Srila Prabhupada – The transcendentalist who embodied the best of traditionalist, existentialist and utopianist
[Prabhupada disappearance day celebration at Fort Lauderdale, USA]
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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors. Jai! Hare Krishna! It’s wonderful to be here after almost two years. And today it’s a very auspicious day, the day of disappearance of Srila Prabhupada. And today I will speak about how Srila Prabhupada has blessed all of us. Broadly, there are three kinds of people. I’ll talk about how Srila Prabhupada integrated all these three kinds of approaches to life. There are traditionalists, there are existentialists, and there are utopianists. And Srila Prabhupada was a transcendentalist who integrated all these three approaches. Now these words might sound a little bit, but the concept is very simple. Basically, life is tough. So many problems come upon us from expected ways and even more from unexpected ways. And everybody tries to find how to deal with these problems. So the traditionalist holds that the past has all the answers. If you just look in the tradition, the people in the past were much wiser than us. And if you just turn to them, they can give answers to all our problems. The existentialists hold that the present is the past. The past is already gone. Don’t worry about it. The future, we don’t know when it will come, how it will come, whether it will come. Just live in the present. That is the existentialist. And the utopianist is they have the idea that the future will be bright and wonderful. And work to create that wonderful future. So some people live for the past, some live for the present, and some live for the future. So these are traditionalists, existentialists, and utopianists. Utopia is like an imagination. Utopia is like a future fantasy that life will be so wonderful in the future. Now, the Prabhupada, he also came to guide us on how to deal with life’s challenges. He was a transcendentalist. Now, the answers don’t lie in the past, nor in the present, nor in the future. The answers lie in transcendence, in the reality beyond the material. And when we approach that reality, and then we can draw the best from the past, the present, as well as the future. Traditionalists, let’s look at this, and we’ll see how what is good about traditionalism and what is bad, and like that for all the three approaches. And we’ll look at how Prabhupada adopted the good while keeping aside the bad. So some people think, in the past, things were so good. In the past, people were more moral, people were more close to each other, families were more integrated, life was so good. Now, traditional is very good. Now, it is true in some ways, things in the past were good. But, this world is always autonomous. And things are always wrong. In the past, there are so many discomforts at the physical level. When it’s cold, no heating, no transportation, as we have it, no telecommunications. Nowadays, for most young people, they think the past is terrible. Because, there’s no entertainment. No TV, no how could people live? Life would be so boring. Actually, it is, we have so much entertainment, and still we are bored. So, in the past, people knew how to get joy in the simple things of life. But now, we have so much entertainment, and then slowly we become dead into all that. So, yes, there is a lot we can learn from the past. The virtue of simplicity, that’s one thing we can learn from the past. The importance of living close to each other, close to nature, and ultimately close to God, that’s important. But in the past, at the physical level, there were a lot of hardships. And not only at the physical level, there was discrimination of various kinds. There was India caste discrimination, there was racial discrimination, there was exploitation. So many things were always going on. So, the traditionalists, they believe that we can just turn the clock back. If only we could turn the clock back, and we could go. Maybe some people said 15th century, some people said 7th century, some people said 5000 years later, and then we would be happy. But first of all, we can’t turn the clock back. And even if you turn the clock back, there are so many things which we who have grown up in today’s world, even if we were as poor at that age, we wouldn’t be able to do that. We have grown up with a certain way of thinking, a certain way of living. So, Srila Prabhupada was in that sense a realist. He grew extensively from tradition. He spoke based on scriptures, which were given thousands of years ago. But Prabhupada time and time again emphasised that what he is giving is not just traditional, it is transcendental. Transcendental means Srila Prabhupada did not try in any way to actually simply replicate what was done in India in the West or anywhere else in the world. Because each culture is different. Some people have the idea when now definitely the wisdom that we are trying to live according to the devotion that we are trying to inculcate, all this was there in the past. Much more than what it is today. But Srila Prabhupada knew that transplant, when we want to transmit the tradition, it’s not just a transfer, it’s a transplantation. Transplantation means like if a particular plant is growing in India, and then we bring it to America in order to grow over here. We have to consider how it will grow over here. Exact same process over there might not apply. Many of us may grow Tulsi. I think in Florida, the weather is reasonably good. Does Tulsi grow naturally here? But if you go to the other parts, maybe Chicago, Canada, it’s a big effort. So, when we transplant, we want the same purpose. That is, we want the plant, the Tulsi to grow. But the process may vary. Sometimes you may need a greenhouse over here, you may need lights over here, so that there is enough sun, whatever. Traditionally, this is what was done in the past, this is what you should do. But Prabhupada was not like that. Prabhupada was resourceful. The first thing that Prabhupada did, it is amazing, if you read Prabhupada’s Zeenamrit. It is a magnificent six-volume biography of Srila Prabhupada. The first few months he was in America, he stayed at the house of Gopal and Shalya Garwal. They had sponsored him. And Shalya Garwal says that Prabhupada was so interested in everything American. He said, write some how the vacuum cleaner worked, how to use the fridge, what all we did. So now, Srila Prabhupada, infatuated with America, what to do? He, when he had come to America, at that time, the first thing he saw, he composed a beautiful poem, Markile Bhagavad Dharma. If you want to understand the heart of Srila Prabhupada, that is a poem which you can read and meditate. Prabhupada is all alone on the ship Jal Roota beholding the American coastline. And at that time, he sees this big building, smooth roads, fast cars, and for most people from the third world, India is, was definitely at that time a part of third world, out of emerging. But for them, India is the land of the dreams. And there was Prabhupada’s song, America. At that time, what did Prabhupada say? He says, Rajas-tamo-bhuna-e rasa-bai-ni-a-cha Vasudeva-prat- jena-hi-se-prasa He said, the whole dream is covered by the modes of passion and ignorance. Rajas-tamo-bhuna-e rasa-bai-ni-a-cha So passion is where people are very impulsive. It’s running around hyperactive and impulsive. And ignorance is where people are very passive and apathetic, just not doing anything. Or they are active, they are destructive. So Prabhupada says, achi-kicchu kar-chitta-pe-yehi-ya-yoma-ne na-he-che-na-va-ni-pe-na yehi-yo-gras-ta-ne But you know, you must have some purpose. That’s why you brought me here. Otherwise, why would you bring me to this terrible place, Ugras-ta-ne. Now, I think, in the history of the world, nobody from India would have come to America and said, this is a terrible place. This is a wonderful place, a dream place. About 25 years ago, when I had just completed my engineering studies, I was supposed to come to America. I had done quite well. I had got admission in some universities also. But somehow, Krishna and Prabhupada’s mercy came in my life. And I was supposed to come here for higher education. But with Prabhupada’s mercy, I got the opportunity to get the highest education. The study of the Bhagavad-gita. Many of my relatives are very disappointed that this is a waste in your life. Lost an opportunity to go to America. About 6-7 years ago, the first time when I came to America, then when I went back, many of my relatives have not even talked with me for 20 years. They called me and said, you went to America, now your life is successful. So, nobody, anybody who comes to the third world, they don’t think of America as a terrible place. It’s a wonderful place. So, Prabhupada was not infatuated by America. Definitely not. Remember, why was Prabhupada so interested in everything American? Because Prabhupada wanted to understand how America works. How American people work. How American people work. Because he was planning to transplant. He was planning to transplant the tradition. And for that, he had to understand how people make it. He got very interested in understanding. So, one of the most important things is, when we are trying to share Krishna Consciousness with others, is people need to feel understood before they become ready to understand. Suppose you are sick and you go to a doctor. You sit in the doctor’s chair and the doctor starts firing a prescription. I didn’t tell you my problem. No, I already know your problem. Just take this. Even if the doctor’s prescription is right, we won’t have the confidence that they know it. Somehow, similarly, for people who are traditionalists, for them, if they want to share, they want to preach. The word preach has a slightly Hindu connotation. So, preach is a holier-than-thou kind of attitude. I’m going to preach to you. I was in Texas a couple of years ago and I saw a slogan on a person’s car. It was a bumper car sticker. Oh God, please save me from your preachers. So, God normally saves us through his preachers. But the preachers are holier-than-thou, condescending, hell-and-brimstone kind of. They don’t want anything to do with these people. So, that is the image that many people have of preachers. Sharing Krishna Consciousness, not preaching. When we have to share Krishna Consciousness, some people have the idea that it’s like one formula. Just download that formula on everyone. Do this, do this, do this. Yes, there is a prescription, but we have to understand it. So, traditionalists, they think this is what was done. If only you do this, all problems will be solved. But life is not that simple. Life is not that simple. The exact same way in which we grew a plant in India, if we try to grow it in America, it will die. We do everything same. Like in medicine, it is said operation successful, patient dead. So, the traditionalists have this idea. This is what was done. This is how it should be. That’s all. No questions asked. But Prabhupada was not like that. Prabhupada understood how do people think, how do they feel. And Prabhupada, accordingly, and I have to tell you, he was resourceful. From the many adaptations that Sri Prabhupada did, one of the most prominent was that he gave everybody a sense of belonging and worth. When Sri Prabhupada later went back to India in the 1970s, he got two big busloads of devotees with him from America. It was a victorious return. And for a long time, Sri Prabhupada stayed in Vrindavan. Vrindavan is, at least at that time, it had a small town charm. Now it has become a little more commercialised. So, for the Brajwasis, it was like, Prabhupada was like their hometown boy. He has become famous. He has come back. So, they organised a big festivity in the honour of Sri Prabhupada. Now, there were many other saints over there, some of Prabhupada’s godbrothers and others. Somehow, for them, Prabhupada had to be like a junior godbrother. And they somehow couldn’t digest that Prabhupada had become so famous and got so many disciples. And one of them said… So, there was a celebration for felicitating Sri Prabhupada for having made so many people from the West, from America, from UK, into bhakti yogis, into devotees. So, one of the Prabhupada godbrothers said that, actually, Bhaktivedanta Swami was a businessman earlier. As a businessman, he interacted with all different kinds of people. And he knew how to deal with people. And we had these skills of business and organisation. And using those skills, he has preached and he has built this school. It’s wonderful that so many people have become devotees. So, as far as we are concerned, now, we were we were we were Brahmacharis. We took sannyas when we were young. And we never interacted with low-class people. And we lived purely. It’s good that all people from here are coming and learning about the glory of Vrindavan. So, there is something called damning by faint praise. You praise. Suppose somebody cooks food for you. And then they ask, how is the food? It’s edible. Laughter So, now, edible is not itself a criticism. But it’s such a faint praise that edible! It comes off as a criticism. So, what they were doing over here is, see, he was a businessman. He engaged with much less people who were all impure. And, he was able to mix with all these impurities and he made them into devotees. We all lived purely. Now, that might seem a subtle put-down of Prabhupada. But what they misunderstood was that, it’s Prabhupada. It was not because of his business experience or his organisational skills. It was because of his purity. There might be a doctor who stays in a hospital always and whoever comes to the hospital, they try to treat impure. There’s another doctor who goes to the epidemic hit zone and there the doctor tries to treat people. Now, all the apparatus that is infrastructure, technology that is available for the doctor in the hospital, very little of it may be available for the doctor on-site. And if the doctor on-site is able to treat, that actually speaks of the glory of the doctor. So, Shila Prabhupada was like that. Shila Prabhupada went to the field. His outreach was, he made everyone feel included. From the Indian perspective, the hippies would have been considered to be very, very degraded. In fact, from the traditional Indian perspective, people who live in the West are considered degraded. But the hippies were considered degraded by even those who were living in the West. Laughter Laughter So, Shila Prabhupada went among them, lived among them. Prabhupada, in the early days of the movement, Shila Prabhupada would actually, they would just come, Prabhupada would cook food, they would eat food, and they would just go away. They would think it’s like a hotel. And Prabhupada would wash their plates. Prabhupada served them. And it was his great compassion. A, Prabhupada’s idea of preaching was that I’ll sit on a big seat and everybody come and hear from me. It wouldn’t have worked. And Prabhupada never made anyone feel ignored. Although he did talk about standards of purity, about practises that will bring about purity, but he did not ever make anyone feel looked down upon. People who were who were looked down upon by society, even people who were traditionally would have been considered low-born, but there was no caste discrimination, there was no birth discrimination, there was no gender discrimination. Prabhupada tried to make everyone included in his agenda. So Prabhupada was giving the teaching from the tradition, but he did it in such an expert way that he was not simply a traditionalist. It’s not the tradition’s formula imposed. He looked at the Nesakala Patra at time, place, circumstances and expertly he taught. And it was because of that expertise that he attracted so many people. So I’ll come to this metaphor at the end of Transplantation once again. So the first is that we have to learn from the tradition, but we have to also learn from the contemporary situation about how to apply the tradition. So Prabhupada was a transcendentalist who took the position and applied it in the contemporary situation. That means Prabhupada was not just a transcendentalist who said that the past has all the answers. What is the second category of people? Existentialists. They say that the present is what you should do. Present is all that is important. And it is quite common. Nowadays many people say live in the present. Live in the present. Now yes, it’s good because our mind wanders into the past and laments about the past. Our mind wanders into the future and worries about the future. So yes, it’s good to live in the present. But we don’t live for the present. We live for something bigger than the present. At a very simple level, if somebody is sick and is in pain, you tell them, live in the present. The present is miserable. I want the present to end as quickly as possible. So we have to live in the present in the sense that we have to deal with the present. And we can’t be absent-minded or thinking about the past or the future and not be attentive to the present. But existentialists are those who say that actually existence, whether it has any meaning or not, we don’t know. So just live the best you can right now. So existentialists often avoid the big questions of life. Does life have any meaning? Does life have any purpose? Who knows? Some people say there is purpose. Some people say there is no purpose. Just don’t get into these questions. Just live. Live the best that you can. At one level, it might seem good. And most people are not very philosophical. So most people, in a sense, live like existentialists. They may have never heard the word existentialism. But okay, just don’t bother about all these questions. Just live the way you are. However, we may just live life without having any philosophy. But actually, nobody lives without any philosophy. If we have never thought about philosophy, then we are living with an unthought philosophy. Unthought means we never thought about how we are living. So an unthought philosophy is a foolosophy. Foolosophy is the sophistry of fools. The sophistry is the misleading logic. So, false arguments. So actually, every one of us, we all live, we don’t just live for the present, we live for the future. In a sense that, parents, even somebody who is an existentialist, if they are parents and they take care of the children, they won’t let the children grow up and have a bright future. Yes, they have to study in the present, work in the present, but we all live for something more relevant. When we just avoid philosophical questions, then what happens? It’s not that we live without philosophy, we gravitate toward the default philosophy of materialism. That means, what is here and now, what I see, that is what I live for. Now, materialism is the default philosophy of most people in the world. And the problem with materialism is that it makes life meaningless. How does it make life meaningless? Because within materialism, ultimately, death is going to come to destroy everything. Everything that we have worked for is going to be destroyed. And even before that, there are times when distress comes, and sometimes big distress comes. And then, anybody who faces huge distress, they do get the question, what am I living for? Why should I get all this distress? Why should life be ultimately meaningless? Why do I go through all this trouble? What is the point of it all? And, when we live only for the present, see, living in the present is good, but living for the present is not good. We have to live for something that is in the present. So, when Srila Prabhupada was in the West, that was the time when at one level, the hippies were very into drugs, and they were very degraded. But many of them were spiritual seekers. And they would dabble into different philosophies. So, there were some prominent philosophers. There was one philosopher, Alberto Camus, he said that existence is miserable. Therefore, the only philosophical question he was asking is, whether to commit suicide today or tomorrow. And he said that, he wrote many, many books, and his conclusion was, don’t commit suicide today. So, he said, in your life, somehow try to create some meaning in life. So, existentialism dodges all the big questions of life. But Srila Prabhupada, even from the early days, he was very philosophical. Prabhupada, if you see his classes, he was not trying to entertain people by giving them the pep talks, the motivational talks. There was spiritual motivation that came when we understood the philosophy. There was encouragement and inspiration also came. But Prabhupada did not avoid philosophy. Prabhupada was not non-philosophical in order to become popular. Prabhupada grounded all his teachings on philosophy. And he addressed tough questions. As I travel across the world, I meet people from various traditions, various Hindu groups, various Christian, various Muslim groups. I go to interfaith meetings. And each tradition may have its teachers. And some of these teachers are very good philosophers. But there is a huge gap between the philosophy of the founder or the teacher and the philosophical understanding of the other followers. Most people, they don’t even have answers to basic questions of life. And they go to the traditional Judeo-Christian version of religion is that pray, pay, obey. You go to church to pray and then you pay, do some donation, do some Taithi and then obey. Do this, don’t do this. And there is very, you have some faith. Oh, there is God or Jesus came and he saved you, he died for you. You accept him as your saviour and you’ll be saved. Now this is not to minimise Christianity. Every religion has this idea. Something similar. Just have faith and everything will be taken care of. So, now this is, this is not existentialism of course, but it’s something similar where the philosophical questions are dodged. Don’t get into philosophy. But Prabhupada was not like that. Prabhupada, Prabhupada spoke philosophy in all his books. Prabhupada spent a lot of time writing his books. His classes were philosophical. The idea is that not every one of us can be a philosopher. But every one of us can be grounded in a philosophical understanding of life. So when there is philosophy, this is what happens. Every, every religion will give some rules. Do this, don’t do this. I was at an interfaith meeting and there was a Christian priest who told about a survey they had done in Christianity. And among Christian youth, what is their idea of a priest? And he said, the one young man said, a priest is someone who is constantly worried that someone, somewhere is having some fun. Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Laughter Their idea is that, people, don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do this. There are so many rules. Now yes, there are rules, but Prabhupada Prabhupada explained explicitly to one of his, one of the devotees doing college outreach. Prabhupada said, the worst thing that you can do when you are sharing Krishna consciousness is present it as a set of rules. Prabhupada said, if you explain the philosophy, then people will be able to see rules as routes to a better life. And then when they see, okay, following these rules will make my life better. When the rules don’t become like a external imposition, they become an inerrity situation. They become inerrity. Because Prabhupada explained that there is material consciousness, there is spiritual consciousness. Material pleasure, there is spiritual pleasure. Material pleasure is temporary. Spiritual pleasure lasts much longer. And if we can raise our consciousness to spiritual level, we can experience so much more joy. So Prabhupada, he gave philosophy in a way that it could act as a map for our life too. So the philosophy shows us these rules. If you do this and don’t do this. Why? If you do these things, then that will keep your consciousness stuff at the material level. And then you are deprived of spiritual pleasure. If you do these things, your consciousness rises to the spiritual level. And then you can access more and more things. So Prabhupada addressed philosophy. And even in his morning walks, Prabhupada would play the devil’s advocate here. And the devil’s advocate, he would play the role of an atheist or a sceptic. And he would ask his disciples to answer. And he would refute all their answers. And what did Prabhupada do? By this, Prabhupada trained. And Prabhupada, even when he was teaching philosophy, it was not like a stereotype. Once a devotee asked, once Prabhupada in a morning walk asked the devotees. He said, why did you accept Krishna as God? And different devotees gave different answers. You know, he has six opulences, he is all attractive, this, that. He said, that’s just your belief. And then Prabhupada rejected all the answers. And finally Prabhupada said, because the Bhagavad Gita says Krishna is God, we all have to accept ultimately some authority for giving knowledge. And this is a divine revelation. And then Prabhupada went to another place. And again in the morning walk, he played the same devotional game. And there was one devotee who was there in this talk and yet was there in this talk. He was just waiting. I get the chance and speak. All the other people were answering and Prabhupada was dismissing their answers. And then finally, Prabhupada, because the Bhagavad Gita says so, Prabhupada said, why should I accept your Bhagavad Gita? Laughter He was flabbergasted. He didn’t know what to say. And then, finally Prabhupada said that, when we chant Hare Krishna, we experience the ecstasy. That’s why we accept Krishna as God. Now which is the answer? Is it because of the Bhagavad Gita or because of the experience? It depends on context. In some context, we stress the authority of the sources of knowledge from which we are taught. In some cases, we focus on the experience that the process gives. It depends on whom we are talking to. So, Prabhupada is resourceful in presenting philosophy. That’s why you study Prabhupada and sometimes he asks the same question, but does not answer the same question in the same way. Because he is looking at the person. And for him, just answering the question is not important. Addressing the questioner’s need is important. That was Prabhupada. He was a transcendentalist who equipped people to face life, not by dodging life’s big questions, but by giving philosophy in an accessible, understandable way. So, that was Prabhupada. And then, what is the third category? Utopianism. Utopianism is the future of this world. Now, we all need some hope that the future will be brighter than the present. That’s what inspires us to work, to strive. And among all living beings, we humans alone have the conscious capacity to recognise that the reality is structured in such a way that we can trade the present for the future. Trade the present means that in the present, there are some things I can enjoy before. But if I forego these pleasures, I can get something better in the future. So, that’s the basis of all of education. That’s the basis of so many other things that we do in our life. Animals may also prepare for the future. When the winter starts coming, some frogs burrow into the earth, other animals do various things. But that is what their instincts tell them to do. The frog who is burrowing a hole for winter is not thinking, I have to dig into this ground and make a hole. I’d better be watching TV. Laughter That’s what the frogs do. Now, we humans, we have a greater amount of free will than we can choose. We can choose to indulge in the present or we can trade the present for the future. So, this intelligence to know that if I forego something in the present, I can have something better in the future. This intelligence we humans have. And that is something we can see even in our food. A cow eats the same grass generation after generation after generation. Humans, we cook so many foods. Now, we could just take the vegetables and fruits and eat it in the summer. But we forego that pleasure so that we could cook something. And we do it a few hours later. Some cooking takes one or two hours. Some foods, it takes maybe a dozen hours. Some foods, not only we do cook, but we actually cultivate, we irrigate. We grow agriculture. So, we cultivate for five, six months so that we get very good food. But we have this intelligence. So, certainly we all have the intelligence and the ability to work to create a better future. But utopianists are the people who believe that at the material level, there will be a future where life will be wonderful and all problems will be solved. So, there are different kinds of utopians. Communism was actually utopian. Communism was not just a political ideology. It was also, it had some spirituality. Actually, spiritual means not that… Communism did not accept anything spiritual. Communism said God is the opium, religion is the opium of the masses. It rejected the idea of soul and God. But it appealed to the longing of the human spirit for a better future. They said that, oh, there are wealthy people who exploit the poor people. And we will destroy all the wealthy people, take all their wealth and then everybody will have that wealth equally and everybody will be happy. Now, what happened eventually was that, as one social commentator said that, in communism, everyone is equal, but some people are more equal than others. That means, what happened? Now, who is going to redistribute wealth like this? Who is going to take wealth? There has to be a class of administrators. And those administrators eventually became poor. So, there were the rulers and the ruled. That dichotomy eventually got created. It’s a disastrous ideology. Communism promised a bright future. Now, most of us we know about the horrors of say, the first world war, second world war. Millions of people were killed. But actually, in Russia and China, USSR and China, 100 million people were killed by the government system. Double the amount of people were killed in the first world war and second world war combined. And, communism was driven primarily by atheistic utopia. That we remove God from the world and essentially, what happens? We, the state will become God. And the state will decide, you should have this much wealth, you should have this kind of house, you should have this. But the state became not a God. Eventually, it turned out to be the devil. At least, it was one country fighting against another in the first world war, second world war. But in communism, it was a government system. Anybody who suspected, failed. So, then, there is this utopia at the material level. We make some material changes and life will become wonderful. But, that utopia soon changes into a dystopia. Utopia is how wonderful the future is. Dystopia is how dreadful the future is. Nowadays, communism has lost much of its meaning. Although, socialism is still very much appealing. There is the idea of the welfare state. But the problem with the idea of welfare state is that people soon run out of others’ money to spend. You take money from others, how much money do you have? Eventually. So, life is tough and no amount of social engineering can actually change the nature of reality. Life is tough and it’s going to be tough. Now, today, there is some hope for social engineering, but now, today’s utopia is technology is solving all problems. I was just a month or so ago in the Bay Area. So, in Silicon Valley and those places, there is so much remarkable advancement of technology. But along with that, there is a lot of unrealistic hype. There is this idea that, you know, Stephen Hawking was a very prominent scientist and one of his last talks, he said that that the way humanity has become wild, we are killing each other, we are destroying our environment. Our only hope is that we advance technologically fast enough so that before we destroy the earth, we have enough technological advancement to go to other planets. Seriously, his talk was calling that the whole world should increase the funds for space research so that before we destroy the earth, we can go to other planets. But then, we’ll go there and destroy those planets also. It is not that the earth is destroying itself, it’s humans who are destroying it. So, technology cannot change people internally. Technology is very useful. Vishal Prabhupada used technology. Kalyugta Vairagya used technology. But, technology can make things better. Spirituality can make people better. Technology can change things for the better. Spirituality can change things for the better. Vishal Prabhupada talked about this synthesis, East-West synthesis when he talked about how the West is technologically advanced, India is technologically and financially poor, but India is spiritually advanced. When the blind man and the lame man come together. So, Prabhupada was not just a European. The world is a tough place. But, if whatever material advancement we are doing, along with that, there is spiritual advancement. Then, the material advancement may deal with material problems, but other problems will come. It is, if we can cultivate a spiritual culture, we can share a spiritual knowledge, then each one of us, at the very least, can make our life better. And we can help make others better. Sometimes we can influence a lot of people, sometimes we influence a few people. But, Vishal Prabhupada, we conclude with this point, Vishal Prabhupada had this amazing potency to infuse confidence in anyone and everyone that they could become an instrument of Krishna. They could be empowered by Krishna. They could do wonderful things and Krishna would guide them. Vishal Prabhupada’s early disciples, Prabhupada called him one day in 1967 and said, Now, I want to start the Back to World magazine. He said, Prabhupada, I have never done anything with a magazine till now except read it. How do I run a magazine? And Prabhupada said, You just try Krishna will guide you. And Prabhupada had such a personal connect with Krishna that when Prabhupada would say that devotees of Krishna here in Krishna will guide us. One of my friends is a traditional brahmana and he told me that Hare Krishna has got everything wrong. So, I said, What happened? He said, For Radha, you use a double honorific. But for Krishna, you don’t use any honorific. No Shri Krishna, no Bhagwan Krishna, just Krishna. I said, Isn’t it? Why do you respect Radha so much and you don’t respect Krishna at all? And it is not that we don’t respect Krishna. Prabhupada coined a whole word, a whole phrase to describe Krishna. What is that? The supreme personality of Godhead. That is translation of Bhagwan. But, Prabhupada while he emphasised the position of Krishna, Prabhupada also wanted each one of us to feel that we have a personal relationship with Krishna. When Prabhupada would talk about Krishna, Krishna was not just a remote abstract divinity. Prabhupada and Krishna was a living loving person. And in the association of Prabhupada, some people also feel that I am involved. If I am involved, if I try to do this, Krishna will involve me. And that is how the Krishna consciousness movement spread. Some people ask, do you believe in miracles? And some people say, science says, if you are a scientist, you can’t believe in miracles. Miracles are not against science. Miracles are about science. Why? Because we accept the laws of nature, but we accept that God is above the laws of nature. So, God can sustain the laws of nature. How can Krishna lift a mountain when he lifted Govardhan? So, we ask, how did Krishna find the centre of gravity of Govardhan to put his finger over there and balance? Krishna doesn’t have to find the centre of gravity because he is the source of gravity. So, we don’t accept that. There are laws of nature and we accept that God exists above the laws of nature. So, we accept miracles. But actually, we don’t just accept miracles. In Krishna consciousness, we don’t just believe in miracles, we depend on miracles. We say, how should a Prabhupada came to America all alone? And this radical had to move for 70 all alone, without any money, without any contacts, without any institutional support. He came to consciousness and that presence of Krishna, each one of us will experience if we practise bhakti and seek the Prabhupada’s blessings. Krishna is present in the hearts of each one of us. And Krishna loves everyone of us. Krishna’s love for us is not based on how good we are. Krishna’s love for us is based on how good he is. He is just the all-loving father, parent of everyone. Sarudam Sarva-bhaktanam. He loves everyone of us. And his personal connection with a loving divinity that some people might think is a utopia. But for a devotee, it becomes a reality. We strive to practise bhakti. We may all go through some dry phases that we don’t feel any connection with Krishna. We don’t feel the presence of Krishna. But if we start practising bhakti, we keep practising bhakti immediately, Krishna starts becoming more and more of an active presence. We start seeing Krishna acting in our hearts, in our world, in the world around us. And thus, our devotee becomes empowered. Shri Prabhupada is empowered by Krishna not just to do wonderful things himself. Shri Prabhupada is empowered to empower others to do wonderful things. Shri Prabhupada was asked several times. Twice he was asked that who will be your successor? Traditionally, there is one guru who appoints a successor. And Prabhupada gave a different answer several times. One time he said whoever wants to be. The only thing is whoever wants to be. Shri Prabhupada wanted all of them to fight and capture. Not like that. Prabhupada said that what the spiritual master gives to his disciples is something very significant. Prabhupada once said that I inherited the legacy of my spiritual master. Now if you see, the Gauriyam was at one time a flourishing state. There are 64 temples in India, 3 centres outside India. One in Burma, one in Germany, one in New Kingdom. But when Prabhupada started to outreach, he had nothing. He did not get anything from the Gauriyam. So what did Prabhupada actually get from his spiritual master as a legacy? So that was the desire to serve Krishna. The desire to share Krishna. And that is the legacy of the spiritual master to his disciples. That is the legacy of Krishna through the bhakti tradition to all bhakti practitioners. Prabhupada individualised that desire to serve and share Krishna. And through that desire, wonderful fruits came. Through that desire, over 70 books came. Through that desire, 108 temples all over the world came. Through that desire, thousands and thousands of souls were attracted to Krishna. To dedicate their lives to Krishna. And to experience divine enrichment through the process of bhakti in their own lives, in this life, and beyond this life. So for Prabhupada, that legacy is available for each one of us. We don’t have to be affiliated with an institution in the sense of having a position in the institution. Prabhupada’s legacy is available for everybody. If we can internalise this desire to serve and share Krishna, then we all can be empowered. Now how much? That Krishna knows. We all can, if we try to serve Krishna a little bit more, we speak about Krishna to our friends, maybe conduct ourselves in a way more gently, more sensibly, more richly as people become attracted. We all can do good to the world. We all can be empowered by Krishna to do good in our own hearts and to do good in the world. And how much good can we do? If we become an instrument for Krishna and for Prabhupada, there is no limit to how much we can do. How much good we can do if we pull our act together and we try to serve Krishna. Discovering how much good we can do, that is our life’s biggest adventure. People want adventures and they go skiing on top of skiing or they go hiking or they do extreme sports. Yeah, all those are adventures. But that’s separate from life. Life itself can become an adventure if we try to become an instrument for Krishna. And Krishna can do extraordinarily good in the world and in our hearts. And that is the lasting legacy that Shri Prabhupada has enriched each one of us with. So I’ll summarise what I spoke today. I spoke on this theme of how Shri Prabhupada has, what is appreciating Shri Prabhupada’s mercy. Talked about three different categories of people. Who are they? Traditionalists, Existentialists and Utopianists. Life is tough and we all need resources to deal with life’s toughness. The traditionalists think that the past has all the answers. Now Prabhupada taught the tradition but Prabhupada was not just a traditionalist. He was a transcendentalist. So traditionalists, they just have literal answers from the past. It’s like you use the same formula which helped a plant grow in India to grow in America. Did not work. So Prabhupada did not just bring in traditional ideas of purity and impurity and make people feel employed. Prabhupada accepted it. Prabhupada learned in America. Prabhupada not infatuated with America but he wanted to understand America so that he could grow in America. He was a resourceful person. He made everyone feel valued and cared about. And then he came with the bhakti prescription by which he attracted the people. Existentialists are those who just live in the present and don’t think about any big questions of life. Now we can’t live in the present especially when the present is miserable as when you are sick. We have to live for something bigger than the present. There may be many spiritual teachers and many of them may have their philosophies but often there is a gap between the philosophical level of big gap in the philosophical level of their followers and their own philosophies. Because they, in order to be popular they often just speak for entertainment and don’t teach philosophy. Prabhupada was always philosophical and still he reached a large number of people. And the philosophy that Prabhupada gave was not abstract. It was philosophy to help people see how to navigate their life journey. The rules that Prabhupada gave so that they did not feel like depriving or restrictive because he showed that rules are allowed to a better man. And in this way when we have philosophical understanding then we voluntarily practise the things when we say no to the thing which keep us in material consciousness and we say yes to the thing that enables us to spiritual consciousness. And Prabhupada was not just a utopianist. We all want that the future be brighter than the present and we hope for that too. That’s the difference between human life and animal life. One significant difference. Why? Those who think that the future at the material level will be wonderful. They are in illusion. Communism tried that and it actually created a horrendous dystopia. Technology is trying that and the technology is actually leading to people becoming more fragmented, alienated, lonely and we are destroying the planet with all that advanced technology. So Prabhupada said that Prabhupada explained how we could have technology and spirituality come together. The east-west synthesis. Technology can make things better. Spirituality can make. Prabhupada was a transcendentalist for whom Krishna was not an abstract remote divinity but a living loving person who was with him. And Prabhupada could give that conviction that Krishna is with him. And Prabhupada was empowered by Krishna not just to himself do wonderful things but to empower others to do wonderful things. Legacy which Prabhupada got from his spiritual master was that he got that the desire to serve and share Krishna. And that legacy is available to each one of us. And if we try to serve and share Krishna with others just trying to do a little more than what we can. Then instead of being obsessed with our problems we should start discovering that each one of us can do good to others and to ourselves. Discovering how much good we can do instead of complaining how bad life is. Discovering how much good we can do is life’s biggest adventure. And you can pray to Sri Prabhupada that he give us his mercy so that we all can join him in this divine adventure of relishing and sharing Krishna. Sri Prabhupada Ki! Sri Prabhupada Tirva Mahamahotsava Ki! Any questions? Are there any questions or comments? But we are seeing that sometimes materialistically you have to have the faith because sometimes philosophy may not be able to explain, let’s say the realisation of the Vacharyas. If we get to the realisation of the Vacharyas there is no philosophy we can bring such that you have to have faith. So philosophy can’t explain everything, we need faith. Yes, that is true. There is reasonable faith and there is blind faith. Faith is sometimes the word faith or belief has negative connotations nowadays. They say science deals with facts, religion deals with faith. But it’s not that simple. Science also deals with faith. When scientists observe nature they have faith that there is some order in nature. When Newton saw that fruit falling the apple had gone to Cambridge University to speak on science and spirituality, so he passed by that same tree. So that tree is like a pilgrimage place for scientists. So now when Newton saw that fruit falling he asked that question, what made this fruit fall? When he asked that question that means he had faith that fruit don’t just fall randomly, there is some order. So even science enquires faith. When some observations don’t make sense scientists don’t think reality doesn’t make sense. There is some other theory, some other law, some other principle which will help us to make sense. So scientific advancement is based on the faith that nature operates in an orderly way. So every area of knowledge requires faith. But the idea is that faith is incremental. That means with respect to as you said, the revolutions of the Acharyas about say the kind of ecstasy that we experience when we love Krishna that’s a matter of faith. But where we are we have enough intellectual resources to make sense of the condition we are in and where we can take steps forward. So you could say that reason and faith are two different things. So reason is like a flashlight which shows us one step ahead. Faith is the acceptance that even if I can’t see the road ahead, this road will take me to good place. So we can’t see the full road ahead of us. Definitely we need faith for that. But if I can’t see even one step ahead and I am told to move in a particular direction, then that will be blind faith. What small things can we include in our day to day life to experience Krishna more? Very draining when we work all day especially with devices. We become the more we interact with machines the more we also become mechanical. And then it’s very difficult to be personal. And bhakti is a personal relationship with Krishna. So we are it’s difficult we are not even personal with people around us. So what to speak of the person who is beyond us? How can we be personal with him? It’s tough. No doubt about it. Two three things. The basic principle is what Rupa Goswami in Ujjwala Neelamani calls as the Uddhipan. Ujjwala Neelamani is the advanced book after Bhaktira Samritsa. That’s Uddhipan for me now. Maybe I am going over time. So what he says Uddhipan is that just as all of us have certain say sensual stimuli that agitate us. Somebody who is who is very much into cricket. Just read some news about cricket like immediately they are getting agitated. Now whenever I give lectures in America often the college programme organisers they tell me don’t talk about cricket. They say here Americans when they hear about cricket they think about an insect not a bee. So cricket might not agitate people in America. Maybe baseball or basketball or whatever else. So each of us has certain sensual stimuli that agitate us. And other sensual stimuli don’t agitate us. Because we are all individuals we have our individual conditionings and our past experiences. The same principle applies to our spirituality also. Each of us has certain sensual stimuli which we won’t use the word agitate but which attract us to a question. For someone it might be music and not just music it might be a particular song or a particular kirtan, particular dhun particular tune or for somebody it might be darshan of the lord and maybe a particular picture of the lord. For somebody it might be a particular book. Somebody just love somebody love Chaitanya Chaitanya Amrit. For somebody it might be a particular speaker or somebody might be a particular subject. I love this person. So we could say that there is a circle of bhakti and there is a circle of what we like. We find the intersection of it. The two are not wholly overlapping but they are not wholly wholly disjoint also. So we find where they intersect. And we do that activity more. That can be our anchor in bhakti. So there are things which we may not like to do so much and if they are a part of the bhakti sadhana we have to do them. But doing them will train us. Life as I started by saying life is tough. So we all have many battles to fight in life. And sometimes we may start seeing our spirituality as one more battle to fight amidst our embattled life. And if you have that vision you say I have enough now. I don’t want to do this. But actually our spirituality is meant to be like a resource that empowers us to fight the battles of life. Yes spirituality is also a battle but it is not primarily meant to be another battle. It is meant to be a resource that gives us inner strength, inner stability by which we can better fight the battles of life. So for us to feel that way if we are existing primarily in that circle of things that we don’t really like then it will be a train. Then we will feel this is one more battle to fight. But if we exist if we function primarily in that overlapping circle overlapping circles where we are doing some devotional activity which also stimulates us which also energises us then the things that stimulate us in bhakti they are called as uddhipan. Uddhipan is a spiritual stimulus. So each one of us has to find out our particular spiritual stimulus our particular uddhipan. And he knows readily accessible. So if you like a particular darshan of the deity then keep that in your phone or keep a picture ready. When the mind feels agitated look at that. Pray to that particular manifestation of Krishna. If you like a particular uddhipan keep that accessible. Here and there. And that way we will be able to keep ourselves with it. Does this answer your question? Any other questions? So the question is Living in the present is good but living for the present is not good. So living in the present is good but living for the present is not good. What it means is that the present is the only resource we have to do anything worthwhile. We can’t do anything in the past. Past is already gone. We can’t do anything in the future. Future is not yet come. So in that sense the only resource we have for doing anything is the present. In that sense we need to live in the present. But what do we do in the present? In the present we do things which contribute to something bigger. So if there is some people philosophical or non-philosophical way of living at it is live for the moment. Whatever is enjoyable now just do that. Actually if we simply start doing whatever we like. I talked earlier about doing what we like. But not just doing what we like. Doing what we like is also good for us. But if we start doing whatever we like. Whatever feels good in the moment I start doing that. The result of that is if we keep doing whatever we like we end up disliking ourselves. In life I just keep eating whatever feels good to me. Eventually I’ll become sick, I’ll become obese and I start disliking myself. Somebody just spends time this whatever feel I look at the social media look at that video, look at that site. Hours and hours and after that what happens? People who just live without any principles, who live only for pleasure to the world they might appear to be enjoying a lot but actually they have a lot of self-loathing. I’m not making any work on it. People who just live for the moment all the time they soon start losing self-respect, they start losing self-esteem. I’m not making any work on that. One pleasure, another pleasure, another pleasure. So we need to live for something bigger than just the pleasure of the moment. And then we create a better world. So what is the live for, don’t live for the present? So a devotee ultimately lives for Krishna. A student may, if the student wants to live for the moment they will just enjoy in the campus, there are so many things to enjoy. But if they are not living, they are living for a career. Then they live for something bigger. Then they can build a career. So a devotee lives for Krishna. That means I live in the present but in the present how best can I serve Krishna? So a devotee’s purpose is to please Krishna, to connect with Krishna and to go closer to Krishna. And the present is our tool for that. So Prabhupada was very grounded in the sense that whatever resources Prabhupada had, Prabhupada was using that. Prabhupada was not hankering if I had more followers, if I had more, I could do so much more. Yes, Prabhupada always, if he got more he used that. But Prabhupada was constantly, diligently serving Krishna with what he had. So that means we use the present to serve Krishna. That’s how we live in the present but not for the present. Thank you very much.