interest them, this is the way they are going to find it relevant. And now somebody else who has not studied their audience, who has not understood how their audience thinks, they may feel that what is the need for presenting things in this particular way. So, there should not be the idea that we do not want to attract a thousand stars, is not meant to be like a blanket condemnation of resourcefulness in outreach.
We also have a responsibility to make Krishna’s message attractive to people, not in the sense of changing the message, but at least making people feel that it is relevant and doing what it takes to make them feel that it is relevant. And you see Prabhupada himself did that. When Prabhupada was in India, let us look at how he was open to adopting different strategies, not in the sense that a cheap way to connect with people, but doing what it took to help people connect with Krishna.
In the early days of our movement, when the majority of the people joining the movement were hippies, Prabhupada used their terminology. So, for example, stay high forever. The hippies wanted to go high and they thought using drugs will go high, but Prabhupada approved the usage, stay high forever, that Krishna Bhakti takes us high and keeps us high forever.
Similarly, he also approved of, when he was asked the question, what is the bliss of Vaikuntha, like Prabhupada said, it is an ocean of LSD. Someone might say that it was an offence to compare, to give any mundane interpretation of the holy name and to compare it with LSD, with the pleasure of LSD is mundane. But no, Prabhupada’s intention was not to reduce the transcendental down to the mundane.
Prabhupada’s intention was to make the transcendental intelligible to those whose consciousness was at the mundane level. And he was clearly giving the process by which people can rise to the transcendental level also. In fact, that was the central mission.
So, even in India, the kind of commitment that Prabhupada’s western disciples had in terms of becoming full-time devotees, that most Indians were not ready to show. And Prabhupada did not reject or condemn them. Prabhupada just encouraged them to become life members.
And he himself was ready to go to their houses and take prasadam at their houses, which was a big thing for many Indians, culturally speaking, to have a sadhu, especially a famous sadhu come to their house for prasadam. And Prabhupada accepted their service at whatever level they were capable of doing service at that time. So, Prabhupada was resourceful.
In fact, it was through such resourcefulness in adapting things, and not insisting that every life member become initiated, come to the standards of initiated devotees earning 16 rounds. Prabhupada didn’t want them to come eventually. But he did not make that a point of insistence.
He did not condemn those who were not ready to do that. He was very courteous and very compassionate to those who were contributing in whatever way they could. Similarly, we see that Prabhupada was ready to even stop certain traditional forms of activities, such as, say, doing Harinamsang kirtan in public, when people started throwing money at the devotees, thinking that they were just beggars.
This happened in Bengal. And Prabhupada said, no, we don’t want to be lumped in with other kirtaniers who are just into money. So, now, if we consider the point that we do have a clear example of Sri Prabhupada being resourceful in adapting things for sharing Krishna Bhakti with others, then we have to follow those footsteps also.
And now, when we consider the fact that we want to attract as many people to Krishna as possible, and then we let them follow Krishna Bhakti at whatever level of commitment they want to follow. Some people may be ready to follow at a high level of commitment. If some people are not, then we don’t have to reject or condemn them.
We may not give so much time and energy to them if they are not ready to spend much time and energy in their spiritual growth. But we can have them favorable to Krishna Bhakti. So, why can’t we have one moon and a thousand stars? That means that we have a small number of people who are very dedicated to the practice of Krishna Bhakti and a good number of people who are well-wishers, supporters, appreciators.
So, Krishna himself does not adopt an excessively confrontational approach with people who are spiritually inclined but who are not spiritually committed. So, we see Krishna accommodating such people who are spiritually inclined but not spiritually committed. From 12.8 to 12.11 in the Bhagavad Gita, he says that the highest level of people are those who are completely absorbed in Him.
The second level are those who strive to fix their mind on Him. The third is that those who work for Him. The fourth is that those who just work for some cause higher than one’s own self-gratification.
Those who have some level of selflessness. And Prabhupada says in the Purport that if one cannot contribute to Krishna conscious charity, if one gives for some good cause, that also is good. So, we see that Krishna also has an inclusive vision wherein he accommodates different people at different levels.
And in fact, that is the broad Vedic culture, Vedic methodology. Those who cannot worship Krishna, they are not just condemned as demoniac. They are given the facility to worship the devatas.
They have been given the option that, okay, you can worship the impersonal. In fact, the very presence of multiplicity of options for spiritual advancement is what is important for us to recognize that we are meant to follow in those footsteps. Now, we don’t have to necessarily recommend or teach other spiritual options.
But if people actually gravitate towards those levels, we don’t have to condemn them for that. So, if we are excessively confrontational and condemnatory in the name of being uncompromising, then we may alienate thoughtful people, especially because in today’s world, sensitivity and respectfulness for different systems of thought is considered to be very important. Now, just being respectful to people as being parts of Krishna, that is, whatever be the conceptions about the world or about themselves that those people have, you know, we can see that Krishna is present in the hearts of all of them.
Sarvasya ca aham rudhi sanniyo nishtho. Krishna doesn’t say that he’s present only in the hearts of those who are practicing bhakti according to particular standards. He’s present in the hearts of all living beings.
So, the more we recognize this universality of Krishna’s presence and Krishna’s accommodating nature, then we will also follow in the footsteps of Krishna. Now, if we have an excessively confrontationalist approach, we may just attract people who are rabble-rousers and they like to have some confrontations in the name of spirituality. Now, whether they are really committed to spirituality or whether they are really committed to just fighting and having some cause for which they can fight, that we don’t know.
Of course, we should not be offensive to those who are uncompromising. We should not be judgmental about those who adopt a confrontational approach. But we have to evaluate honestly in our heart whether our confrontational approach is coming from a deep level of compassion where we see that people are an illusion and are deprived of the bliss of Krishna bhakti and we want them to have that or whether it is coming from our ego where we want to prove our superiority over them or it is coming from our insecurity which comes when we see others following some other path consistently, committedly and then we start that is creating doubts within us.
Oh, then is my path right? If they are following so seriously their path, they are at their level and their commitment makes me raise questions about my commitments because we doubt whether our path is the right one or not. So, Bhakti Sanskrit Akhut said that aggressive intellectualism can be atheism. Rather, it is often that to conceal our own lack of faith that we put on an aggressive facade of faith.
So, if we are attracting people who are actually don’t have much substance of faith but who are very aggressive in their putting on a facade of faith, then we may be very proudly rejecting a thousand stars but we may not be getting one moon, we may be getting one Rahu or one Ketu. We are getting people who are simply going to fight for the sake of fighting and create trouble. So, there is no need to take one example and absolutize it.
Yes, Prabhupada did say that it is important for us to attract, it is preferable for us to attract one moon and to attract a thousand stars but that does not necessarily mean that we have to condemn the thousand stars and it certainly does not mean that those condemning the thousand stars are automatically attracting a moon. Attracting people to Krishna is a complex task which requires a significant amount of subtlety and resourcefulness according to time, place, circumstance and if certain devotees are doing certain resourceful adaptations then we don’t have to immediately take it on ourselves to become self-appointed judges and condemn them. What we need to do is if it is our service or if it is our interest, we can talk with them and try to understand their perspective and see what they are doing for ourselves.
Of course, having said all this, there is definitely the danger of compromising and we need to be careful that we don’t water down central truths of bhakti for the sake of pampering or pandering to people but we also have to be careful that in the name of not pandering to people, we don’t let fringe aspects come in the way of people appreciating the central aspects of bhakti. So, the central aspects of bhakti are we are not the body, we are the soul and Krishna is the most, is all attractive supreme that it is by connecting with him through bhakti that we can all become spiritually elevated. So, these are central truths that we need to present and if we don’t present these truths, definitely we are not doing justice to our tradition in terms of representing it appropriately to people and giving people an opportunity to connect with it.
But at the same time, there are many contextual applications of this. If we overemphasize those and some people find those controversial, those unacceptable, unpalatable and because of that, they become unreceptive to hearing and benefiting from the central truths to which actually they don’t have much objections, then we are actually doing a disservice to them because we are depriving them of the opportunity to hear the central truths of bhakti because of being excessively confrontational and alienating about certain aspects which are not really central to bhakti. So, Srila Prabhupada definitely attracted a thousand stars when he came to India and he did life membership and we see a few of them have become like moons and it took them time.
The number of committed disciples of Srila Prabhupada among Indians is very few. But in the second generation of our movement, you know, the disciples of Srila Prabhupada, they have attracted many many Indians and the moons have definitely emerged in the second generation. But in the first generation that did not happen so much.
It’s not to minimize those devotees who are extremely dedicated to Prabhupada in the first generation also among Indians. But I’m just simply giving an example that if you’re just going to have simplistic over-generalization, then somebody could even condemn the life membership program as just attracting stars. But it was not.
Prabhupada had a vision that by having the people affiliate with ISKCON as life members, they will come to the temple, stay in the temple and gradually they will become devotees. So, now it may or may not have happened. But the point was Prabhupada was open for that.
So, similarly in today’s world, different devotees may adopt different initiatives. If you try to get people closer to Krishna in terms of at least become appreciative of Krishna and from becoming appreciative, if people gradually become, take the steps forward and eventually become more connected to Krishna, then that is good. So, the basic point is that the stars and the moon, if we have to choose, then definitely we will choose the moon.
But we don’t have to assume that we always need to choose. If we present Krishna Bhakti in a way that is intelligible and appealing to people, who knows we can have a thousand stars and we can have a moon also. We can have many people who are appreciative of Krishna Bhakti and we have some people, a few people who are committed to Krishna Bhakti.
Thank you.