Preserving Gaudiya culture by fostering a mood of inclusion, The Monk’s Podcast 143 Madhavananda Prabhu

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna, Madhavanandru. Welcome back to the Monks Podcast. It’s been a long separation.
Delighted to have you. Hi Krishna, so good to see you again, Prabhuji. I’ve been following you sometimes in some of your other talks.
You’ve been really, really busy. You’re doing a nice thing. I really appreciate it.
Thank you, bro. Actually, you are the seed of this. Our meeting in Puri was the meeting that gave me this idea of doing this.
And we sat and talked, and some of your students were there together, sitting and hearing. And one of them told me that we never heard senior devotees talking like this. So it was so inspiring.
So the two of us had talked and I thought, you know, we could do it more also. So that experience was one of the inspirations for starting this. So I’m indebted to you.
So you could say you are one of the founders of the Monks Podcast. Well, great. But I have some bhakshish that I want.
My bhakshish is that you should come back. And we’ll do it in person. Then we’ll get to feed you some prasadam, because you’re too skinny.
My gosh, that’s one of the bhakshish you are seeking. That’s the bhakshish you are giving to me. I would love to come there and be with you.
No, because it will be our benefit. And any devotees who are here in the ashram will have some talk like we did last time and some interactive thing with everybody. That’s really, really special, really special.
Yes, true. So today I thought I would love to come whenever I can, but let’s have that association virtually today. So I thought that today we could discuss about the broad Gaudiya Vaishnav legacy in Bengal and Orissa, especially Orissa and how you are trying to continue it and preserve it.
And you mentioned that you also started a forum to preserve and continue it. So could you talk something about that today? Yeah, that sounds great. So I’ve got some pictures today I’d like to share with you.
We’ll go ahead and start with this. This is our logo, our preliminary logo we’re working on. This says Gora.
Now if you read Bengali and you read Oriya, if you look at the script underneath the word, it’s a combination of both. The first syllable is Go and the second syllable Ra. First syllable is in Bengali and the second syllable is in Oriya.
And the word Gora, the long A at the end, is a common spelling in Gaudiya Vaishnav Padavali Kirtan as a name for Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. And it’s a compound name. It means that person is Govinda Radha.
And in our case, Gora stands for the Gaudiya Odiya Research Association. And we have a PPP. Our PPP is Preserve Publish Practise.
That’s our meditation. We have those three things. That’s Gora is brilliant.
You could say it’s almost like a traditional acronym and a contemporary acronym now. Both brought together. So, yeah, we’ve been having some interesting response from it.
We’re getting good, good support with it here in Orissa. A lot of scholars and people appreciate it. But when I asked them, what do you think of, you know, combining the Bengali and the Oriya like this, they don’t like Bengalis always in Orissa.
And sometimes they have some little harsh things to say that, no, it should be mostly Oriya culture. But I’m not satisfied with that because we want to have a combination of both because I’m coming from a Gaudiya background. But we want to learn something about Odiya Vaishnavism.
And it is such a wonderful culture, such a wonderful resource, which very, very few people know about. So previously, if I can just go on speaking, you asked me something about our inspiration. Yes, we just one minute before this project.
Sorry, just one minute. The name Gaura, I thought it was just a variant of Gaura. So is that also one more meaning or that would be G-A-U-R-A and this is G-O-R-A? Yeah, I mean, if you transliterate it in the system that we use in ISKCON, you know, one spelling for Garanga Mahaprabhu’s name is G-A-U-R-A and that A sound is one syllable.
But there’s another spelling, which I could, if I dug around some, I could find some of our books here. But Bhaktivinoda uses it sometimes and that we would transliterate as G-O-R-A. You can see, I actually have a little NAM stamp, which this is in Bengali.
And it’s like that for if you can look at it backwards, it would be spelled like that G-O-R and a long A. And again, it traditionally means that that personality who’s a combined form of Govinda Radha. It’s a very sweet alternative kind of way to spell Gaura instead of G-A-U-R-A. G-O-R-A.
Okay, so there are three meanings in that sense then of that name? Yeah. Okay. I have to give credit.
It’s my wife’s idea. I was talking for a long time about a research institute, something which we’ll talk about our inspirations for this. Fakir Mahaprabhu is one of them.
And she suggested this acronym GAURA. And I just, wow, I just completely loved it. Although, as I mentioned, some people in Orissa are not so enthusiastic about it.
But our work is not only with the Odia literature. And I’d like to speak about that later. But there’s books like this Rishik Mohan Vidyabhushan, his Gambhirayashi Gauranga.
And this is Nilachala Bhrajamuduri. These are two books about Gauranga Mahaprabhu in Puri that are written in Bengali. And there’s a number of books.
We’re having these two translated and some others that go very deep into the esoteric culture of Orissa on the Bengali side. And then there’s Odia side also. And we’re trying to make some union of that.
And that unity is on different levels. We’re not just coming in trying to preach to the Odia people that this is Bengali, Gaudia culture, and you should like it. Nor are we trying to just go and spring something on all the Iskan devotees or Gaudia devotees that we’ve got this far out Odia thing.
But we actually want to make a synthesis in one sense, where they learn from each other and bring out the best in each other. And as I think we’ll speak a little more in a later, we have a lot of thoughts about this, how it can affect our contemporary Vaishnav society, both within Iskan and without Iskan. Because Bora technically is part of the BRC, the Bhaktivedanta Research Centre.
And the BRC is not technically an Iskan project, which is needed. Iskan does very good, as you and I were speaking a few minutes ago, as preaching to new people, training new people, educating them for training them to be preachers and priests and like that. But it doesn’t always do well in the secular society.
And we have some vision with Gora to be able to mix with them. Because as you mentioned to me a few minutes ago, generally people in India anyway, when they think of Iskan, and people generally appreciate Iskan, but they generally think of us as a preaching kind of movement, a missionary movement. And people who are not interested in missionaries, they just block us off.
But I’m finding that when you start talking to them about old rare books, all of a sudden doors start opening, people’s hearts melt, and you have scholars coming to see you and people from other traditions. And then it’s an interesting thing, because all of a sudden I have to be more than just Iskan. I have to be myself.
I have to be a person. And otherwise they don’t appreciate that. And I can be myself and be an Iskan devotee, be wearing a dhoti and tilak and all that, and interested in this Gaudiya culture, but also very supportive and appreciative of the Odia culture and very interested in it.
And it really melts their hearts. And it’s opening so many doors. So that’s one benefit I see from it.
I’m also saying I think it’ll provide a safe place for intellectuals in our society. For me, one of the symptoms of a progressive society, a culture, is that there’s room for intellectuals and artists. And if there’s no room for intellectuals and artists, then you failed.
And you may have a huge army that does what they call the duck step or something like they were doing in Nazi Germany. And they all march together very nicely. But that’s not culture.
We want culture where people are thinking. And that’s difficult sometimes in an institution when you’re training new people who are not used to Gaudiya culture. And you have simple things like how to clean yourself and which hand to eat with and things like that.
And there’s a lot of rules and things like that because it’s in an ashram, which is like a monastery. But if we can get outside of the box and really just present our culture, that’s good for devotees too. The devotees, the intellectuals and artists, we’d like to give them some space where they can come and be themselves and empower them to work within that.
So we have a whole variety of visions for Gaura. That’s amazing. Two, three things.
So what struck me when you spoke was that I started realising that when we talk about Krishna consciousness, there are so many dimensions to it. And there are many people who may be Krishna conscious in different ways from what we consider as standard. And that may not be what we aim for as an institution.
But there is no reason why we need to discourage that. So somebody who’s, just like you said, somebody simply appreciating Gaudiya literature said that they certainly have some level of Krishna conscious. Otherwise, why would they appreciate that? And so if we can nurture that, that is also very valuable.
And I was reading a book on how more and more in today’s world, religion is becoming decentralised. That there are, there may be these big mega churches in America. But more and more, what happens is religion forms, there are like organisational units and there are organic units.
So more and more people are gravitating to organic units based on not so much shared affiliation as shared interests. So in one sense, you could say that the interest in literature that you have, many devotees may not have that literature. In fact, as soon as you show some books to devotees, they would say, I don’t even have time to read Prabhupada’s books.
When am I going to read that? What is? Okay, I may buy a book and keep in my library, but I’m not going to read it. So those who have that interest, certainly if we can create facilities for reaching out to them, that’s wonderful. As a sanyasi friend of mine told me once, he was preaching in South America and this was like in the late 70s, early 80s that he was preaching and giving classes there.
And one day in one class, Bhagavatam class, he quoted someone named Vishwanath Chakravarti Thakur. And after the class, one of the devotees came to him and said, is he bona fide? This Vishwanath Chakravarti Thakur, is he bona fide? So that happens. And that may sound funny for those of you who know Vishwanath Chakravarti Thakur, who I hope is all the listeners, but it’s not necessarily something we should criticise because young devotees, they don’t know so much.
And we just necessarily tell them that Prabhupada’s books are everything. And that’s a fact. Prabhupada’s books are everything.
And that’s all that we need is Prabhupada’s books. But Prabhupada in his books says to read Vishwanath Chakravarti Thakur. And he says to read Sanatana Goswami in different literatures.
So not everybody is going to take that up. But we should have some intellectual side in our society. Otherwise, as I said, the culture is not going to be satisfying.
Sometimes we think that an institution or society will create culture. But it’s just the opposite. Culture creates a society.
It’s not that the society creates culture. Rather, the other way culture creates a society. So for that, we need to go deep.
We need to think and we need to have poetry and thoughtful writings and commentaries and paintings and etc. That’s a beautiful thought. Yeah, in one sense, if you say society as a group of people, what is going to bind them together? It’s ultimately some cultural aspect.
It can be art. It can be intellectual interest. There has to be some shared interest and those shared interests ultimately manifest as the multiplicity of human culture.
So, yeah, society doesn’t create culture. Society might facilitate certain cultural forms. But then those cultural forms, when people around those interests, they join together, they will actually bond very nicely.
So in one sense, you could say, this is a continuation of the principle of Sajatiya applied in a broader context. Yeah, we’ve been speaking a lot about eco-villages lately. We have some interest in that.
We’re trying to start something. And one friend of mine, he has a vision. He says that in a community, you’ll have smaller villages within the community.
And the smaller villages, that’s what he calls Sajatiya Sangha. We have a group of three or four or five or six. Maybe you have 50 people or 100 people in your community, but you have five or 10 different smaller groups who are like-minded.
He calls those villages. And that’s natural that that should be encouraged. Oh, yeah, that is so true.
I think that will be even more, you could say, focused group together where people with shared interests can be together. You know, going back to your earlier point about the Gaudiya legacy, in some ways, we in ISKCON, it seems almost like we have a very narrow understanding of the Gaudiya tradition. So, could you take a step back and we can discuss about how the Gaudiya tradition is existing in currently in Orissa? Are there practitioners, are there general cultural awareness is there? Are there people who are scholars who are researching? And maybe then we can go back toward the history, how it continued after Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
If that’s a direction you are comfortable taking. Sure, sure. We can just meander around a little bit.
First of all, I can only speak in a natural way from my perspective. And I only understand very little Gaudiya language. I can read a few letters a little bit.
And here I am working as a research centre. How is that? What inspiration do I have? I’m coming from an ISKCON perspective, but I have a perspective about Gaudiya culture, which I find a lot of local people find interesting and fascinating, because it’s from a different perspective, from a different view. And that all began with my Guru Maharaj.
This is my Guru Maharaj here, Prabhupada’s disciple, Gauravendra Maharaj. It’s an old picture. This picture says a lot, I think.
He came from Jagat Singhpur. He came from a very traditional Gaudiya culture, Kirtan culture, in a small village known as Gadai Giri. And I had good fortune to hear some from him.
And that was kind of an unusual thing, especially for Westerners. There are some Indian devotees who get some opportunity like that. But for Western devotees, it’s a very unusual thing for them to get some opportunity to associate with traditional persons in other cultures.
So my Guru Maharaj greatly inspired me. I can show you a beautiful picture that I like. This is a picture someone took of the two of us together.
Probably the greatest gift my Guru Maharaj gave me, you can kind of maybe see in this picture here, this photo, is to think. And to think in a certain way, and to look in a certain direction, and to ask questions. Probably that’s the greatest gift that he gave me.
And he did it through that Gaudiya culture. And I wish I could say that every class that he spoke, that I remembered every single verse that he quoted, and every song that he sang, and every single story. But it’s not like that.
It’s not like that for anyone. I’ve imbibed a certain amount of things. And a big inspiration came from him.
And so now you have some people, myself included, and a few others, who are becoming, by his influence, becoming interested in this Gaudiya culture through Srila Prabhupada’s window. Our Guru Maharaj was a disciple of Srila Prabhupada. I can show you a couple of rare photos that I got from the Bhaktivedanta Archives.
This is in Mayapur in 1974. And you see Srila Prabhupada walking. I don’t remember the name of this grhastha devotee.
And this is Bhavananda Prabhu on the right. He was a sannyasi at that time. And there on the left, this very skinny devotee in brahmachari dress, that’s our Guru Maharaj, Guru Govinda Maharaj.
He was a little different in ISKCON, because he already came from a Vaishnava culture. He already had some culture that he brought with him. And when he would speak, he would give classes for sometimes three or four hours at a time.
And he would sing. And he was fluent in Bengali and Odia and Sanskrit and also English. And he would quote from so many different things.
And he had a particular style, which was very different. And Prabhupada encouraged him in that. So he was a great inspiration for that.
He wanted us, for Prabhupada’s centennial, to start a university for Srila Prabhupada. And it’s a long, complicated thing. Like many different projects, it ended up not working out.
But Gora, as we could discuss perhaps further, we have some idea to try to do something like that in terms of a university and things too. So in one sense, you are saying that your connection with the whole Gaudiya and Odia culture has come primarily through the inspiration and association of your Guru Maharaj. Yes, and also one other personality.
You like the pictures I’m showing? Is this okay? Yes, of course. I’ll show you another picture. This is my Guru Maharaj on the left.
And this gentleman on the right, who’s wearing white, this is Professor Fakir Mohan Das. Interesting Vaishnav name, Fakir Mohan. And it’s a long story.
I wrote something for Satyaraja’s scholarly journal about him. Fakir Mohan Prabhu, I met him a little before my Guru Maharaj left this world. And he’s been a very great inspiration for us.
I attended classes from him for over 10 years. And he was flattering us, praising us, chastising us in whatever way he could to encourage us to serve our Guru and to serve Srila Prabhupada. But at the same time, he was also very, very conversant in Odia culture.
This is another picture of him here, very effulgent personality. He’s a research scholar. He has a PhD from Utkal University.
And let me see, I think I could tell you his complete academic and devotional title was Vaishnava Pravara Fakir Mohan Das M.A. Ph.D. Delit Sahitya Charya Vyakarna Shastri. That’s his complete academic and devotional title. He is quite a scholar.
He knew my Guru Maharaj at a young age. And at the age of nine, he ran away from home because he wanted to be a sadhu. The family life is Maya.
And he grew up chanting Hare Krishna and reading those books of Bhaktivinoda Thakur. His favourite book was Harinam Chintamani and worshipping Jagannath. And he decided family life is Maya.
My parents are Maya and I want to be a sadhu. And so he ran away from home at nine years old. And his parents captured him a few villages away and brought him back.
And then they managed to keep him for some time. And at the age of 12, again, he ran away from home. And that time he came to Puri.
At that time, the only existing Gaudiya Math, which was the Purushottam Math, which is right near Tota Gopinath. That’s the only temple directly established by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta. And as a young boy, he moved in there.
And it’s a very long story. But at one point, the authorities there in the temple, they saw that he was a bright young man. And they said, you should go back to school.
And he said, I don’t want to go to school. I came here to do Vaisnava Seva and to do bhajan. No, no, you should go to school.
And then they found out that he was a very bright student. So his guru finally instructed him that you should get a PhD in Sanskrit and you should teach Gaudiya culture in the university as a kind of way of preaching. And so he did like that.
And his whole life was a kind of a cross between academia and devotional life. His students called him the Babaji. And he had, I don’t know, probably maybe 100 or more people get their PhDs under him.
He was probably the foremost authority on Gaudiya literature in Orissa. He wrote a number of books and published many, many books. So he wanted to start a research institute.
In fact, his idea for the university was going to be with Fakir Mohan Prabhu. He brought Fakir Mohan Prabhu to meet Srila Prabhupada when Prabhupada came to Bhubaneswar in 1977. Fakir Mohan Prabhu was a very, very simple, humble person, was very inspired by Prabhupada.
So then later, after my Guru Maharaj left, Fakir Mohan Prabhu came and was helping us and preaching to us and giving us classes and nourishing us. And he wanted to open a research institute. And somehow he wanted me to help him with that, even though I’m not an academic, but I like books, as you remark.
And we had a lot of discussions about that. And then he left this world a few years ago. And I’ve been meditating on this ever since that we should do this research institute.
So these are two big inspirations for us, these two personalities in our life. That’s fascinating. And I have read about Fakir Mohan Prabhu, but I didn’t know specific details that he had run away at age of nine.
I knew he was a great scholar, but it’s an inspiring story. So the idea of say devotees going back to academia, it’s not just in ISKCON. There are precedents in the Gaudiya tradition before that also.
Yes. And although Srila Prabhupada said so much about how, you know, schools are what you call slaughterhouses and like that. And that’s a fact.
Prabhupada wasn’t mincing words, he wasn’t flattering that they are a slaughterhouse. But at the same time, they also have some benefit. And Prabhupada told different devotees that to stay in the university and to use their PhD, like Bhaktisubdhaman Maharaj and others, to preach.
And in fact, at one point, I think Garuda mentions this, maybe he spoke about this in one of your podcasts also, but he mentioned how Srila Prabhupada at one time wanted every temple to be connected with an institution, a university, and every temple should be able to offer master’s degree and PhDs. He wanted every temple to do that. And that desire of Srila Prabhupada, as far as I know, there’s not one single temple in the whole world that’s done that.
But Prabhupada wanted every major temple to do that. So, it’s a desire of Srila Prabhupada which is lacking in our society. That’s remarkable.
I had no idea. I knew Prabhupada wanted a Bhakti Ananda Institute and there is a letter that Prabhupada said, if any person who comes to our movement is well-educated, they should be first sent to the Bhakti Ananda Institute. And if they can be engaged there, then that’s good.
Otherwise, they can come back and do other temple services. So, Prabhupada did appreciate that the role the intellectuals could play in the movement. And definitely, there were every temple leading and having that.
That’s quite remarkable. Yeah. Yeah.
What is it? Namrata Prabhu, if I can mention your competitors. Namrata Prabhu with his programme or whatever he calls it. Yeah.
I get a little plug for Namrata. He’s my friend also. Namrata Prabhu, when he interviewed Garuda, Garuda mentioned that.
And that’s a good source because Garuda was an academic disciple of Srila Prabhupada during Prabhupada’s time. So, I would consider that comment to be authoritative. We have some vision with Gaura that primarily we want it to be a research institute and we want to find old rare books.
Like, we’ve been compiling a number of things. This is a book by Kanai Kunti called Mahabhag Prakash, which was written, he says, Kanai Kunti was one of the associates of Mahaprabhu. He’s mentioned twice in Chaitanya Chaitanya Amrita.
He was the head priest in the Jagannath Mandir and a great devotee of Mahaprabhu. But he says in the beginning of this book that he learned these things from Roy Ramananda in the Gambhira. So, this is a very authentic, very old book.
And there’s a number of other such books, too, that we’re trying to work on. This is another one here. This is Roy Ramananda Padavali in Odia, which is a collection of rare, practically never seen before, songs of Ramananda Roy, which the state museum in Orissa in Bhubaneswar, they compiled into a book.
So, we’re working on translating that and a number of different books. Chaitanya Chakrada is a biography of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu from 500 years ago. And Vaishnavila Amrita, this is a book called Manaseeksha, which is written by Bhakta Charandas, who was in the line of Gadadhar Pandit.
And Bhakta Charandas, he wrote a commentary on Raghunath Das Goswami’s Manaseeksha. And it’s just amazing what he wrote. So, these books are very, very little known.
You devotees who are a little academic, a little bit learned, they would be familiar with two heavy books. These are in Bengali. This is the Godi of Vaishnav Abhidhan.
This is compiled by a great scholarly devotee, Haridas Das. Actually, Bhagavan Prabhu was his personal servant. And I think Vaishnav Abhidhan making that was the great desire of Bhakta Sahasra Thakur, isn’t it? And then completed after his departure.
And on Bhakta Siddhanta’s request, Haridas Das took up the work further. So, that’s a great work. But in that book, there’s practically nothing about Odia-Godia literature, because Haridas Das couldn’t read Odia.
And that wasn’t his forte. So, he instructed Thakur Mohan Prabhu that you should increase the Abhidhan and add to it about Odia literature. And that’s something that he unfortunately never got to do.
But he was certainly meditating on it and spoke to us a lot about it. And in some ways, he contributed with his whole life, like Mahabharat Prakash, that book we were just showing you, or this Manasiksha of Bhakta Chandas. These are books that he very carefully searched out for many, many years.
And as a professor, he used to joke with us that he never had a home in his whole life. And he was really a fakir, really a beggar. And all the money that he got as a professor later when he retired, he used to print these books.
This was a labour of love for his whole life. And he printed many, many rare books, like Purusha Bodhanishruti of the Pappalata Saka of the Tharva Veda, which is quoted by Rupa Goswami in some of his literatures. But that book had been practically lost.
The Garanga Bhagavat, which is by Odia poet named Bhagavan Das. Many, many different, Bhanumali Padyavali, there is a collection he printed of a Gaudiya poet named Bhanumali Das. There’s a book, Raj Bihar, that he did by an Odia Vaishnava named Dasarathi Das, who was born in the 1700s.
Many, many, so many different books. Chaitanya Bilas is an Odia Vaishnava named Madhava Bharat, who wrote this book about the pastimes of Mahaprabhu. He wrote so many, many books about Mahaprabhu.
In fact, my grandma once commented that Fakir Mahaprabhu knew more about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Orissa than anyone on the planet. And partly that was because when he did his doctoral thesis in 1983, he wrote his thesis, it was called Prachin Odia, Sahityari Sri Chaitanya Charit, a study of books about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in ancient Odia literature. And so many different chapters.
Chapter one speaks about the different biographies of Mahaprabhu in both Bengali and in Odia. In chapter two, he wrote a chapter which he later printed in a small book, this book here, called Sri Chaitanya Padam Kaputa Orissa, which means the footprints of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Orissa. And it’s a compilation of research he did over many decades, describing Mahaprabhu’s journey from West Bengal to Orissa and all the places he visited on the way.
And he personally went to all the villages and found many times there are deities there that are 500 years old of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu or Gauranityananda Prabhu. And sometimes they had local stories, remembrances of Mahaprabhu’s visit. And so he compiled all that into a wonderful book, which we also want to translate and expand on actually, because those places are still there and there’s still research that can be done on those places.
So that’s another thing we want to try to do with Gaura. Okay, so one dimension is the books and the other is even the holy places. It’s almost something like when the Goswamis went to Vrindavan or sent by Lord Chaitanya to Vrindavan, they had, of course, I don’t think they were recovering literature, but they were recovering temples and building temples, writing literature and I think embodying Vaishnava qualities.
It’s amazing. So now these books that you are mentioning are the books that are, that are, since you said they were published by Fakir Mohan Prabhu, so are they books that are read by scholars or are they read even by practitioners or is, how much is the current cultural influence of Gaudiya Vaishnavism in today’s Orissa? It’s gone down a lot. It’s different in different ways.
I would say if you want to compare West Bengal culture, Gaudiya culture, to the Gaudiya culture in Orissa, in some ways the culture in Orissa is stronger. There’s more Hare Krishna, Kirtan. There’s more worship of Gauri Tai.
Gauri Tai is worshipped in practically every village in Orissa. But one thing West Bengal has that I see that Orissa doesn’t have and that is they love their literature. Bengalis are very, very proud of their Bengali literature, whereas I’ve been working a little bit with the IYF in Bhubaneswar and giving classes once a week to the students there.
And I’ve naturally been asking them, you know, since you’re Gaudiya students, we’re looking for these books, can you help us? And I came to find out something very interesting that a lot of them, they don’t really know Gaudiya very well. They know English better than they know Gaudiya. Because the culture today, Gaudiya is kind of looked down and like it’s backward, but English is very high class, Hindi is high class, and English is very, very high class.
That’s their vision. So one of the things, one of the dreams that I have, we’re hoping to try to do someday with Gaura is we’d like to have a bookstore. I’m a book lover.
If you talk to any book lover of Bengali books, they’ll know about the Sanskrit Pushtak Bhandar in Kolkata. It’s an old bookstore, which they have Sanskrit books and Bengali books. They publish rare old books, but they also purchase books.
If your grandfather died and he had a library and you don’t care about books, you just want to get rid of them, you can take those books to them and they’ll pick through them and decide we’ll buy this and this. They probably pay 50 rupees a kg or something for the books. And they buy those books and some of them they may keep, some of them they may sell.
We’d like to do that. Fakim Rambu told me we want to have a bookstore with all the books, but primarily of course with Prabhupada’s books. But we want to have books in Odia language and Hindi and Bengali, because Puri is such a place where there’s many different yatris coming, pilgrims coming, and we’d like to have so many books for them.
But we’d also like to have something where scholars will come and look for books. And for that reason, we have to have all kinds of books, even books we may not agree with. But that’s just what you have to have.
But we want to keep prominent Srila Prabhupada’s books and the books of our sampradaya. And as part of that, our vision is we want to reprint Fakim Rambu’s books. You can kind of tell from the camera, I think, the quality of printing of this book.
It’s not very high quality. It’s about the cheapest paper you can get. And the printing’s very, very cheap, because he was a poor sadhu.
But we’d like to print this in a better way, just like this. I’ll show you another book. This is Chaitanya Chakada in Odia.
It’s a biography of Mahaprabhu. And this is a contemporary printing. And you can see the ink is very nice, nice printing in that.
So we’d like to try to print some of these Odia books of Fakim Rambu in their language and encourage the local people to read Prabhupada’s books, of course, in Odia, but also show them your own culture and do that through literature, distribution, selling, printing, research, and do that through having classes. And as I was mentioning, you can slow me down if I’m going too fast. I have a lot of my mind about this.
Gora is not only about preserving, researching, and printing, and translating books, but we want to focus on research. Just like for myself, I’ve done some research over the years in some of our magazines, Krishna Kathamrita. In this magazine, The Hidden Identity of Lord Jagannath, we wrote about a topic which Krishna Chaitanya Maharaj, who you recently interviewed, wonderful Vaishnava scholar who’s very encouraging to us, told me, he said, My God, Madhavananda, you’re asking questions no one’s ever asked before, but you’re also giving pramanas for it.
And the question we asked in particular was, If Jagannath is Brindavan Bihari Krishna, where is Radha? And he said, Nobody’s even asked that question. And we find it in the literature. We find it in Jagannath.
We find it in the puja of Jagannath and the identity of Jagannath. Many, many pramanas. It’s a long topic.
But that’s the kind of research subject that we would like to encourage in Gora to find out more about Jagannath Puri, more about Jagannath, more about Bengali Gaudiya-Odiya culture. So our desire, and it’s one of our benefits of working with devotees like Krishna Chaitanya Maharaj, and with other scholars too, that we want to open up not just a research institute, but a place where we have classes, and people can come, and they can study traditional Odiya literature. They can study music, traditional sangeet.
And I would like to see some traditional Bengali mridanga players, as well as Odiya ones, because they have a little different techniques. And I have in mind to have three types of teachers. It’s a very unique conception, I think, of an educational institution, because it would be accredited.
We would have some recognition from Oxford University, and I think they’re getting it from University of Kolkata right now, as well as Mumbai University. They’re connected with them. So we would be able to offer through their master’s degree or PhD.
But the teachers we’d like to have would be secular professors, but also local gurus who can teach us about Odissi dance and music, and not just the style, but about the philosophy behind it. Because I find, for example, we talk about Odissi dance. There are many devotees even who know about Odissi dance, and they know how to move their feet like this, and they know how to do this mudra and that mudra.
But there’s very few who know the philosophy behind it. Oh. And we would like to promote that.
And we would also like to promote traditional agricultural culture. You were speaking a little bit earlier with this young lady who works with this Anupayani Radha, and I’m hoping that she can be a professor. She already has a degree in landscape architecture, and she’s studied some permaculture.
I’m encouraging her that she should study and teach spiritual ecology, and we should show people how to live a natural life, and live closer to the land, and grow organic food, and how to grow nice trees, and how to build nice houses in a traditional way, but not just in a traditional cultural way. Because there’s also philosophy, and culture, and art that go with those buildings, and even also with the harvest festivals, and with the planting of the crops, and what day you plant them on, and there’s prayers and things you may offer to Krishna and Garunga Mahaprabhu at certain times for your crops, and like that. And that culture we want to continue.
We’re hoping that students in that school will be ISKCON devotees perhaps, but also devotees from other different mutts and groups, people, local Odia people, and perhaps Westerners also. That’s some vision we have. And again, as I was mentioning in the beginning, a big desire I have for Gora is to enable us to connect with different scholars, with different personalities, and I can see on three different levels at least that we can connect.
We can connect with secular scholars who are devotees in one sense, like you said. They may love Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnavism, but they may not be a strict practitioner, but they know about the tradition, and they love the literature and things. So those kind of persons, as well as ISKCON pundits, as well as local, like we have our Hariparshi Prabhu or other devotees who are very learned in Sanskrit and Gaudiya literature who are devotees, they can also teach.
And then we should also have local gurus, kirtan gurus and whatever, and I’d like to see that both from Orissa and from West Bengal coming here. That’s a long-term vision that we have. And actually, we’re looking at some property now with the school, three-story building to try to have some hope and desire about that.
I can see your heart’s devotion and if I may use the word devotional passion coming out in what you’re saying. So, it does seem that what we talked earlier about the society and culture, you really would like to reach beyond the institutional boundaries. And in one sense, for this kind of cultural work, the institutional boundaries, they don’t really, they don’t have to, we could say, bind us or restrict us.
If you can share Krishna Bhakti to any of these people and we can preserve what is there. So, going back to a couple points earlier, you made some point which is, I feel, maybe it’s like in some TV serials, they have a cliffhanger which you have to watch the next episode to know. So, can you share what is the answer about Radha being there in Jagannath Puri or do we need a next episode for that? My grandma had an expression which I found it has a philosophical, historical, scriptural deity worshipping base.
And that expression was Radha Viraha Vidura Roop. And that means, that’s Jagannath. Jagannath is Krishna on the outside but Radha on the inside.
He is the embodiment of separation from Radha. And Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is Krishna Viraha Vidura Roop. If separation from Krishna can manifest a form, that form is Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
That’s the last limit, that form. So, we found with Lord Jagannath some very interesting things. That with Lord Jagannath, well, first of all, in the Jagannath Ashtakam, which right now it’s a project I’m working on with some of the BRC members.
We’re working on a critical edition of Jagannath Ashtakam. We found one 15th century manuscript. We’re trying to compile different manuscripts.
And they have different readings. Some of the words are a little different. We’re going to compile and give a comparison of the different readings.
And we also want to write some commentary on it. And that’s a really big subject. If you get me started on that.
And we want to speak about the authorship of it. But one of my premises is that within that Jagannath Ashtakam, we find the identity of Lord Jagannath. And in the sixth verse, it said, Rasanandi Radha Sadasa Vapur Alingana Sukha.
That Alingana Sukha, with great ecstasy, Lord Jagannath is always embracing Radharani to his chest. What does that mean? I was a pujari for Lord Jagannath in Bhubaneswar for many years. I used to undress him at night and put him to rest.
I would bathe and dress him in the morning. And I never saw Radharani stuck on his chest. I’ve never met any pujari who had that kind of revelation.
But at the same time, we have this verse. And what does the verse mean? So this is one pramana. And then we did a little more research.
And we found out that during the Navakalaivaram festival, you’re familiar with Navakalaivaram? So for some listeners who may not be, that Navakalaivaram festival takes place every, I don’t know, 15 to 20 or so years. According to lunar calculations, it’s a complicated thing to that. And it’s the time they change Lord Jagannath’s body.
And they go and they find a new Dharu. And it’s very complicated how they do that. So we found out about the process they do, finding that tree.
And again, they go to Kakapura, a particular temple. They fast until Mangalaman, who’s Jagannath’s auntie, appears before them in a dream and tells them where the Dharu is. And then based on that dream, they’ll go to that place.
And then the tree has to have four branches, not two, not three, not five, not ten, only four branches. There has to be a Shankha, Chakra, Gata, Padma, the four symbols of Vishnu on the tree, or they won’t accept it. There has to be a lake nearby, a small mountain nearby, a crematorium nearby, a Shiva temple nearby, an ant hill.
There has to be a cobra living at the base of the tree. And if all those things are not there, they won’t do it. So there’s so many rituals.
And I’m getting to the point. One of the rituals they do, when they cut the tree down, one of the pandas comes with a solid gold axe, an axe made out of solid gold. It’s a little smaller than my small finger.
It’s not very practical. They just touch it to the tree. And then they have a silver axe, which they touch to the tree.
And then some fellow comes with an iron axe, and he does the hard work. So he cuts the tree down. Then they cut off the branches.
They peel off the bark. And then they do purusha-shukta abhishek for the tree, okay? Because they want to take away any fault that may be there in the tree. And then as part of the deity worship, part of the prana patistha, the installation ceremony, they have what’s called soda-nyasa.
Nyasa means when you place the identity of the deity on that form. You have a form of Krishna. It’s made out of brass, let’s say.
You bought in Lloyd Bazaar. But Krishna has not been called there. And although it’s the form of Krishna, that form doesn’t know who he is.
And so to tell him who he is, just like you tell a child, your name is Krishnadas. Your name is Radadasi. You give a name to your daughter or son, and you give them an identity.
Nyasa means we give an identity to that form. And so there’s a certain mantra that goes with that form. Now we managed to find out.
So, nyasa is different from prana patistha or are they different traditions themselves? Sorry to interrupt you. Nyasa is part of prana patistha. It’s one of the most important aspects of it.
I used to do prana patistha, some for my groomers. That was another one of my first services. I was a pujari like that.
I installed the deities of Radagopinath and some Gornitayi deities and different things. Anyway, but we managed to find that Sota Nyasa mantra that gives the identity to Lord Jagannath. When they find that dark tree, they cut the branches off, they cut the bark off, they do that abhishek to purify everything, they chant Purusha Shukta.
And then the head priest comes with this a secret mantra and he chants this Sota Nyasa mantra. And we found out that mantra. I could read it to you in Sanskrit.
It’s right here in our article. But it’s a mantra meditating on Srimati Radharani. Really? Can you read that if you have it? I’ll just read you the translation because it’s a very long Sanskrit slogan and very small in the magazine and my eyesight is not so good.
I meditate on Radhika, who is the most beautiful girl in the three worlds. She has a smile on her face and her complexion is the colour of kumkum. Her veil is made with the border of her splendid lower cloth.
Her dress is delightful and a lotus hangs at the end of her braid. She appears wonderful in her fresh youth and her eyes extend her ears. With her thumb and index finger, she’s placing a betel leaf in the lotus mouth of Krishna.
So that mantra, that’s the inner identity of Lord Jagannath. That’s the tradition. We’re not putting words in their mouth.
That’s the tradition here in Jagannath Puri for who knows how long they’ve been doing that. Aside from that, we found out. So this is the inner identity of Jagannath means Jagannath himself is considered to be Radha or Radha is present with him or what does this Nyasa Mantra mean? Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is Shri Krishna Chaitanya Radha Krishna Nahi Anya.
Yes, correct. He’s a combined form of Radha and Krishna. He’s Krishna and actually that’s a controversial topic which I won’t get into here.
But if you talk to some Vaishnavas in the Dwaita party bar, for example, I have some friends in that line. They say that it’s not that Radha and Krishna became one but Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is Krishna but Radharani’s complexion and mood are covering him. So anyway, that’s a technical detail which to me is kind of a mute point.
It’s just language because we don’t see a difference between Radharani’s mood and Radharani. We don’t see a difference between her complexion and her. So whether they merge together which they don’t like the idea or whether it’s just Krishna but he’s adopted Radharani’s complexion and mood.
So on the inside Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is Krishna. Basically the meaning of that verse is that on the outside he’s Radha, he’s golden, but on the inside he’s Krishna. And Jagannath is just the opposite.
On the outside, and this is why he’s the Isvadeva of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, on the outside he’s Krishna but on the inside he’s Radha. This Jagannatha Astakam describes that and also this Sotanyasa Mantra describes that. And I found a third evidence which is very interesting.
In the Jagannath Mandir there’s actually a number of Deities on the main altar. There’s Jagannath Baladeva, Subhadra and Sudarshan. There’s also Sri and Bhū, the two consorts of Lord Jagannath.
And there’s also a Deity, a wooden Deity of Nila Madhava. And there’s also another small Deity who is called Ardha Nari Isvara. And that Deity, another name for that Deity is Aśāyana Vigraha.
Now you haven’t heard very much about that Deity. It’s kind of a secret Deity. That’s one reason.
The other reason is the Deity is only about as big as my thumb. Perhaps another reason is the Deity is made out of solid gold. And that Deity has a very simple function.
That Deity just sleeps. Because Jagannath is pretty big. He’s about seven or eight feet high.
It’s hard to put him in bed. So this Ardha Nari Isvara, this Aśāyana Vigraha, the Deity who sleeps, that’s Jagannath. And they put him to rest.
But why is he called Ardha Nari Isvara? Because he’s half Radha and half Krishna. Or half Lakshmi and half Narayan, that Deity. Okay, I thought it referred to Shiva and Parvati.
It refers actually to Radha and Krishna. Yeah, in this case, it’s Radha and Krishna. Sometimes Shiva and Parvati are also called that too.
So this is some research that we did. We also did some research. Have you published this? I don’t think I’ve read this in Krishna Karmagundu till now.
Was it? Yeah, it’s an article on Jagannath. And this issue, we did some interesting research about the history of the policy of Bideshi probationary shade. A foreigner is forbidden going into the Jagannath temple.
And when did that begin? And the first formal, I went to the Uttar Pradesh University and spoke with the leading historian there. And I asked him, when did it start? And he told me, actually, I don’t know. But I did some research with the London Library.
That’s not the way it’s called. The Library of London. And I managed to find some, the British Library.
Thank you. The British Library. Yeah.
And I managed to find some documents from the 1800s that describe how that legal, that position began. And interestingly, ironically, paradoxically, it began with the British. The British were the ones who made the law forbidding themselves to go inside the temple.
And there’s an interesting story, interesting history behind that, which is another cliffhanger you’re going to demand from me. I’m afraid. That’s important.
I mean, so you’re saying that, yeah, in one sense, some things which are present right now, we think that they’re probably even present for a long time. And there’s some kind of restraint, even when Haridas Thakur was not allowed in the temple. So, are you saying that, so there is a date before that from which it started? Well, at the time of Haridas Thakur and Rupak Sanath and Goswamis, none of them were allowed inside the temple.
Balaram Das, who was a great devotee of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, wrote this book called Bhava Samudra. It’s a 500-year-old book. He was not allowed inside the temple because he came from a Sudra caste.
Dasha Bhauri was not allowed inside the temple because he came from a Sudra caste. Sala Beg was not allowed inside the temple, although he’s one of the greatest poets in Odia literature, devotional literature, because his father’s name was Lal Beg. His father was a Muslim.
But at that time, there was no formal law. There was no formal rule. But it was the British who made a formal rule.
And I don’t want to leave a cliffhanger. You’re going to kill me. The reason they did that is because the British were very intelligent.
And they understood that if we want to control Orissa, we have to get Jagannath on our side. We have to have the common people think that Jagannath is on our side. And the way to get Jagannath on our side is to have the Pandas on our side.
So they spoke with the Pandas, whatever you want. And the Pandas wanted this thing. There should be some rule.
And so I think originally, they forbid, I think it was 16 different castes, like shoemakers, alcohol makers, prostitutes, different persons, fishermen, but they were officially forbidden to come in the temple, and foreigners also. So that’s the first beginning of that, ironically, coming from the British themselves. So that’s a bit of research that we did.
I don’t want to just beat the drum for articles that I’ve written. But my point in bringing up these topics is, I have a passion, as you noted, that I would like to see research going on. I’d like to empower young, intelligent people who may be ISKCON devotees.
They may not be ISKCON devotees. They may not be formally devotees at all. But I’d like to empower them to go deep into the culture and tradition of Orissa and West Bengal, and find these gems, and do it before these things get lost.
And my vision is that if we do this, this will be a great preaching tool. Because when people see me, they come. For example, today, we went to have darshan at Tota Gopinath.
And we walked, there’s a local temple of Gopinath, about a 10-minute walk from our house, a 350-year-old temple. Tota Gopinath is about a 20-minute rickshaw ride away. So we were walking to this first temple, and a rickshaw walker stopped and picked us up and took us to Tota Gopinath.
And the same person brought us back. And when he brought us back, I saw he seems to know the way to go. Our ashram is kind of in a rural area almost.
It’s just on the outskirts of the city. And it’s very difficult to find. So I just purposely didn’t say anything.
And he took us right to our house. And it turns out he lives about one kilometre away from us, and he knows all about us. Because everybody knows those white guys, the Vedases.
Now, some scholars may think of me as Gora, but they’re always going to look at me and they’re going to think Iskcon, no matter what. Even if you’re a Western scholar who’s not an Iskcon devotee, and you come here to work with Gora, and I’d like to have some people do like that, they’re going to look at them and think they’re Iskcon. Because white skin, Tidak, especially working with Gurunga Mahaprabhu topics and things like that means an Iskcon devotee.
That’s what they think. So I can’t get away from that. But that’s something which I want to use.
I want them to see, because they see me, they think Iskcon. I want them to see me and think, oh, this is someone who loves our culture, and is doing something for our culture that we’re not doing. They’re preserving these old rare books, and they’re trying to preserve the tradition and philosophy behind the literature, the culture and things.
And they appreciate that so much. And I benefit as an individual because I learn from them. I learn amazing things.
Let me tease you a little bit. I spoke about this Manasiksha. Just one minute before you go there.
You know, in one sense, when you’re saying that when Prabhupada came to India, in one sense, that’s what happened, isn’t it? People felt that Prabhupada Swamiji is teaching, is preserving our culture in a way that we are not able to do is spreading our culture. And there were very, in one sense, between 1960s, before Prabhupada went to America in 1970s, when he came back from America, there was not a dramatic transformation in people’s spiritual commitment to Prabhupada and his teachings. But there was a significant cultural pride that came in.
So people didn’t become Prabhupada’s disciples. In that sense, they’re not that committed. But because of that cultural pride or the word pride has slight negative connotation, you could say the cultural appreciation or the cultural joy could say in seeing the culture being preserved and spread.
So that’s what actually attracted them and they became well-wishers. So I was talking with my Guru Maharaj, he said that when we’re doing outreach, there are two kinds of people we will reach to. He says one is those for whom we open the doors to Krishna.
We open the doors and they come to Krishna. And there are others who will open the doors for us to take Krishna to others. They may themselves never come to Krishna.
So he gave the example of Allen Ginsberg to some extent for that. He never became a committed devotee, but he was the first influential person who spread Krishna, who helped Prabhupada spread Krishna consciousness among the young and hip crowd at that time. So in one sense, the scholars and that kind of people you are saying, they may themselves never become devotees.
The life members in India didn’t become devotees, but they helped Prabhupada build the temples through which so many people are coming to Krishna. So it’s a strikingly different way of different perspective, but it’s a very accepting perspective from our side toward them and it’s empowering for us because we will reach out to people whom we can’t ourselves. Say what one influential scholar, if an influential scholar endorses or appreciates what we are doing, their circle under their influence, we can’t directly influence them.
But if they do that, it opens so many doors for us. So in one sense, just to complete this point, somehow as we have become established in India, it’s our perception has changed from we are preserving Indian culture to we are making Brahmacharis. So the idea that ISKCON is preserving Indian culture, that is no longer a central part of ISKCON’s public perception today.
That’s in one sense unfortunate, but what you are doing in Bengal and Orissa to some extent, in one sense you are replicating what Prabhupada was doing earlier and fostering that cultural consciousness, cultural awareness, cultural pride in a healthy sense, both so that they will do the work to preserve and they will appreciate and help those who are preserving like you. Some years ago, it’s a little complicated history, but some years ago, a secular scholar who was working for the Orissa State Museum in Bhubaneswar, which has the largest manuscript collection in the world, palm leaf manuscript collection, and so many Gita Govindas, and they have so many books. So somehow, for some reason, they contacted Bhakta Rupa Prabhu and I, who worked together on our publication work, and he invited us to their home.
Initially, even they wanted to donate some property to us, and there were some catches, and we didn’t do that. But the reason why he wanted to speak with us, he gave me a stack of paper which had a list of books, and it said things like Bhakti Rasami Dasindhu by Rupa Goswami, and there’s all these different lists of books, Gaudiya books, next to the author. And I marked, one of them said, Chamakkar Chandrika by Rupa Goswami.
And I spoke up, I said, this is a mistake. This book is not written, this is written by Vishwanath Chakravarti Thakur, Chamakkar Chandrika is not written by Rupa Goswami. And then he said, this is why I called you here today.
He said, because in the museum, we have scholars, secular scholars, who are doing this work, but they’re not practitioners. And you have something that we don’t have. Maybe you can’t read the manuscripts, maybe you don’t know, you can’t read the language, but you know the culture behind it, you know the literature background.
And they were inviting us to work with them. That particular opening didn’t happen. But just like you’re saying, doors open like that in a very amazing way.
And I’m very excited doing this kind of work too, because again, I want to see devotees empowered. And sometimes the nature of any institution, you just said, it became creating brahmacharis. And sometimes the nature of the institution becomes to preserve the institution and just follow the hierarchy, and to be a good chela.
And every institution becomes like that. It’s not just the fault of ISKCON. We have two good qualities going on in ISKCON.
We have the Bhagavatam and the Holy Name. And as long as those two things are there, everything’s going to be okay. We spoke about this before in one of the previous sessions.
But we need to have some room for intellectual, artistic devotees to expand and to do research, to do something really exciting, to contribute something major for our Sampradaya in a secular kind of way that scholars appreciate, just like someone writes a thesis for their master’s degree or PhD. We want to get some facility for devotees and people interested in this culture to come and write a thesis, do hardcore research on topics like Radharani and Jagannath, or the history of Westerners not being allowed in the temple, so many things, and be able to get a degree for that. And we want to facilitate that.
And so many things will happen with that. That’s remarkable. Actually, in some ways, what you’re doing is pathbreaking, because in India, religious studies has been quite highly neglected.
I had a podcast with Krishnachetra Maharaj. And it seems that in India, secularism grew up to mean not neutrality toward religion, but neglect of religion. So, and one reason for that, I have been still exploring this, and I’m doing some reading of Indian history.
The main understanding I got that was India was born through a bloody partition, a ghastly or a million people are supposed to have lost their lives. And the partition was largely caused by religion. So, many of the Indian leaders felt that for India to preserve its secularism, its territorial integrity, let’s sideline religion from the public square.
Let’s sideline religion from the education, from the, you can never sideline it, but that was their attempt. So, religious studies are not being done in India at all in academic level. And yes, but then what is happening is, we may not study, we may not study, but somebody else will study.
There is an international journal of Hindu studies. I had read some issues. They have like a panel of 12 editors and not a single Indian in those editors.
So, then our traditions representations in the mainstream world come from people who really don’t know our tradition. So, that is unfortunate. So, like you told about the scholar that he appreciates your personality.
I’d like to support what you’re saying. I’d like to illustrate that and not just a figurative way, but in a literal way. One thing, I have an interest in art.
I grew up, my stepfather was an artist, and I grew up around artists and art colony. And one of our books is right here, Mathura Meets Vrindavan, we had illustrated lavishly with traditional Pata Chitra art. But I found out some things about Pata Chitra art and also this Rajasthani art, that a lot of the culture is lost.
Now, if you go to Conart Place in downtown Delhi, you’ve probably been there a few times, you’ll find many people selling Rajasthani art. But you look at the paintings, it doesn’t move your heart. Because as you’re saying, the Indian government is preserving, quote, the culture, but they’re not, they’re neglecting the heart of the culture.
And so we have an interest also with Gaura to promote the arts. And I’d like to show you three things that are happening with this. This is one of them.
This is the painting done by one devotee who works for this, Champakalata Biharni. This is the same painting that was behind me on the wall. This is three logs of wood, Jagannath Balari Subhadra.
It’s a phrase my grandma uses that Jagannath Balari Subhadra are three logs of wood, drowning in the ocean of Radha Bhava. This is illustrating that. And let me show you just two other paintings also.
My point being that we’re trying now to get, we’re getting Western devotees, and we’re speaking to them about the philosophy and the culture, and then they’re seeing that culture through their own particular eyes, and they’re making paintings of it. And I want to expose the thought, not just the thinking or the commentaries of the Western scholars, Western devotee scholars, but also these paintings. This is done by Annapayani Radha, who’s a Russian devotee who works with this.
And you see Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Jagannath, and we were speaking about this in Radha and Krishna. And I’ll show you one last painting. This is done, this particular one is done by a Maharajan named Raja Kishori, and she’s living in St. Petersburg, Russia.
And this is a painting, this is just a small portion of it. She’s doing for me right now, this is a painting illustrating Gambhira Lila, as described in Chaitanya Chaitamrita, Anchalila Chapter 14, there’s a verse describing how Mahaprabhu is embracing Sri Uddhamana Goswami and crying. So they’re coming up with this art.
So I would like to see Gora to be a kind of fusion like that, of good thinking, good feeling from the West. And when you bring this to India, when local artists and people see this, they’re struck, oh my God, there’s so much feeling in this painting. We should have this also.
So this is something that we’re hoping to try to contribute with Gora and accomplish. That’s amazing. You know, just to reinforce this point, I had a podcast with a devotee from Europe, Jayanand Prabhu.
He did his PhD in forms of atheism in Northern Europe. And it’s very striking forms of atheism. So he said, there are atheists who believe in God.
There are atheists who like religious observances and there are atheists who value spiritual experiences. So I asked what do you mean by that? So he said that there are atheists who believe that there’s some ultimate reality, but they just don’t believe that the God of the mainstream religion that they have acquired, that is not the God that they accept. So they accept God, but not some God.
So his point was that, but that these atheists, they may accept the ultimate reality. In some ways, Einstein was like that. There are quotes of Einstein, where he says, I believe in the divine intelligence and the religious experience is the most profound, but it is strongly critical of the conception of God also at times.
So he was more like a theist who didn’t accept the conception of ego. You can call him an atheist. He is not exactly atheist.
But the point is, one is that the people don’t believe in God. They believe in God, but still they call themselves atheists because they don’t have a conception of God they can accept. And there are these atheists, he says, they value spiritual experiences.
They don’t believe in God, but they go to a cathedral and this is majestic or they sit for some religious music or religious hymns or they behold some sacred art and they feel there’s something special over here. So their experiences point them to something spiritual. And in their case, their reason, their rationality, their intelligence may be the last element which comes in.
And he was making the point. Can you hear me, Prabhu? Yes, yes. Very interesting.
He was making this point that if we make reason, rationality, belief, philosophy as the first entrance point for these people, they will never come in. So his point was that we can open as many doors to Krishna as possible. And there are people who value spiritual experiences.
Yes, I experienced something special when I go to some places like this. So they may appreciate meditation because and they may even chant some sacred sounds without believing that they are talking about some God, but that helps them feel higher. And there are atheists who value religious ceremonies and religious culture.
There is a book called Religion for Atheists. So what they say, they say that religion fulfils some deep-rooted social and emotional and psychological needs which atheism itself can’t fulfil. So the point, so he was making that there are atheists who come together and they have the Sunday gatherings where they will sing some songs and they will do some rituals.
So actually the point is that if we just stick to philosophy, philosophy is important. No, I’m not undermining it. But there are people who may be open to spirituality, open to Krishna Bhakti, but not in the way that an organisation can offer.
So it’s what you’re doing in one sense is opening doors for all those people. Like I was very appreciative to hear that, I mean delighted to hear that, not as appreciative, that even scholars who may not be devotees that you will facilitate their research also. So that’s remarkable.
Your comments remind me, I’m reflecting back on something you said earlier about institutions, and I think a lot of atheists in the world today, like I grew up in America, I grew up in a very fundamental Christian family, and I became an atheist at one point because I rebelled against the Christian upbringing that I had. It didn’t make sense to me, it was fanatical, it was bizarre, and I didn’t like it. But my atheism was really just anti-Christianity or at least anti-Churchianity, we might say, a particular flavour of Christianity, not that I’m against Jesus or something.
So a lot of atheists, it’s not that they’re against God, as you said, but they don’t like institutions. And as you’ve commented several times in this discussion tonight, that if we need to have multiple ways to reach people, if the only way we have to reach people is through an institution, through a formal church, it’s just not going to work with a lot of people. And there’s so much to offer in Krishna consciousness.
And another topic, frankly, too, is that in some ways maybe that formal institution may limit devotees too, may limit the individuals. That’s another topic. Yes, that’s true.
So now this limit point, if I may just tread this territory, some of these understandings, like you talked about the Advaita Parivar, their understanding, some of the understandings may be slightly different from what our understanding of Gaudiya Vaishnavism is. So even it’s very unlikely that all the books that are written in a tradition, all the many books you mentioned, they will all be speaking exactly the same theology. So there will be divergences.
Of course, one is you mentioned that we will preserve even books of opposing ideologies, opposing philosophies. But when we encounter in our research, understandings that challenge our current understandings of Gaudiya Vaishnavism or of Krishna consciousness. So how do you deal with that or how do you plan to deal with that? Well, first, according to our philosophy, Vrndavana dasa Thakur in Chaitanya Bhagavad, he says, that the Lord manifests according to the mood of a devotee.
Now, what you’re mentioning is a concern a lot of devotees have. Oh, my God, what if you start reading these books and you go crazy? You get some strange idea and then you leave Krishna consciousness. You start some strange thing.
But I find those kind of problems or those differences even within our main books. What are the two main books dealing with the life and teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu? The two main books. Exactly.
So which one is correct? In Chaitanya Bhagavad, it says that Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya was a Vaishnava before he met Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. But in Chaitanya Charitamrita, it says that he was a Mayavadi before he met Mahaprabhu. Which one is correct? So if we go deep, even in our own books that we have in front of us, we’ll find things which may disturb our minds.
But if we have this understanding of Vrindavan Das Thakur’s teaching, that the devotee sees the Lord according to their particular mood, then we can accommodate that. And not only can I accommodate the Panchasakas, these are five different Odiya Vaishnavas and Arissa, which generally Gaudiya Vaishnava is considered to be an upper Sampradaya or a few upper Sampradayas. Okay.
Sorry, what was the mood you mentioned before you went? What was the mood of, which mood do we accommodate? Do we accept? We can accommodate different moods. And what to speak of the Panchasakas, I’ve been to the Bodho Odiya Math, which is the most prominent Panchasaka Math, which is started by Jagannath Das. And you go into the Math and I see a painting of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Nityananda.
It’s the first thing that I see. And there’s some verse written underneath it. I don’t read Odiya very well.
So I asked the devotee with me, what does it say? And he says, it says, chanadapisa nityena taroheva siksastakam. And you go in the temple, they have Radha Krishna, they worship Gaurani Tai, they read Srimad Bhagavatam, they worship Tulsi, they offer prasadam, they do practically all the things that we do. But they have some things that we’re not really into.
For example, they put a lot of stress on mudras and astrology and some things which we might consider to be a bit mechanical. But for me, and I’m not representing ISKCON in this regard, I’m representing myself, which is something I’d like Gaura to do, to represent individuals and not represent an institution, but individual thinking, which is important amongst scholars. Different scholars have different thinking.
When I see these persons, it doesn’t disturb me. Rather, I’m happy. Wow, they chant Hare Krishna.
They appreciate Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Nityananda. They read Siksastakam. That’s great.
If I meet a Christian, I look for common ground. If I meet someone practising Islam, I look for common ground. We were going to some Islamic countries for giving classes.
I can’t even mention the names. But we were going there some years ago, and we had some experience. They took us up in the mountains.
And my wife and I were wandering around the mountains, and people would see us and invite us into their home and give us some tea or something to drink. And they’re just so sweet and loving. And they’re Muslims.
But we found some common ground in different ways. And that’s the kind of thing I want to look for, for common ground, and then respect someone’s right to have a different opinion, but go deep and be firmly fixed on our own tradition at the same time. So definitely we will find other things that are a little different, sometimes at odds even with our understanding, but sometimes we’ll find very sweet things.
I can share with you two sweet things that I found, if you’re interested, I found in audio literature. Shall we get into that? Before you go into that, just this point about this broadness in accepting. This has been to some extent, it’s very much in the mood of Bhaktivinod Thakur, isn’t it? Bhaktivinod Thakur talks about, if I go to the holy place of some other religion, and I respectfully be there, and appreciate how God is manifesting in a form that I don’t appreciate.
And that appreciation increases my devotion to the Lord I know, the Lord in the form I know. That in one sense, instead of feeling insecure on seeing somebody having some other understanding, if we actually can increase our own devotion also. Yes, I like your word insecurity.
That’s a big part of it. Sometimes we’re so insecure, we have to make up, we have to try to convince ourself by preaching and bashing other people. And that’s a shame, because here in Puri, somehow we’ve met many different people.
There was an interfaith dialogue some years ago in Mayapur, and some different people came. At one point, we had a Christian missionary, a Christian preacher and his wife here in Puri, and they’re friends with the devotees. And we were taking them to different tirthas and things.
We had another time, we had a Jewish couple, we had a Muslim couple, and none of them were interested in changing their faith. And none of them did I try to change their faith. But I just was their friend.
And I just said, hey, there’s this really cool place I want to take you to, because they were interested in experiencing something of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. So I love that. Let’s experience it like you’re seeing the scholars.
And so we take them to the Tota Gopinath temple, and I tell them the story of Tota Gopinath, and they just feel the presence of Gopinath, and wow, this is amazing. And then I say, you know, let’s do some kirtan. Yeah, I love kirtan.
And we do kirtan together. And we love each other. And then they go back to Israel, they go back to wherever they go, America or their Christian church or whatever.
And I made a friend. And probably they’re never going to become an ISKCON devotee, but they’re going to appreciate something about ISKCON. And maybe they gain something.
I’d like to tell you a little story. I was making books and magazines for my Guru Maharaj. And sometimes in the course of doing that, I did something which is not very accepted in any religious institution.
But I would go to other groups, like the Gaudiya Mutt, to meet different senior persons and give them a magazine, give them a book, and just be friends with them. And sometimes ask them some particular research question or something, because I’m doing something scholarly. And I remember I’d done that with one popular Gaudiya Mutt person, and I’d heard from their Acharya a little bit.
And a few years later, I happened to be at their place, and someone invited me for prasadam. And I’m going down the steps. And coming up the steps is one of their leading sannyasis.
And I saw him, and I said, Oh, Maharaj, you know, my friend, I haven’t seen you. And when he saw me, a look of annoyance came on his face, a look of kind of disgust. And immediately I felt a little hurt.
And he said, I’m sorry, Madhavananda. He said, But I find it very difficult to be friends with someone who left my Guru. And then I had to tell him, I said, Maharaj, I don’t think I ever came to your Guru.
I just came to your sangha for a little while to share something, some book or something. And yes, I heard a class or two from your Guru Maharaj. And I’ll never forget that exchange.
And that person’s changed since then. But that exchange said a lot to me. I don’t want to be like that.
If someone comes, and they spend two days with us or two months or two years, and then they decide to leave, and they decide they don’t want to be a Vaishnava. But maybe they like prasadam. Or maybe they like the Hare Krishna mantra.
So they become a Christian or a Muslim or whatever. But they keep one thing they’ve gotten. I want to celebrate the fact that they’re our friend.
And they took one thing from us and kept it there. But the problem is in institutions, it’s all or nothing. We want everything from you or nothing.
It’s a shame. So true. I mean, it’s sometimes when you see that thing in somebody else affecting us, that’s when we realise how objectionable it is.
Otherwise, we might do it. And we may not even realise it. I remember one of the devotees with whom I spent a lot of time.
And I learned a lot from him. And he was very kind. He was very compassionate.
And he answered a lot of my questions. I was very grateful to him. But then I was connected with already some devotees with the group and they had my shiksha guru.
And then eventually, when I took initiation, he came to me and he told me, you betrayed me. I said, what do you mean? He said, I thought you came to my guru and you left. I said, no, I came to you, not to your guru.
And I respect you as a guide. But somehow he presumed. I thought I was just, I have the intellectual seeker and he was the intellectual guide.
I was simply getting answers from him. And I appreciated the answers. But somehow it’s almost that some advance in the seeker may have a more broad-minded attitude than the teacher sometimes.
So, that’s unfortunate. Yeah. Sorry.
Could you hear me? Yeah. Yes, I can. And this same mentality we see in ISKCON sometimes too.
You know, some preachers to you and then they just expect you’re going to take initiation from their guru. And we do this a lot in ISKCON and it hurts people. Part of the problem, I think it is, we think then that people belong to us.
I own you. Yeah. And that’s wrong.
Krishna owns them. I don’t own anybody. We should never think like that.
You don’t own your wife. You don’t own your husband. A guru doesn’t own his disciples.
They have a relationship which is based on love and trust. And there should be some faithfulness in that relationship. But it’s not that I own that person.
There’s a kind of violence there when we have that kind of possession. True. Possessive attitude.
In one sense, we condemn fruitive activities. But actually in our preaching, we are very fruitive. Okay, what fruit is going to come? Is this person going to become a devotee, chant the holy names? Now, we understand there has to be some level of reciprocation.
But the reciprocation doesn’t have to necessarily be in predefined terms. Like say you spend time with this Israeli couple. That is because they were interested.
So, if you’re talking with them and they had no interest and you would not spend time. But that reciprocation need not be restricted to particular forms. Reciprocation doesn’t mean that you have to start chanting Hare Krishna tomorrow and then move forward.
Can I add one thing in this direction, Prabhu? If you don’t mind. See, I, when I have been last few years spending a lot of time in the West and many devotees feel that somehow we are too Indian in our culture and that obstructs people from coming to us. So, then I talk with his.
Krishna West. Yeah, Krishna West is, I mean, Krishna West is one expression of that. There are others also who have that concern.
But so, then I talk with Indranath Maharaj and he actually uses the culture to attract people. Then I had an elaborate talk with him. Then I talked with some of his disciples.
I had not been to, I don’t mean to actually the festival in Poland or other places. But I read about it and they use the culture to attract people. So, I was wondering why is it that, so he says that actually the culture attracts people.
People are eager. We present the culture and they come. So, I realised that it is not that people are against the culture.
See, there is a, there is cultural curiosity and there is cultural commitment. So, we don’t keep a sufficient gap between them. People are curious about the culture and we present the culture.
Actually, I read a book of a Western author who came to a pilgrimage to India. And he said, my first experience was like a sensory overdrive. The food is so colourful.
The dresses are so colourful. So, all my senses, they get so much stimulation. So, actually they, from the cultural perspective, people have curiosity.
But unfortunately, from the curiosity, we very quickly expect and demand commitment. And that’s what alienates people. So, actually the culture itself is not the problem.
Our expecting people to adopt the culture and adopt it too fast, that is a problem. Otherwise, people have interest in culture. So, if we don’t impose, but if we just present, I think the culture can also be a way we draw people to Krishna.
And that’s what you did in your own way with people from very different denominations and different backgrounds. Yeah, I can tell you for myself, I grew up as a preacher, as a brahmachari in the Los Angeles temple, going out and doing book distribution in the airport and on Harinam and so many things. I had a very traditional background in preaching in ISKCON.
But when I had these people come, I didn’t even think about preaching to them at all. I don’t even care because now I’ve got them. I’ve got them for four days or five days, whatever it is.
And they know, they want to experience kirtan, they want to experience Jagannath Puri and the deities and the temples and the stories and the culture and things. And so, I just presented it as an experience. And I’m in complete ecstasy that I’m giving in this experience.
And I have this strong feeling that even if they walk away, which they very well might, and never chant again, or never come to Puri again, or never drink, at least this one time in their life, they had darshan of Tota Gopinath, Pati Pavan Jagannath, they took prasadam, they heard some philosophy, they did kirtan, and they had a good experience. At least one time. And I feel so happy with that.
Why can’t we have a little more broad-minded attitude like that, that this is our friend, this person lived in our temple, he was initiated by my Guru Maharaj and did service for so many years, did so many things for Guru Maharaj. And then later he had problems, and he went away, but he’s part of our family. The poet Devaki Nandandas, he sings, Hoi chhena hoi bhena prabhujyata das, sabaracharana vandam dante korigas, that all the Vaishnavas, hoi chhena, all the Vaishnavas in the past.
In fact, I remember he explained this to us once, he said, another meaning is, all the persons who used to be devotees, but they’re no longer devotees. Really? Hoi bhena means all the devotees in the future. Another meaning is, all the persons who are not devotees yet, but they’ll become devotees.
I offer my pranams to them, because they’re so special. He lived in the ashram for two days. Oh my God, it’s such a special thing.
I’ll tell you a quick story. Once we were doing some collection and book distribution in Las Vegas, Nevada. Las Vegas is another word for hell.
We’d collected huge amounts of coins, like hundreds of dollars worth of coins. How do you change those coins in? We had big, huge bags of coins. We thought, we’ll go to the casino, the gambling casino, because they have machines where the coins come out, and you can cash them in at the cashier.
So we put on hats and Western clothes, so we don’t give it away. We’re standing in the queue with these big bags, and we’ve got bald heads and some baseball caps on. It’s this place, it’s very low lights, and everything’s red, and there’s people gambling everywhere.
Everybody’s drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes. There’s prostitutes walking around. They have legal prostitutes there.
It’s hell. All of a sudden, one of the security guards walks over to us. He says, excuse me, are you Hare Krishna devotees? Oh my God, now we’re in trouble.
I said, yeah. He said, really? I lived in the Toronto Temple for two weeks. It’s so nice to see you guys.
I was so happy. This is our friend. Maybe he’s working in hell, and maybe he’s not following any principles anymore or anything, but he’s our friend, because he lived for two weeks in the Toronto Temple.
My God, this requires such a broad attitude, and otherwise, it’s as you said earlier, it’s one or zero. It’s one or zero, and if, say, I was expected to be at 80%, and even if I come down to 60%, I start feeling I’ve become a failure, and there’s no place for me over here. So, I could be at 60%, but because I feel that being a devotee means 80%, so I don’t, I become so discouraged.
I don’t stay at 60%, I go down to zero. So, why not accept somebody at that 60%? And actually, that is the mood of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita also. In the 12th chapter, he talks about, if you can’t do this, then do this.
If you can’t do this, then do this. So, you know, what is striking me is that the whole Gaura project is not just at one level project of scholarship or just of devotion. It’s also, you could say, a project of compassion that, in one sense, you are giving access to the tradition to people who would not come through the normal channels, and they get connected with devotees, and they appreciate devotees.
That is their way. That may be the only way they grow in their spiritual life. They may not grow by any other way.
That’s one perspective. But I’ll tell you something else, Chaitanya Charan Prabhu, honestly, I’m greedy. I get so many wonderful things.
I meet so many wonderful persons. Let me share with you a couple of things. You’re asking about the culture in Orissa.
Here in Orissa, to this day, practically every village has some kirtan groups, and they do Chariprahara, Ashtaprahara, Solaprahara—means 12-hour kirtan, 24-hour kirtan, 48-hour kirtan—of the Hare Krishna mantra. And even amongst the smart brahmins, the smartest here in Orissa, there’s a tradition with the Hare Krishna mantra. When the bride gets married, part of the ceremony is they initiate her into the Hare Krishna maha-mantra.
That’s part of the smarter tradition here. And there’s a song. There’s this nice song that we found about the Hare Krishna maha-mantra, which Bhakhyam Rambabu shared with us.
I think it’s very similar also in Hindi, so you’ll understand the meaning. It’s very simple language. It’s about the maha-mantra.
That the name of Lord Ram is like the Ladoo, Krishna’s name is like ghee, and the name of Hari is like Kandakira sweet rice. So, you take the Rama Nama Ladoo, you add the Krishna Nama ghee, then you add the Hari Nama Kandakira, and gory-gory, you mix it together, and then pee, you drink it. This is a traditional song.
So, I’m benefiting. I love this. So, what you’re saying is, in one sense, you’re talking earlier from the Las Vegas perspective that people may have no connection with Krishna, and still we can be friends with them.
But here, people already have a connection with Krishna and Gaura. So, we learn so much from them. Yes.
I mean, why not? It’s such a wonderful thing. And I sing this. I sing this in the villages, and people go crazy.
Here’s the verse right here under the screen. Rama Nama Ladoo, Krishna Nama ghee, Hari Nama Kandakira, gory-gory pee. We printed this in our Krishna Katami Dibindu magazine some years ago also.
So, let me share another one with you, another real favourite that I have. This Rama Nama Ladoo, Krishna Nama ghee verse is something that Fakir Mohan Babu shared with us. And I’d like to share another verse with you that he also introduced us to.
This is from this poet whose name is Bhakta Charandas. And he wrote this book, Manasiksha. This is a commentary on Raghunath Das Goswami’s Manasiksha.
So, you may remember, if you’re familiar with Manasiksha, it begins with Guru Goshte, Goshtali, Susujane, Busurugane. That’s the first line. The very first word in Manasiksha is guru.
So, Raghunath Das Goswami is telling my dear mind, you should respect guru. So, what does guru mean? Who is guru? And Goshtali says, Susujane, Susujane means the Vaishnavas. Who are the Vaishnavas? What is their role with me? So, Bhakta Charandas has given a kind of song commentary on this in Oriya language, which no one knows.
This is one of the things we’re translating. I’ll put this on the screen, and I’ll go ahead and sing this. We should see that my deeksha guru, Krishna says in the 11th canto of the Bhagavatam, Acharya Mambijanayam Navamanyetakarichit, that Gurudev is Saksaduritvin.
He’s non-different from Krishna. That’s deeksha guru, because he’s the person who gives us mantra. And Siksha guru Rupiradha, our Siksha guru, who’s giving us our abhidheya, he’s giving us the process that’s a general function of the Siksha guru.
He’s like Radharani. He’s giving us devotion. So then, what are the Vaishnavas? The Vaishnavas are the gopis.
These three all together, they remove the obstacles in my path. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? There’s some great treasures in the line of Shamananda, Gadadhar Pandit, Hrishikananda Prabhu. These are the Gaudiya Vaishnavas.
We’re not talking about anything controversial, right? There is some controversial thing. There are some Vaishnavas like Jagannath Das, who have a little different idea. Chutananda, they stress more astrology than we do and such things.
There are some differences. But there’s a lot of similarities too. There’s a lot of literature, which is, it’s our literature.
It’s our Gaudiya literature. Shamananda Prabhu is a Gaudiya Vaishnava. Hrishikananda, Gadadhar Pandit is one of the Panchatattva.
There’s so many literatures of their followers. How did you explain Radha is the Siksha guru? You said, what Nikshaguru is understood, you said Sakshadharidvena or something like that. But how is Radha the Sikshaguru? Yes, Nikshaguru is our Sambandhadata.
He’s a person who gives us our connection with Krishna. He is our connection with Krishna. He is our connection because he gives us mantra.
He gives us Krishna. Then the Sikshaguru, the Nikshaguru may also be the Sikshaguru, but the Sikshaguru tells us what to do with what we’ve gotten from the Nikshaguru. So the Nikshaguru is Sambandhadata and the Sikshaguru is Abhidheya-data.
He’s teaching us Abhidheya, the process, and that’s Radharani. Radharani is teaching us devotion. The Nikshaguru gives us Krishna from a mantra, but Radharani gives us the process.
She teaches us how to behave with Krishna. Such a sweet understanding. Otherwise we think Radharani is too far away for us, but it is by her mercy that we are able to practise bhakti and relish bhakti.
Here in Orissa, I could go on and on about it. It’s something we want to publish. Spoke at a moment, did a lot of research about this.
The worship and literature of Radharani is older in Orissa than anywhere else in India, including Brunch. Now I’m talking about secular history. I’m not talking about Radha and Krishna’s pastimes or whatever like that, but according to manuscripts in writing, you’ll find more of a tradition of Radha.
And for example, here in Orissa, Radhasthami is still a government holiday for many people, whereas in West Bengal, Durga Puja is the big holiday. But for many people in Orissa, it’s Radhasthami. The first deities of Radha who were worshipped by the Gaudiya Vaishnavas were with Govindaji and Gopinath.
And those deities came from Maharaja Purushottam Jana, the son of Maharaja Prataparudra. This is described in Bhakti Ratnakara Narahari Chakravarti. Those deities were sent by him to Brunch because he heard Govindaji is there without Radha.
But there was a tradition in Orissa of worshipping deities of Radha before those deities went to Brunch. There’s a deep tradition of Radha in Orissa. It’s very, very rasik, very nice thing.
And it’s such a thing which can really enhance our own devotion and also be very attractive for outside people, as you’re saying, like with Indira Doomanaraj and others who are doing, presenting the traditional culture like that. I very much love that. When I give a class or something, I like to sing songs, tell traditional stories.
It’s attractive to people. But I’m also doing it through the particular lens of this Bidesi, this Western devotee, who’s come and lived here for some years. And my perspective is not the same as the local people.
I’m a kind of cultural person. I can’t really live in America anymore. I’m no longer an American.
But I can’t live here either, exactly, because I have white skin and I’m always going to be a Bidesi. So even if I learn to speak audio perfectly so they can’t even tell in a dark room that it’s a foreigner speaking, I’ll always be a foreigner as soon as they turn the light on and they see the colour of my skin. I’ll never really fit in properly.
And that’s a kind of curse or maybe a blessing. I don’t know. Actually, I mean, you may feel that they may not accept you as a Odiya, but actually they’ll accept you more because you’re not Odiya in a sense.
Because in India still has that. A few years ago, I was asked to give a class on Gita and cricket. So it is a complicated class.
How do I connect the two? But anyway, the point at that time is I read a little bit about cricket at least 10 years ago. We say India is a cricket mad country, but actually it is not so much a cricket mad country as an international cricket mad country. That means an Indian in an Indian local match might score a triple century, but it may make no difference.
But an Indian in a match against Australia or England or something like that does well, he becomes famous. So this was the example that is given to show how Indians feel validated when anything about India is accepted or appreciated on the international stage. So in one sense, your complexion will actually increase the curiosity and the appreciation of Indian culture among Indians, Odiya culture, among Odiya people.
Over the last 25 years, hundreds of times, maybe I’ve taken devotees to the temple of Toto Gopinath. I was there today doing kirtan. And when we sit down and speak or do kirtan, a lot of times the local people gather around us and they’re just marvelling.
Here’s this Bideshi and oh my God, he’s quoting Sanskrit and Bengali and this and this. And they’re completely bewildered. They’re very, very attracted.
Sometimes they cry. I had an experience some years ago when we bring the Western devotees or devotees, not just Western, the devotees to Orissa, to Puri, I like to engage them in something practical. And so if we have enough time, we’re not always doing parikrama, harinam, kirtan, whatever, but I like to engage them in doing some dhamseva.
And so one of the things that we do sometimes, we take garbage bags and gloves and we go someplace and we pick up garbage. And once we did that behind the Gambhira, and now they have a walled in area there, but before there was before the wall, there was a big field kind of behind it. And it’s just full of nasty garbage.
And he had about 50 Western devotees out there picking up this garbage and putting it in bags. And then after about half an hour, an hour, there was a crowd, about eight or 10 babajis standing and looking at it, and they were crying. It just ripped their heart out that the Western devotees are so humble that they’re coming and doing something with which average Indian person would consider the service of a bhangi, right, or some low class person.
And here’s persons, these initiated devotees who are chanting, they’re so humble, they’re doing this, and they were crying. So it’s a beautiful, in that sense, I guess, gora means a cultural meeting that I would like to have. If gora is a canvas, I want to use different types of paint, traditional paint, but also some Western paint, and I want to make a composition which is a cultural mix, kind of fusion, like we have fusion music.
Sometimes they do some Indian mantra chanting, but they also add an electric guitar and they have a bhaja also and a sitar or something, but they have a fusion kind of thing. So intellectually, culturally, in terms of art, and also in terms of, we haven’t spoke about it today, but a big passion we have is agriculture and natural living, eco-living. That also, they can learn a lot, and we can learn from them, how they grow plants and things and their culture, and we can also teach them things.
Leela Purushotham, who you met earlier, and Anupani Radha, they both studied permaculture, which is a Western kind of system, but it’s very, very applicable for Indians also, and that’s something I’d like to share with them and show how we can make a better world, something which is just, it’s practical. It’s not just philosophy and something in the air, but art means life, and our life, what we eat, what we grow, how we build our houses, that everything we do should be art, and that’s something we want to share with gora. It’s amazing, you know, I was thinking about the word gora, as you’re telling us, you may not have intended it, but in vernacular Hindi, gora also means fair.
Gora refers to non-Indians, especially British or American people. So, that’s the fourth meaning, this is you are starting it. It’s something started by a person with a fair skin, but it is, maybe because of that, it will have more impact than what it would have otherwise.
And to me, that’s real. I grew up in America, as I mentioned, in a Christian family and things, and when I joined the movement, I was very much curious and attracted, fascinated by the culture and the dress and the music and so many things, but at the same time, also, I felt lost, and I felt confused, and I felt like I didn’t feel very comfortable with it, because I didn’t know how to put on a dhoti, I didn’t know how to properly put on tilak, I didn’t know the mantras, I couldn’t pronounce Sanskrit properly, and pretty much all Westerners go through that. But at a certain point, those Western devotees, they learn those things to a greater or lesser extent, how to put on a dhoti, how to put on a sari, that doesn’t mean you’re a devotee, but you learn some of these cultural things, how to make a chants, how to make puris, or how to make pizza and offer it.
We learn these, and then we’re going to have to apply it through the own lens of our own perception, and that’s an important part of bhakti, not just that I try to become a clone of the Odia people, but I’m my own person, I’m the son of my mother and my father, and they taught me certain things, good things, and I want to keep those things, and I have my own particular cultural roots, which I always want to remember, and I think this is one lesson we get in Puri from the Namacharya Haridas Thakur, who never said, he identified himself as being a Muslim, he didn’t go to the temple and say, hey, you know, I was Lord Brahma, I am Lord Brahma, I installed the deities here, get out of my way, but he always accepted, I’m born in a Yavanam family, and he wore that culture, so in that sense, Gora also means a Bideshi, Gora also means a fair-skinned person, and it’s a good title for us in that sense also, and I don’t want to try to imitate and try to be something that I’m not, I’ve seen sometimes Western devotees come to India, and maybe they marry an Indian girl, and they become more Indian than the Indians, they become hardcore fanatics, they learn to speak Hindi, or they learn some Sanskrit, and they become more fanatics about the culture sometimes than the Indians do, and I don’t find that very natural, I should be who I am, my mother fed me pizza, and cake, and pasta when I grew up, and I’ve been eating Dalma, and rice, and chapatis for many years, I like them, I can eat that the rest of my life, but if someone offers me what my mother cooked in a prasadam way, I like it, that’s my culture, and I can’t deny that, and I find that the local people here respect that, they expect that, they come close to me, if I’m just trying to be a clone of them, the novelty wears off pretty fast, but they’re more interested to see who I am as a Westerner, who’s coming to Krishna consciousness, and imbibing their culture, and how do you see us, how do you see our culture, that’s something we can offer, but sometimes we can’t offer it because we can’t see it ourselves, we don’t understand ourselves well enough, we’re not comfortable in our own skin, and we’re trying to be something that we’re not, we’re trying to imitate an ideal which is not actually us, and this is also for me an important part of Gora, where it’s a meeting of cultures, the Bengali culture, the Odia culture, and also you were pointing out the white skin Gora culture. Yeah, true. You know, what you just said about the past, quite often as when we become devotees, we are taught that the past is just, our past is just a burden to be shed, and while there is something in our past which is a burden to be shed, but there is also a lot from our past which is a resource to be built on, which is a resource that can help us grow, and sometimes we just neglect that completely, and that has, we are, as you said, we are not being ourselves, we are just splitting ourselves, we are denying, and then what happens is everything that we are, we claim that this is transcendental, this is spiritual, but that’s not spiritual, that’s an expression of our past, and it can be like that, it can be used spiritually, but it doesn’t have to be something which we have to reject from our past.
If I may share one experience recently, when it’s okay, just for a few minutes, and I don’t want to go over time, finish in a few minutes. Yeah, so now this whole idea of, can you hear me Prabhu? Yes. Okay.
I’m just making a note. Yeah, sure. So, about the past, there was one devotee Mataji from abroad, from the west, she called me and she said that recently her mother passed away, and she was quite old, and she’s the eldest sister, so she had to go for the funeral, and they had in the memory, they had to give a talk at the memorial, but she says that my whole family is against Bhakti, against God, and in general, in those kind of funeral settings, it’s, they consider it very intrusive to talk about God.
She says, I don’t want to talk, if I don’t want to talk, I can’t talk about Krishna. So, then I told her that, you know, this is not, don’t see this as an opportunity simply to glorify Krishna, see this opportunity to glorify your mother who was brought into your life by Krishna. So, she says, what good you learned from your mother that helped you as a devotee.
Now, you don’t have to tell her, tell them that I’m appreciating this because it helped me as a devotee, but just talk about what you learned from your mother, and what she meant for you, what she taught you by her actions, by her words, and don’t talk about Krishna over there. You just think there as you are doing this to your mother who gave you this life, and who gave you whatever you values by which you became, which helped you as a devotee. So, she said that, and she told me that after she talked, all her relatives were so happy.
And then my sister, younger sister came to her, and she said that, you know, I lost my mother today, but I got my sister back. So, she said, I had lost you to a cult. I thought you never cared for us.
You were only into this God business. But today, I saw your human side. I got my sister back, and she came and hugged her.
And so, we all have got so much from our past, and some of it is undoubtedly bad, but to reduce our past entirely to the bad thing, it is not only artificial, it is we are depriving ourselves of resource that we could build on. I think it’s even offensive because we have teachers. We have people who loved us, who helped us.
You and I have one thing in common, Chaitanya Charanprabhu. We’re both charis. You’re a brahmachari, and I’m a mamachari.
You’re situated in Brahman, and I’m a follower of my mother. And my mother is someone I was very close with, and I learned many things. I learned to love literature.
She was a librarian. I learned to think. I learned to appreciate the outdoors and gardening and plants and animals and things.
Those are gifts that I got from my mother, and I want to always remember those gifts that she gave me and the qualities of honesty and things that I learned from her. How can I divorce myself from that? And yes, there were bad things that I did before I was a devotee, and those things I’d rather not talk about because it’s not going to be helpful, but there are things that I got which are very good things, and that’s part of me. And even the bad things are also part of me also that I have to come to grips with, and those bad things can help me to know how to speak to certain kinds of people.
I can speak to certain kinds of the Western people, and I understand their mentality and things like that. That’s natural. Just like Lord Nityananda, when the thief came and Nityananda converted him into a devotee, the first thing that he told him after he became a devotee, now you go and preach to the thieves.
So that’s natural. In Vaishnavism, actually, we speak about Vanashram. We haven’t spoken about it in this talk, but people talk about Vanashram.
Vanashram means it’s going to be different. The Vanashram in Mumbai is different. The culture is different than Orissa.
It’s different than UP. It’s different than Rajasthan. It’s different than South India.
And then what to speak of China and Japan and Norway or America and Mexico. And Vaishnavism is going to manifest in a little different way in those different places. The devotees in Russia, they like to eat buckwheat, and they like bread, and they like soup.
And if they don’t have soup and bread, they want to cry. The devotees in Italy, they like pizza and pasta. They’re going to cry.
They’re going to die. That’s part of their culture. It doesn’t have to be a different thing, but let’s use that for Krishna.
And we should also learn this traditional culture, what Rupa Goswami gives and what Krishnadevaraya Goswami says that Mother Yashoda cooks for Krishna. And when we cook for the deity, we should try to cook those things that Mother Yashoda and Radharani cook for Krishna. We should learn that culture.
But it doesn’t mean that I have to become a robot and forget the culture that I come from or try to deny that. As you said very nicely in the story, you’re not a real person then. And we’re just trying to fool ourselves.
Sociologists speak about this in conversion of religion. It’s a common thing. Someone maybe grew up as a Christian, and then let’s say they decided to convert to Islam.
All of a sudden, it’s a completely different culture. They don’t know how to read the Quran. They don’t know the rituals.
They don’t know the ceremonies and things. And now they lost all their friends when they converted. All their Christian friends, now they hate them, their family maybe.
And so to make up for that, they become fanatics so that the people in their new religion like them more. And I’ve seen so many Western devotees who grew up in some other religion, some other culture, take to Krishna consciousness, and they become fanatics in the same way because they want to be loved. They want to be accepted.
I personally think this is one reason why Srila Prabhupada wanted all the devotees to come and spend one month a year in India. Or better yet, he said to come and spend some time here, six months or a year or two, and try to learn an Indian language. Because when you learn to speak some Indian language, I can read a little Bengali, I know a little Indian language, you learn culture.
I can give a lecture about Vanashram Dharma, and I can tell the ladies, you should be chaste, and chaste to your husbands, and do this and this. And I can have a list of quotes from Srila Prabhupada there. But you’re not going to give someone culture in one hour lecture, or even a two week long seminar.
You’re not going to give people culture. But if you come and live in India, and you see the way the ladies dress, you see how the traditional ladies behave with their husbands, and how the husbands behave with them, and how they’re interacting, and you learn the subtle nuances, and you learn whether they dress like this in public, but sometimes if you go to their home, maybe they’re not dressed in the same kind of way. You learn the subtle things also, what’s accepted in a subtle way.
That culture will come to you in a deep way. It’s not just something we can get from a one hour lecture. So, I’m just trying to connect.
So, you’re saying that at one level, even if somebody is not going to adopt a culture fully, but still living in a culture and observing it, we will be able to learn some refined things, which we may adopt according to our own ways. So, we are not going to either extreme, that we don’t reject this. This is simply Indian culture, and has got nothing to do with me, and not our birth culture.
Now, I’m a devotee. So, it has got nothing to do with me. We try to learn what we can.
So, in one sense, it’s like the Saragrahi, we see the essence. The Avadhut Brahmana talks about the 24 Gurus, the Avanti Brahmana. So, it’s almost like that with respect to culture also.
Yeah. Let me give you a nice example. You know what this is, right? It’s a bead bag.
Yeah. So, how many devotees know, okay, we know this finger is supposed to be outside the bag. Yeah.
We know we have 108 beads, and we know, some devotees don’t know, but we know Prabhupada wouldn’t chant on your beads unless you had a string marking off the first eight beads. Why is that? Why is there 108 beads? Why do we keep them in the bag? Why do we keep this particular finger outside? Now, some people will say, Prabhupada said so. Prabhupada said it.
I believe it. That settles it, right? That’s okay, but there’s a cultural reason behind it. First of all, this bag is not just a bag.
There’s a verse. This is a mantra, some Vaishnavas chant before they begin their japa, that they’re meditating that this Meru bead is Radha and Krishna and it’s 108 gopis headed by the astasakis, which is why Prabhupada wanted this string tied here. This is the astasakis, the big beads, and they’re doing Gopimandala Majestam.
They’re doing Gopimandala means that the Raslila is going on inside a kunj. This bead bag is a kunj. That’s why we keep the beads inside the bag.
That’s why the beads are moving. It’s a Raslila. Now, why to keep this finger outside? Why not my thumb or some other finger? Why this finger? In Ayurvedic medicine, this finger has a name.
It’s called Bish Angul. I think you understand in Hindi. It means the poisonous finger because this is the finger that I use when I complain about Chaitanya Charan, that rascal, or this or that.
When I criticise someone, this is the finger I point at somebody. So this finger has no business in that Raslila. So we keep it outside.
So there’s so many cultural things like that, which we can just blindly follow. But if we come and we live, these are things that I didn’t know in America, but I learned after living here in Orissa for many years and speaking to local Vaishnavas and things, and I find it so much more satisfying. You know, someone can say, Prabhu, you’ve got to keep your beads in the bag and you chant like that.
Why? You have to keep his finger out of the bag. If you don’t have the finger out, it’s bad. Why? I don’t know.
Prabhupada said so. That’s okay for neophytes. But if we want to go deeper in bhakti, when we have a philosophical, cultural reason, we understand why we do that.
It’s so much better. And those whys, that requires some time. That requires some reading and literature.
It requires meeting people, meeting sadhus, mixing with people, something which we don’t always do when we’re protected in our little Krishna conscious bubble in the West, in a temple or something. I love meeting local devotees, local people in Orissa. And I always go to them with the attitude that I’m representing Srila Prabhupada.
And I have to be very, very careful. I have to try to be a nice Vaishnava because when they look at me, I’m a reflection of Srila Prabhupada, my Guru Maharaj. So I’m very careful that if I go to meet some sadhu for some research, and as I did once at Radhakon, for example, I asked one mahant there about some of the old Srilingas around Radhakon because I was writing an article about that.
I don’t go there like a lost soul, like a lost puppy looking for an owner. I go there with a stamp on my forehead, owned. I’m owned by my Gurudev.
I’m owned by Srila Prabhupada. They get that idea right away. I don’t necessarily go and tell them right away.
But I’m going there as an emissary of my Guru Maharaj and Srila Prabhupada to do this research work. And they respect that. And if somebody doesn’t respect that, and they want to try to break my faith or preach against Srila Prabhupada or ISKCON or something, then I just, that’s why God created wristwatches.
I just look at my wrist, I don’t have a wristwatch, but I look at my cell phone or whatever, and I say, I am really sorry, but I forgot I have a meeting I got to go. And I just get up and walk out. And they know.
It doesn’t happen to me very often. I can only think of once or twice that’s happened. They know.
They committed some offence. They shouldn’t have spoke like that. It’s beautiful.
So, in one sense, what you are doing is just by exploring, because they are connecting with Prabhupada and seeing you as a follower of Prabhupada. Once they see that you are committed, they’re not really going to pull you or demean Prabhupada. But then you can move forward and work with them and we can do so much, so many things we can do together.
It’s amazing. But at the same time, and I don’t want to try to act like a mature person. I’m not mature enough to associate with everybody.
I’m not mature enough to hear certain things. It hurts me. I stay away from certain people and certain things, but not everybody can do that.
In spiritual life, we also have a lot of babies. And we should respect that babies need an incubator. Small children need a fence to stay inside of in the yard.
And that’s important. And I’ve seen that in every institution also. They tell their followers, don’t go to ISKCON, don’t go to the Gauri Amrit, don’t go here or there, stay with your guru.
Everybody says like that, just like the parents tell that to the child. We spoke about that in one of our previous sessions, I think too. Yeah, that is true.
So, you know, this is such an illuminating discussion. It’s we started from, it’s one project, but the inspiration behind the project brought up so many different dimensions of how we practise bhakti and how we can go, how we are meant to practise bhakti, how our tradition has started. And it’s amazing.
Can I just go back one question and we’ll conclude? Yeah, sorry. You mentioned I just say this real quick. I very much hope that with this project, I can have association with devotees like yourself who are guru-nishta, who are firmly fixed to your Guru Maharaj and Srila Prabhupada, because that’s necessary.
It’s an absolute requirement for anyone’s advancement in bhakti to associate with people in their own, who are swajatiyas, swajatiyasya snigdha sadhusangha-satovare, where Bhagavad Swami says in Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, and my Guru Maharaj translated swajatiya, he said, as being in the same group, coming from the same guru. I very much want to work with friends like that who are very faithful to Srila Prabhupada and our guru-janas, but I also want to work with devotees who are broad-minded and who can genuinely not just appreciate, but even love people who have a little different perspective, but have some similarities with us. We may be friends with them because they also chant Hare Krishna or they also appreciate Jagannath or some cultural similarity.
That’s so true. Actually, I would say you’re giving me far more credit than what is due. I’m realising that there is so much, by associating with you, I’m realising that there’s so much treasure in the Gaudiya tradition that I have no idea of, and in one sense, our tradition has given us so much to nourish our heart, and the more we discover it, the more we get nourished, and the more we can share that nourishment with others.
It’s amazing. It requires a good strong foundation. You can build and make a big building and a fancy top of it, but there’s no strong foundation.
It’ll fall down, and our strong foundation for all Vaishnavas doesn’t mean just ISKCON, but for all Vaishnavas, their foundation is Guru Nishti, and for our devotees in ISKCON, it means that they should have some fixed connection with Srila Prabhupada. We should have gratitude for Srila Prabhupada, what he’s given. That’s our foundation, and if we have a strong foundation, then we can go and we can find out other amazing things, and it can decorate the foundation.
We’ll bring it back to be part of the building and use it for Prabhupada’s service. That’s our desire. It’s beautiful.
You know, I was talking with Anuttama Prabhu, and he told me that every, he organises a journal of Vaishnava studies, not journal of him, Hindu, Christian Vaishnava studies. So, he told me, I do it for 3-4 days every year or 5 days a year, and he says, I get a special kind of rasa, special kind of nourishment by it. I won’t want to do it every week or every day, certainly every day of the year, but that gives me a, so he, I asked him, what is the, what is it that, these are not people who are going to get converted.
So, what is the purpose of doing this? So, he told many purposes. He said, we as a movement need it because we are a minority religion, and they are the majority religion. We have to have good connection.
Those are practical reasons, but he told me personally, I appreciate how God is acting in other traditions. So, we often think more in terms of, that was a revolutionary statement for me, we often focus more on what a person is doing or not doing in relationship with God. You know, you’re chanting this mantra wrong, you’re having this belief wrong, but irrespective of what people are doing, God is acting in everyone’s life, and if we can appreciate that, it opens a whole new dimension for Krishna Consciousness.
So, every scholar who is even, the scholar could be studying anything, but if they study, decide to study, say, Gaudiya Vaishnava literature, there is somewhere Krishna is acting in their life or Chaitanya is acting in their hearts. So, we can appreciate that and help them take a step forward. So, yes, that was a response point about how you said that we have to have a foundation and then there again so many different fruits that can come.
Those fruits are not just for others, but for ourselves also. Yes. One thing I always try to do, when a guest comes to my house, we had a guest who came just before our talk, I mentioned to you, one of the pujaris from Tota Gopinath temple came to our house and I gave him some sweet words, I gave him a couple gifts, I gave one of our magazines and one of the things I told him, I said, when you come in here, I feel as though Gopinath has arrived in our house and he really liked that, it really touched his heart.
Whenever I meet someone, an outside person, especially if it’s in an ISKCON temple and they’re an outside person or even if I’m representing my Guru Maharaj in Srila Prabhupada, through Gaura or whatever, I feel like I should be learning something from them. Because everybody has some valuable thing. When we do some interfaith dialogue, I’ve also had the opportunity to do a little bit of that.
And if you go there with the attitude that I want to convert them, that I want to teach them, I want to show them we’re the best, all you’re going to do is get in arguments and you’re going to feel very frustrated because they’re not going to agree with you, because they’re probably already fixing their religion themselves. But if you go there with a humble attitude, let me see what I can learn. And I found some of these Christians or even Muslims or people practising Judaism, they have amazing initiation to the Lord, they have amazing realisation.
Sometimes I feel like they have more devotion than I do. And I learned from that. I see their renunciation or maybe their dedication, whatever, some particular quality they have or some understanding.
We hear about St. Francis of Assisi, who I know Radhnath Maharaj is very fond of speaking of. I also like to talk about him. He’s one of our heroes.
There’s so much I can learn from his life. Now, I’m not suggesting that all the devotees should go out and start reading comparative religion books to try to find some, but when we meet people, if we always have a humble attitude and this person has something I don’t have, I can learn something from them. Then we’ll find so many doors open and people are so happy with us.
And this is the mood that I’m trying to apply a Gora with here in Jagannath Puri. I’m not coming in like I’m a Mignola. I don’t know anything, but I’m coming to them like a beggar that I love your culture and I’d like to serve you and I want to get something from you for your culture.
And it charms them, all of them love it. And therefore, all the rickshaw haulers and everybody in the area, they know us. Amazing.
Yes, so maybe one last question. I said last question several times now, but if devotees want to know more about this project or want to assist or contribute, is it your Facebook page or you have a website or how do people come to know more what they can connect and contribute or how can they do that? We have a Facebook page and it’s Facebook.com GORA Research, one word, GORA Research. We’re on Facebook and we also have, you can find out there on our Gora page, we also have a GoFundMe thing, which you’ll become very popular with us if you want to give some donation for helping our project.
We’re trying to raise money right now, both for Almirahs and AC to preserve books, to buy books and also long-term where we want to purchase some property and try to get to school and get some things going like that. So that’s an answer to your question. Everybody likes projects.
This is our project. Hare Krishna. That’s wonderful.
That’s so inspiring. Thank you, bro, for sharing all this. Can I try to add some things? We can continue discussing a long time, but I want to respect your time also.
We had a wonderful discussion. So today we discussed about, I would say, the project which you started, GORA, multiple meanings, Govinda Radha and then a variant of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu as GORA and also as, what was the third thing you mentioned? Gaudiya Research Association. Of course, the acronym for that.
Yes. So multiple and then, of course, toward the end we discussed about it can refer to you as a person who is. I’m a GORA.
So you mentioned several of our literature, which are, which were preserved. You talk about two inspirations, Gurmaj and Fakir Mohan Prabhu. And I really didn’t know much about, especially Fakir Mohan Prabhu.
It’s amazing how much work he has done. And the whole universe of, I could say, Odia Vaishnavism opened up for me today. I had some understanding of it, but it is remarkable.
And within that, you mentioned about your desire not only to, three things, you said, preserve, publish and then practise. So with respect to devotees, they can come and do some research if they want. Even scholars who may not be devotees, they can also be facilitated doing research.
And in this way, actually something which could not be done in institutional boundaries, they can be done in a very effective way. I think from that point onwards, we did discuss a lot about the broad-mindedness that’s required or that can help spread Krishna Consciousness and Gaudiya Vaishnavism far and wide. So many points in that connection.
One is that when people come to us, we don’t have to convert them. We just give them a good experience, help them explore. Then that itself, maybe somebody from Israel, somebody from some other part of the world comes, that may be the only experience of Krishna Conscious they have.
And if that is a happy experience, that is going to be their eternal asset. And if we can have that service attitude, then we can reach a lot of people otherwise whom we just shut off within the institution. And then we talked about how there is this whole, we have certain stereotyped definitions of success and those, they may be helpful for organisation.
But if we want to influence broad society, people who are not going to necessarily come to the organisation, then we had to open more doors for them. And these could be various doors. You mentioned this point that society and culture, sometimes we think if I have a society, we have organisation, and that will establish the culture.
But it’s more that when there is culture, from that natural grouping of people happens and that’s how society emerges. So, people can share cultural values. So, it could be appreciation for art, it could be appreciation for literature, and it could be appreciation for music or dance, and then through that people can bond.
And that’s one way of Sajati. One Sajati is, of course, we are serving Krishna in the same way. But Sajati in the sense of interests which are ultimately centred around Krishna, that is also another way.
And then in that connection, you talked about your experiences living in Orissa, how you’re sharing this and preserving this, it attracts and sometimes astounds people. People, as you said, when you are speaking, quoting Odia and Bengali, when you visit to Tata Gopala temple and others, people appreciate that. And overall, you quoted several beautiful verses about the research about how the restriction, official restriction on entry of foreigners into Jagannath temple came up during the British times or where is Radha in the, with Jagannath.
So, Jagannath is actually, he is Krishna externally but Radha Rani internally. As that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in one sense is Radha Rani externally and Krishna internally. So, that’s a very special insight and all these devotional insights, you also talked about some beautiful verses that Krishna is like the Nikshaguru and Radha is the Shikshaguru and the Vaishnavas are like the Sakis.
So, in that way, the three are removing our devotional obstacles. So, there are nuggets within the tradition which are like, you could say, pure nectar. They can inspire us so much if we release them and there may also be some things which may be slightly different, some understanding which is slightly different from what our understanding is.
But even they can be appreciated because they are also part of the tradition. They are also part of the culture and we don’t have to be so insecure that we have to prove everything else wrong so that we can be practised, so that we feel strong. Here you repeatedly emphasise that if we have the foundation in Prabhupada’s books and we read Prabhupada’s books but there are people who are interested in books itself and they have this wide variety of books and we preserve them and then they access those and that is the way they are coming closer to Krishna.
So, it’s not only that they are coming closer to Krishna but especially the culture is what they have lived in, then we can learn from their culture and our past. So, towards the end you made this point that two things we want to learn about the traditional culture of Gaudiya Vaishnavism and we want to preserve that practise that at the same time we all have a particular culture that we came from and to simply reject that is artificial and it’s even offensive. So, we adopt what is there from that which is favourable.
There is much that we have to give up but there is much we can adopt also and that way what we have is more of a hybrid or a blend which is natural to who we are and in that way. So, Gaura the last week as you mentioned is of a wide complexion actually inspiring, we could say a local revival of interest in Gaudiya culture. This is when Prabhupada came.
There is an Indian cultural pride in Prabhupada bringing western disciples. Similarly, you are researching this culture, the Gaudiya culture that is going to, that is inspiring people to take, explore it more seriously also. So, of course there are many other points but this was a brief summary.
You want to add anything in conclusion Prabhu? Just that you always astonish me Chaitanya Chandra Prabhu with your memory and your heart for the devotees and I really really appreciate the contribution you are giving the society, encouraging people to think and I just love your association and I have a strong request for you that you please come to Puri again sometime and give us a chance to have your association here in our ashram. We’ll show you the other books. We can sit and have a long talk in person and we’ll give you prasadam because you’re too skinny.
I love to be there and I will become skinny so that I can come there and you can fatten me. Thank you very much for your association. I think we had many sessions but this was one of the most devotionally direct and devotionally enriching also.
Thank you so much. I look forward to your association again in the future sometime soon. Thank you very much.
Thank you for what you do.