Prabhupada demonstrates how to be both faithful and resourceful for expanding Krishna consciousness

[Prabhupada Vyasapuja offering at Toronto, Canada]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
So today we have assembled to discuss about Shila Prabhupada’s extraordinary contribution for our lives and for the world. And I’ll speak this in three different parts. First I’ll talk about Shila Prabhupada’s faithfulness and resourcefulness in sharing Krishna consciousness.
Then I’ll talk about how we also can seek to be similarly faithful and resourceful. And then lastly we’ll see how we can get inspiration in our own personal spiritual practise as well as our service by Shila Prabhupada’s example. So Bhakti has these two combinations, these two things in combination.
Being faithful and being resourceful. So if we consider there is in any situation there are some things in our control and some things not in our control. Now when Shila Prabhupada was trying to share Krishna Bhakti in India there are so many things not in his control.
The whole Indian continent at that time was filled with political upheavals, political aspirations, political agitations. The hope was that politics could change Indian society for the better. And Prabhupada himself had that belief.
Now Bhakti Siddhanta could change them. Prabhupada was a special soul who could be changed. But most people were not ready at that time to hear Shila Prabhupada’s message.
So faithful means that when things are beyond our control and things are unfavourable at that time we maintain the faith that something positive will indeed emerge. That whatever is uncontrollable, whatever is unfavourable that will lead to something positive. How? We may not know.
But that is where faith requires some willingness to allow parameters beyond our control to work out. Now Prabhupada tried diligently for nearly 40 years to share Krishna Consciousness in whatever way his situation allowed him. He was a businessman so he tried to earn money and offer to his spiritual master’s mission.
He tried to give contacts to his God brothers in Mumbai and other places so that they could establish centres. And he himself tried to run back to Godhead. He tried to establish League of Devotees.
Now he tried to do what was in his control. But it just was not working. And to be empowered doesn’t mean that whatever we do it will overpower every obstacle that comes in our way.
To be empowered means that no obstacle overpowers our will to serve. The obstacles may of course change the way we serve. They don’t change the will to serve.
So now Shri Prabhupada started out and his faithfulness was that he, if he could have lived on track record 40 years of outreach and no success, he said, what can I ever do? But his faith was that his spiritual master told him go to the West. That will benefit the world and that will benefit you. And Prabhupada did that.
In 1965 when he alone boarded Jal Doota, it can be considered to be one of the most courageous acts in human history. For an old man nearing 70 who has never gone out of the country to go to a distant land where he doesn’t know anyone personally. To give a message that is going to be very alien to them that requires enough, it requires an incredible amount of faith.
So now we could say that, we could ask the question, why did Krishna wait for Prabhupada to be empowered, to empower Prabhupada? Why did Krishna wait for so long? Of course we cannot know Krishna’s mind. But we can look at the historical context and get some inferences. Prabhupada had not done any sociology to history courses to know that America in the 1960s and early 70s was in a cultural turbulence that made it especially receptive to eastern transcendence.
And that’s how it happened. Prabhupada, when he went to America, of course Krishna glorified Prabhupada by the way he went alone to America. But Krishna also prepared the ground for Prabhupada.
So Krishna, you could say, richly rewarded Prabhupada’s faithfulness by ensuring that the west was receptive. Now receptive, just because the west is receptive doesn’t mean it was easy. It was extremely difficult.
It’s like when we say, use the word receptive, if the land is fertile, then if we sow the seeds, then the plants will grow over there. But still, sometimes the land may be fertile, but ploughing it may be tough. The land may be very uneven, the land may be very rough.
So, there’s a difference between receptivity and ease. So, it was not easy. Prabhupada had to present Krishna consciousness to people who had not even the basic idea of the cultural etiquette of how to respect a saintly person, even an elderly person.
The early days when Prabhupada was living in the Lower East Side with his early followers, there was only one restroom and Prabhupada had to stand in a queue to use it with his disciples. They were just with his early followers. And people would just come, eat food, eat the food and go away and he had to wash all the plates, apart from cooking all the food, buying all the groceries to do everything.
So, it was difficult, no doubt. So, that is where the other part comes up. Prabhupada was also resourceful.
Prabhupada grabbed every opportunity that came his way. But the point is that because Prabhupada was faithful, his spiritual master had told, go to the West and speak and share Krishna Consciousness. And Prabhupada, he did not try to use any mundane logic.
Oh, if I have not been successful for so long in India, how will I be successful in the West? People there have never heard of it, how will they ever take it up? Prabhupada had faith. And when the opportunity opened, he grabbed that opportunity. Prabhupada had been talking with so many people in India that he would like to go to the West and share Krishna Bhakti.
And finally, Krishna arranged to the Agarwal family for him to go there. And when he went there, the Krishna Consciousness exploded over there. So it was a difficult but fertile field.
And Prabhupada worked tirelessly and Krishna Consciousness spread magically. So we, when we are trying to serve Krishna and we are trying to do what we can and there are no results, we needn’t become discouraged. We need to have that faith.
Okay, just because something is unfavourable now doesn’t mean it is going to be unfavourable forever. We have to have faith that things will work out. That Krishna has a plan and Krishna has a role for us in his plan.
And we may not know exactly what the role is or what the plan is. And that’s where our resourcefulness comes up. So now, of course, everything that Prabhupada did was a combination of his faithfulness and his resourcefulness.
But I would like to broadly divide this into two parts. That Prabhupada’s going to America was a big leap of faith. Although it was just a small step when he climbed the Jaldut.
The Jaldut took him across the ocean ways. But it was an act of enormous faith. It was a huge leap of faith for him, an old man, to go abroad like that in that old age, without any money, without any institutional support.
So that is without any followers also. That is his faithfulness. Now his resourcefulness broadly can be seen in terms of how he chose to come back to India and refocus in India.
Various factors historically conspired for Prabhupada to decide to refocus in India. But one of the things he said that sharing Krishna Consciousness in the West was my spiritual master’s instruction, I did that. Now establishing Krishna Consciousness in India that is my desire.
Now can a devote, now normally you say pure devotee means no, pure devotee means only desire to please Krishna. Yes, now the desire to please Krishna can be something which Krishna’s devotees have told us to do or the desire to please Krishna can come also from a purified heart. Or even if the heart is impure, like in our case sometimes, even an impure heart, a pure desire may emerge.
And Prabhupada was resourceful. Now what was the reason? There could again be many reasons. We are not making an exhaustive analysis, but we are doing analysis to learn.
So Prabhupada recognised that the Western culture was so far away from anywhere near a spiritually conducive culture that people could take up. But if there is to be a steady foundation for people to take up bhakti, it has to be in India. Because India still had the remnants of that culture for a very long time.
And the culture had been there for a long time and the remnants were still there. Of course, there were much more than remnants 50 years ago. So Prabhupada focused his major energy in India.
And how he did outreach in India shows his resourcefulness. He recognised that Indians were not ready to reject this world for the other world. That’s what the thrust of his outreach was in the West.
And people were disillusioned by the prosperity of the West. And they were ready for the spirituality of the East. So in many ways, Krishna consciousness as presented by Shri Prabhupada in America was other-worldly.
It was world-transcending. But in India, we saw that Indians were still quite hopeful about material prosperity. That people who don’t have money think that money will solve all problems.
Now once they get money, they start understanding that money is important but it can’t solve all problems. So Indians were still in that stage where they had some piety and they had some material prosperity, at least some of them. And they also, now when I’m using Indians, because I’m doing an objective analysis, so I’m not, I’m using the word they and not we.
So it’s another generation, several generations ago in fact. And we’ll talk about our situation also toward the end. So Prabhupada provided people the way by which they could come to Krishna through his life membership programme.
That means if people are not ready to come all the way here, then at the very least, let’s remove the obstacles on their path so that they can start coming. They can take a few steps over here. So in a sense, the life membership programme which was the main outreach that Prabhupada did in India in terms of his meeting people, apart from of course building magnificent temples.
Very few people became committed devotees. Very few Indians at that time seemed to be ready for that. And Prabhupada recognised that and he did not reject Indians because of that.
He accommodated them. So there was piety but there was deep piety but not serious spirituality. And Prabhupada accommodated for that deep piety through the life membership programme where people accepted books in their homes, gave a generous donation and they contributed to the spreading of Krishna Consciousness movement.
So the way Prabhupada functioned in India, recognising that Indians’ deep piety would mean that they would be attracted towards big temples. They would be attracted towards resources which could help them exercise their piety. He created those resources.
And that is how he ensured that the piety and the spirituality were established in one smooth flow. So if you could say broadly speaking, again these are very generalisations, in the West there was impiety, in India there was piety and Prabhupada presented spirituality. So in the West, people had to reject impiety to explore spirituality.
It was very difficult for them, but there were some who were, some across the world, and it became many, who actually rejected the impiety to take the spirituality. But unfortunately because the overall culture was filled with impiety, so that huge leap was not sustainable for many people and that huge leap was not even feasible for many people. So Prabhupada to some extent recognised that and thus he focused his energy where there was a suitable foundation, that is India.
So piety to spirituality is also a leap, but it is not that big a leap. And even if somebody takes the leap and can’t continue, they’ll come back to piety, they won’t fall back to impiety. And that way, the Krishna consciousness movement will at least have a broad foundation.
And at least at that time, when Prabhupada went to America, there was impiety and there was a desire for spirituality. So people were rejecting the, some people at least were enterprising enough to reject the impiety and embrace the spirituality. But with respect to with respect to India, they were not so much ready to rise from piety to spirituality.
So Prabhupada accepted them at the level of piety and gave them a path to come towards spirituality. That is, have the bhagavatam and the way, bhakti classics in your houses, have the opportunity to come and stay in the temple and experience temple life. And thus, the path for them to come from piety to spirituality was opened.
Now, in the West, the path from impiety to spirituality meant that they almost had to reject the existing culture. Whereas in India, the existing culture was not needed to be rejected. It was just to be used as a launching pad.
So this was Prabhupada’s resourcefulness in recognising the landscape and adapting his strategy accordingly. And we can see how prescient what Prabhupada did was. Just as Prabhupada recognised that the sustainable practise of Krishna consciousness would require a solid foundation in India, now that has happened even in the West, where Indians are the main members of our movement.
Now this is a matter of concern for many of our leaders because Prabhupada wanted an international society for Krishna consciousness, not an Indian society for Krishna consciousness. Although Indian also paradox significantly has the same name. So it could still be ISKCON with Indian instead of international.
But Prabhupada wanted an international society. And we could say that today increasingly the society is becoming filled with Indians. So while this is a matter of concern, now I’m moving on to the first I talked about how Prabhupada was faithful and resourceful and now we’ll talk about how we need to be faithful and resourceful.
And I’ll take talk of some things based on my observations about outreach in India and in the West and how we as individual members of our movement can contribute to continuing and expanding Prabhupada’s legacy. So in India as of now many Indians have emigrated to the West and they are respectable, upstanding citizens. Wherever Indian, whichever part of the world I have travelled, whichever continent, Indians are considered as very good immigrants.
Of course sometimes they are envied because they are so well educated and prosperous. So they may not be admired all the time but they are respected. So now in many ways after that period of counterculture when the existing culture people were ready to reject and explore something alternative.
Some people from that overall culture they rose to spirituality but many fell from impiety to even more grievous impiety and eventually that counterculture phase vanished. And in many ways our movement would have collapsed in 1980s. Many factors but the absence of that receptive audience meant that the way we were doing outreach in Prabhupada’s times encouraging people to reject their mainstream, their way of living and adopt the devotional way of living.
Very few people are interested in that now. Phenomena started increasing from the 80s onwards. But now Indians they went to the west.
For them the more further we go from our culture often we realise the value of that culture. Because Indians cannot become Americans. I’ll use America as an example because America was where the movement started.
The west is much bigger than America. There is UK, there is Europe, South America but let’s focus on America. So Indians in America cannot become Americans even if they want to.
The brown skin prevents them from becoming like white skin people. And many of them don’t want to. They realise that there are a lot of issues.
There are family problems. There are other problems. There are families breaking down.
So many other societal problems are there. So therefore people in general are Indians. At least they may be very materialistic when they go initially just money, money, money.
But once they have children then they become more conscious. They want to pass on their cultural values to their children. So the Krishna Consciousness Movement became a very valuable resource as a potential cultural home for many Indians.
And thus Indians took over the responsibility of maintaining and in many ways running the movement. Without Indians in the West ISKCON would have become an Indian Society for Krishna Consciousness in India. There would be no movement in the West.
So there is a need and the kind of Indians we get in the West. Prabhupada has given a profound philosophy. Prabhupada has given a serious spiritual practise.
Prabhupada has given so much to us that when we attract Indians, high quality Indians, dedicated, talented. In fact to be in the West and to make it big in the West is not easy. That itself requires them to be committed, dedicated, talented.
And they bring those virtues even to the practise of Bhakti. And that’s why it’s wonderful that we have Indians. Now just as Prabhupada was faithful and resourceful.
Now our leaders also were resourceful enough to recognise that when Westerners are not coming, who are coming? Indians are coming. And actually there was support and encouragement for the Indians. And that’s how the movement has continued.
Now how? How will Western people take to Krishna Consciousness now? That is where we need to be both faithful and resourceful again. More or less for Indians, now if you can consider Indians the Krishna Consciousness movement in India is also expanding phenomenally. India has become the powerhouse of the whole world.
More devotees, more temples, more books distributed. Everything is big. Having said that, India also has a lot of scope to expand.
If we stop thinking that people are at the level of impiety and they have to reject their existing culture and then we take up to spirituality. We understand that many people are at the level of piety and they don’t have to reject. They have to connect what they are with Krishna.
So the method of outreach of rejection alienates a lot of people. But the method of connection, what we are practising is good and build up your Krishna Consciousness. So we went through a phase where in India also where there were a significant number of young people who were ready to reject mainstream culture or their mainstream way of living and practise bhakti and that’s how we had this explosion of brahmacharis in some temples.
Now how sustainable that phase will be is open to question. But overall we are moving increasingly towards becoming a congregation based movement. And that model where people continue with their life but with Krishna becoming the purpose of their life.
That is how we present it to the western people. So if you see Indians from piety to spirituality even the most empires of Indians have some pieces of piety because it runs in their blood. So piety to spirituality is not that big a leap for them.
Now in the west there is some piety, there is a lot of impiety. I mean India has a lot of impiety. But the Indian population is so high that among all the impiety the number of people with piety are still very high.
So we need the blessings of Srila Prabhupada that just as he was resourceful we can be resourceful and be faithful that somehow Krishna will give us the opportunity and Krishna will give us the vision and the wisdom to actually bring people closer to Krishna. How it will happen we do not know fully but you can look at some indicators. To be faithful means that which is not in our control that will become receptive that will become favourable even if it is unfavourable right now.
That’s to be faithful. To be resourceful means that whatever is favourable right now we tap it to the fullest. So broadly there are four cultural trends in the western world which are now today making people receptive to Indian spirituality and they are yoga, environmentalism, environmental consciousness, veganism, vegetarianism and mindfulness.
And many resourceful followers of Srila Prabhupada are using these to attract people towards Krishna. And the key thing is that when we present Krishna consciousness in these ways we are faithful in purpose and we are resourceful in process. And that our purpose is to get people to come towards Krishna.
That was the purpose of Srila Prabhupada that was the purpose of Krishna himself when he descended to the world. So we are faithful in purpose but we are resourceful in process. Just as Prabhupada was.
Prabhupada when he had people who were brahmacharis go out and distribute books and get money by that way. Now in the past brahmacharis or people living in the ashram would go and beg alms but Prabhupada was resourceful in that. Begging alms would not be appreciated in western culture.
So getting some charity in response to giving the books that is what Prabhupada was resourceful. So Prabhupada was faithful but Prabhupada was also resourceful. And we can pray to Srila Prabhupada that he bless us also.
This combination of faithfulness and purposefulness that he manifested in such an extraordinary way. So we keep plugging on doing what we can according to our small capacities. Now this applies to our bigger outreach for those of us who are doing it and even for our personal practise of bhakti.
There are things which are unfavourable to us, there are things which are favourable to us with respect to whatever is favourable, we become we are as resourceful as possible and with respect to that which is unfavourable to us we stay faithful looking for doing what we can and waiting for the bigger picture to change and we don’t know what Krishna has in store for us but we needn’t be discouraged by that because 50 or 60 years ago maybe 1960s nobody would have predicted that Krishna consciousness would spread so miraculously across the world. So even now we may not be able to predict how exactly Krishna consciousness may spread but if we remain faithful and resourceful even if Krishna consciousness does not spread externally it will spread internally and that is what Srila Prabhupada wanted the most. He said that even if one person becomes a pure lover of Krishna, pure devotee of Krishna, he will consider the movement successful.
He said that his ultimate what he wanted, what would please him the most was not just how many books we distributed or how many temples we built, it was whether we loved Krishna and each one of us in our particular situations if we learn to be faithful and resourceful that means we faithfully wait for Krishna to make that which is unfavourable uncontrollable favourable and we resourcefully use what Krishna has given as favourable to do our best in that situation and then we will by Krishna’s grace ensure at the very least that Krishna consciousness will spread in our hearts we will become devotionally enriched and on some days in some ways when some people are receptive we will be able to share Krishna consciousness with them and if that much difference we can make on some days in some ways we make a difference that itself is enough to make our life valuable meaningful and fruitful so I’ll summarise I spoke about how Srila Prabhupada embodied being faithful and being resourceful through his example and how we can similarly do that so Prabhupada’s faithfulness was that although 40 years he had no success no significant success in outreach in India his spiritual master had given the instruction go to the west so at an advanced age he took a giant leap of faith when he boarded the Jal Roota and his faithfulness was richly rewarded by Krishna because Krishna arranged him to go to America at a time but because of the counterculture people were receptive the land was fertile although the land was difficult to plough but at least it was fertile and Prabhupada was resourceful in finding ways in which he could plough that land and expertly bring people who had not the slightest inkling of spiritual culture of Krishna Bhakti to the level of dedicating their lives to Krishna Bhakti so in the west to some extent there was primarily impiety and Prabhupada helped people take the leap from impiety to spirituality by rejecting what they were having originally but because this leap was so huge and so few were ready to take the leap and that leap was not likely to be sustainable Prabhupada decided again resourcefully that the sustainable foundation for Krishna consciousness would be in India and then because India was still filled with political aspirations and hopes so India were not ready to give up their life for practising Bhakti but from piety to spirituality they don’t reject but connect Prabhupada offered the bridge the life membership programme and through building big temples and in the post Prabhupada phase of the Krishna consciousness movement in the west the counterculture collapsed the movement would have become extinguished in the west but it was Indians who then took the connecting bridge from piety to spirituality and that’s how our movement has survived and expanded in the west and in India also if we stop insisting on the rejection from impiety to spirituality assuming people had impiety but even people who are acting impiously presently still have piety within their hearts if we help them to adopt connect them from where they are to Krishna not ask them to reject where they are to come to Krishna then we can expand much more in India although in India already we are like a significant powerhouse as compared to the rest of the world and for further western outreach how is it going to happen we need to be faithful although things seem difficult today but there are there are strands of sattva rising in mindfulness in green environmental consciousness in vegetarianism in yoga through which people are coming toward Krishna and if we can pray to Prabhupada to give us the combination of faithfulness and resourcefulness then at the very least Krishna Consciousness will spread internally and enrich our life and by Prabhupada’s mercy on some days in some ways we all may be able to make a difference thank you very much Krishna Prabhupada Ki Jai