Reflections on Western outreach

[Talk at San Jose, USA]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Shreemad Bhagavad Gita ki.
Om Gyanati Vrindasya Gyananjani Sharaka. Akshobhya Tamina Tasme Shri Gurave Namaha. So, you know, we are going to discuss about Western Outreach.
I think you are living in the West, so you have much more experience than me. But I will talk about a few things which I have found. I basically have three sources for my understanding.
One is that around 2006 or 7 when Maharaj wrote the Journey Home, at that time Maharaj had asked me to review it. So I told Maharaj that I like the tone of the book very much. Apart from, of course, the adventurousness of the story.
So Maharaj said that this is a tone you need to write to reach to a postmodern audience. And he said if you learn this tone, you will be able to reach to a lot of people. And India is also becoming postmodern now.
So you will reach India also. So since that time I have started studying a little bit. Trying to understand what postmodernism is and what is the way that things work for them.
So I will talk in three main terms and then you can share some things. First is the mood of presentation. Second is the content of presentation.
Third is the purpose of presentation. So mood I mentioned briefly to some of you earlier that you can have spirituality presented in a prescriptive, normative or descriptive way. Prescriptive is like a doctor giving a prescription.
Do this, don’t do this. And that is the way traditionally many religions have presented themselves. Including our tradition also where if you don’t do this, you are going to go to hell or whatever.
But normative is absolute morality. This is the norm. This is the right thing, that is the wrong thing.
Whereas descriptive is this is what I do and this is why I do it. So one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism is that there is no acceptance of any absolute truth. All truths are considered relativised.
So a common postmodern saying is there is no truth with a capital uppercase T. There are many truths with lowercase t. You have your truth, I have my truth. And you live with your truth, I live with my truth. So all of this relativization is there of truths.
But at the same time there is also another major feature that people want something that works. Because whatever was the traditional source of structure, meaning, purpose in life, it’s all relativised. So at one level there is a certain level of closeness and rejection of authority.
But at another level there is openness to experience. If something works, people are open to that. One result of this is that, so this prescriptive way of doing things, it simply alienates people today.
The prescriptive way of doing things is what? Makes people feel that we are dogmatic, that we are too rigid and we lose people by that. So the normative way also doesn’t work. The descriptive way works very well.
The Mormons are a prominent Christian group. They are especially in Salt Lake City. And they were considered to be heretics even by Christians.
They had some strange beliefs like they accepted polygamy and something like that. Because of this they were considered to be almost like a cult. But there was a girl who grew up in a Mormon family and then she wrote her story growing up in a Mormon family.
It’s a sympathetic story. She is herself a practising Mormon. So her book became a New York Times bestseller.
And that changed, in a very significant way, changed the mainstream conception about Mormonism. Now Mormons are more or less respected as a traditionalist but still they are accepted as a religion. So personal stories have a lot of weight.
In general we are taught to be humble and that’s true. But humility in one sense also means centering on Krishna and doing what is required for the service of Krishna. So telling our story, our experiences, how we, rather than what you should do, how I came to do what I do.
What I am doing, instead of just telling what I am doing, how I came to the position of doing what I am doing. That is very helpful. One devotee was telling me that he is doing western outreach in New York.
And he said that many people still have the, some people have the notion of Hare Krishna as a cultist. So he says that, yes, I was like that, you know, card carrying, Hare Krishna, cultist, out to convert the world. But I have mellowed down now.
And then he laughs at himself and tells his story. This is, although I am not like that, but I still find something of value in the tradition. And then he shares that.
So people are much more open to that. Even if we talk about our past in somewhat self detrimental way, self effacing way, that is considered quite cool. So basically this prescriptive way doesn’t work, normative way doesn’t work.
So mood is descriptive. We may tell the philosophy, but rather than telling that this is the truth, this is what you should do, we say this is a world view that I learnt from the bhakti texts of ancient India. And this is why it makes sense to me.
Or like what I found is that, instead of saying that you are not the body or the soul, you say that the bhakti text or the yoga text offer a model of the self. Rather than saying this is the truth, this is the model. So what happens? This way it’s up to you to accept it or not accept it.
Rather than, see what people want is to make sense of things. If something helps them make sense of things, they are fine with it. So you can present actually anything.
If you present it in a descriptive way as this is life and this is what helps me make sense of life. Then people are quite open. It’s the world view, what we are going to speak doesn’t matter as much as how we are going to speak it.
Even in, I gave a talk in Princeton and there were Hindu scholars. For them Hinduism is a complete hodgepodge of so many things. And they are not practitioners also, many of them.
They are like people who are studying Hinduism academically. So if we make any claim about the Bhagavad Gita also, they say no, the Bhagavad Gita doesn’t teach this, it teaches this. And this is how, they can challenge us even on our home territory.
But then I found that if we presented that, I follow a bhakti yoga tradition which came from so and so, Gaudiya Vaishnavism. And then this is what I have learnt. And this is what I find adds value to my life.
So I found this journey home, one of the reasons for its appeal is also that it’s descriptive. It’s not so much somebody teaching someone, rather somebody sharing what they learnt. So that mood that, okay, this is my understanding, but how I arrived at this understanding.
That helps quite a bit for people to relate. That’s with respect to the mood of presenting. Now with respect to the content of presenting, again I talked to some of you that there can be three broad ways with respect to interaction of spiritual and material.
Spiritual life and material life. Material life is temporary, you give it up to practise spiritual life. The other is material life is good, but it’s not enough.
To gain fulfilment, you need spiritual life. And the third is that your spiritual life will improve your material life. That means you could say rejection, complementation and improvement.
So traditionally, of course, when we used to traditionally, ISKCON was only 30, 50, 50 years, 60 years also. So earlier ISKCON’s main presentation was of rejection. The world is temporary.
We’re all going to die. This is a place of distress. Just practise bhakti.
And to some extent that model worked when Prabhupada was preaching to Western people in India, Western people here who had rejected more or less mainstream culture. They were hippies and they are the people who mostly came to Prabhupada’s movement. If you see the traditional Indian model is complementation.
And Prabhupada, that’s what he did in the life membership programme, was what basically? It was that people, they are well situated in their pious material life. And Prabhupada is telling them, add Krishna Bhakti to it. They are already Krishna Bhaktas, but add it a little more intensely.
So make a solid financial commitment and then they come to temple, they practise sadhana bhakti. So generally complementation is what is sustainable for most people. Because that is where most people are at.
But today what spirituality has become popular is not complementation also. It’s more of improvement. How your spirituality can improve your material life.
Now whether what is that, what is practise is spirituality or not, that’s a different question. It may not even be spirituality. Like yoga is a very good example.
Yoga was traditionally, I mean yogasanas, they were practised in India traditionally by male renunciates to make themselves more austere and more focused on transcendence. In the West, yoga is practised mostly by females who are interested in being more fit and more attractive so that they can attract partners or whatever. So it’s been for health and it’s not even, many people practise it for health, but far more people practise it for more for fitness and shapely body.
So the purpose has been quite transformed radical. So the point I’m making is yoga is not popular because it’s a spiritual practise. Yoga is popular because it is seen as a practise for improving your health.
The whole mood today is that what can add value to my life. So when Prabhupada was there originally, the mood was that, okay, this whole life is rotten. I want some other way of living.
So people are not interested, people are interested very much in spiritual experiences, something which adds value to their life. They’re not interested in changing their life, radically altering their life. So now there are four broad trends in the Western world, which I see as indicative of rising of sattva guna, which we can use for bringing people towards bhakti.
One is the popularity of yoga. Second is environmentalism, environmental awareness. Third is vegetarianism, veganism.
And fourth is mindfulness. Now, of course, you could add something more like Ayurveda has also become popular, but none of these are, Ayurveda is nowhere as big as yoga or mindfulness. So why do I consider it as sign of sattva? Because in all these cases, people are considering subtler things beyond the gross.
Environmental consciousness also means there’s some order to environment. The environment is not just there for our enjoyment. We should live less materialistically, consider bigger picture.
Then there is yoga as well as mindfulness. It is that instead of just ingesting chemicals into the body, try to do some posture, do some breathing exercises or adjust the mind. And of course, vegetarianism is very good, veganism.
So these are four broad trends, which are opportunities for us to get people to think about spirituality. When I was in Govardhaniko village at that time, I had a meeting with Maharaj. I asked Maharaj, Maharaj, what was your vision in establishing the Govardhaniko village? Maharaj says, Chaitanya Chaharani said, I am not a very organised person.
He says, actually that morning I had given a Bhagavatam class and Maharaj had attended Bhagavatam class. It just comes automatically in between. So there I spoke about how we have impulses and we have instincts.
So impulses are, instincts are like programmed intelligence. What we have learnt or what is subconscious, like animals have instincts, you know, birds know which direction to fly. It’s intelligence, but it’s programmed.
We are not consciously analysing. Just get it right. As impulses are non-intelligent, anti-intelligent also.
It’s urge to over-eat, urge to do this, urge to do that. It’s impulses. So he’s talking about how both do not involve conscious intelligence, but one is constructive, the other is destructive.
So Maharaj said that, I’m not a very organised planner. So I hope I’m instinctive, not impulsive. And then Maharaj became very serious.
He said that, but my instincts have been trained by my 50 years of chanting Hare Krishna, my 10-12 years of deity worship, 10 years of preaching in college in America, 30 years of community building here and all the journey home, journey before that. So they’re not just mundane instincts, they’re spiritualised instincts. So he said that, that we cannot go against the current of the mainstream culture.
We have to find how to present bhakti within the current of the mainstream culture. So he said, when Prabhupada came to America, the hippies had rejected, rejected the world. And Prabhupada’s presentation actually gave them a philosophical basis for rejection.
The alternative way of living, alternative religion, alternative education, alternative lifestyle, everything alternative. When Prabhupada came to India, there was no one interested in that kind of alternative lifestyle. So if you see, Prabhupada’s presentation largely was based on tapping into India’s current of cultural nationalism.
You see, Prabhupada would say that these Americans, they are coming and practising, teaching Bhagavad Gita. This is India’s book. Prabhupada would go to such extent and say that, yeh Bhagavad Gita sikhane ke liye bohot bada business hai America mein, aaja hi aap.
Come and teach Bhagavad Gita, it’s a big business here. So the idea was that Prabhupada tapped into that and became immensely popular. So it’s not that in the 60s when Prabhupada came to America, when Prabhupada left India, at that time people were not interested in spirituality and suddenly in 70s they became interested.
In committed practise of bhakti, neither in 60s nor in 70s people were interested. But in 70s what had changed was, Prabhupada had not just been another Indian sadhu, a sadhu who had international disciples. So people wanted to affiliate with him, not so to become his committed followers, but just to have the prestige.
We belong to an organisation which has international followers. So Prabhupada tapped into that. So he said, now the mood is more of, not of rejection nor of nationalism also, it is more of contribution.
People feel that there are a lot of problems in life and I don’t care what your philosophy is, how is this philosophy contributing to making the world a better place? How is it the philosophy contributing to making my life better? In one sense this has always been why people practise religion. But there are different times when different motives come into the picture, prominence. So if we can show people that this improves the quality of your life, this practise, this philosophy, it can help you in your life.
Not in terms of devotional definitions of success. This will increase your love for Krishna. Who cares for love for Krishna? It will improve me as a person in this life.
And Prabhupada is also astute about this. When Prabhupada is asked, what are the characteristics of your followers? How do we know your followers? They are perfect gentlemen. Perfect ladies and perfect gentlemen.
He didn’t say they are constantly Chandi Hare Krishna. They follow four eggs. His focus was this.
So I would say that this, so I talk first about the mood of presentation. The content is that it’s more or less between second and third. That complementation and improvement.
That how your spirituality can improve the condition of the world. Because when you go too much into philosophy, so many people have so many philosophies. We can argue at the philosophical level.
Nobody cares. No matter how good arguments you present, somebody can come up with some other arguments and refute that. So with respect to the content of philosophy, content of our presentation, I say there are two broad approaches.
There is ontology and there is functionality. Ontology means what the nature of existence, what exists. Functionality is how it matters, how it functions, how it matters to me.
So whether God exists or not, you can go on with endless arguments for that. But how does God’s existence matter to me? Is God’s existence going to add value to my life? Is accepting God’s existence? Is accepting that a soul is there, is that going to add value to my life? So if we shift to that, if we try to prove that a soul exists, nobody cares so much. It exists, it doesn’t exist.
And actually this was not like that even 10 years ago, 20 years ago. At that time people were serious. Does God exist? Now it’s many of the, there are atheists who are very aggressive and say God doesn’t exist.
But their major arguments are not so much on the concept of God. There is the consequence of that concept. That means because of your belief in God you become violent, you become terrorist, there is terrorism, there is sectarianism.
So what is the point of having such a belief? So it’s more in terms of functionality. So mindfulness is popular. If you see Buddhism is spectacularly unphilosophical.
It has no, it is I say that Christianity accepts soul without reincarnation. Buddhism accepts reincarnation without soul. So it’s a messy thing.
But that way from the philosophical point of view Buddhism doesn’t really make much sense. But most people don’t care about philosophy. The whole idea that you become more mindful, live in the present, become aware of your thoughts and do some rhythm exercises to become aware of your thoughts, that itself is considered a great wisdom.
And so basically people can, something brings people to sattva also, they appreciate that. And mindfulness, many exercises do get people to sattva. So in general trying to prove that my path is right, that is an endeavour which will alienate people.
Instead tell how this path works for me. There is a subtle but significant difference in this. So rather than saying that Krishna is God, focus on how our longing for love is fulfilled in a beautiful way by this aesthetically appealing conception of God as all attractive loving person.
So instead of presenting Krishna as a religious revelation of divinity, we present him as the object that fulfils our longing for love. So when you present it that way, it becomes much more appealing. So not what is but how it works.
What is if you try to, this is how it is, this is how it is. Again this is more or less similar to normative. Normative or descriptive.
But here I am talking more about the content. So why material life is bad, okay, that doesn’t appeal so much to people. But how something can improve my life.
If you can present that, that will be very, it’s very powerful. And my personal understanding, I feel more deviscon grahastha should write their biographies. Like Maharaj has written his biography.
Those devotees who have done well in their lives, at least not their full biography but their personal stories, short article. I don’t make it so how I came to Krishna consciousness. That becomes just too explicit.
Why I practise bhakti yoga or how I became a bhakti yoga practitioner. Even the word Krishna consciousness is a little sectarian. Bhakti yoga is, yoga is a cool word, bhakti yoga is also very nice.
So that’s with respect to the, so how the practise adds value, how the philosophy adds value. If that’s what we focus on, then that helps a lot. And the last part I will talk about is the purpose.
So I talked about the mood, the content and the purpose. So in general, people are very averse to religious organisations, to organise religion. There’s a whole huge group of people who call themselves SBNR, spiritual but not religious.
So and it’s hugely growing actually. So one representative of this, I was at an interfaith meeting, I said that the representative of this thought that there’s a pastor who was giving his experience. There was a radio show on which the pastor and the rabbi both were speaking.
And then a man presented himself. And he says, I’m a Christian, but I don’t go to any church. And this pastor very cautiously asked him, he says, so why don’t you go to any church? I haven’t yet found a church that agrees with my philosophy.
So the idea is that people are actually very against organised religion. Because they feel organised religion brings politics, brings selfishness, brings manipulation. And to some extent it is true.
Even Bhakti Shankaracharya also talked about how organised religion is like putana. She was like a nurse who came to nourish Krishna, but she was actually meant to poison Krishna. So many times the spirit of devotion can be lost, the essential spirit can be lost within organised religion.
It doesn’t have to happen like that, but it can happen. So that’s why when somebody, it’s in tradition, it’s in India, if somebody is introduced as the president of a scone temple, so and so, you have some religious authority. That means you have some position, you must have some credibility, that will bring some credibility.
But in the West, actually telling your religious designation, it decreases credibility. Because it means, oh, that means you are going to simply speak the party line. So in fact, there is in the Catholic Church, they have something called imprimatur.
Imprimatur means which book should the Catholic congregation read? So they have a whole body of scholars, they read the book and they say the imprimatur means that this book does not contain any ideas contrary to Catholic theology. So in the past, Catholic authors would seek the imprimatur so that people would read their books. But now the imprimatur is seen as a disqualification.
I mean, if you have got an imprimatur, it means you are simply going to spout the, you are going to speak the party line. So speaking the party line means you don’t have any realisations, you are just speaking something to get people to do what you want them to do. So if you see again, most of Radhanath Maharaj’s preaching in the West is not as, he is not presented as an ISKCON guru or ISKCON GVC.
He is the author of Journey Home. That means it is his personal journey, his personal credibility. So there is, people are not interested in religious organisations, people are interested in spiritual individuals.
People are very interested in spiritual individuals. So somebody, a spiritual individual might also be a leader of a religious organisation. But they want to be, they are attracted to the spirituality of that person, not the religious designation of the person.
And what this implies is that at one level, this opens the doors, this democratises outreach. Because in religious organisation, only somebody who is in the hierarchy up, that person will get the opportunity to reach out to people. But when people don’t care so much for religious designation, anybody who speaks something which is substantial, something which people feel adds value to their life, that they are ready to take it up.
And with respect to this, you could say that there is an institution and there is the movement. The institution is more with the official office bearers and the hierarchy. The movement is more generic, is broader.
So people are attracted to movements, not so much to organisations. If you see, even in our movement, the yoga, most of the yoga outreach that is happening, it is not through the official channels. It is more through devotees who are affiliated with the movement.
They are doing things on their own initiative. If the institution helps, that’s great. But people are much more likely to be attracted to a movement than to an institution.
Now what this means for us is that although ISKCON, we call ourselves a spiritual organisation, at first glance to most people we appear very religious because we have particular dress, we speak in a particular language, we chant particular mantras. There are a lot of externals that go along with our practises. And they strike to the people’s eye the most.
So that’s why people do not see us, they see us much more as religious than as spiritual. And that becomes a problem for them. It becomes a disqualification in their eyes for us.
So what is the difference in their conception between religion and spirituality? Spirituality is about experience. We are open to experience. Pro higher realities in life.
Religion is about dogmas, about externals, rituals, do this, don’t do this, believe this, don’t believe this. Like that. So for us, in general, through Western outreach, the number of people who will join the institution will be very few.
And as long as we set that as the definition of success of Western outreach, we will actually never be successful or very low probability of success. But if we recognise that people will join the movement, that means people will practise bhakti, people will chant the holy names, people may follow some or all of their four regs, what they want, but they may never come to the standard of say initiation in our movement. If they come, that’s wonderful.
But the benchmark that we have for success in Western outreach, it is like official affiliation of the institution. Not only is the standard too high for many of them, but it’s just that official affiliation just doesn’t work for them. They don’t like to be officially affiliated.
Informally affiliated is something which they like. So it’s more that people are not so much spiritual seekers as spiritual shoppers. Because the whole idea is I want to add value to my life.
So I’ll take this from this train. I’ll take this from this guru. I’ll take this from here.
And it is that people may even become committed, but it takes a long time for them. What happens is that for many people, they model themselves on the models they have had in the past. So many people in the West now grow up without any experience of committed relationships.
They came from fragmented families. Mother and father were not together. So the idea of a committed relationship or commitment, it just isn’t registered with them.
Professionally, of course, they have to be committed because they have to work and on. But in terms of relationships, they’re not very committed. In terms of spirituality also, they’re not so committed.
But it is not necessarily a failure. It’s when we have this definition that somebody comes to this institutional standard and that’s a success. Otherwise, it’s a failure.
But it’s not like that. It’s if we define success as a pyramid and some people may be on the upper side of the pyramid, some people on the lower side of the pyramid. So a lot of people will be willing to be at the lower ends of the pyramid.
And they also matter. They can also contribute in their own ways. They can contribute to their volunteer service.
They can contribute to their contacts, to their financial support. They may just not become devotees in our sense of the word devotees, initiate members. So that may also happen, but it will happen very gradually.
If we go with that expectation, we will feel that this is, it’s not productive. When Prabhupada started, Prabhupada was also open to different definitions of success in different forms of outreach. When he started Bhakti Yantra Institute, he said the primary purpose of the Bhakti Yantra Institute is to increase the prestige of ISKCON.
He didn’t expect that when we have life comes from life conferences, that after that the scientists would chant Hare Krishna and accept Krishna as the Supreme Personality of the world. That’s not going to happen. We just accept it.
The idea of a soul makes scientific sense. We don’t accept it, but it is not, it is intelligible. That much also will expand our outreach elsewhere.
The scientist says, oh, Bhagavad Gita is a sensible book. So the idea is that we have to adapt a different definition of success itself. And it’s like when Prabhupada had life membership, Prabhupada wanted life members to become devotees eventually.
But that was not the immediate purpose. Prabhupada told the devotees that life membership is more about, it’s not about taking money, but about doing six fold exchanges with people. That’s a beautiful understanding actually.
Not just they give you money and we get some money, it’s like a six fold exchange. They give us some contribution, we give them books. That’s an exchange.
They come to the temple, we give them prasad. Sometimes they invite us. Prabhupada’s system was that anybody who would invite his, he would go to anybody’s house for prasad if they agreed to become a life member.
And gradually that would also happen. So if we see preaching not so much as getting people to chant 16 naams and follow four regs, as having these six fold exchanges with people, then we’ll find that we will connect people. And they will gradually come towards, they’ll take steps towards Krishna.
And if this definition of success is, what happens if we, if a devotee is in Indian outreach and somebody is in American outreach, Western outreach, the results will come much faster in Indian outreach. And that devotee will feel, why should I spend so much time on this? But the point is that wherever Prabhupada was, there were devotees in India and they were in Hyderabad and some Americans had come to study anthropology. And one devotee said, Prabhupada, I took them around, I spent several hours with them and he told Prabhupada.
And I think one Prabhupada said, Prabhupada said, when you are in India, preach to Indians. If you want to preach to Americans, go to America. So it’s not that you cannot preach to Americans, but a trust.
So we don’t want our movement to simply be an Indian movement. It’s wonderful to have Indians, of course, but that’s not the only purpose. So even if it’s slow, even if people don’t really immediately become initiated, it will take a long, long time.
But if you see that they are becoming favourable, they are practising bhakti at their pace, and that is also a success. Because we all get the inspiration to persevere in something when we get a taste of success. And whether we taste success or not depends on what our definition of success is.
So if we have a definition of success that doesn’t work in a particular area, then we will feel no inspiration in doing that. So if we see this simply in terms of the sixfold exchanges, we do that and then people connect with Krishna. People open their hearts to Krishna.
And how much they take Krishna in their heart, that will be up to them. So it does, at a subtle, I’ll conclude with this point, that at a broader level of making Krishna Bhakti intelligible and appealing to people. We have been to some extent successful now.
People don’t think of us so much, especially in the West, people don’t think of us as a cult so much. We have become a part of, okay, there’s one part of the Hindu religion, the Hare Krishnas, and a lot of people are open. So this won’t, if we present it in the same way, this is the path, you take it as much as you want.
Then if we, if you’re not impatient, you have to do this, do this, do this, if you’re not doing this, then it’s too slow. Then it’s, there’s a lot of potential for, actually, if you see, vegetarianism was introduced by, in the West, especially Prabhupada. I agree with what you say that before him, nobody, people thought being a vegetarian means eating vegetables.
That was what they thought. They had no idea. Kirtan was introduced in the West by Prabhupada.
Swami Vivekananda and others, none of them actually did kirtans. Maybe Paramahamsa Yogananda would do some kirtans, but it was not a stress. It was not a systematic practise that Prabhupada did.
That way Prabhupada emphasised the part of sadhana. But vegetarianism, if you consider, and Prabhupada did not specifically talk about environmental consciousness in the term that we talk about today. Prabhupada talked about simple living, high thinking.
He was quite futuristic about that. He talked about the problems of rampant industrialisation. So at least three of these things, environmentalism, and these three things which have become quite mainstream, we introduced them in the West.
But what happened was, we tied them down too strongly to institution. And others who did not do that, they took it up. So kirtan is huge.
There are kirtaniers who come and they actually charge. And people come and attend. People pay for just attending some kirtans.
And even veganism is very big. Of course, environmental consciousness is enormous. So basically, if you don’t tie things down to the institution, and if you are ready to, and people will be a part of the movement, will be a part of the institution, they may become gradually.
Then people don’t feel that force to come. Then people will come, and then if it makes sense, they will accept. And they will accept gradually at their pace.
So these are a few thoughts I had. With respect to the mood, the mood is rather descriptive rather than descriptive normative. With respect to content, we have to present spirituality, not as rejecting material life, but as complementing material life and adding value to your material life.
And with respect to the purpose, it’s more to get people to become affiliated with the movement, to become a part of the movement rather than become officially affiliated with the institution. You have any thoughts on this? Just one question I have. Regarding the content, are there different, looking at it another way, are there different parts to the content? Like you talked about ontological and functional, and how basically the content should be geared towards how it contributes to one’s life, how it makes one’s life better.
I mean, is there still like a breakup of… Whatever we present, three gunas also if we present, present them in a way that, okay, how can it help you in your life? Whatever we present, I would say that can be divided definitely further. But what do you have specifically in mind when you say divide? Like, are there different pieces to the content itself? I mean, from somewhere I heard, you know, if you, first initially you present why the content is important, and then you present… Yeah, I agree with what you are saying. Relevance is vital for any form of adult education.
As soon as people feel this is not relevant, they snap off. It’s like, it’s for everyone, but students if they are in school, they have to study because they have to give an exam. And whether there is relevant or not, they will cram the facts and… But for adults, they have to feel it relevant.
So, I would say add value is a more utilitarian word. A more appropriate word might be, people have to feel it is relevant. So, do you have relevance at the starting of the talk and then you say, like, this is the worldview from the yoga wisdom, and then you say how, so is there like… Okay.
Like, is this how it’s practically going to help you? Yeah, okay. I understand what you are saying now. So, we may start with a identity.
See, there is a felt need of people and there is an ultimate need of people. We have to start with their felt need. Felt need means, what do they feel they need in their life? So, for example, I was a part of a group discussion in Australia.
It was the topic of multiple religious representatives. The topic was, why has God not died till now? What that meant was that there were many sociologists who predicted that the idea of religion will become outdated as science progresses. And then Frederick Nietzsche had said, God is dead.
So, the idea of God has no scientific basis and people will give it up as rationality progresses. But it has not happened. So, why is that? So, basically, one reason is, Christianity is also quite resurgent in America.
So, I read an article which said that many of these popular Christian churches, big, thousands of people coming for those programmes, they have rebranded God, not as a cosmic supplier. Oh, father, thou art in heaven, give us that anyway. They have rebranded God from a cosmic supplier to a cosmic therapist.
That means you devote yourself to God and you will feel peaceful. The negative emotions will go away. So, the power of positive thinking was probably, Norman Winslow’s book was there, that was the first in that generation, that genre.
So, people in the Western world, people don’t feel the need for bread. I don’t have bread, the government will provide me, somebody will give me. I don’t need to go to God for that.
But for peace of mind, for positivity, I have a stress relief, I want something. So, the idea is that we have to begin with people’s felt need. So, we start with that and then we move forward.
This is your need and then OK. This need, these are the mainstream ways of addressing it. Why are these mainstream ways inadequate? We don’t, I won’t use the word incorrect.
It’s inadequate. And then what are the additional ways? So, understand the additional way, this is the worldview. This is the worldview and definitely these are the practises that come out.
These are the principles that come out. So, you could say that’s a broad format, but then I think that would be a format for most presentations. We begin with the felt need.
We present the current ways of addressing the felt need and their inadequacies. Then we present the worldview that gives an alternative way of addressing that need and then we give the practises that address that need. So, each talk may not be so precisely structured like this, but an overall understanding would be helpful.
But I would like all of you to speak something, something which either resonated with you or something which you felt didn’t make so much sense to you or whatever, because you’ve also been in this field. I was just thinking about the point that you told about the definition of success that we keep. That’s very much important.
Otherwise, when we think that success is to like appreciate them in an institution, then it might be like frustrating rather than to have the idea that you just connect them to a movement and they will grow at their own pace. Yeah. It requires detachment to do that.
Devanath Maharaj says that Indian preaching is like getting the low hanging fruits. Western preaching is like climbing up the tree to get a fruit. It requires more effort, there’s more risk.
And when you climb high up the tree and you see there’s no fruit. So it’s a challenge. But then that’s what is required.
That’s what is lacking. So Raj Maharaj told me that where there is need, where there is need, there is mercy. He gave the example.
Raj Maharaj also told me a similar point. He said that if somebody asks you for a glass of water and you give them, they’ll be grateful. But if you’re in a war field and you’re dying of thirst, you ask somebody for a glass of water and they give.
And they give, you’ll be so much more grateful. So he said, it’s my learning that in the Western world there is so much need for doing outreach. So although it’s much more difficult, but there’s much more mercy available over there.
Anything you felt relevant or anything which was not with you? No, but anything specific? I mean the specific is the same kind of, because I used to wonder that why, you know, there was one lady actually who, you know, comes to, really comes to the kirtanas. And then she goes to so many programmes. I mean, she goes to drumming sessions, she goes to this, she goes to that.
And I used to wonder, you know, when would these people, you know, like, really, you know, get focused and commit and probably, you know, it may never happen. Actually, you know, one way to bring commitment is to increase involvement. I mean, there’s one devotee who told me that he was having a college programme and he told the people, students come to Sunday for the programme.
We have a Sunday programme, Sunday feast, there’s a talk and there is a feast, you can come. Nobody would come. And then one day he told them, how many of you would like to volunteer to serve free food to 300 people on a Sunday? It’s almost 70% of them came.
And they came, say, they want to do something, not just be talked to, or even worse, to be talked at. So, if somehow, if the same person who is coming for kirtanas, if you could encourage her to become a kirtana teacher, somehow you have to, if there’s no involvement, there’s no commitment. So we have to find some way to get them involved.
Then they will commit themselves much more. But yeah, still that commitment may not be as much as we might get elsewhere. That’s the way it is.
One thing that I was thinking is, we don’t even realise they are suddenly off and we don’t know why, what happens when. Yeah, it’s like, in the West they have this word, what? No fault divorce. You know about that? I know more than you about it.
That means in the past, if somebody wanted to divorce, they had to give reason, you know, why are you separating? He says, no, it’s just not working out, so we want to separate. So it’s not that I blame this person or this person, this person did, this person, there was domestic abuse, there was this, there was this, nothing like that. It just doesn’t work out.
So no fault divorce. So that has led to a lot of escalation of divorces. But in Australia, I was told that you don’t even have to go to a court.
You can just fill information website and get a divorce. Application is online. The completion of the application is also online.
You don’t have to go to the court for getting divorce. You have to go to the court to separate the assets after divorce. So anyway, so that point I’m making is that they have this idea of no fault divorce.
Similarly, they have this idea of no fault spiritual abandonment. Why don’t you come? I just don’t feel like coming. Oh yeah, they don’t, some of that idea of commitment, that OK, you’re taking a vow, concept only is not there.
So what to do? Like one spiritual master was telling me, a disciple came to him and he said, Maharaja, I have something like how much? I have 1856 rounds pending. I told him, thank you for keeping track. So anything that resonated with you? This thing, that content is complementation.
We always start with sometimes even with the last part of the improvement. But somehow or the other, when we start thinking that, OK, he’s a little more serious, we start towards rejection. Sometimes, even if we don’t realise it, but we go through that part and we just lose that time.
I was just thinking that we should completely focus on complementation. Improvement is also OK, but once we go towards the rejection, it’s just we never know. We are basically inviting danger.
Based on various scenarios. Yeah, it’s one very striking example one devotee gave me that when you tell people to reject something. If we say somebody is a Mayavadi.
Actually, in today’s world, to call somebody Mayavadi is to actually give them too much credit. Because they don’t even know much philosophy. They’ve heard philosophy, generally something, we are all one, we are all one.
It’s something which they’ve heard. So for them, they may have heard something from some teacher, gone somewhere, and they’ve got some shred of spiritual experience. And that is their experience of truth.
And when we challenge that, like what little truth they’ve experienced, we are trying to challenge that. It may be a very fragmented truth. It’s like say somebody, it’s very cold and they’re trembling and they have a torn blanket, which they’re putting on their body.
Actually, it’s not covering their body also properly. So we tell them, we pull away that blanket. See, this is so torn, it’s not covering you.
But for them, that is the only thing they have. If we pull it away, they will fight with their life to keep it. Because otherwise it’s so freezing cold.
Our intent may be, I’ll pull off this blanket and I’ll give you a much better blanket. But they will not let go of that blanket. So what happens in the intermediate, if we say, instead of blanket, if you take this cloth, and the cloth is torn.
Now people don’t allow themselves to be undressed in front of someone strange. Now, but if you say, I’ll give you a cloth, and that cloth won’t fit on your cloth. You take out this cloth and you can wear this cloth.
No, I’ll not do it. So then in the intermediate, they have their own cloth. We have to give them our cloth at that time.
And that cloth, their earlier cloth and our cloth, may not fit also properly. It’ll look strange and odd. But that’s what they will wear.
And after sometime they feel, this cloth is much more comfortable. Why do you need that earlier cloth? Then they will take it out. So like that, in between, so people have experienced something by which they have got some beliefs.
And if you try to challenge that belief, it’s like pulling off the cloth that they’re wearing. So in between when they’re wearing that old cloth as well as the new cloth, it’s like their belief will be a mess. It’ll be a khichdi.
But over a period of time, they will just adopt the new cloth. But we have to be patient till then. Maybe more direct.
When a question is asked, and we know that we should not answer in a certain way, but let’s say it leads to a contradictory statement of what the beliefs are, or what the right thing is. It’s completely contradictory. So is it okay to give, like example is, let’s say in the vegetarian cooking class, they ask, is wine okay? Because it leads to digestion.
It helps in digestion. That time you say that, no, it’s okay as long as it’s working for you. It’s completely contradictory.
I wouldn’t go that far to say wine is okay. What we can say is that we don’t drink wine because it intoxicates us. And there are alternative ways of improving digestion also.
Don’t say that it is not bad. We don’t take it. Once you make a judgement, then they feel threatened.
This is bad. This, you should not do it. It’s whatever way people ask a question, we can answer it in such a way that we give across our point.
So if somebody says that, if somebody in our class comes and says, Sathya Sai Baba is God. Now we will say, that is not God. Now that will be quite alienating for them.
I have to speak the truth. Yes, you have to speak the truth, but you have to speak the truth in a way that attracts people to the truth. So you say, you know, yeah, I believe in God.
And, you know, rather than saying anything like this, if they ask a question directly, I don’t think people will ask. People will not ask a question like that directly also. But if they ask, what we can say is that, you know, yes, I accept God and I have learned the definition of God from the Vedic texts.
And this is the definition of God. And whoever satisfies that definition, if you talk about six opulences, then people can arrive at their own judgments. There is a way that we don’t contradict them directly.
At the same time, we don’t contradict our own teachings also. It’s a, it’s a, yeah, it’s a, it’s okay, it’s art, it’s both art and a skill. So in New York, somebody asked, why are you people against sex? He says, we are not against sex.
He says, we are only for the contextually appropriate use of sex. So he said, suppose the President of America is eating pizza. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But the President of America is giving the State of Union address. And while eating, while giving the State of Union address, he’s eating pizza. He says eating pizza is fine, giving the State of Union address is good also.
But eating pizza while doing that is not proper. So context is important. So he says, similarly, for sex, there has to be a context.
But when sex is done anywhere and everywhere without context, that is not proper. That makes sense. So people should not, at least initially in interaction, they shouldn’t feel threatened by us.
They feel threatened and they close down. So we can present in such a way that we make our point, but without attacking them. Like I learnt in public speaking, don’t ask the people, do you understand? Ask them, am I making myself clear? It’s a simple difference, but it makes a big difference.
Who will say I don’t understand? It makes you sound like a fool that you don’t understand. Am I making myself clear? No, I think this was not clear. You can explain that.
So don’t put the burden on them. Take the burden yourself. Don’t say that your belief is wrong.
This is what I believe and this is why I believe it. How they get, they want to try everything. That’s how they get trapped.
They don’t want to focus on one thing. Even when they have, they lose the practise, but not completely. One challenge I’m facing is like sometimes when they call for having lunch together or they call for coffee, tea, it becomes a little challenging.
The thing is, once another person directly took from that same plate and put again back. What, what? That’s okay. Prabhupada says intelligence means to keep, to see things in their proper perspective.
So what is more important, what is less important? So I think the Jyota standard is, it’s not vitally important. If people are, if through that people are able to chant Hare Krishna, it’s like, I’ll say that with respect to food, there’s a continuum. The highest level of food is, the food which is, we have that whole standard, harvested by devotees, sowed by devotees, transported by devotees, cooked by devotees, offered by devotees, honoured by devotees.
And then you could have the bottom most standard is, food that is bought outside, bought from outside, it is offered to Krishna or offered in the mind. Basically vegetarian food that we offer in the mind or whatever, or offer properly and take. Market-bound food.
Now all of this is at various levels of acceptability. Non-vegetarian food is utterly unacceptable. Depending on each devotee’s inspiration, past cultural upbringing, and particular service focus, devotees may situate themselves anywhere in this range.
So I would say that if it’s conviviality, eating with others, sometimes even the food which is, if we can offer in the mind or whatever, eating with others is a very important way of bonding with people. So how we can do it, we have to adjust. We have to see the current time, place, circumstance.
One advantage I find in Western culture as compared to Indian, because in West, people are lazy about cooking. So if you say, I will get the food, they are so happy about it. In India, cooking is a very important part of the culture, at least still.
So if you go to somebody’s house and don’t take food, it becomes a little problematic. So within this range, depending on the nature of the service of preaching or whatever, I would say somebody who wants to reach out to a large number of people, they cannot have a very high standard of food. If they have that, they’ll be able to reach mostly insiders.
They’ll not be able to connect with many outsiders. So it’s not a serious issue. It’s like a small thing.
The big thing is to get people to connect with Krishna, chant Krishna’s names, take up bhakti in some small way. And with respect to people committing to various things, I remember when I was editing Journey Within for Maharaj, there’s one section he was talking about how to find one spiritual path. So I wrote a passage, basically.
Maharaj told me, I had suggested something to Maharaj, and Maharaj said, OK, you write it down and show it to me. I wrote down at the same point, we should not do window shopping in spiritual life. Look at this, look at that, look at that.
And Maharaj said, most people will be reading my book because they are doing window shopping. They are already following some spiritual path. They have some experience, but they are also wanting to experience something else.
So then we removed that from there. You want to say something? You said right, engaging them in the most powerful way. So he was coming, he was next to the temple, his office was Sony, near our temple.
So he used to come to Govinda’s and eat like three years and never connected with anyone. Later when one more devotee, we asked him to do what he can do, so he wanted to start a restaurant in a farmer’s market like that. So the other devotee challenged him in such a way that he wanted to do something, so he asked him to do like dosas, and then now in Eleyarath Yatra he has a tent and he is leading that.
So but, you know, he is like regularly in touch with devotees, but he is not, you know, very committed and chanting. But there is like three things, you know, we have to give people engagement, encouragement and enlightenment. What we often do is we just give enlightenment and leave it at that.
This is what you should do. How do I do it in my life? That is your problem. So all these three if you give.
Engagement means where you are at this level also you can do this. Encouragement, okay, from there you can rise to this level. Enlightenment is why you need to rise, why is that higher.
So if you just give enlightenment, it actually is not very enlightening. Yesterday this situation, I don’t know, we count how many people we got into this institution, but if we count how many people we moved away from getting into this. It’s not very fast, within the family circle, sometimes with our behaviours or avoiding something, it’s not very fast, within the family circle.
That’s true. I was there with Birbhachari’s father. So he was there and we were talking and he became a devotee.
So I was appreciating this devotee. He says, it’s wonderful, you know, you have made your father into a devotee. His father is a jolly person.
I did not become a devotee because of him. I became a devotee in spite of him. So they are on the phone? Want to add something? No, I think he is just dying.
Oh really? Okay. So thank you very much. Shall we go on?