The living bhakti tradition is a garden, not a museum

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you very much. Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya Narayanam Namaskritya Naram Chaiva Narottamam Devim Saraswatim Vyasam Tato Jayamudheerayat Nashtaprayeshwabhadreshw Vidyambhagvatasevaya Bhagavateeruttamaashiloke Bhakterbhavatinaistike Krishnaya Vasudevaya Devaki Nandanayacha Nanda Gopakumaraya Parinamonama Prantharajya Nithyagatham Canto 10, Chapter 76 Thank you. Text 28 Labdha-sangyo-muhur-tena Karshni-sarathim-abhravita Aho asadva-idam-suta Yad-rananme-apasarpanam Yad-rananme-apasarpanam By the followers of Shri Prabhupada.
Translation Quickly regaining consciousness, Lord Krishna’s son Pradyumna said to his charioteer, O driver, this is abominable for me to have been removed from the battlefield. 29 Except for me, no one born in the Yadu dynasty has ever been known to abandon the battlefield. My reputation has now been stained by a driver who thinks like a eunuch.
30 What will I say to my fathers, Ram and Keshava, when I return to them after having simply fled the battle? What can I tell them that will befit my honour? Purport Shri Pradyumna here uses the word Pitra, fathers, loosely. Lord Balram was of course his uncle. 31 Certainly my sisters-in-law will laugh at me and say, O hero, tell us how in the world your enemies turned you into such a coward in battle.
32 The driver replied, O long-lived one, I have done this knowing full well my prescribed duty. O my lord, the chariot driver must protect the master of the chariot when he is in danger, and he and the master must also protect his driver. 33 With this rule in mind, I removed you from the battlefield since you had been struck unconscious by your enemy’s club and I thought you were seriously injured.
Thus ends the purport of the humble servants of His Divine Grace, S.E. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada to the tenth canto, 76th chapter of the Srimad Bhagavatam entitled The Battle Between Shalva and the Vrishnis. Hare Krishna So today morning, on this auspicious day of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sri Thakura’s appearance, we are discussing from the Srimad Bhagavatam So I’ll discuss on the topic of what is natural is not necessarily universal. What is natural is not necessarily universal.
So I’ll discuss this in four parts. I’ll first talk about the specific context over here, the battle that is happening and the conversation. Then I will talk about how the Bhagavad Gita talks about different natures according to one’s individual disposition and how the duties of different natures are not only different but can also be contradictory.
And then we will discuss one intriguing section from Bhaktisiddhanta Sri Thakura’s teachings how he explains that the definition of success and progress can vary depending on people’s natures. And then lastly we’ll discuss about how all this talk about different natures applies in today’s context. So here Pradyumna is fighting against Shalva who has opportunistically attacked Dvarka in the absence of Krishna.
And while fighting he was wounded, gallantly he was fighting and he was wounded and his chariot driver took him away. So when he has come back to consciousness he is chastising his chariot driver for having taken him away. And interestingly the reasons he gives he says, I will be known as a coward.
What face will I be able to show to my parents? And my sisters-in-law, they will all laugh at me as a coward. So now these considerations what will people think about me? What people will laugh at me? Are these considerations just ego driven? That is a person meant to be so concerned about appearances and ego that the primary cause of lamentation here doesn’t seem to be, oh we may lose the war. If he is a commander fighting the war he is not seeming to be concerned about are we losing the war or winning the war? He is thinking more of what’s happening? I will be considered dishonorable.
So why is this? Actually the Kshatriyas are expected to follow certain codes and if we look at this in the 18th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita Krishna talks about the duties of the different Varanas. So 18.42-45 he talks about Varanashram. There he states that one of the qualities of the Kshatriyas is युद्धे चाप्य अपलायनम् So he says that युद्ध is war च अपी certainly therein अपलायनम् So पल means to run, अपलायनम् means to not run away.
Now in the previous verse Krishna contrasts this with the qualities of Brahmanas and there he says शमो दमस्तपः शौचम् शान्तिरारजवमेवच ज्ञानम् विज्ञानमास्तिक्यम् ब्रह्मकर्मस्वभावजम् So ब्रह्मकर्म what is that? There he says शान्तिर शान्तिर and mean tolerance, non-violence, forgiveness. So on one side Krishna is telling that the Brahmanas they should be forgiving. So even when there is शान्ति, they should be peaceful.
Even when there is reason for confrontation, even when there is provocation avoid confrontation. Be peaceful, be forgiving. And just in the next verse when Krishna talks about the qualities of Kshatriyas he said that if there is a confrontation don’t flee from the confrontation.
In fact not fleeing from a confrontation, that is considered a virtue for a Kshatriya. So this at one level may seem contradictory, but it is not. It is because Kshatriyas and Brahmanas have different natures.
The shoe that fits one person bites another person. If you have a 7 or 8 size shoe another person whose leg is of 10 size will bite. So the same shoe is not going to fit for all people.
And the same applies with respect to nature and duties. Whatever scripture tells, especially when it is according to material nature, material natures are different. In fact in the fourth canto of Srimad Bhagavatam when Dhruva Maharaj goes to the forest after having been dishonored by his father at that time when Narada Muni comes to know about this, Narada Muni says How great is the effulgence of the Kshatriyas that they cannot tolerate dishonor.
So now this may seem to be radically opposite to Don’t expect any honor. Be humbler than a blade of grass. So here it is normally we would say that we should tolerate dishonor.
But here Narada Muni is glorifying Dhruva that how great are the Kshatriyas that they cannot tolerate dishonor. So what is going on over here? Actually there are different words. Words have different connotations and if you don’t understand what words imply, then there can often be confusion.
So just to clarify, I’ll use three words over here. There is honor, there is pride, and there is arrogance. And the three are not the same.
The word pride often it is used especially in spiritual circles in the negative sense. Pride cometh before of all. Or pride is one of the anarthas.
At the same time, the word pride does not necessarily have that negative connotation always. For example, there may be some hotel named Hotel Pride. Now as far as I have seen, there is no hotel named Hotel Arrogance.
Arrogance has a clearly negative connotation. But the word pride does not always have a negative connotation. So for example, if there is a cricket series going on, three-match series, and say a team has lost the first two matches.
And as far as the series is concerned, it’s a dead rubber now. The series is over. So then in that case, when the third match is being played, so the team that has lost the series, they say that now we will play for pride.
We’ll play for pride means at least there should not be a whitewash. So at least we should win one match. So here the word pride is used not in a derogatory or negative sense.
It is used to imply a more positive sense of honor. Now Prabhupada also uses the word honor in a positive sense. When he states, he writes a letter to his disciple, and this disciple has somehow, for whatever reason, broken some of the initiation vows.
And Prabhupada writes to him and he says, don’t you have a sense of honor? You have taken a vow in front of your spiritual master, in front of the deities, in front of the Vaishnavas. How could you have broken this vow? Where is your sense of honor? So here when Prabhupada is using the word honor, he is not talking about honor in terms of the negative connotation which we are using. So the sense of honor can inspire us to act honorably.
The sense of honor can inspire us to act honorably. And in that sense, the honor is a good thing. So for example, if we make a promise to someone, and if people have at least a little conscience, sometimes somebody tells us, I will do something, and then they don’t do that person, they don’t do that thing.
And when we meet them, not only have they forgotten that they didn’t do it, they have forgotten that they have promised to do it also. This is very irritating. Then, if that person doesn’t have even that much sense of honor that if I am not able to do my work, I am not able to do my promise, at least I should explain, at least I should apologize, at least I should try to make some other arrangement.
So if there is not even that much sense of honor, then it becomes very difficult to have any functional relationship with such a person, any working relationship also. What to speak of a deeper heart-to-heart relationship. So that sense of honor wherein we take ourselves seriously, not ourselves in the sense of ego, but take ourselves in the sense of our worth, our principles, the values that we want to live according to, we take that seriously.
That is valuable, in fact indispensable for living purposefully, living constructively. So Kshatriyas have their own sense of honor. And this sense of honor inspires them to act honorably.
So for example, here specifically it is said that a Kshatriya who is known as a as a coward, as a person who has run away from the war field, that Kshatriya is disgraced. And out of the fear for disgrace, if a Kshatriya fights honorably, then that is also at one level desirable. It is best to do what we are doing with a pure motive, with the highest motive.
But if you are not able to do something with the best motive, at least do it, even if with a lower motive. For example, if we don’t feel like chanting. We want to chant for Krishna’s pleasure.
We want to practice bhakti for Krishna’s pleasure. But if we can’t practice bhakti at the level of love for Krishna’s pleasure, we can practice it at the level of duty. I have made a commitment and that’s why I will do this.
So the principle here is that if we can’t do something at the highest level, a Kshatriya should fight heroically because a Kshatriya understands that this is what I am meant to do. This is how I am going to protect my citizens. This is what the whole state is providing me.
The state is giving me honourable position so that I can protect my citizens. This is what I am meant to do. So that is a much more positive motivation.
But even if that positive motivation is not there, it is a negative motivation. If I don’t do this, people will laugh at me. I will be dishonoured.
So even that negative motivation, if that enables us to do the right thing, that is also good because at least the right thing is being done. Jannivas Prabhu tells one story. There was one devotee who was a very good kirtan player and used to play Mrudanga and sing kirtans.
So then once he was doing kirtan and Prabhupada came in the temple hall and Prabhupada took darshan and Prabhupada came up to him, your kirtans are very nice. So this is for a disciple, this is the highest compliment to have a spiritual master appreciating one’s service. And he decided to confess his heart to Prabhupada.
Sometimes I feel proud. So Prabhupada just looked at him and said, what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with that? Now, what did Prabhupada mean by that? Actually, sometimes we think that if we do some service, then we will become proud. Or if we do something very well, then we will become proud.
Actually, this itself is an illusion because that assumes that we are not proud right now. So it is not that by doing something well, we will become proud. By doing something well, we get reason to express our pride.
The pride is already there. But there is nothing that we can, we have done to be proud of. So we can’t express the pride that is already there in the heart.
So, just by not doing something well, it is not that the pride is going to go away. The pride is going to be there anyway. And then, that pride will express itself in a distorted way as envy for those who are doing something good.
So, I don’t do something good because I think that this will make me proud, so I am not doing it. And then if somebody does something good, see, so proud, so I show off. Well, actually, pride cannot be purified simply by repression of talent.
Pride is, if you want to deal with pride, what is required is not repression of talent, it is purification of intent. Not repression of talent, because the anartha of pride is already there in the heart. And that pride will go away when we get some higher happiness.
When we get a higher happiness, then this lower pleasure of seeking honor and appreciation from others, that will, we will not be so dependent on that. That will not become, that will not be so important. In the Gopi Gita, the gopis while praying to Krishna after Krishna has departed, they say that Krishna, your smile is dhamsana smita.
He says, your smile destroys nijjanasmaya dhamsana smita. Your pride destroys, sorry, your smile destroys the pride of your devotees. Now, what does this mean? Krishna’s smile destroys the pride of his devotees.
That means that when Krishna smiles at us, when Krishna becomes, pleads with us, when we perceive and relish Krishna’s beauty, that gives us such a higher satisfaction that whatever pleasure that we get from pride, that pales into insignificance. We realize that, yes, people may glorify me and that is, yes, as a human reciprocation, we can’t live in isolation. So if somebody glorifies us, that’s fine.
But if our bhakti, if our performance of bhakti is dependent on others’ glorification, then, if that doesn’t come, then we will not be able to practice bhakti at all. So, we may start bhakti because of that, yeah, devotees are so nice, devotees are so kind, they appreciate when I do some bhakti. So we start off that way.
But over a period of time, we will start seeing that as we keep practicing bhakti, the performance of bhakti itself gives us greater satisfaction than the result of appreciation that comes from bhakti, from doing that bhakti. And that is how we get, when we get the higher taste of bhakti, we gradually, our intent becomes purified. So, by doing service, we become connected with Krishna.
When we do some service to Krishna, that service connects us with him. And when we become connected with him through service, that connection purifies us, that connection gives us the higher taste. When we talk about purification, what does purification mean? Purification is not something abstract.
Purification simply means that we understand the lower desires to be undesirable. When we understand the lower desires to be undesirable, at that time, we become pure. Purification doesn’t mean that in one moment, all lower desires will forever disappear.
It simply means that the lower desires, we at least understand. This is not what I should do. And not just at an intellectual level, but also at an emotional level, we realize this is undesirable.
This is what I should not do. So we see that even Yamunacharya, in his famous verse, he says that when I think about sensual desires, I, my lips curl in distaste. So normally when Prabhupada quotes this verse, his focus is on my lips curl in distaste.
So that is fine. But what the verse also signifies is that even a great saint like Yamunacharya may get such desires. So from where those desires come? We live in a contaminated world.
The desires may come from various sources. But the point is that the response to the desires is different. So rather than rather than anticipating or craving or delighting in that desire, he is responding in a way that is, this is not, this is not good.
I don’t want this. So if we define our spiritual advancement, if we consider that my spiritual advancement means change of desires, then we may often become discouraged because desires can pop up from anywhere at any time. Now spiritual advancement is defined not so much by change of desires as by change of values.
Change of values means what? That the same desire, if it had come earlier, we would have looked forward to it. But the same desire when it comes now, we want to resist it. We want to drive it away.
That itself signifies a change of values. And change of values is far more steadier indicator of the change of heart than change of desires. Our consciousness is often like a sine wave.
And the sine wave sometimes there will be crests, sometimes there will be troughs. Sometimes we will feel attracted to Krishna. Sometimes we may feel sometimes we are chanting and then we take out the beads.
There are 108 beads or 1008 beads here. It just feels as if it’s going on and on and on. So our consciousness may go into a trough sometimes.
So at that time when the consciousness goes into a trough, a lower extreme, at that time certain desires may pop up. So when those desires pop up, that does not necessarily mean the bhakti yoga is not working. That doesn’t mean that we are not on the path of purification.
It simply means that the mind is wavering. In the 14th chapter, when Arjuna asks Krishna that, he asks three questions in 14.21. kairilingai stringunane tan atito bhavati prabho kimachara katham chaitan stringunanati vartate. So he says that, what are the characteristics of a person who has transcended the modes? kairilingai stringunane tan.
And then he says, kimachara. So first he is asking, what are the internal characteristics? Then he asks, what are the external characteristics? How does such a person behave? And then, katham. How can one transcend the modes? And in response to that, Krishna’s answer is very revealing.
He says, prakasham cha pravatyam cha moham eva cha pandava na dveshtisam pravrittani nani vrittani kankshati udasinava dasinam gunairyona vichalyate gunavartantityeva yo vatishthati nengate. So he says, prakasham cha pravatyam cha moham eva cha pandava. So prakasham, pravatyam and moham.
These are three words, shorthand, which Krishna uses to signify the three modes. In 14.11, he is talking about sarvadvareshu dehe prakasham upajayate. When talking about goodness, he has used the word prakasham.
In 14.12, when he is talking about the mode of passion, he says, lobha pravrttirarambha. He has used the word pravrtti. That refers to the mode of passion.
And aprakasho pravrttischa moha eva cha pandava. In 14.13, he has used moha to define the mode of ignorance. So, Krishna uses that shorthand, prakasham, pravrtti and moha to refer to the three modes here.
In 14.22, and he says that prakashamcha pravrttimcha moham eva cha pandava na dveshti sam pravrttani. So, when either illumination or passion or illusion, prakasham, pravrtti and moha, when any of these come, na dveshti sam pravrttani. When they come, one doesn’t resent.
Why is this happening? Why am I getting these kind of feelings? Na pravrttani kankshati. And when some feelings come, one doesn’t crave for those also. So, udasina vadasina.
One stays as if detached. Gunair yo na vichalyate. One is not shaken by the modes.
Guna vartante teva yo avatishthati na ingate. Guna vartante. One understands these are transformations happening because of the modes.
And, yo avatishthati, one is situated above, at the level of the soul. So, what Krishna is telling over here is, when Arjuna is asked what are the characteristics of a person who has transcended the modes, Krishna is not saying that the modes are completely absent in that person. Krishna is saying that this person is not influenced by the modes.
Is able to see from a detached, distanced perspective, okay, these are the feelings that are coming, and these are going. So, our feelings are not necessarily our feelings. What that means is, whatever desires we get, whatever feelings we get, they often may not express our core values.
They may simply be projections which come from the circumstances. So, it is not necessary that what we feel, or sometimes even what we speak, that’s not necessarily reflective on a regular basis of what we are. So, we know in the Ramayana, when Ram had gone to pursue Maricha, and then Maricha was shot by Ram at that time, Maricha called out in the voice of Ram, Lakshman, Sita, help! So, at that time, Sita told Lakshman, please go to help Ram, and Lakshman said, no, Ram is not in danger, this is the demon speaking.
He said, no, this was the voice of Ram, I can recognize the voice of my lord. She said, no, this is the voice of the demon, Maricha, he is impersonating as Ram. So, now Sita at that time became so desperate, somehow she felt that I am just helpless over here, and Ram is in need, he should be helped.
So, she somehow wanted to goad Lakshman to go. And at that time, she spoke words that she had never even thought before. She told Lakshman, now I understand why you came to the forest here.
He said, you had an evil eye on me, and you were just waiting for an opportunity for Ram to die, so that you will have me. He said, I will die before you will be able to touch me. Sita had not thought like this, and Lakshman had also never thought like this.
Lakshman was devastated. See, Lakshman was also a hero. He was a Kshatriya warrior, and in fact, if we look at the whole Ramayan, Lakshman is actually more impulsive.
Lakshman’s character in the Ramayan is somewhat similar to Bhima’s character in the Mahabharata. Both are literally itching for fighting. Itching for fighting.
And at that time, time and time again, Ram knew that Lakshman likes to fight, but Ram also had a sense of fraternal responsibility. And the elder brother. And in fact, later on in the Maharamayan war, in the final climactic war, when an arrow of Ravana wounds, first twice Lakshmana gets wounded.
One is through an arrow of Indrajeet, later on is through an arrow of Ravana. But when Lakshman gets wounded, and it seems as if he has died, the first thing that Ram says is, alas. You know, it is a wife’s duty to come with her husband, to be with her husband, but it is not a brother’s duty to be necessarily with a brother.
So he says, Lakshmana, he had come with me and it was my responsibility to protect him. And now what face will I show to Sumitra that she had entrusted her son to me and I have not been able to protect him. So at that time, Vibhishan comes and pacifies Ram and he says that actually, Lakshman is not dead.
So the point here is, Ram, he had the sense that I am the elder brother, so I have to protect my younger brother. And that’s why whenever any demons would attack, Ram would tell Lakshman, you guard Sita and I will fight those demons. And this was for Lakshman more difficult than having come to the forest doors.
Because he wanted to fight, that was his nature. And for a hero to be on the battlefield, in the thick of action, that is what gives great joy. And instead of being in the thick of action, to just be passively a guard for someone, that is actually a great torture for a Kshatriya.
And so Lakshman had very obediently accepted that. So Ram would be doing the fighting. Now we may think that fighting means a risk of life and nowadays we have politicians, they are safely in their palaces or their houses and the soldiers are fighting.
So one of the big discrepancies in today’s socio-political system is that the administrators and the warriors have been separated. So the privileges of power have been separated from the responsibilities of power. So the administrators and the warriors, the administrators are the people who enjoy power.
The Prime Minister, the President. But nowadays they have very little martial skills. And they are not, the whole government has evolved in such a way that they don’t have much martial skills.
And often because of this, the disconnect between the ground realities of what is necessary for protecting the country and the realities of what is required for managing the country, this disruption between the two often breeds irresponsibility. So coming back to our Mahabharata, to our topic here. So the point is that when Sita spoke this to Ram, to Lakshman, Lakshman had actually, he had not only had no intention of any evil eye towards Sita, but he was, he had actually sacrificed a lot, not just to come to the forest, but he had sacrificed further so that he was not in the thick of action, but he was simply a guard.
And at that time, for Sita to have spoken those words was intolerably painful for Lakshman. And Lakshman departs at that time. And yet, after that the whole Ramayan happens in terms of Sita getting abducted.
But afterwards, you know, Lakshman never holds any grudge against Sita. You know, when they are eventually reunited, and Ram says that Lakshman, he tells Lakshman, you know, she has to go through Agni Pariksha. So at that time, Lakshman doesn’t say, serves you right, you spoke like that to me.
No, he protests, he immediately takes the side of Sita and he says, she has already gone through so much, why does she have to go through this? So again, the same principle of honor being important, that’s what comes over there. But the point here is, Lakshman does not take some just accidental words spoken at a particular time to reflect on the character of the person. So what is spoken in tension doesn’t reflect intention.
What is spoken in tension, when somebody is in tension and speaks something, that doesn’t necessarily reflect intention. In fact, we can’t see the thoughts of people. And that is Krishna’s arrangement for protecting our relationships.
You know, if all of us could see every single thought that was going through everyone else’s mind, we would not be able to trust anyone at all. And not only would we not be able to trust anyone, no one would be able to trust us also. So yes, there is impulse which goes inside and there is intent that comes out.
In between impulse and intent is intelligence. So impulse is what comes in. We can’t control the impulse.
From various impulses, desires may come in. But when impulse goes in, we have our intelligence which can act as a stopper which prevents impulse from becoming intent. Intent means, yes, I will do this.
So Ramacharya explains that the functions of the subtle body can be classified into three. He says, they are thinking, feeling and willing. So thoughts are themselves impossible to avoid.
Thoughts can go in any direction. But when we dwell on those thoughts, then we start experiencing feelings in relationship with them. So feelings become stronger.
And then after that there is intention. When the intention comes, then it’s almost very difficult to avoid. So we are talking about charioteer and chariot.
So let’s consider a chariot metaphor over here. Most of us know the metaphor of the chariot body in which the horses are the senses. The charioteer is the intelligence and the soul is the passenger or the warrior.
Now, if one of the horses suddenly, say the horse is going on a straight path and the horse sees a fruit on the side of the road and the horse immediately wants to go there to eat that fruit. So then when the horse starts moving in that direction, at that time, the charioteer is alert and charioteer pulls the horse back. At that time, the horse can be relatively easily restrained.
But if the horse starts running in that direction and the more the momentum the horse gains, the more difficult it becomes for the charioteer to bring the horse under control. Of course, even if the horse goes off the chariot off the road and goes into that side path wherever it is and the chariot tumbles over, even after that the charioteer can ride the chariot, can again hitch the horse properly and again go on the track. But the amount of trouble that is there is far greater.
So, just as the horse which is getting distracted, it is much easier to control it in the initial stages than it is after it gains momentum. Similarly, the undesirable desires, when they come in as thoughts, at that time, if you can curb them, it is much easier. So, it is at the best time to win the battle against temptation is before it begins.
The best time to win the battle against temptation is before it begins. When the temptations are coming in at that time itself, we are alert enough and we say no. If we expect that no temptation should come, no desire should come, that is unrealistic.
That is not going to happen. Why? Because the mind is having a lot of impressions from the past and those impressions cannot be immediately eliminated. It takes time.
There are three different ways to understand the work of the mind, how the mind works. So, I will give different metaphors over here to explain this. The mind firstly is like we could say if there is sometimes graffiti which people write on some walls maybe in trains or wherever.
Now, when some nonsense is written on the walls, there are different ways to remove it. Sometimes we can just get some scrubber or some brush and we can rub it vigorously and that will go out. Or we may get some cleansing liquid and then it cleanses off.
But sometimes, we have now a whiteboard over here, sometimes there are markers which are inerasable. And then, if we try to erase it, we may spend a lot of time scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, nothing happens. So, sometimes some graffiti becomes so firmly written over there that rather than trying to erase it, we may just overpaint it.
You are not trying to erase it, just have a full layer of overpaint on it. So, that means if there is some, so we could compare our mind similarly, whatever undesirable impressions are there, one is we try to erase means we have to delete those impressions. The second is that we try to overwrite those impressions.
So, now deleting is very difficult. Why? Because the mind only one aspect of it is the conscious mind that we are aware of. The subconscious mind in which many impressions are there, we may not even be aware of them.
And we may think that things are deleted, but they are just gone down deep in the consciousness. So, the process of bhakti at one level is like overwriting. So, now there are rules and regulations that we follow in bhakti.
But the purpose of these rules and regulations is not so much, is not suppression. There is an atheist gag about Christianity, gag means a joke. They say that in the beginning was the word and the word was no.
That means people have the idea that religion means no, no, you should not do this, you should not do that, you should not do that, you should not do that. But that is not the essence of the rules and regulations. The purpose of the no is a higher yes.
The purpose of the no is a yes to something higher. And even in our practice of bhakti, our focus has to be on the yes. Yes, there are certain things which we have to say no to.
But if our focus is on saying no, then that creates a sense of deprivation. That creates a sense that oh, I am missing something, I am losing something. But if our focus is more on saying yes, okay, what are the things that I can do for Krishna? Then that yes creates a sense of excitement, it creates a sense of fulfillment and our consciousness becomes filled with Krishna.
So, when we practice bhakti, here we are talking about Kshatriyas and Kshatriya’s nature. So, the principle in bhakti is that when we start practicing spiritual life, it is not the rejection of the material. It is the harmonization of the material with the spiritual.
So, we look at this in the third chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, how Krishna talks about this. So, there is one verse which is often misunderstood from the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna says, What can repression accomplish? So, he says that even the wise people act according to nature. So, Krishna says even the jnanavan act according to their own nature.
So, what can repression accomplish? So, there are some interpreters of the Bhagavad Gita, they say that this is the essence of the Bhagavad Gita. What can repression accomplish? Therefore, indulge. Indulge freely.
That is the message of the Gita. Now, if that were the message of the Gita, then this is in the third chapter, 3.33, 34, 35, 36. Just two verses later, Arjuna is asking a question that, He says, By what is one impelled to do wrong? And Krishna answers that it is selfish desire.
It is lust. And then from 3.37 to 43, he is talking about how lust can be controlled and transcended. So, if Krishna’s statement, What can repression accomplish? That had been a license for licentiousness.
It had been a license for unrestricted indulgence. Then the whole question of Arjuna and the answer of Krishna would make no sense. Krishna has just said, What can repression accomplish? And Arjuna is asking, What is it that makes me do wrong? The whole idea of wrong and right means there is something that should be given up.
So, there is something that should be controlled. So, there is no need to control. That is what, would mean.
But, is talked about in a very different context. The next verse, this is 3.34, 3.35 is It is far better to do one’s own duty than to do someone else’s duty. that working according to one’s own nature, destruction in that is also better than doing someone else’s duty.
So, here, Krishna, when he is talking about What will repression accomplish? He is not talking about desires. He is not talking about lust, anger, greed, envy, pride, illusion. He is talking about nature.
What he is telling Arjuna is that, Arjuna, you are a Kshatriya. If you think that you will act like a Brahmana and be forgiving, be tolerant, whatever injustices the Kauravas have done, just forgive them. And live like a mendicant in the forest.
You will not be able to live like that. Your nature is of a Kshatriya, you will have to act like a Kshatriya. So, in this sense, he is saying, Arjuna, if you repress your Kshatriya nature, what will repression accomplish? He talks about this again in the 18th chapter, 18.59 and 60, he says that, He says, By sabhava, all of us are bound.
Even if you think that you will not act that way, you will be forced to act. So, Vishwanath Chakravartha explains in his commentary there that, if Arjuna says that, I will not fight a war, I will live like a mendicant. And then, a mendicant’s duty is to beg.
So, if he goes for begging, and if somebody refuses arms, you know, Arjuna’s hands will go to his foot. How dare you refuse me? So, he says, And he says, that time, if you raise your sword to fight, that will be whimsical violence. And that will lead to adharma.
So, this means that, when we talk about nature or natural, there are many things which come under the natural. So, our desires can be classified into three broad categories. There are our spiritual desires, which come from the soul.
The soul longs to love and serve Krishna. And then, apart from the spiritual desires, there are desires which are according to our material nature. A Kshatriya naturally likes to rule, likes to manage, likes to coordinate things.
A Brahmana naturally likes to study, teach. So, these are desires which are natural. And this naturality is not to be suppressed.
It is to be dovetailed. It is to be channeled in the direction in which we can serve Krishna. So, for example, what this means is that, in this world, everybody faces problems.
This world is Dukkhale Mashashvatam. But what does this imply? The world is a miserable place, but that doesn’t mean all of us have to be miserable. If we see, Arjuna was in great misery.
At the start of the Bhagavad Gita, his tears were coming from his eyes, his limbs were trembling, and he was overwhelmed. And Krishna’s message, what did it do? It solaced him. So, he became determined, he became solaced.
In fact, just hearing Krishna’s message, that gave ecstasy to Sanjay also. In 18.76 and 77, he says that, I am becoming jubilant. So, here, Krishna is giving a message that this world is a place of misery, and that is freeing Arjuna from misery, and that is giving Sanjay ecstasy.
So, what is going on here? So, is the Bhagavad Gita’s message that this world is a place of misery? If we look at the verse also which we often quote, which talks about this world being a place of misery, that is, The thrust of this verse is not that this world is Actually, that is just a passing fact. Krishna says, if you practice bhakti, those who become devoted to me, they will not come back to this world of misery. So, Krishna’s thrust is not on this world as a place of misery.
Krishna’s thrust is on the potency of bhakti to take us beyond misery. So, the point which I am making through all this is that this world is a place of misery, but Shastra gives us a means by which we can minimize misery while we are living in this world, and ultimately we can go beyond this miserable material. It is not that because this world is a place of misery, we all have to be miserable.
So, everybody has to face problems in life. But the expertise of Varnashram, the expertise of Varnashram is that it allocates to people problems that they like to face. So, a brahmana likes to study.
So, if a brahmana is told, you know, there is some verse in the Vedas which says that at certain times you can, you don’t, if life is at risk, you can avoid speaking the truth also. Can you find this verse? You know, if somebody is not of a brahmanical nature, somebody is of a Vaishya nature, he will say, no, why do you need one verse? Speak the class without the verse. What is the problem? Who has the time? On the other hand, if you tell a brahmana that you know, we have to build a new temple and for that we need to raise 5 crore rupees, the brahmana will say, why do you need a temple? Just study Shastra.
So, what happens is that what is seen as a big burden according to one nature is seen as a stimulating challenge by another nature. So, for a brahmana, raising money is a big burden for a Kshatriya or a Vaishya. Finding some reference somewhere in scripture, that is a big burden.
So, the expertise of Varanashram is that people are allotted problems according to their nature. And that way, so, if a brahmana has to do a work of a Vaishya, the brahmana will be unbearably miserable. But, now, when a brahmana has to do the work of a brahmana also, there are problems.
You know, nothing in this world can be done easily. Anything worthwhile we have to do, there are problems. But, a brahmana, that brahmana has to study scripture, at that time, books in general, brahmana loves to do that.
That’s not just a bearable challenge, it’s a relishable challenge. Look forward to it. So, the essential principle of Varanashram is not dividing people into castes.
The essential principle of Varanashram is engaging people according to their nature. So, Kshatriyas have a martial nature as is being talked about over here. So, then, their martial nature is used in the cause of spirituality, in the service of Dharma, within the principle of Varanashram.
So, the sense of honour that a Kshatriya has, that sense of honour enables people to enable Kshatriyas to act honourably. So, normally whenever there is power, there is a great tendency for power to corrupt. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So, when power is associated with the sense of honour, then, the corruption that comes from power, that can be minimized. So, if a Kshatriya gets a sense of honour, gets a reputation, has been charitable, then, for a Kshatriya to give charity is considered a matter of honour. And that’s why we’ll see in Indian history that whenever any kings would get any major victory, and they would get a lot of wealth, they would build big temples.
The idea was this is how, all these kings throughout Indian history may not have been pure devotees. Some of them were great devotees, some of them may not have been motivated really by devotion, but their sense of honour was channeled in such a way that a king’s prestige is how big a temple, how magnificent a temple has that king built. And, as I said earlier, even if we can’t do the right thing with a right motive, at least do the right thing with a less than right motive.
Do the right thing. So, the king may not necessarily have the motive to selflessly glorify the Lord, but even if it is motivated by the desire for fame and honour, yes, I built such a big temple, that’s fine. At least the activities of dharma are being done, and gradually purification will happen.
So here, when Pradyumna is talking about feeling dishonoured, he is actually talking about how the sense of honour impels him to protect the Dwarkawasis, who are all devotees. They are Krishna’s associates, they are devotees. And he is, in the absence of his father, he is the leader over there.
And he has to protect them. So, he is not primarily concerned about honour or dishonour in a ego-driven sense. It is honour and dishonour which is connected with his performance of his dharma.
So, what is natural for a Kshatriya will be different from what is natural for a Brahmana. A Brahmana is expected to be forgiving and tolerant. A Kshatriya is expected to take assertive action against injustice, so that the rule of dharma is maintained.
And this same principle of dovetailing people, dovetailing our nature in bhakti, that is what Kshatriya Prabhupada was so expert at. So, I talked about three kinds of desires. Our spiritual desires are what are at our core.
And they are what we want to develop. We just want to love and serve Krishna, become absorbed in Krishna. At the same time, we have a material nature.
And that material nature has to be channeled in Krishna’s service. Material nature has to be connected, directed and engaged in Krishna’s service. And then, of course, within our desires, there are also lower desires.
There are desires which come from lust, anger, greed. So, they have to be controlled. So, it is, sometimes we divide things into spiritual and material.
That is a valid division, but that is not a complete division. Bhakti is not about accepting only the spiritual and rejecting everything material. Even in the material, there is division.
There is material that is pro-spiritual, and there is material that is anti-spiritual. So, the material that is anti-spiritual, that means the desires that come from lust, greed, anger, envy, all these are anti-spiritual. So, they we have to control.
But even within the material, there is pro-spiritual. And that which is pro-spiritual needs to be engaged in Krishna’s service. We don’t have to reject the material that is pro-spiritual.
So, if somebody has certain abilities, those abilities need to be used in Krishna’s service. And we can’t and we shouldn’t reject those abilities as simply material. The material is not, sorry, the spiritual is not the replacement for the material.
The spiritual is the complement for the material. What I mean by this is that sometimes some people say that Bhagavad Gita has the solution to all problems. Well, this is, in an ultimate sense, it is true.
In an immediate sense, it is an over-generalization. Because the Bhagavad Gita does not say, if I get my leg fractured. The Bhagavad Gita doesn’t contain knowledge about how to fix the leg.
So, many of the practical problems that are there, the Bhagavad Gita is not meant to solve them. What to speak of practical problems now, even when Arjuna, Arjuna fought and won the Kurukshetra war with the knowledge of archery that he had acquired throughout his lifelong study and training. So, the Bhagavad Gita did not give him the knowledge of archery to win the war.
The Bhagavad Gita gave him the inspiration and the direction to use the knowledge of archery. So, the spiritual is not the replacement for the material. The spiritual directs the material.
So, Ayurveda is not itself spiritual. But Ayurveda can be used for spiritual purposes. And today when we have to take treatment, some devotees may take treatment using Ayurveda, some may take it using allopathy.
That varies. The principle is, the material is meant to be used in spirituals for the purpose of the spiritual. The spiritual is not the replacement for the material.
Material knowledge may be there, but if it is not used properly, if it is used without spiritual knowledge, then that material things will end up creating more and more problems. So, the material and the spiritual are harmonized in bhakti. And Srila Prabhupada’s expertise was that whatever was pro- spiritual, the material that was pro-spiritual, he would use it in, he would inspire people to use it in devotional service.
So, I’ll talk about three examples and conclude this class about how the material can be used in, used for spiritual purposes. So, when Srila Prabhupada came to India, first example is of nationalism. Now, Prabhupada in the Ishopanishad, in Vidyamcha Vidyamcha Astadvadohamsa, he says there that the bodily conception of life leads to many unnecessary bad qualities such as pride and nationalism.
So, Prabhupada here says nationalism is a bad quality. And why did Prabhupada say that? Prabhupada says that so much energy and time and money is wasted in setting up borders and fighting over land. If people understood that we are all meant to serve God, then all this could be avoided.
So, if you understood all this is the property of God. So, here Prabhupada is talking from a transcendental perspective. But, yes, nationalism at one level we could say is undesirable because it is a part of our bodily identification.
But at another level, we’ll also see that same Srila Prabhupada when he came to India, he was giving a lecture before the Juhu temple was established, he was giving a lecture to some potential patrons, and he said that what is the use of you know, Bhagavad Gita is the book from India. And to teach Bhagavad Gita in India, we have to get people from America. He says, what are you Indians doing? This is your book, this is your knowledge.
And Prabhupada plays a nationalistic card over here. He says, you know, you people, you are afraid. This is 1970-73.
At that time, Bangladesh had become separated, Pakistan had become separated. Prabhupada says, you people are lamenting that, you know, Pakistan was lost from India. He says, you teach Bhagavad Gita, the whole world will become Hindustan.
So, what Prabhupada is saying is, so what is he saying? He is dovetailing the nationalistic spirit in Krishna’s service. And a few days later, Prabhupada is giving a lecture, talking to his disciples, he wanted to hold a big Pandal festival. And the devotees are saying, Prabhupada, we don’t have manpower, we don’t have resources, we don’t have money.
How will we do such a big festival? And Prabhupada says, the whole world knows all of you Americans as the world’s achievers. So, what is the use of your being Americans if you don’t achieve something wonderful for Krishna? So, what is Prabhupada doing here? Nationalism, the nationalistic spirit, he is using in Krishna’s service. Whichever way it is.
So, now, the same thing we see in the Bhagavad Gita itself, Krishna says in 2.13, Dehi no sminatha dehi. He says, you are not the body. You are not the body, you are the soul.
And yet, in the next verse itself, 2.14, Krishna addresses Arjuna with two addresses which are connected with the body. Matras parashastu kaunteya, shitostu sukha dukkha daha, agam apayino nityas tam sitikshaso bharata. So, kaunteya and bharata.
Both are designations for Arjuna based on his body. You are the son of Kunti, you are descendant of bharata. Well, just now you told me I am not my body.
Then why are you saying you are kaunteya or you are bharata? The thing is, yes, we are not the body is true. But, we have to live in the body, we have to live with the body. We can’t give up the body.
Actually, at a theoretical level, at an intellectual level, we understand I am not the body. But at a functional level, the journey towards realizing I am not the body begins with understanding that I am more than the body. There is something to me which is beyond the body.
And therefore, I should give time and attention for my spiritual side also. And nobody can work at the level of rejecting the body entirely. So, when Krishna is referring, just telling Arjuna you are not the body, and then referring to Arjuna based on body’s designations.
What is the reason for that? The reason is that Krishna is telling Arjuna that, oh you, so the Acharya has explained, in between these two verses is, when Krishna says you are not the body and your loved ones, they are also not their bodies. Bhishma is not his body, Drona is not his body, so don’t lament for their death. So Arjuna gets this question, yes, I know that they are not the body, but still, whatever happens at the bodily level causes pain.
It causes distress. So then Krishna tells Arjuna, tolerate it. But tolerance is not easy.
Tolerance is difficult. So Krishna says, yes, tolerance is difficult, but you are born in a glorious dynasty, and you can do difficult things. So, oh Bharata, oh Kaunteya, you have such illustrious predecessors, so live according to the caliber of the dynasty that you belong to.
Live according to the glory of the mother who has begotten you, and therefore act on the level. Tolerance is difficult, but tolerate. So, in order to inspire Arjuna to adopt the demanding spiritual principle of tolerance, Krishna dovetails his bodily connections.
So Krishna doesn’t reject the bodily connections, Krishna dovetails them. So our dynasty, it is not to be rejected. It is to be dovetailed in Krishna’s service.
So, this is the first example of nationalism. Second was this dynasty. Third is gender.
Gender, in the traditional Indian society, was largely patriarchal, and women had certain roles, men had certain roles. But when Shri Prabhupada went to the West and started preaching, at that time he found that the women there, and women in India also, as he experienced more and more, he said that they had been brought up in a different way, and they would do practically all the things that the men were doing. So in 1968, after Prabhupada had been sick, and he came back from America to India, he had come to India for recovery, when he went back to America, the devotees were there to welcome him.
And at that time, he, so, the devotees were in their room, and Prabhupada had a globe over there. And Prabhupada, when he had been away, the movement had not only survived, it had expanded also. Devotees had opened a few more centers.
So Prabhupada told all his disciples, he pointed to the globe, and he said, all of you, take one one country and deliver that country. Devotees had started, and the Jadurani Mataji was there. So Prabhupada, she said, Prabhupada, what about us girls? Prabhupada said, we are not boys or girls.
We are souls. We are devotees of Krishna. You also take one country.
So, the point is, I talked about Varanashram being that, that means, whatever problems we like to face, we are given those problems to face. So, practicing spirituality is not about turning back the clock. Turning back the clock means, everything that was done in the past, we have to do everything like that.
That’s not necessary. The essence of spirituality is not turning back the clock, it is turning on the compass. Turning on the compass means, within us, we have a sense of conscience.
And this conscience ultimately connects us with Krishna. And once we have the strong desire to connect with Krishna, how we will serve Krishna, that will vary according to the time and place circumstances. Krishna will give the intelligence by which we can practice bhakti.
So, Srila Prabhupada’s mood was, in his books, he talks about how women should always be under the protection of men and women should practice bhakti accordingly. But we see in his practical dealings, if devotees wanted to, if even female devotees wanted to do services, he did not discourage or repress them saying, this is not your role. So the idea is, in general, his, if you look at his broad teachings, to devotees who had brought in to, the female devotees had been brought up in western or westernized environments, he did not try to make them follow the Vedic culture entirely in terms of conforming to traditional gender roles entirely.
His focus was, okay, whatever abilities you have, you serve Krishna. So, that’s why we would have Matajis going out for book distribution and doing various kinds of services, which traditionally might have not been done by women in the traditional Vedic culture. So, the important point here is, Prabhupada writes in his CC Parpod that some traditional Indians would criticize him, saying that he is, you know, men and women are all engaging in devotional service and women are doing so many other things which normally they would not do.
So, Prabhupada said, he says, these people don’t understand that things are different according to time, place and circumstance. And the western women, they have been brought up in a different way and you cannot force the same stereotype formula on everyone. So, he said, that has to be engaged accordingly and that was the expertise of Shila Prabhupada.
So, the principle of Bhakti is that we don’t have to make Bhakti more difficult than what it needs to be. There is anyway difficulty in Bhakti. So, but, for example, if Prabhupada talks about farm communities and he did talk a lot about how we should have natural living and Prabhupada said, natural living is simple living.
But if somebody has been born and brought up in a city throughout, simple living is not so simple. To live without many of the facilities that we consider natural, that we consider just a part of life, to live without them is not easy. So, now, we don’t have to restrict Bhakti to only a particular cultural model of rural practice of Bhakti in farm communities.
So, there may be devotees who have been born and brought up in cities, but they are fried out with cities. And they may embrace a rural lifestyle, very nice, very eager, and they will practice Bhakti joyfully there. But that doesn’t mean necessarily that those who are practicing Bhakti in a rural setting are more advanced or more renounced.
No, different people have different natures. Prabhupada wanted farm communities, but Prabhupada also wanted vibrant centers in cities. So, if somebody has an inclination to live more close to nature, live in harmony with nature, and live simply, that’s fine.
That’s your nature, do that. If somebody wants to live in cities and have facilities for practicing Bhakti, that’s also fine. The important thing is practice Bhakti.
Both ways, we need to practice Bhakti. For example, some devotees may say social media. No, it’s so entangling.
I just stay out of social media. That’s fine. If you want to stay out of social media, that is fine.
But we can’t make that as a principle. According to the Pew Research Foundation, Pew Research Foundation is the world’s most preeminent foundation for religious surveys. And Pew Research Foundation said that in the last 10 years, in the Christian outreach that has happened, 35% of Christian outreach has been through social media.
35% of people who came to Christianity, they came through Facebook, Twitter, Internet, and these things. So now, that means, the human search for spirituality is always going to be there. And that human search for spirituality will be expressed according to contemporary forms of expression.
So, if we are not present on those contemporary forms of expression, then we will be the losers. If we say, this is modern, this is western, this is mundane, we don’t need this. Fine.
If some devotees feel they don’t need it, that’s fine. But that’s not a principle. The principle is, whatever way we can serve Krishna, that is fine.
If somebody is very tech-savvy, and we tell that person, you know, to practice bhakti, you have to give up all technology. We are making bhakti more difficult than what is necessary. And not only are we making bhakti more difficult than necessary, we are actually missing out on all the outreach that could have happened in bhakti through that particular forum.
One of the main reasons, if we look at Indian history from 5th century BC to 5th century AD, practically all of India, more than 80% of India, was ruled by non-Vedic rulers, Buddhists and Jains. And in fact, if you see, more books expounding atheism have been written in Sanskrit than any other classical language. Why is that? Because Buddhists and Jains, when they gained power, they wrote books expounding their doctrines in Sanskrit.
So originally what happened, the caste-conscious Brahmanas, they said, you know, the language of wisdom is Sanskrit. And they did not care to teach spiritual knowledge in the language of the common people. This is too mundane, this is too ordinary.
But Buddhism and Jainism, they were taught in Pali and Prakrit, which were the languages of the common people. And what happened? The common people took up those, and that’s what was available to them, that’s what made sense to them. And they started practicing it, and things started growing.
These religions spread. And eventually when those religions spread, they attracted intellectual people also. And those intellectual people started writing books in Sanskrit.
And when they wrote books in Sanskrit, then their books at one time became more prominent and widespread. Not only their local language books, even their Sanskrit books became more well-known than the Sanskrit books of the Vedic Acharyas. So if we are not available in the languages, in the forms of expression that are contemporary, we end up being the losers.
Especially Prabhupada focused on English outreach. Why? Because he felt English is the language of the world, and that’s why Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur told him, preach in the English language. One of my friends, he has done his PhD in Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur, and he showed me a book that is Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur’s English vocabulary book.
He would memorize words, the words and meanings. He’s an Acharya, but he felt that he has to speak in English, so he would learn English. So we have to make ourselves, make Krishna’s message accessible to people, and we don’t have to reject cultural forms, any specific cultural form.
We have to dovetail them in Krishna’s service. This is the essential principle of Varanashram. Varanashram is not necessarily dividing society into castes.
The essence of Varanashram is to provide a materially congenial atmosphere for practicing spirituality. The essence of Varanashram is to provide a materially congenial atmosphere, atmosphere that is the material, sometimes if say, if devotees have to go to college, the college atmosphere may be very materialistic. The school atmosphere may be very materialistic.
So then devotees form their own school. Devotees form their own college. That is what we are doing.
We are forming a materially congenial atmosphere for the practice of spirituality. So the material life is not to be given up, but the material life is to be made congenial to spirituality. So Varanashram is not something which is a stereotype.
Varanashram will vary according to the time, place, circumstance. How people can be, their material side can be harmonized with their spiritual side. That is an art and that requires expertise, not just of what is given in scripture, but expertise in terms of what is the current situation, what is the contemporary situation, how bhakti can be practiced, bhakti can be shared in this contemporary situation.
So Prabhupada gave us a living tradition. What Prabhupada gave us is a garden, not a museum. What do we mean by museum? In a museum, things are preserved, but they are not of any use to anyone.
So, they are not of any use except some historical value. So, those who say that everything that Prabhupada did, we have to keep everything as it is. They will keep everything as it is, but then the Krishna consciousness movement will become a museum.
It will not be a garden. A garden means that there has to be according to time, place, circumstance, things have to be presented appropriately. Only when things are presented appropriately, the essence is not changed, but the presentation has to be made according to time, place, circumstance.
Then it is appealing to people. It becomes a garden where the Bhaktilata grows. Otherwise, it doesn’t grow.
So, His Holiness Radhanath Maharaj’s book, Journey Home, is an example of the garden’s fruit. That is an autobiography. Some people criticize that who has written autobiographies in our tradition? Isn’t writing an autobiography one’s own glorification? No, not necessarily.
We have autobiographies. Narada Muni is telling his autobiography in chapters 4, 5, 6 of the first canto. It’s not a separate book, but it is his autobiography.
Further, we have Bhaktivinoda Thakur writing his own autobiography. The same devotee friend, he told me that Bhaktivinoda Thakur actually started his own autobiography, but unfortunately could not complete it. Then his disciples wrote a biography based on his autobiography.
But the important point is not just the precedence in the tradition. The age that we live in today, it is not exactly modern. It is called as post-modern age.
It is becoming more and more, coming to India also. In the West, they say modern is outdated now. The time is post-modern.
So what is the difference between modern and post-modern? In pre-modern times, whether it is India or the West, people had faith in scripture. It may be Bible, it may be Quran, it may be Vedas. People’s authority was scripture.
That is pre-modern times. But when the modern times came up, people’s faith was in science. Scripture, it may be true, it may not be true.
It is irrelevant. People had faith in science. But especially after the weapons of mass destruction came up, you know, 1945 when the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from that time onwards, the people’s faith in science also started weakening.
Because till then, science and technology were thought as a source of unadulterated good, universal good for everyone. But the dropping of the atom bomb and the huge destruction that resulted, that had a tremendous symbolic significance. The whole atom bomb project started with Albert Einstein’s letter to President Eisenhower saying that we should develop the Manhattan Project.
So this was the, and that was based on E is equal to mc squared, his insight. That matter can be converted into energy. So the most brilliant insight of the most brilliant brain of the last century led to the worst destruction of the last century.
So Einstein himself regretted sending that letter to the American president. But he said, my fear was that if Germany had got atom bomb before, it would have been devastating for the world. So the point I am making is, because the harmful effects of technology and the potential harms of scientific research, they have become more and more apparent.
So people use technology, people cannot live without technology. But people don’t believe in science and technology. It has been shaken in science and technology also.
So in the post-modern times, people have faith neither in scripture nor in science. And what do people have faith in? Their own experience. Their own experience or others’ experience.
So if something works for you, tell me. I would like to know how it works. But if this is the absolute truth everyone has to follow, get lost.
I am not interested. So for example, if a husband and wife couple, they are addressing some spiritual group and they say, we have been married happily for the last 25 years. So young couples want to know how did it work for you? The same, if something works for you, I am interested in knowing how it works for you.
But if that same couple says, we have been married for 25 years and divorce is a sin against God. And anybody who divorces is going to go to hell. They’ll say, you go to hell.
We are not interested. So anything that is presented as a mandatory dogma, the post-modern mind rejects that. So for people who are interested in experience, if something works for me, let me know.
So experiential presentation of spirituality is enormously appealing. Buddhism has spread. The fastest growing religion in the West is Buddhism.
And it has spread primarily because of the experiential writings of many of the Buddhist teachers. Dalai Lama wrote his autobiography. And several impersonalist teachers have also written their autobiographies.
And these have attracted so many people to their particular paths. So when Raghunath Maharaj wrote his autobiography, what is he doing? He is presenting the spiritual message in a way that is appealing to the post-modern ethos. So he is a pioneer in this field.
And so many people have become attracted to Krishna through that. So when I was editing the Journey Home for Maharaj, Maharaj asked me how do you define the book? Maharaj, I said, I found the tone so dramatically different from your normal tone. Maharaj said, what do you mean by that? I told Maharaj that this is that instead of when Maharaj used class, of course Maharaj is always very humble, but still he is a spiritual teacher giving instruction of how we should live.
But in this book, you take the position not of a teacher but that of a seeker. A seeker who is sharing his experiences. And he says this was, so when I read through the full book, I searched in the full book, Maharaj uses the word ISKCON only once.
And when is that? When he is introducing Srila Prabhupada. He is the founder Acharya of ISKCON. Maharaj doesn’t even say that I joined ISKCON.
He says, what he says is, I just I started, I went to New Vrindavan and started living the way my beloved Ghanshyam Baba was living earlier. So serving the deities and taking care of the cows. The point is, in the post-modern culture, there is a lot of suspicion about institutions.
Religious institutions, you cannot practice religion or spirituality over there. One of the most popular forms of spirituality is called as SBNR. SBNR means, I am spiritual but not religious.
I am spiritual but not religious. Such people think that their idea of religion is close-mindedness. Spiritual means open-mindedness.
So, by presenting an autobiographical mode, by avoiding emphasis on the institution, what happens by that? People who would earlier not even consider practicing spirituality, because it seems too religious, because it seems too sectarian, because it seems too dogmatic, those people become open-minded and they start practicing spirituality. So, this is the expertise of the spiritual teachers in each generation by which the bhakti tradition is kept alive. Not as a museum, but as a garden.
And not only they stay alive, but it spreads far and wide. So, I mentioned this when I had given the talk about Prabhupada and Prabhupada’s disappearance day. I’ll just conclude with that.
That Satyaraj Prabhu is one of Shri Prabhupada’s prominent disciples and he has written a book about ISKCON history. He has written an article, 50 years of chant and change. And he says that normally, a religious institution, if it is founded by a charismatic teacher, it spreads very rapidly when he is present.
But after he departs, then often that institution collapses. And there are conflicts and so many things happen. So, he says, Prabhupada, he established 108 temples, but Krishna Consciousness Movement has gone on to have 600-700 temples now.
And not only has the project that Shri Prabhupada started continued, he says many of Prabhupada’s disciples have started their own projects and they have become among the most successful projects in the movement. And there he used the example of Radha Gopinath temple. He says this project was conceived and started for all practical purposes after Shri Prabhupada.
And yet it spread. And it has become one of the most prominent projects. So, this is not self-glorification.
This is just an acknowledgement or recognition of the vibrancy of the bhakti tradition. That the living teachers of the bhakti tradition keep the tradition going on. And they do it by expertly dovetailing whatever is favorable to the spiritual and the material and sharing spirituality that way.
So, I’ll summarize. I started by talking about the difference between arrogance, pride and honor. So, arrogance is definitely undesirable.
That’s ego-driven. But pride can go either this way or that way. Honor can be used in a positive sense if it is used to inspire people to act honorably.
So, the best is if we can do the right thing with pure motives. But even if we can’t do the right thing with pure motives, if we can do it for some less than pure motives. Oh, I don’t want to be dishonored.
I don’t want to be disgraced. So, I will do the right thing. That is also good.
So, using honor to inspire people to act honorably is good. And then we discussed about how the purification from pride does not come by suppression of talent. It comes by expression of devotion.
If we don’t do good things because we feel we’ll become proud, we will stay proud and we’ll become envious of others who do good. Rather, we do good and we try to serve Krishna and by that service to Krishna, as we get a higher taste, then we gradually become purified of the craving for worldly recognition because we become satisfied in devotion, in the remembrance of Krishna, in the service of Krishna. Then we discussed about how the duties according to different natures are different.
So, Brahmana is meant to forgive whereas the Kshatriya is meant to not run away from confrontation. So, what is natural is not necessarily universal. And the principle of Arunashram involves recognizing that our desires can fall in three categories.
We have brought spiritual desires to love and serve Krishna. We have a material side that is our nature and that has to be dovetailed in Krishna’s service. And we have a material side which is the lower, which is self-centered, which is driven by the anarthas and that has to be rejected.
So, when Krishna says, nigraha kim karishyasi, what will repression accomplish? He is talking about the svabhava which cannot be repressed, which should be dovetailed. And the essence of Arunashram is not division of people into caste. The essence of Arunashram is allocation of problems to people according to what they are endowed.
So, give people the problems that they like to face and they will solve those problems and they will be happy and they will make constructive contributions. And that is what Prabhupada also adopted. So, from the spiritual point of view, you could reject nationalism as just bodily misidentification.
But then if nationalism, feelings of nationalistic pride can be used to inspire people to serve Krishna, why not? Similarly, if thoughts of our dynasty, we could say the dynasty is connected with the body, so it is bodily, but if thoughts of the dynasty that we belong to can inspire us to act honorably, then why not? Similarly, the principle of bhakti is, we don’t have to make bhakti more difficult than what it needs to be. We have to surrender to Krishna by giving up our lower material desires. But our material nature, we don’t have to give it up.
We have to act according to that nature. So, Prabhupada engaged women in whatever way they felt inspired, he engaged them in Krishna’s service. And Prabhupada said that pride is not necessarily bad if we can use it in Krishna’s service.
So, we concluded by discussing how the principle of bhakti is not centered on turning back the clock, it is on turning on the compass. The compass means the desire and the wisdom to serve Krishna. So, how to serve Krishna in different time-place circumstances, that will vary according to time-place circumstances.
So, it is not necessary that everybody has to live in a rural setting, nor does everybody have to live in an urban setting. Whatever is materially compatible, use that in Krishna’s service. If we put ourselves in a materially incompatible situation, we make our life more miserable than it needs to be.
The process of bhakti is, this world is miserable, but we can practice a process by which we can minimize and eliminate that misery. So, presenting bhakti according to contemporary modes of expression keeps the tradition alive and appealing to people. We discussed how the Vedic tradition got sidelined because the caste brahmanas insisted on presenting only in Sanskrit, not in the Pali and Prakrit.
And today, how those religious organizations, those religions which are prominently present in the social media, they are attracting a large number of followers through social media. So, contemporary, we concluded by discussing about how in the post-modern ethos, people are not interested in scripture as authority, they are not interested in science as authority. They are interested in experience.
If something works for you, do that. So then, writing in autobiographical genre taps this mindset of people and presents spirituality in that way. And this way, when it is presented in a contemporary way, we preserve the tradition not as a museum, but as a garden, which attracts many, many people to come and relish the fruits of love of God that Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu wanted us to distribute all over the world.
Thank you very much. … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … is, you can say, sometimes inadvertently happening and we tell people to tolerate things which they cannot, by their nature somebody cannot tolerate something which is going on wrong and he may come up with something and naturally the answer from all of you, what is, how do you, you are not the body, there is, you have nothing to do with India for example, don’t bother about it, whereas you gave wonderful examples how Prabhupada also used that kind of nationalism and everything, even, even caste, they can, Prabhupada could use that, so what would be your, say, advice for how do we deal with this scenario today that many young students, young people, they are coming forward, now they need to be part of the Varanashram system which Prabhupada wanted, but it seems difficult, today there is nothing like, you know, somebody is a Kshatriya and he takes out a sword and starts fighting, that kind of Kshatriya is not required today, today is something more like a intellectual Kshatriyas, you know, by intellect they can fight it out, so how does one look at that challenge for ISKCON to deal with, how would you deal with it? So the question is that, initially when ISKCON was centered and almost restricted to the temples, we had, it was easy to, relatively easy to engage people according to whatever was the services available in the temple, when mostly people are living outside at that time, they all have their natures and they may not be able to conform exactly to what we in Krishna consciousness movement were practicing or are advocating, so how can they be engaged in bhakti? In ISKCON there is a discussion going on at the GVC level, how do we define a member of ISKCON? How do we define? Because for this 50th anniversary, we had, different devotees are giving different statistics, you know, we have so many millions of members or so many, this many members, so how do we define? If we say that only initiated devotees are members, that is one way of talking about it, but then there are many devotees who may be initiated but they may not be practicing actively now, they may not be members or there may be many devotees who may not be initiated but they are very committed, so rather than thinking of membership or membership of ISKCON as a rigid clear cut division, it is like one circle, so if you are inside the circle, you are a member, if you are outside the circle, you are not a member, it is not like that. Ravindra Saruprabhu writes in America how they started congregation preaching, now for us congregation preaching, you go to somebody’s house, every week have a program and cultivate them, but that was not, they didn’t have that model in the west, so at that time to become a Hare Krishna devotee means you have to join the temple, so he says that when they were preaching in America, many Indians would come to the temples, but these Indians had come to America for their career and they had no interest in joining the temple, very few of them, most of them, they were not interested, so initially whenever these people would come to the temple, he said that we would not pay much attention to them, they are never going to get serious, so they would always be looking for new people, and yet over a period of time, he said that we found that although we paid no attention to these Indians, week after week, month after month, they kept coming, and then he said that if somebody had asked us, means he is talking about those western devotees who initially follow the Prabhupada, if somebody had asked us whether they are members of ISKCON, we would have said no, but if you would have asked them, are you a follower of ISKCON, they would have said yes, because they were more connected with ISKCON than with any other organization, so he said at that time, it started dawning on us that there can be people who have no intention of moving into the temple, but still they are going to be connected and committed to ISKCON, and then the whole model of how such people can be nourished, cultivated, engaged, that started coming up, and now in America ISKCON, it is the Indians who are practically the prime movers of ISKCON, there are Americans, but not so many Americans, so even after Sri Prabhupada departed in 1979, when survey was done, 93% of ISKCON members lived in temples, brahmacharis, renunciates and grahasthas, but now when 50th anniversary survey was done, more than 93% of people are living outside temples, so the demographics have changed drastically, and we cannot have the same model going on, which was earlier, so currently the understanding of ISKCON membership is not as one line inside of which all are members, and outside of which all are no members, people are not members, it is rather a set of concentric circles, and different people will be connected with Krishna at different levels, so the main movement that Sri Prabhupada started, that will focus directly on spiritual outreach, but along with that, there are many other people who want to practice bhakti at their own level, they want to do something for Krishna at their level, and they can be facilitated, they can be engaged, so there may be people who have a lot of interest in social service, and if they can do that social service in connection with Krishna, we are not to say that you cannot do social service, we have to facilitate them, so this is going to be, the growth of the Krishna consciousness movement is Prabhupada also started it in such a way that he did not want things to be centralized too much, some amount of centralization is required for the smooth conduct of the organization, but Prabhupada said that too much centralization will choke individual initiative, at one time, the devotees, in the early days, I think 70, 71, 72, the devotees said that we will have centralized financial management of all of us, all the temples, whatever funds they get, let them all come to a central body, and then depending on what projects the temples are doing, let them, that body will allocate funds, and the GBC made that, and after the GBC made that decision, and Prabhupada came to know it, Prabhupada was so upset, he sent a letter to all the temple presidents saying that I have suspended the GBC, and he says till future intimation, you take instruction only from me, don’t follow anything that GBC tells you, and Prabhupada said that your centralization will kill devotion, he said the purpose of organization is to inspire devotion, so don’t centralize, so Prabhupada kept each temple, we could say like a, like a nuclear center, now each center, if the temple leaders have vision, if they have initiative, they can develop, and by that, when they develop like that, they can create customized models of bhakti according to what is needed for the time, place, circumstance, so rather than thinking of what ISKCON should do or what ISKCON can do, it is better that we do at our level according to our understanding of the time, place, circumstance, we can consult some senior devotees and do what we can, so they say that if you have to work in organization, you know, lead or follow or get out of the way, if we have the capacity, if we have some inspiration, we have some vision, if we try to get others, you know, you should do this, you should do this, you should, it doesn’t work, because people work according to their individual inspiration, so if somebody is leading, if we can, if we feel inspired by that vision, we join them and help them, but if we have a particular vision of how we can practice bhakti, then that initiative is good, so Prabhupada writes in the Ishopanishad purport, that every soul has its own initiative, in the mantra four purport, he says that, one of the purports, that whatever initiative we have, that initiative should be harmonized with the initiative of Krishna, it is not to be suppressed, so many of the most successful projects that have happened in ISKCON, they are often, they have, not just in ISKCON, in the Gaudiya Vaishnav tradition at large, they have usually come from the sidelines, sidelines means, that when Bhaktivinod Thakur, he started, he started reviving Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Bhaktivinod Thakur had not been born in the Gaudiya Vaishnav family, Bhaktivinod Thakur had not, he was not, he was not a traditional caste Brahmana, he actually, within the traditional Gaudiya Vaishnav, some Gaudiya Vaishnav mathas and all that were there, not exactly mathas, whatever vamshas were there, Bhaktivinod Thakur never had any position in them, so he just created his own audience and he revived Gaudiya Vaishnavism, similarly Shila Prabhupada himself, he never had any position in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, he was at the sidelines, at the main, of the main action of Gaudiya Matha and he took up and he spread, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswatha Thakur himself, you know, Bhaktivinod Thakur had, he had built a structure in terms of the vision, Bhaktivinod Thakur was more of an intellectual, you know, he wrote and he discussed with people, but he was a grahastha, he did not have time to set up an organization, so Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswatha Thakur started on his own in that sense and he built his organization, so the, rather than expecting change at the global level, we focus on presenting bhakti at the local level according to time and place circumstances and sometimes if we try to create too much, make too much noise about the need for change, often the debate over that takes too much energy and nothing tangible happens, so if we keep practice, if we, there is definitely the need for accommodating people at different levels, so there may be many people who may not be able to chant 16 rounds every day, but still they want to be connected with Krishna, they want to be connected, they want to do some service to Krishna, then they also need to be accommodated, it is not that they have to be forced to come to 16 rounds and they don’t come to 16 rounds, we make them feel so guilty that they just want to go away from Krishna, no, people will come towards Krishna at their pace and there are two kinds of extremes that may happen, that you know, we want to, we feel that everyone should become a pure devotee, not just in one lifetime, but just in the next few years only, you know, but it’s not possible for everybody to do that, people will practice spirituality in their own life, so one level, you know, at one level we have had that very, very high standards of practice, high standards according to certain definition for some people and then at another level we have had huge amount of book distribution, the book distribution has attracted many people to Krishna, but book distribution is like, we could say, it’s like throwing the seeds practically, now after that the seeds have to be nourished, if you don’t do that, then the books get distributed, but without a conducive environment for people to live according to the books, if they feel, yes, what this book teaches, it makes sense, but if I have to live according to it, it’s so lofty that I can’t do it only, you know, so it’s like, you know, if somebody has to, in many places, the temples are on hill stations, so the temple is on hill station, people have to climb up to go to the temple, now if the steps are very tall and very big, it’s like, it’s very difficult to climb up the steps, then does that mean that people who cannot climb up all those steps, they just should not be allowed to go to the temple, no, there has to be some alternative methods, we have some vehicles, we have some palkis or whatever, by which people can go to the temple, so they may not get the exact same benefit of having done the austerity for taking darshan of the Lord, but still they get the benefit of taking darshan of the Lord, so like that, we shouldn’t reduce the entrance to ISKCON to only those who can climb up all the steep standards, no, others can also come in, they may not be at the same standard, but they are on the progressive path towards, they are contributing towards the protection of dharma, they are contributing towards the sharing of Krishna consciousness in some small or big way, and they are slowly on the journey towards Krishna, so it is that, yes, there is, there are some people, so it’s like, we have an express way which is going very fast towards Krishna, but it is not that those who cannot join the express way, we have to push them in the opposite direction, isn’t it, that means we become so self-righteous that if you can’t practice this, people get alienated, people think, you know, this is, bhakti is impossible for me, and you just go away from Krishna, no, it’s, we have a central core who are practicing higher standards and moving fast, but apart from that, there can be other people who are practicing at their level and moving onwards towards Krishna, so the problem may come if what they are practicing is made into the standard, but that will happen only if the core institution, its outreach becomes watered down, but along with ISKCON, if there are other organizations run by, other sister forums run by devotees which are catering to different kinds of people, that is how the circle of Krishna consciousness will spread in more and more concentric circles, now that’s my small understanding, can I add something if you want, Krishnachandra Prabhu, Srinathji, do you want to add something, thank you very much, okay, one last question, since the class was focused on one’s nature and we have given so many instances where one is, one is, one is telling some, one person is telling other person to act according to his own nature, and there is also this word, we heard swadharma, so nature means swabhava, so it is spontaneous, right, it is spontaneous, so how is it possible that one is, one has to be told to act according to his own nature and if someone is not acting according to his nature, then why is it so, so you talk about swabhava and swadharma, so something is shouldn’t that be natural to us, why does somebody have to be told to act according to one’s nature, see swabhava, bhava means emotion or more specifically disposition, swabhava means one’s own disposition, swadharma is, the word dharma is multivalent, multivalent means it has many meanings, so in this context swadharma refers to the occupation according to one’s nature, so swabhava is one’s disposition, swadharma is one’s occupation, now for many reasons, one’s occupation may not be according to one’s disposition, sometimes some, because say, say for students, certain careers are glamorized, engineering and medicine are glamorized, the student may have, may want, may have artistic inclinations, may want to become a writer, but the student may be pressured to become an engineer, so there because of social pressures, because of glamorization of certain particular forms of activities, people may get, get into activities which are not according to their nature, so that’s external glamorization and pressure can be one reason, another point is, at even at the time of the Mahabharata, there when Nahusha asks Yudhishthira Maharaj, you know, how is a brahmana defined, so he says, is it by birth, is it by learning, he says no, it is ultimately by qualities and activities, so then, now, then Nahusha asks Yudhishthira, Nahusha is in the form of a serpent at that time actually, so he, so he asks, but then if it is by qualities and activities, then what is the significance of the birth at all, because we could say that anybody who is having those qualities and activities is a brahmana, then why is a brahmanical birth considered significant at all, so he said, he replies that traditionally, genealogy and quality moved in the same line, that means if a brahmana, man and a brahmana woman united, then they would attract a soul who has brahmanical disposition and that’s how the qualities would flow according to genealogy, but 5000 years ago, Yudhishthira Maharaj is saying that because of intermixing among the various castes, now the qualities do not necessarily flow according to genealogy and that’s why the varana has to be determined according to quality, so if that applied 5000 years ago, that will definitely apply now also, so that’s why we may not come to know our swabha very easily, it often takes time to recognize, okay, what are my talents, what are my abilities, see, our problem is, the modern culture, modern materialistic culture is a culture of dissatisfaction, for the consumer economy, dissatisfaction is the essential fuel, if people are satisfied, they will not purchase new mobiles, they will not purchase new cars, they will not purchase new computers and all the industries that are doing this, they will become bankrupt, so now what happens in today’s economy is, our vision because of advertisement, because of glamorization of things, it always focuses on what we don’t have, the whole advertising industry is specialized in showing us all the things we don’t have and because of which what we have, we don’t see and this applies not only to possessions, it eventually applies even to qualities, quite often the talents that we have, we don’t even notice them, we don’t develop them because we are too busy lamenting that I don’t have the talents which others have, so it’s like example, suppose now after this program there is prasad, suppose after a program there is a feast, but it’s a special feast where everybody is getting separate items, everybody has different items at the feast and now when I’m taking the feast, I’m not looking at what all is in my plate, I’m looking at what all is in whose plate, oh I don’t have that, oh I don’t have that, I don’t have that and that way although I also have a feast, I’m dissatisfied, so that is what happens for many of us, although we have certain qualities, we have certain abilities, but if they are not glamorized in society, some other qualities are glamorized, then we are too caught in the lamentation of not having those qualities rather than developing what we have, so that’s why discerning swabhava is not easy, so if we while in the normal conduct of our life, while doing our various activities, even in bhakti, when we are doing various services, we need to observe ourselves, what are the things that I am good at, what are the things I am comfortable at, so guna and karma, when we say guna karma, when Krishna says, so guna and karma, we can broadly translate it as that inner comfort and outer competence, guna if something is our quality, that means we are comfortable doing it and karma means we are competent doing it, so we don’t have to today, when we are trying to engage ourselves or engage others, we don’t have to necessarily put people in a bracket, this is Brahmana, this is Kshatriya, this is Vaishya, this is Shudra, we just broadly recognize the principle, okay this person is good at this and accordingly this person can be engaged in this service, this person can be engaged in this service or I can engage myself this way, so it requires observation of ourselves and guidance from those who know us well, by which gradually we can understand our swabhava and then we can choose a swadharma according to our swabhava and even if it is not possible to radically change things, we shouldn’t assume that whatever I am doing is not according to my swabhava, because the nature of the mind is to always think that the grass is the greener on the other side, so if we live, if the search for our swabhava, if we leave it too much on the mental platform, the mind will say whatever you are doing that is not your nature, so that way we will stay restless, we will stay dissatisfied, now whatever we are told, we do that, whatever we are doing, we continue doing that, by the same time we explore, we observe and by that we learn about ourselves, so when we say there is self-realization, we say discover yourself or journey of self-discovery, now that is that it is not just that we did the journey of self-discovery course and we have discovered ourselves at that time, discovering ourselves is a lifelong process, you know, firstly we intellectually discover ourselves, we understand I am not the body, I am the soul, but in the self Krishna uses the word atma to refer to the mind also, Krishna uses the word atma to refer to the body also, why is that? Because at present our self is three-dimensional, body, mind and soul, we are all three combined together, we are not just the soul, essentially we are the soul, but presently we are body, mind and soul combined together, that means to know ourselves, to discover ourselves doesn’t mean just understanding I am the soul, it also means understanding who am I at the subtle level, at the level of the subtle body, what is my disposition, what are my strengths, what are my inclinations and detailing them in Krishna’s service, so we realize ourselves spiritually, but we realize ourselves also subtly, what is my subtle nature, what is my nature at the subtle level and then gradually as we keep practicing bhakti, Prabhupada writes in the introduction to nectar of instruction that he says as we keep practicing bhakti diligently and we come to the mode of goodness, then how to advance further will be revealed from within, that means once we come to goodness, we start understanding ourselves better and we start understanding this is what I should be doing, this is what I can avoid, this is what can be done by others and that way we can become more harmonious, our practice of bhakti and our conduct in our life can become more harmonious with our nature.
Does it answer your question? Thank you very much.