Shouldn’t we speak strongly to get everyone on the fast track to Krishna?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so there is a concern that sometimes we may just speak so mellow that people don’t get benefited, Prabhupada always spoke strongly so how do we how can we actually speak effectively in our particular situation see strong speaking is not just about the content of what you are speaking Mahabharata explains that the rightness or wrongness of action is determined by three things the intent, the content and the consequence that means why do I do it? a doctor may perform a surgery with a good intent but they may make a mistake it’s wrong that they made a mistake but the intent was right so sometimes there will be complications because something else happens so I may do the right action with the right intent but the consequence comes out wrong so how do we know what course of action was right or wrong all these three factors that we consider intent, content and consequence so we have to see what is the effect of whatever way we are speaking on others so sometimes strong speaking is what is required to get people closer to Krishna and sometimes gentle speaking is what is required so it’s not so much about strong speaking in terms of strong words, it is in terms of effective consequence so the desired effect should happen there are many times when Prabhupada will speak very strongly in terms of exposing people’s misconceptions but there are times also when Prabhupada would speak strategically so when Prabhupada himself interacted with George Harrison before Prabhupada had met George Harrison he had been in touch with many Indian Gurus and during his interaction with Prabhupada he said you know this Swami says this, this Rishi says this, he was quoting all those people and Prabhupada was just non-committal, without commenting anything about them ok what do they do, he was just focusing on their teachings and addressing those teachings in the light of bhakti wisdom so before that there were two main musicians two big musicians who connected with Prabhupada one was Allen Ginsberg he was not that big but he was there in 1960 and early 1970 Prabhupada connected with with George Harrison so Allen Ginsberg was also quite impressed by a particular Indian Swami and when he spoke about that Swami to Prabhupada Prabhupada said he is just a foolish old monk, something like that I was so shocked he said from that point he said he at that time I was very sentimental respecting all monks and they must be good people but Swami introduced a criticality in me it was healthy but one result of that criticality was that I started evaluating Prabhupada also like that and he didn’t commit to anyone he didn’t commit to any other Swami, he didn’t commit to Prabhupada, he had Prabhupada in any way but he never became any kind of committed follower so we have to see what is the effect what happens for us when we hear Prabhupada’s classes or when we hear about Prabhupada’s speaking as reported by his followers the tendency of the human mind is to look for sensational stuff and Prabhupada’s strong words fools, rascals they are like catchy sound bites and they catch our attention and when speakers speak they also catch other’s attention but that is not the way Prabhupada spoke most of the time I did an elaborate study of Prabhupada’s works so I found that if you look at Prabhupada’s lectures so he uses say words like fools and rascals strong words, maybe around 300 times it’s a rough figure I have statistics but roughly around 300 to 400 times but if you look at his books he uses it less than 50 times, the word rascals and if you look at those books which he wrote as books, many of his books like Science of Self-Realization, Journey of Self-Discovery there are lectures which are made into books, what he directly wrote as books like Bhagavad Gita, Bhagavatam the word rascal comes I would say less than 10 times and those words that Prabhupada wrote are like Prabhupada wrote 100,000 words what he spoke out, 70,000 or 100,000 words, so 10 times he used it so actually by thinking that we should speak strongly, are we really representing the mood of Srila Prabhupada we have to also access it honestly so we may be so Prabhupada spoke in a way that was effective and Prabhupada clearly said that his, what he wanted mainly to be circulated was his books, in fact there is a clear instruction that one devotee in 1976 he wrote to Srila Prabhupada saying that Prabhupada in order to understand your message I want to transcribe all your lectures Prabhupada said that is excessive endeavor, there is no need to do that whatever I have given in my books is enough so what he wanted for mass distribution was his books and if you look at his approach in the books, it is very calibrated in nature, so we have to be we definitely do not want to compromise but we do not have to have we do not have to equate sensitivity with compromise we have to and we do not have to equate necessarily strong speech with effective speech if I speak strongly in terms of using judgmental words and that alienate people from Krishna, then it is not effective it is ineffective speech so we have to see what is effective, is it that Prabhupada wanted everyone to go on the fast track to Krishna yes definitely but if you look at Srila Prabhupada the way he has presented Krishna bhakti, in America practicing Krishna bhakti meant moving into the temple because the American culture was so radically different from the bhakti culture that becoming a devotee meant moving into the temple now when Srila Prabhupada went to India, at that time Indians were not interested in moving into the temple at all so Prabhupada created the program of life and worship and Prabhupada’s main preaching in India was you just go to people’s houses take prasad at their houses speak something and ask them to become life members and he went to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people’s houses like that now you see, becoming a life member means they are not committing to chanting they are not committing to following the four ayurvedic principles of course many of them were already following but there is no wow committing them to that nor were they committing to sadhana bhakti in a particular way but Prabhupada was satisfied with that connection of course he wanted them give them their books, let them come to the temple and stay in the temple so both intellectually and culturally they will have the opportunity to come closer to Krishna but Prabhupada was real he saw that at that time Indians were not ready so he was ready to have that life and worship as a way to connect them with Krishna so there is the fast track of connecting with Krishna which is following the rules of sadhana bhakti and becoming committed becoming initiated that is wonderful, that is what we would like to do but that doesn’t mean that any other thing is wrong it is that Prabhupada making people life members indicates that he was happy with people coming at this level but he was also accepting to people being at this level now what should not happen is that we think that this level is the standard that is not just everybody becomes a life member, gives some donation to temple and that’s all, there is nothing more but that is unlikely to happen because Prabhupada’s movement is a preaching movement we speak the philosophy and we encourage people to come here so it’s not this or that it is this and this this and this, that means we encourage people to take the fast track to Krishna bhakti but those who are not ready we don’t reject them we tell them take whatever track you can and move onwards towards Krishna does it answer your question?