The Monk’s Podcast 33 with Anuttama Prabhu – Going beyond the we-they mentality

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you very much for joining today.
It’s an honor and a pleasure to have you. Since the time I attended your communication seminar, I have appreciated the breadth and the depth of your Krishna consciousness. Breadth in terms of how you once told me when you interact with people from other faiths, you appreciate how God is acting in different people’s lives.
But the breadth of your Krishna consciousness as a depth in terms of how deeply introspective and humble you are. I remember once you told me that you feel very happy apologizing to others to devotees for offenses that they haven’t committed, even by other people, not you. So I feel that you are the ideal person for communications and you are the communications minister for our movement.
So when I heard your first communications class, it was the first time I thought of this, that we might interact with people, not for the purpose of preaching specifically, but just getting to know each other. So I thought we could take that as a topic today, that how can devotees engage with the world without necessarily from a negative terminology, but from a conversion perspective. So should devotees engage and what are the ways in which we should engage? So maybe if you can start with how you got involved with communication and what is purpose, then we can take it forward from there.
Okay. Thank you very much. My basis unto you and all the devotees that will be listening to this, I appreciate the opportunity to speak.
This is a very important topic. It’s one that’s very dear to me. And I think having an opportunity to discuss with you, because you’re someone who I admire, who is very much trying to understand how to reach out to a vast variety of people through your different lectures and your podcasts and your books, trying to understand how to bring Krishna consciousness into people’s lives.
And it reminds me right now, I’m rereading the Shilaprapa and Leelamrita. I’ve read it, I don’t know, eight, 10 times, perhaps. And I just reread, I just read volume one, and then I finished and I read it all over again.
I wanted to read it twice to really kind of meditate and practice Leela. And then I’m reading right now volume two. And one thing that very much strikes me in the context of what we’re talking about now is how Prabhupada was so flexible and so intent in trying anything and everything to introduce Krishna consciousness to people.
Maybe we can talk about it a little bit later. But I just read yesterday how in the early days, before he even had his place on 26th Second Avenue, he started a Sanskrit class because some of the young people that were coming were interested in Sanskrit. So Prabhupada found a little blackboard somewhere in this loft where he was staying and started teaching the Sanskrit alphabet because he knew that this is the way they were attracted to Krishna.
So that flexibility is an example that I think is there for all of us. And we can talk about different perspectives and angles on that as well. So I’m very honored to be here.
I will mention one thing because we happen to be recording this just a couple of days after the passing of His Holiness Bhakti Tumharaj. And I think it’s appropriate that we talk about this at this time because we know Bhakti Tumharaj was such a gentleman and that everyone that he interacted with appreciated his qualities as a very nice, friendly, soft-hearted and saintly person. And he interacted with people in the movie business and he interacted with government leaders and he interacted with so many important industrialists and people like that.
And of course, not all of them were devotees. And he was always trying to give people Christian consciousness but he’s such a wonderful example of being able to interact with different types of people of different kinds and always maintaining his own saintly demeanor but never leaving people with any kind of feeling that he’s better than someone else. Which of course puts a tremendous block in any kind of relationship.
I want to maybe dedicate our conversation to him and our remembrance of him and our prayers. Presence will continue in ISKCON for many, many years and generations as a wonderful saintly example of Christian consciousness and especially dedication to one’s Guru. He was so dedicated to Srila Prabhupada.
Amazing, yes. And you’re taking the theme of Leelamrita. You know, he engaged with the video world at a time when nowadays everybody is doing videos but at that time practically nobody was doing it.
So he was a pioneer in that. And he tried to bring Leelamrita to life. That’s a beautiful example, yes.
Very true. There’s an example of engaging and utilizing what’s there in the world. And we have so many examples, Srila Bhaktivedanta Saraswati Thakur and his elaborate cars and Prabhupada flying in airplanes.
Every generation we have to reassess how to engage all of the energies of the Lord in his service and not be stereotyped into thinking, well, that’s what was allowed 50 years ago and we can’t apply it to whatever exists today. It’s very much principle-oriented and not getting hung up in the details. Yes.
I also like one word you used. You didn’t use the word make people Krishna conscious. It is give people Krishna consciousness.
It’s a subtle but significant difference in usage. They’re not trying to, in a sense, convert. We are trying to enrich.
And awaken. Awaken. I think that’s something our philosophy has very different than some of the other theistic philosophies which is we, on the basis of a very deep philosophical analysis, understand that every soul is eternally Krishna conscious.
We’re just temporarily covered over. So when we’re engaging people or introducing Krishna consciousness, it’s not like, you know, philosophies have this idea you’re lost and then, oh, they’re bringing you more light. That’s good.
We should maybe mention to people that are watching, you have a bit of a power short. So you’ve been working with very limited light. So now they’re bringing more light.
It’s actually, I haven’t go to the village where the power is not there. So we’re just trying to add some power. I’m just using the mobile battery.
That’s good. That’s much better. Is this better? Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, right there. I think it’s good. It was a little.
Yeah, right. There’s good. Okay.
So, yes. Thank you. So we can continue.
Yes, ma’am. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Yeah. Just like now you’re an eco village. So there’s so many wonderful things about the eco village.
And so many people are coming from all around the world to go over to an eco village to see a practical application. And at the same time, when the power goes out, you have to do what you can do. Yeah.
So this point you’re mentioning about awakening as compared to other theistic philosophies. What was the point? I’m sorry. Our philosophy, we understand every living being has an eternal relationship with Krishna.
So it’s not this idea that I’m connected to Krishna. They’re unconnected. And I’m like some special person who’s going to give them something.
No, they already have it. They have a relationship with Krishna. You know, I mean, and I don’t know what the rasa is of other living entities.
I mean, maybe there’s somebody who’s whatever. In a parental rasa with Krishna, maybe I’m a humble blade of grass when I go back to the spiritual sky. Who knows? So I can’t prejudge people or think because they’ve temporarily forgotten Krishna.
I’m so special. What’s special is that I’ve been given the mercy by my guru and the previous acharyas to assist them in helping people reawaken what they already have. Prabhupada said, I think when he came to Europe or America, I think it was Britain, they asked him, why have you come? He said, I’ve come to help you remember what you’ve forgotten, which is beautiful.
It’s beautiful. It’s humble. It’s beautiful.
And it’s the truth, according to our Vaishnav teachings. Yeah. And if we remember everyone’s a devotee of Krishna, then it takes down so many barriers.
You know, it’s not so much, you know, a thing of like, okay, we’re Vaishnava and they’re a Muslim or they’re a Jew or they’re a Christian and they’re a Jain. But no, we’re all devotees of Krishna. We all have a devotional relation with God.
Or I’m black. He’s brown. He’s white.
This is a woman. This is a man. I mean, that’s our basic teaching.
We’re not the body. We’re all connected to Krishna. And it’s not just that we’re not the body.
Prabhupada would say, that’s the preliminary thing. I’m not the body. The next is I’m spirit soul.
And next is I’m an eternal servant of Krishna related to Him, as anyone else. You know, people these days, they’re struggling. I don’t know if you hear much in India these days, but a few years ago in the United States, a lot of talk about living holistically.
How do we get all the broken parts? Well, Krishna consciousness philosophy is the ultimate holistic philosophy. We’re all part of the supreme whole. Ishvashamidam Sarvam.
We’re all part of the supreme whole. And we’re all connected. We’ve just forgotten.
Yeah. So maybe when you talk about, as you said, awakening people’s God consciousness or Krishna consciousness. So how do you see communications as a part of that? Would you like to talk about that? Or would you like to take this in some other direction? No, I love to talk about communications.
That’s my service to Prabhupada. Well, communications, as we understand in the communications ministry, in a broader sense, sometimes we use this little mantra to make a sankirtan friendly world. We know Prabhupada has his mission.
We have the ISKCON seven purposes. Lord Chaitanya’s whole purpose of coming into the world. Krishna’s whole purpose of speaking the Bhagavad Gita.
And we also understand that to be effective in spreading Krishna consciousness, we need to help make what we use this term, create a favorable environment. And we use a real simple example, but I think it’s helpful. Just like if we go to do some gardening.
Let’s say it’s the springtime. You have to the cold weather, like in my part of the world, after the cold weather, spring comes and you go to the garden. So I think, well, I just have to go and plant these seeds and then everything will work out nicely.
No. First, you have to prepare the garden. You have to turn over the soil.
You have to pull out the weeds. Maybe there’s some sticks and maybe even some dead things are there from the previous year. You have to put in some fertilizer.
You make the soil very favorable. Then you plant the seed and it’ll grow. So in the same way we’re trying to spread Krishna consciousness, we also have to make a favorable environment as much as possible.
An example, let’s say we’re going to go out on Harinam in a city where, you know, there’s an article in the newspaper that says Hare Krishna threatens the security of Delhi or Washington, D.C. That’s going to make it very difficult for us to go in Harinam that day. You know, the mayor is quoted as saying, you know, they’re a threat to society. They’re dangerous people.
They’re not good. That’s an unfavorable environment. Another situation that they’re saying, just as an example, there’s a newspaper article, you know, mayor says Hare Krishna’s give great benefit to all the residents of Delhi or Washington, D.C. or whatever.
That’s going to help create a favorable environment. If we have a good relationship with, say, government agencies, they help us have a Ratha Yatra. If we have a bad relationship, sometimes they won’t allow us to have a Ratha Yatra.
And there’s many, many, many examples of this, but I think the point is clear. Just if you’re going to plant a seed, you need to prepare the soil same way. If we’re going to spread Krishna consciousness, it helps us tremendously to create a favorable environment.
And that’s what communications is largely about as a ministry. How do we create that favorable environment? And then I’ll use one other term if I can. We talk about this idea of key audiences.
Who are those people or individuals who can really, really help us? So say the police, the government, the media, scholars, our neighbors, parents and devotees. Those are people if we cultivate a good relationship, they can really help us or they can put some barriers up in our efforts to try to share Krishna consciousness. So communications is all about creating a favorable environment.
And of course, ultimately with devotees as well. I mean, in one sense, devotees are the most important audience. So I’m working on that.
But we also do, say like ISKCON News, it’s an effort to help build relationships and information amongst the devotee community itself. But then we also reach out to a lot of others, like I mentioned, the police, government, et cetera, that many people really don’t emphasize. So the idea is that I like the idea of making people friendly or Sankirtan friendly world.
So maybe we could also envision this like a pyramid. Let’s say maybe toward the top of the pyramid will be people who will be willing to commit themselves to the practice of bhakti. And they will be not, we want them to be as large as possible, but they are going to be relatively less.
But if we have a larger number of people who are friendly, then we can do things for better. So here is one way. Yeah, go ahead.
Sorry. No, I’m just agreeing. I’m agreeing.
Okay. So sometimes when we talk about devotees, there is this we-they mentality that we are devotees and they are, we can have various, almost derogatory kind of labels, karmis, materialists, and something like that. So in some ways, if we are doing communication, we are blurring the sharp boundary between devotees and devotees, non-devotees, isn’t it? There are shades of gray in between the two.
I would say that sharp boundary is a false boundary. Because you earlier said everybody is a devotee potentially. Everybody is a devotee.
Now, for the sake of our own Christian consciousness, sometimes we have to put, we put some walls, we put some barriers. Just like, especially in our early days as devotees. I remember when I became a devotee, I grew up in a place called, a city called Detroit in the state of Michigan.
And by Krishna’s kindness, he sent me about 2,000 miles away and I joined a temple in Denver, Colorado. And I knew from the very beginning, if I was still living in Detroit, Michigan as a young brahmachari, you know, raised in a very materialistic environment until I was 20, it would have been almost impossible for me to become a devotee because there was too many old friends and old things I used to do and places that reminded me of my material life and my material attachments. So Krishna gave me a very, very new environment to protect me.
So many of us, perhaps all of us, that’s essential, especially in the early days to really kind of separate ourselves a little bit from those things that allure us to the materialistic energy. But as we become more mature, then we start seeing, you know, what material energy? I mean, not that I’m at that level or advocating that we can artificially be there, but at least in a philosophical way, we start seeing everything belongs to Krishna. It’s what the scripture says.
Now, Arjuna said, Krishna, I don’t want to fight. And Krishna said, it’s not all about you. This is not your war, Arjuna.
This is my war. You do it for me. So I think that, and I think this happened in the early years of our movement.
We should study the social context of our movement and try to understand why things happen a certain way. And I know I came in 1975 and there was a tremendous push against the outer society because almost all of us were very young, 20 years old and plus or minus a few years. We all had grown up in very materialistic environments.
And we had to push away from that. You know, we had to see that as a bad thing. And I think on the negative side, it led to a lot of mistreatment of women and lack of appreciation of women because the men, you know, were reading these things about women can be the cause of our materialistic mentality.
And young men, you know, generally, you know, there’s a lot of attraction towards women. And there’s a real tendency to think I’m the enjoyer and she’s meant to be enjoyed by me. So to have to separate ourselves.
And sometimes in our immaturity, we did that a little harshly. But I think as individuals and as a society, as we get older, we don’t we don’t need to do that. And we can talk later about being careful we don’t go too far.
But I think the general principle is our movement occurs. I mean, just again, just reading Lila Rita, Prabha is there in Butler, Pennsylvania. And and he’s he’s seen people and he’s coming to their home to do a little program and there’s people smoking.
And they’re saying, Swamiji, this must be very disturbing to you. And Prabha said, no, no, think nothing of it. Yeah, nothing.
It doesn’t mean he doesn’t know cigarettes are bad and cigarettes are sinful. And there’s been but he’s he’s understanding. I’m not going to let that put a wall up because these people are ultimately devotees.
And we’re trying to give a little Christian consciousness. And of course, she was his host. So he was being a gentleman.
Even one night he came and she said, Swamiji, we I feel bad we haven’t cleaned up. They they were they ate meat. That family is that we haven’t cleaned up yet.
The smell must bother you. Same thing. Prabha said, no, no, think nothing of it.
You know, I like this word, put a wall in between. I had thought more of a demarcating line, but it’s not just a line. It’s a wall.
So in some ways, we might put it, like you said, initially to defend ourselves or to protect ourselves. But eventually, if we had to reach, you know, if the wall is there, we cannot reach people. So we get an expression like that in English.
Anytime you build a wall, you have to consider what did what did we what are we keeping in? But also, what are you stopping? What are you preventing from coming in? The wall. So and I think another example, too, is like if you have a little plant or a tree when it’s very young, you put you put some kind of, you know, a barrier or cage around to protect it. I think this is even in the Shastra, but as it gets bigger and older, it can give shelter to so many others.
So individually, we have to be very, very careful to protect ourselves and as a society to protect ourselves. But as we get stronger, we can give shelter to others and interact with others more and more. So.
As so if, in a sense, we are engaging with the world, like moving forward, this communication is one way of engaging with the world. And that’s not necessarily we would like if people become people become devotees. But if they become devotee friendly also, that is very helpful for us.
Now, when there is a veda mentality, it often that friendliness. If you don’t come in, then it’s almost like you are you’re a bad guy. And you don’t come in almost like you push people away.
So when I was a new devotee, I still remember this. There was one brahmachari who was senior to me, and he moved out of the temple after I’d been there for about three or four months. He was initiated.
He had a devotee name, but he moved out. And in those days, the term blooping was very popular. You know, you’re in or you’re out.
And this devotee came back after about a month to the Sunday feast. And I remember everyone’s mood was like, oh, you’re back. Now you’re going to move back in the ashram.
And he said, no, I just came for the feast. And we were shocked. We didn’t know how to, we literally, may I just speak for myself and I think others.
We didn’t know, I didn’t know how to deal with that. It’s like, well, wait, if you’re back, then you have to live in the ashram and be with us. And if you’re not, then you’re out there.
As opposed to he was one of the earlier people expressing that I’m still a devotee, but I’m just not a brahmachari or a temple resident, which, of course, now we know most people aren’t. But it’s another station of that, of not understanding, you know, the wall, as you said, and, you know, where the barriers are, you know, sometimes you can have barriers, you let in the good, you let out the good and you, you know, you have some barrier against the negative, but it doesn’t mean you stop everything. Yes.
Okay. You know, it’s interesting. I’d also heard about this.
It’s almost like a geographical was equated with the transcendental. It’s like a temple premises, but inside, then you’re transcendental, otherwise you’re not. So.
And even, I mean, even in early years, I mean, there was a tendency to think, you know, if one, if you are, if you’re a serious devotee or brahmachari, grahasthas were questioned. And if you are really serious devotee, at least when I first joined, you had to be a book distributor. And if you weren’t a book distributor, your integrity, your commitment was questioned.
And I think that just comes from a general materialistic perspective of, we’re always trying to create some kind of hierarchy, ultimately with me at the top, right? Because we don’t want Krishna to be at the top. But then again, as we get more mature and it brings up another story, I’ll just share. A well-known story, I believe, Prabhupada went to Atlanta and he was speaking to the book distributors, the sankirtana devotees.
And I was a sankirtana devotee for years as a young devotee. So, you know, I have a great appreciation of that essential service in our movement. And I benefited from being able to do that full time for many years.
But these devotees met with Srila Prabhupada and one devotee asked him, Prabhupada, what pleases you the most? And clearly it was, okay, Guru Maharaj, I’m here. I want you to tell me how wonderful I am. Tell me how special I am.
Tell me how special my service is. Tell me book distributors ki jai, just as an example. And Prabhupada answered him as he only was able to do in a very transcendental way.
He said, Prabhupada, what service is the most, pleases you most? Prabhupada said, when you love Krishna. So in a sense, Prabhupada was refusing to build that hierarchy. Or if there is a hierarchy, the hierarchy is not based on the service you are doing.
The hierarchy is based on how much you love Krishna. Yes, yes. And not to minimize the importance of book distribution or any, you know, same way, you know, to talk about the importance of brahmacharis and grihasthas doesn’t minimize the importance of sannyasis.
And we know the sannyasis that, you know, they’re the top of the social hierarchy. But when we appreciate and understand the need for sannyasis and their most valuable service, and we bow down to them and pay obeisances out of a sense of gratitude for what they’re doing in their sacrifices, that doesn’t mean we’re minimizing or deprecating grihasthas. It’s all part of the whole.
It’s holistic, as I said. It’s interesting when you said just now that there’s no hierarchy we might create. So I earlier gave the example of pyramid.
Pyramid is almost like a hierarchy. But if you’re talking about Krishna consciousness, then that is the depth of your Krishna consciousness that is there, or the intensity of Krishna consciousness, the hierarchy would be that. And if you combine the pyramid and say the wall metaphor, so it’s like climbing up is anyway difficult.
But if we build a wall in between, it becomes even more difficult. So if we have that veto mentality where maybe we are condescending towards others, then we make it more difficult than what is necessary for people to come to Krishna. Yes, yes.
And that’s not our purpose. Our purpose is to make it easier for people. To make it easier for people.
And again, it doesn’t mean we compromise standards, or we minimize or water anything down. But I mean, just again, classic examples, Shyama Sundar Prabhu, when Prabhupada asked him to carve the Jagannath deities. And I’m not sure if he was actually initiated yet or not initiated.
I really don’t know. I have to go back and reread it. But either way, Prabhupada asked him to carve the Jagannath deities.
And you know the famous story. He was still smoking. And Prabhupada came in to see how Jagannath was doing.
And I think as I remember correctly, Shyama Sundar had the pack of cigarettes on the soon to be Jagannath deities head. And Prabhupada took his cane and flip, you know, flip that off Jagannath’s head, something like that. And told him, he said, you know, don’t let such a small thing come between you and Krishna.
And then what’s really significant, he told him, just smoke one less every day. Now, if you look at it in one sense, that means Srila Prabhupada did, you know, in Western cigarettes, I don’t know if they changed it, but when I was 18 years old, there was 20 in a pack. So if you have a pack of cigarettes and you smoke one pack a day, the next day you smoke 19, the next day 18, the next day 17.
Prabhupada has just allowed him to smoke a lot of cigarettes. So we can say, how is it Prabhupada allowed him to smoke? Why didn’t he tell him, stop, this is sinful, it’s terrible, it’s evil, it’s intoxication, it’s against the… No, smoke one less every day. So what was the love? What was the support? What was the wisdom, the patience, the care that Prabhupada showed that he said, okay, we know it’s bad, but take the next step.
One less, one less, one less. And we’re servants of Prabhupada, so we also have to have that same mood. And if I could, there’s one letter I’d like to quote, if I can, real briefly, just right along the lines of what you’re saying about not everyone immediately is going to become a devotee, but on that pyramid, they can become friends and they can help us and they can become this key audience, helpful.
So this is a quote from a letter from Prabhupada to Tejas Prabhu in 1973, Prabhupada writes, if you make some of the big government officials interested in our movement, then our strength will increase. So make them interested. Because we are in the material world, sometimes we require that help.
Another point is that if a government officer becomes our admirer or member, then many others will follow. So try to make them sympathizers. So in communications, we’re also very much understanding this.
Yes, we like everybody to become a devotee, everybody become a member of ISKCON, we want to provide full facility for people, and everyone has that potential. But it’s not all going to happen overnight. And Prabhupada directly said, make them sympathizers.
If we can help people appreciate our movement, then it opens so many doors. It’s spiritual advancement for them just to appreciate us, it’s spiritual advancement. And as Prabhupada says, because we’re in the material world, we need help.
So rather than thinking us versus them, and alienating people, sometimes offending people, unnecessarily criticizing people, we can see that actually, we’re in the material world, we need people’s help. Here’s a person that can help us. Maybe he’s a meat eater, he can still help us.
Maybe he’s an atheist, he can still help us. Maybe this neighbor is total nonsense, but they can still help us. At least they can stop complaining to the police about our morning kirtans, if we build a little relationship with them.
So those are some of the ways that in the communications ministry, we try to engage with the world. Yeah. So two are interested in sympathizers.
That’s quite a different paradigm from, like I said, making people devotees. And because if we have this almost one zero mentality, so to the extent we try to pull people in, those who don’t come in also, it seems get pulled out, get pushed out. And then we end up making, making enemies unnecessarily quite often.
Yes, because it’s just like, you know, they sometimes they talk about in family dynamics, say the father wanted to be a famous football player. He wasn’t successful. So he has a son.
So he tries to force his son to be a famous football player. The son wants to play, you know, the tabla. No, no, you can’t play tabla, you have to be.
And sometimes, you know, people, their lives are ruined because they’re forced instead of saying, OK, you know, in a Christian conscience example, OK, play the tabla for Krishna or play football for Krishna. In America, there’s a young man now who comes from a devotee family. And last time I heard, he’s playing professional football.
So he has those particular skills. So maybe one day he becomes famous and I don’t, maybe one day they interview him. You know, what is it that inspires you? Well, I’m a vegetarian, first of all, the 300 pound vegetarian.
And I offer my food to Krishna. I don’t know what he’s going to say. But, you know, for somebody to come in and say, no, no, you have to, you know, shave your head and move in the ashram, be a brahmachari.
No, that’s not what he’s meant to do. You know, some people came to Prabhupada and they wanted to paint. Some people wanted to play music.
Some people became big, big organizers. Some people learned to dress the deities. Some people just gave a little bit of money.
You know, some people helped incorporate the ISKCON and that’s all they did. And Prabhupada wasn’t like, no, no, you have to join or it’s useless. And, you know, you’re bringing back all these classic stories of the drunk who stumbles into 26th Second Avenue.
Some rolls of toilet paper and Prabhupada said, just see how easy it is to do service. I mean, devotees were shocked. They were watching.
How’s Prabhupada going to react to this bum who smells of alcohol stumbling into the little 26th Second Avenue? But Prabhupada’s vision was, ah, just see, he has some bhakti. He wants to do service. This might be a silly question.
Did Prabhupada even use toilet paper at all? I don’t know that question. You’ll have to ask Hari Sori Prabhupada. I don’t know.
Yeah. But either way, Western is coming, something they had in the bathroom, the toilet area, because they wouldn’t know what a lota filled with water was. Yeah, that’s true.
Oh, yeah, that’s a good point. So just think about Prabhupada in the early days. Yeah.
There was a public toilet in the back of the little temple room there. Yeah, I remember. I see the 26th Second Avenue.
I’ve seen that. Yeah. I had a discussion with Kalakant Prabhu a month ago and he made an interesting point.
He said, ISKCON in the 60s and ISKCON in the 70s was quite different. And he says that we, in our movement, have standardized ISKCON of the 70s. But whereas in Krishna House, he says we are trying to recreate the mood of the 60s.
And he said, in the 60s, it was more of a family atmosphere. And there was not so much of a demand that you have to do this and you don’t have to do this. But by the 70s, when it became very big, the demands had to be standards and all those things.
So in a sense, the wall started getting big. So that was a very striking observation. And some of the incidents you said reminded me of that.
Yeah, and I would just add to that, I think that we should look and see what were the things we did very well in the 60s and keep those alive. And what were the things we didn’t do very well? And what were the things that we did well in the 70s and keep those? And what were the things we didn’t do very well? I mean, Krishna Consciousness is a culture of self-reflection, self-improvement, you know, self-critique, community critique. And in a broader scale, this is something else in communication, I think it’s very important that healthy people are open to see how they can improve.
You know, people that aren’t so psychologically or spiritually healthy, very difficult for them to take feedback because they’re very weak, perhaps. Insecure. And I think as I said, yeah, insecure.
Or maybe they’re just, you know, they’re not trained to do it. There may be people that are very secure people, but they’re not trained to take feedback. But I think when we as individuals and as a temple, and as an international movement, we take feedback from people.
And sometimes that can be rather harsh, which is one of the things that happens when you engage with people. They’re going to point out to you, you know, what are you doing well? What are you doing wrong? What do they like about what you’re doing? What do they not like about what you’re doing? And we need to be strong enough to be able to say, you’re right, we’re not doing that very well. And take that as emphasis.
I mean, again, rereading the Leelamrita, Prabhupada had two people. I’m trying to remember who they were. One was a military man.
And someone else, an admirer of someone who was reading Back to God, suggested to Prabhupada, you should write books. I think maybe one was a librarian, and then the other was a military man. And Prabhupada said he took that as Krishna speaking to him.
So Prabhupada wasn’t like, wait, you know, I’m a sannyasi, you know, a renounced person, advanced Vaishnava. Who are you? Are you just some little librarian? I think maybe the librarian was a woman. I’m not sure.
You know, you can’t give me instructions. You’re a military man. What do you know? Prabhupada was like, oh, here’s some good ideas I can use for Krishna.
And that was the impetus that the Lord used to have him write so many books. I never thought of that incident in these terms, so that if we have walls, then it’s almost like we’re not able to take anything from them. The whole idea is we have to give them.
And then they only have to come our way. So we will. So that’s interesting aspect that people see that we are able to take feedback.
That also makes them a little more appreciate us for being humble. And that also creates a friendlier attitude. Absolutely.
I mean, in my part of the world, sometimes we meet. Then you generally that they’re like Christians who are a little overly committed to their tradition, from my perspective, and they can be a little pushing, a little obnoxious. And for many of us, it just pushes you away.
Whether someone comes up, says, you know, I’m a Christian. What are you doing? Tell me about what you’re doing. Let me share what I’m doing.
We can have a nice, I can learn from them. I can learn from them. Yeah, I think that as a mature organization, we can be deeply rooted in our conviction about Krishna, Lord Caitanya and Prabhupada, Vaishnav culture and all of our practices.
And at the same time, be open to the fact, like you just mentioned, in the 70s, maybe we swung too far in the 70s. You know, maybe we’re swinging too far right now in some way. Maybe, you know, this or that.
To be self-critical, how can we do better? And, you know, always remember, we’re imperfect beings, and we’re always wanting to learn better. Even in our philosophy, when it’s described prophecies, it’s not like we’ll even ever know everything about Krishna. There’s always more to learn about Krishna eternally.
He’s too, he’s infinite. What to speak of now? We’re just trying to figure out how to live in this world. So much more we can learn.
So when we, so one, and this page is talking about, say, how to avoid breaking the wall. I thought three things you discussed till now. One is understand that they’re potentially already devotees.
They’re all, it’s not that they’re not devotees. Yeah. At least at a philosophical level, you understand that.
And second thing you mentioned is that there are multiple ways in which they can be engaged. So rather than thinking, this is what they have to do. Maybe they can be engaged where they are.
And third thing is we can learn also from them. So this is, so then by all this, we are creating a, as you said, a friendly environment. Now, going back to just that pyramid and wall thing.
So one is that, say, we lower the wall, if it’s like a say a movable wall, something like that, so that there can be flow. So is there, how much, if you go to, how much do we engage with the world? There is, for example, now, earlier you mentioned that if somebody just became a householder, they were considered almost to be like having left the movement. Now, if I can see the fallen, yeah, yeah, fall down.
So now, say now it’s some devotees say, we speak to devotees in India. We have got good outreach programs in top colleges. So then there are some students who are very passionate about their engineering, about their studies.
So they would probably in future become big scientists and researchers and stuff like that. And sometimes when we become Krishna conscious, the idea is that, okay, you do good studies, you get good marks, but focus your energy primarily on your, on your Krishna consciousness, on practicing it, on sharing it. So if you consider from the level of engagement with the world, say if a devotee has a passion for their profession, so would that, now, if the profession is, say, if somebody’s in music and they can do music for Krishna, it’s easier, but their profession doesn’t have anything directly connected with Krishna, then how much is like a passionate engagement with one’s profession? Now, I’m not using the word passion here in the sense of the mode of passion, but passion more in the sense of a great drive or great attraction.
So is this, I’m going off a different track now. No, no, it’s very good. When I was a new devotee in Denver, Colorado, I remember some man came to the temple and he really wanted to be a devotee and he was a concert pianist.
He played piano. Okay. And typical engagement for new devotees and for us in those days, especially, was you were asked to wash pots.
There were always so many pots to wash. Big, big Sunday feast and so many offerings a day. So he had to wash pots.
So washing pots meant you put your hands in hot, hot water. Sometimes there’s knives. Sometimes your fingers get hit by a pot, this and that.
And for a concert pianist to ask him to take his hands and put them at risk was very foolish. And as I remember it, that was a huge block for him. And he pretty much went away because we had this idea, a new devotee, you have to wash pots.
When I was new, I had to wash pots. You’re new, you have to wash pots. Same way, you know, when I was a new devotee, I lived as a Brahmachari for 10 years or one year.
You have to live in the ashram for one year, etc. And that’s just not true. And, you know, different, even we know, we look at the life of Srila Prabhupada, recently re-reading Leelamrita.
And it explains that Prabhupada’s own father was thinking, well, I could give my son to some sannyasi. He could grow up. But who actually, where is he going to be protected? Who’s going to actually cultivate him as the Vaishnavas that his father wanted him to be? So somebody could say, oh, Prabhupada was never a Brahmachari.
He didn’t live in the ashram. Well, time, place and circumstance, his father did the best for his Krishna consciousness. So I mean, that’s the essential thing.
And I know I’ve seen in some of the temples I’m involved in. Sometimes there’s devotees, congregational devotees. And sometimes they’re very enthusiastic, but sometimes a little immature.
And they have a preaching program or Bhakti Vriksha or different names they use for programs at their homes. And sometimes in their mind, everyone that comes, we’re trying to make disciples. Everyone is coming to meet with this pyramid, right? Like you said, so many people come.
So we introduce them and slowly, slowly, we want to make disciples. And if they’re coming, but they don’t show any interest in becoming a disciple or chanting 16 rounds, then we filter them out. Because that’s not what we’re looking for.
I think that’s grossly wrong. I think it’s personally, I feel it’s a violation of Krishna consciousness. It’s immature and it’s harmful.
Because we have to have a big scope, which is we have temples where we’re going to have. We want to make sannyasis. We want to make brahmacharis.
We want to make temple residents. We want to make people that if they’re not full time, they get 50% or 75% of their income to the temple that come every single month. We want that class of commitment, but not everyone’s going to do it.
Especially in the beginning. And most people are going to be one step at a time. So we have to create an environment.
Everyone feels welcome and everyone can make progress. You know, we should a little bit of like they talk about being in the stretch zone. We want people in the stretch zone.
But if we put so much pressure on people, as you said, they’ll leave. And there’s even a letter like that from Prabhupada in the early days. He said, when new people come, they shouldn’t be pushed prematurely into the temples because if you do, they’ll leave.
Prabhupada also said, just as you said a few moments ago. You know, this brings one point that there is standardization. And there is, we could say individualization.
So that this is the standard thing you have to do as a devotee. But people are individuals. So is standardization at one level a result of institutionalization? Or especially when an institution becomes big, we will have to create some standards.
But how much do because in one sense, the Vedic mentality comes in when we have the standards. We are following the standards and this person is following the standards. So how much room for individualization can we create? If you look at the first purpose of ISKCON, he probably wrote it is to systematically propagate Christian consciousness, right? Systematically propagate spiritual knowledge.
He didn’t even say. And correct the imbalance of values. Yes.
He didn’t say to standardize. If you say there’s a standard, that implies there’s one standard and everything else is to use your analogy outside the wall. If you say it’s systematic, just like if you go education is a system.
There’s a system for kindergartners is the term they use in America. When they’re four or five years old, they come and they play all day long. That’s the system.
There’s a system for first graders. There’s a system for sixth graders. There’s different standards at different levels, but it’s all part of a system to help people advance.
And if you’re really smart, like say Radhika Raman Prabhu in America, when he was 12 or something, he went to high school with the 17 year olds. So the standards were at 12, you should study this, but they advanced him because the system was meant to promote education. And similarly, if someone’s a little slow or struggling in a certain area, they put you into a group with younger students because the purpose of the system is to help train you, not to force you into some standard.
Frankly, it’s impersonal and ignores the fact we’re all humans. And you know, all of us, like, you know, I’m pretty good about certain things. There’s other things I’m not good at at all.
And Prabhu Chaitanya Prabhu, maybe you have the same thing. There’s certain things you’re maybe you’re really good at. Some things you’re not good at all.
And if someone comes in and says, here’s the standard, you know, new to me, you have to be able to climb a tree in a minute and a half. Sorry, I can’t do that. I don’t have that ability.
I used to be able to stay up all night long for Ratha Yatra events and things like that. But these days, I got to go home and go to sleep. I don’t have that capacity anymore.
Very, I never thought of this very clear difference between systematic and standardized. So systematic means basically, it’s like there are paths. We could continue the pyramid example.
We could say there are different paths to go up the pyramid. And there is a system. OK, if you take this path, you might go slowly.
And this is what you encounter. You take this path and go this way up. So it’s systematic, but it is not standardized.
And, you know, in the normal. The goal of a guru or an elder or a parent or a preacher or a leader is to try to help people work their way up, you know, according to what they can do and not force that. But to see what everybody, you know, what are the unique talents and abilities that everyone, everyone has and help them.
I just read a purport this morning. I gave class for the devotees in at the Krishna house. And it was about Sati and Sati within the Daksha Yajna.
And it’s and probably it’s 4, 4, 12 probably talks about an advanced person sees the good qualities in others. They don’t see the bad. So in a similar way, I think an advanced person and then those of us that aren’t advanced, but we’re trying to act like that to please our gurus, please, Prabhupada.
We see the potential in people. We fan the spark, as we used to say so many times. And wherever somebody is inclined, we encourage that.
And we don’t focus on the negative. So let’s say there’s a police officer that’s very enthusiastic to help us, you know, get, get permits because he thinks we’re nice people. But he’s an atheist and he’s a meat eater.
Okay, gradually, maybe we can help him get over that. But we don’t reject him. We engage him.
We take his help. We appreciate that. This is just when you’re talking about police officer.
If you look at Prabhupada’s conversations with VIPs, Prabhupada has robust intellectual exchanges. But I think Prabhupada is never demanding any lifestyle changes from them. Prabhupada doesn’t even tell, if he meets Anant Gandhi or somebody like that, he’s not telling him to chant Hare Krishna or do this or don’t do this.
So Prabhupada is also multifaceted in the way he approaches different people. Yes, yes. And another story comes to my mind with Reena Anandamaharaj talks about how, you know, I’m just going to have the basic flow.
I’m going to have the details. But he was with Prabhupada and he drank some water and took a little prasadam, something just popped in. And then Prabhupada chastised him because he didn’t immediately go and wash his hands.
And then a little later, there were more people in the room and they spread some prasadam out. Reena Anandamaharaj was thinking, okay, I’ve heard from my guru. These people have to wash their hands.
So he went to get like a pitcher and something, you know, somehow to help them and Prabhupada chastised him again. Why are you making so much trouble? So I think he was thinking this is the standard, but no, what’s the system? They can learn to wash their hands after they eat later. Right now, we want them to like Krishna and to understand the value of it and the depth of it.
That’s the first step. These other things can come later. And, you know, I think something that comes to my mind too is like in those early years, in those 70s, there were a lot of, you know, young sannyasis were coming up and young brahmacharis.
And all of us brahmacharis, we looked forward to becoming sannyasis. That was the goal. And when we didn’t, a lot of people became discouraged and went away.
You know, they felt, okay, I can’t be a sannyasi. I should just leave Krishna consciousness. And that was a tremendous loss.
And, you know, now we see, you know, sannyasis, a few years ago, I started noticing this maybe 10 years ago, sannyasis going to weddings of gurukulis, second generation devotees. Now, in one sense, why is a sannyasi going to a wedding and blah, blah, blah. But no, those same sannyasis are elders.
They’re honored persons. They’re people that give blessings. And if I’m a young man or young woman, I’m getting married and some sannyasi, who’s 50, 60 years old.
I’ve known him since I was a kid. I look up to him. I revere him.
And he comes to my wedding. How much that binds my heart to him and to Krishna. Because, you know, at these important stages of life, a person, you know, sets aside, okay, for himself, he has no interest in getting married.
He doesn’t deal with these kind of mundane things. But to help me and to show his care, he’s willing to come and be there. And how important that is to me.
So these are some of the transitions and the maturity I’ve been able to see in our movement over the last years. And it’s encouraging and it’s inspiring. And it gives me strength to see that we can take that kind of youthful enthusiasm and mix it with some mature wisdom.
Beautiful. So, you know, what was considered strictness, or what were, see like earlier we might have black and white mentality. This is strictness and this is laxity.
But now we might understand that in the name of strictness, we are simply alienating people. And they’re actually not being lax, but we are actually connecting people and bringing them, bringing Krishna deeper into their hearts. Yes.
We should be strict with ourselves and flexible with others. Yeah. You know, and it’s right out of the Gita, right? Sixth chapter, Krishna says, one who’s moderate or one who’s regulated, it’s translated differently sometimes, in their habits of eating, sleeping, working and recreation, can conquer all the pains of the material world by the practice of yoga.
So that sense of balance and moderation, very, very important for ourselves and the way we interact with the world. Yeah. So this reminds me of Niyamagraha actually.
That means sometimes this is the rule or this is the standard, but the purpose of the standard is to help people rise up, not to make them feel bad or to push them away. So if we stick to the letter of the rule without, while forgetting the purpose of the rule, then that would be a problem. So you could say a system has different standards at different levels, like an educational system.
And the key is to find out what standard works for the person at that level. Yes. Yes.
Yes. And then when you talk about engaging with the outside world at large, as you mentioned earlier, we can bring people to Krishna consciousness. We can make friends with people.
We can learn from them. And this is very important. We talk about this as one of the principles of communications.
We have five principles. One of them is to look for win-win or mutually beneficial relationships. And I give an example of this again that I just read in the Leela Mrita, that famous part of Prabhupada’s early outreach internationally.
He tried to go to that cultural event in Japan and he was going to bring the beautiful 50 paintings, the description of autumn from the Bhagavatam, and eventually it didn’t work out. But kind of a subplot that I saw rereading Leela Mrita recently, the organizers at one point asked Prabhupada if he would write to the mayors of those cities in Japan about the programs that they were hosting. So they’re talking to Prabhupada, you please come and you spread your Vedic Vaishnav teachings and the glories of India’s spiritual culture.
That will help you, Swamiji. We need your help to convince the mayors, the government leaders, the political leaders of our place, so we get whatever they wanted. I don’t know, the details aren’t told, you know.
More money for the government, more support, more publicity. And at this point Prabhupada wasn’t even committed to go. Prabhupada could have.
He wanted to go, but he wasn’t for sure he was going to be able to. Prabhupada could have said, well, no, no, no, I’m not going to help you with your mundane event because if I’m not there and Krishna’s not there, it’s all my, it’s all useless. He wasn’t like building walls.
He wrote to those mayors on their request to try to help promote their event. So he’s getting help from them and he’s willing to help them. I mean, there’s so many stories, you know, Prabhupada walking on the morning walk and you’re walking down and walking across somebody’s lawn.
You know, in America, private property is a big deal. Walking across somebody’s little pathway to turn off the water that’s dripping from their faucet. Why is he doing that? Well, what do we care if they, you know, they can waste their money, you know, blah, blah, etc.
But no, it’s Krishna, it’s Krishna’s water, you know, and let me help them by turning off the water. You know, there’s stories of Prabhupada walking a morning walk and somebody’s sitting in their car two or three mornings in a row. Prabhupada notices the man.
He walks over and knocks on the window. The man rolls down his window, Prabhupada says, good morning. Just a gentlemanly thing.
You know, there’s other stories. Prabhupada on a morning walk in Juhu Beach with, I think it was Juhu, with some of his senior disciples. They walked by some Mayavadi sannyasi.
And as soon as they passed, Prabhupada like slammed his cane down to his face. He said, why you did not pay obeisances? He’s a sannyasi. Why you did not pay obeisances? You know, we may think, wait, but they’re Mayavadis and they’re offenders, you know, all the different things we learn.
But in terms of the personal interaction, Prabhupada said, no, he’s a sannyasi. You have to pay obeisances to a sannyasi. You have to respect them.
Doesn’t mean we follow them, doesn’t mean we agree with their philosophy, but we have to respect them. So in the same way, the police, the government people, the neighbors, you know, making friends with people, you know, trying to gradually introduce Krishna to them or trying to, you know, have a favorable environment so they don’t complain about the noise or, you know, maybe they allow, like in Washington, D.C. where I live, the temple president, Ananda Randhavan Dasi, she’s cultivated very nice relationships with the other religious communities. So on Janmashtami, we use their parking lots.
We have buses, we have way too many people. We have thousands of people, nowhere to park. So we have buses we hire and they drive and park people in like at the church and I think there’s a mosque.
I think, I know there’s a mosque part of the group. There’s like a Catholic church, a Protestant church, maybe a synagogue, I’m not sure of the mix. And we help each other.
And we don’t agree theologically, but we value that they’re also trying to help people be God conscious according to what they understand. We’re trying to do the best we can. We’re neighbors, you know, we’re still neighbors.
Even the atheists were neighbors with the atheists. So, you know, why put up unnecessary walls? So in this way, there’s mutual relationships. And sometimes she goes and speaks at their place and sometimes they come to our place, take Prasadam and, you know, gradually, gradually the relationships grow.
Yes, just one thought struck me that in some ways there are, there are certain philosophy, we have philosophy and we have practices. And we often label people based on their, whether they agree with our philosophy or not, or whether they’re adopting the practice, they’re following certain practices or not. Say, for example, somebody’s meat or not.
But, you know, people are not just defined only by their ideology or by their particular behavior, particular habit. So people are multifaceted. And so the culture, like you talk about the cultural interaction, just good morning or whatever.
So we don’t necessarily have to look at people’s particular practices or even people’s particular beliefs. So you can just connect with people at a human level. So because in our, could it be that this is this question, could it be that because in our tradition, we emphasize a lot on philosophy and on practices, then they become almost like filters through which we see everyone.
So if somebody is, and then that’s how the walls come up. So I’m just, now I’m trying to understand what brings the walls up. So we shouldn’t have the walls up, but could it be this is something, our own overemphasis on seeing people through certain prisms? I think that’s a good word, overemphasis.
Because there’s no doubt the Shastra says, the deep, dark well of household life, if one does agree, maybe talks about, woman is a source of illusion for man. There’s verses that talk about a woman who thinks her husband is the provider or sees the husband, the man becomes Maya for her. Wealth and then all these things are described as dangers for devotees.
I mean, we had Bhard Maharaj, the whole chapters in the Bhagavatam about how he was so great, and yet he got attached to a deer. I mean, there’s a lot of warnings. So we can’t minimize those.
Prabhupada talks about in the Gita, in the Purport, he talks about there’s danger even on the Royal Roads. So the caution has to be there. But we don’t overly emphasize the caution.
We’re Prabhupada anugas. Prabhupada didn’t stay in Vrindavan. How risky was it for him health-wise to get on that boat? How risky was it for him to violate what most people thought was Hindu Dharma, which is to not get on that boat? How risky was it for, you know, Shakti Vishavatar, but just in general, one lone person to go to a place like America and try to bring Krishna? How risky was it for him to send his disciples all around the world? I mean, those were phenomenal risks.
But they took it because they had that vision of being open and trying to, you know, build relationships and bring people to Christian consciousness. So we have to be aware of the risk, but not to the point that we become stagnant or stifled or stereotypical. Because let’s say, you know, Prabhupada came, again, I just read, just been reading the last few days, so it’s fresh on my mind.
Prabhupada was staying with Dr. Mishra, the uptown Swami. And when he moved to this location on the Bowery, which was about as low as you can go in the social hierarchy, it’s described sometimes people would die. They’d die outside of the, you know, he’d try to get in, there’d be a dead body sitting outside where he’s trying to get up to his place.
And a different type of people came there. You know, the younger people, artists and musicians. And the older people, the kind of stuffy people, they were a little less comfortable.
They stopped coming. But Prabhupada didn’t say, no, no, I don’t want to talk to hippies. I don’t want to talk to young people.
I don’t want to talk to people that take drugs. I don’t want to talk to people that have an illicit relationships. I want to talk to anybody who wants to hear about Krishna and anyone who’s willing to help about Krishna, to help Krishna, help me in my service to Krishna.
So there’s this like openness of trying to, like you gave the pyramid, we want to help everyone come up, but we don’t force people. We appreciate people. You know, it’s like a book distributor.
Again, I remember, you know, in my early years, and lately it’s changed, and I fall at the feet of all the book distributors, especially by Shashika Prabhu for what he’s done for cultural transformation and Vijaya Prabhu and others. We were kind of pushed, you know, if somebody wants to give you $5, you should push them for 10. You know, try to get them to give as much as they possibly can.
And we made a lot of enemies. Because it was like, I’m determining how much this person should give to Krishna rather than inspire them. I’m trying to force them.
And it made a lot of enemies. And I know these days, by Shashika Prabhu and the book distributing ministries, they teach devotees, no, no, first you just want to be grateful to people. And then they just touch the book.
So that kind of spirit of giving and openness and gratitude and appreciation. And when you have that, people automatically they give you $10 or $20 or something else. Or if they don’t, next time they think like, wow, those were such nice people.
Next time I see them, I have to get one of those books. And planting that desire is at least as important as whether or not they take that book. Because in my day, many times people would buy a book.
I don’t think this ever happened in India, but in America, it happened in that spirit of the 70s. They would buy a book, walk down the hallway in the airport and rip that book into shreds because we had been so pushy. And at least me, maybe nobody else did, but I did it a few times.
I had been so pushy and frankly obnoxious in the way we dealt with them. They were angry and frustrated. They went away bitter against Krishna.
So, okay, we were young, we were immature, we were trying. There was benefit. A lot of books went out.
We can’t look back and say that was a useless era. Not at all. That was very important.
A lot of wonderful things happened. A lot of many, many people came. A lot of those people who were offended later on, they got over it.
It wasn’t like, shut the walls down. But looking back, we should learn from those shortcomings and we should be more mature. Like the father, he forces his one son to play tabla.
Maybe the second time around, he realizes, okay, this son wants to play violin, let him play violin. But let me help the best violin player. And let me help him play violin for Krishna.
Yes. You mentioned out of humility, certain extreme things which you did in the earlier years. I think about it also, even now, if I hear some of the talks I gave about 10-15 years ago, there are so many times I wince when I hear some points.
How could I have been so judgmental, such generalization, such blankets, criticisms. So is it almost like a universal phase in the growth of a spiritualist that initially we will be somewhat judgmental and then we will… So like earlier, we talked about building the walls. So is it that everybody will go through that phase of being a little judgmental and then maturing? I’m not such a scholar of these things, but I think so.
I’m sure it’s there in the Shastra. I’m sure that’s just a symptom. I mean, you know, Kanishadikari, he only sees Krishna in the temple.
He doesn’t appreciate devotees. And then at the highest stage, you know, of course, we can’t imitate this. And what I’m talking about is not trying to be a pseudo-Uttamadikari.
But in the advanced stage, one starts seeing everybody’s connected with Krishna. And therefore, we’re reconnecting people. You know what I mean? Like I was thinking, I just have the ISKCON Interface Statement here, which is online.
Everyone, if you haven’t read this, I really encourage devotees to take a look. You can just look that up. Just Google ISKCON Interface Statement.
And it talks about the broad-mindedness that we should have in relationship with people of other tradition. And there’s a couple of quotes here that are referenced here. This is Bhakti Nontakar.
It is not proper to constantly propagate the controversial superiority of the teachers of one’s own country over those of another country or faith, you can understand. Although one may, nay, one should cherish such a belief in order to acquire steadiness in a faith of your own. But no good can be affected to the world by such quarrels.
So in the beginning, we have to go very, very, very deep in our own Christian consciousness. And as I mentioned, like my experience in Detroit, I needed to be separated from that place. Stronger, then I’m not so threatened by those things.
So maybe when I’m in Brahmacharya, you know, women and my own desire to, you know, exploit women is a big problem for me. I got to keep away from women. But when I’m in Charisanyasi, within the proper etiquette, I can go to people’s homes and I can appreciate, thank you, Manaji, for cooking.
And how are you and Prabhu doing together? And, oh, you know, show me the new baby, you know, whatever. Because if we’re mature, those things, we’re not threatened by those because we start to see it as Krishna’s energy, not just Maya. And again, not sentimental.
We can’t be artificial. We have to be very, very careful. But to find that balance.
Yeah, beautiful that you started with that there is precaution and there are risks. So in a sense, maturity means to know when we should be cautious and when we should be taking risks. So if we are taking risks prematurely, that’s a problem.
But if you’re excessively cautious, then also we will not be able to be effective. Yes. Yeah.
And I think in the beginning, it’s good to be cautious. Overly cautious. But we can’t be paralyzed.
And as we mature, we have to be willing to take reasonable risks. And part of that risk, we have to make sure we have good association. We have to make sure we’re deeply rooted in Christian consciousness.
We have to watch out for the warning signs. You know, if I start, even as a preacher, I go to someone’s home and I start thinking, wow, you know, this is a beautiful home. Maybe I should have a house like this.
Prabhu mentions that if a sannyasi thinks like that, he’s immediately fallen. So the rest, we start thinking, oh, you know, these people are so nice. Maybe I should associate with them more than devote.
We have to watch out for those things. That’s Maya eats away at our Christian consciousness. And be careful with that.
Prabhu said, your first duty is to become Christian conscious and save yourself. So we can’t be naive. But again, not be entrenched in this us versus them.
It broadened our views. Yeah, that’s cool. You know, maybe I can mention one last story.
And then I actually, maybe we could continue at some other time. But in real life, I’m supposed to go to participate in a ceremony for Bhakti Turma. But I’ll mention one thing.
When I first organized an interfaith dialogue in Boston, and we had some very good people, some very, very big scholar on new religious movements. We had a big professor later on into Harvard. We had one of the biggest people writing an interfaith from the Christian side.
And the many senior devotees, Tamar Krishnamaraj was there. Shona Karishi from the Oxford Center. Many, many others.
Some men, some ladies, et cetera. And I chose the topic. I was the convener.
And the topic was the kingdom of God. And I chose that topic because I knew Christians have an idea of kingdom of God. And we have a kingdom of God.
But I thought we have so much to say on this one. We’re really strong on this. We can really shine in this dialogue.
They’re going to see what we have to offer. And it was a two or three day event. And maybe halfway through it at one point, one of the people there said, why don’t we go around and talk about our own experience or thoughts about kingdom of God in our tradition and how it inspires us.
And devotees were talking about, it’s so lovely because Krishna’s there in Vrindavan. He plays a flute and plays with the cows. And the Christians didn’t have much to say, frankly.
And I was feeling a little proud, I think. And I got to one scholar, Larry Shin, who’s written, did a lot of writing, a lot of studying about Nisga’at. He’s a Methodist minister, also a PhD.
And he said something to this effect. He said, you know, in my tradition, it doesn’t really talk that much about the kingdom of God. But what it teaches me is I should try to help manifest the kingdom of God in this world.
I should try to be a good Christian. I should try to help my fellow Christian. I should try to help my neighbor.
I should try to learn to serve others. I should try to alleviate the pain in this world. And this was like 1996 or so.
This is right when Nisga’at was becoming aware of the history of child abuse. There was a lot of social upheaval, in a sense, in Nisga’at about, you know, you know, the new Vrindavan community had been kicked out and was just coming back in. And we were starting to realize that, you know, we didn’t have everything figured out.
And as this wonderful man, Larry Shin, was speaking, I felt myself shrinking. Because I’m thinking, oh, we have this beautiful philosophy. But then as he’s speaking, I’m thinking, yeah, how well are we manifesting Vaishnava culture in our communities? I mean, obviously, we’re doing wonderful things, but there’s a lot of room for improvement, especially in those days.
How well are we taking care of our families? How well are we taking care of women? How well are we taking care of children? How well do our neighbors all love us? Because we’re such nice people. You know, are people appreciating us? Are the governments stepping up to help us? Because we’ve done such a good job telling them who we are. Are we manifesting what it means to be a Vaishnava the way he’s given his life to try to be a good Christian? And that really, it struck me like, oh my gosh, we have a lot to learn from these people.
Not just about us telling them about Krishna’s blue and he plays the flute. That’s wonderful. We can share that.
That’s an amazing revelation given to us. But we have a lot of things to learn from other people. And if we’re open to a win-win engagement, and again, it doesn’t mean we say, okay, we’re going to start eating the bad stuff they eat.
No, obviously, that’s not the point. We can take the things because, you know, look at the Christians, look at Muslims, look at Jews, look at our neighbors, look at, you know, they all have things we can learn. And I think part of being a devotee of Krishna is seeing the Krishna’s everywhere.
If Krishna speaks to me, as Prabhupada had a military man and a librarian, he said, Krishna spoke through those people to tell them to publish books. We certainly can have neighbors and Christians and the police and the government and scholars and these other people also, in addition to making friends. And some of them may become devotees.
But in addition to that, to be able to open to hear from them, how we can do better, I think is very much a big part of what it means to be Krishna conscious. Yes, thank you. Maybe I’ll just quickly summarize.
And if I miss out something that you can add. So we discussed, eventually, I think our topic morphed into something like going beyond the Vedic mentality or creating a friendly environment, creating a devotee-friendly environment. So we started by talking about in Nilamrit, you said, Prabhupada was intent as well as flexible in how he was reaching out to people.
And then we talked about how there is, initially, there was a very strong insider-outsider kind of mentality and the geographical and transit will consider equal. So then he said, it’s not just like a boundary, but a wall. And then that wall will prevent us from sharing Krishna consciousness also.
So for that purpose, at one level, we need to protect ourselves. So in that sense, it’s required in the initial years of a devotee’s life. But eventually we need to lower the walls.
And we discussed overall some ways to, we also use another metaphor of a pyramid. So ways to lower the walls. One way is that we understand that even if people don’t become devotees, they can become friends.
They can become friendly. So it’s not a one zero thing. And also you talk about, we can learn, they can do things for other us, apart from becoming devotees also.
Where they are, they might be able to do a lot of things also. Then we can also learn from them. And if we try to force them, then they might actually, it might backfire and then become enemies.
So you made a very significant difference between systematic and standardized. So that means, systematic means there can be different standards for different people at different levels, just like in education. And it is our maturity to understand where a person is and encourage them appropriately.
So eventually we want people to rise up the pyramid, but wherever they are, we want to encourage and help them from where they are. And then toward the end, you discuss several experiences of how the Prabhupada did not, Prabhupada was always cultured and gentlemanly with everyone. And sometimes based on the filter of philosophy or certain regulative principles practice, we might almost dehumanize others and then not give them adequate respect and cordiality.
And you concluded toward the end by talking about how when we, the same system, the example of striking that as one standard for one person that wash your hands after eating, but not the same standard for others. So that maturity, and you talked also about that instead of trying to prove our superiority to others, other traditions, if you try to learn from them, then even if they have lesser theological revelations than us, still there is something we can learn from them. So I would say one of the strongest ways to break this veda mentality is having a learning attitude.
And if we have a learning attitude, that would also mean that we will know, this is not something that I need to learn, or I want to learn. So there are some things which we don’t want to adopt from them, but that learning attitude could help us. Any concluding thoughts Prabhu? Yeah, that’s a very wonderful what you said.
And one thing enters my mind is that, you know, described in the Bhagavatam, right? The different brahmanas and how they’re, you know, they have their what, 25, 26 different gurus, and they learn this from the bird, and this from the prostitute, and this from the snake, and this from this. So, you know, to have that kind of view, what can I learn here? You know, like the dog, right? We’ve been to learn loyalty from the dog. You know, and yesterday I was walking around a pond near my house, and there’s a crane, you know, and he stands so stiffly.
So, you know, how can I be so fixed in my intention to Krishna? So seeing how everything can remind us, and in what way it’s… I think when we become a little more advanced, at least me, because there may be so many people who are already there, but I think we’ll wake up every morning really enthusiastic to see in what ways is Krishna going to appear and teach me today. How is he going to come today? Where will I see him today? Where will I connect deep with him? And one final comment is when we talk about, like you said earlier, making people devotees, that’s really arrogant. We should think, I mean, Krishna’s already with this person.
He has his relationship with Krishna. It’s not like I’m going to come and give him a relationship. He has his relationship with Krishna.
I’m just coming as his humble servant to help him remember, you know, to remember. That’s all I’m doing. It’s not like I’m some transcendentalist he’s lost in darkness completely, you know, and there’s no connection to God and I’m going to give him God.
God’s already there. And if God wants, if Krishna wants, he’s going to use me to help connect this person a little bit. If I do my part right, and if my part is angry or arrogant to this or that, I may not be as effective as I could be in helping him reconnect with Krishna.
So I should take your leave. Thank you very much for your time and your wonderful association. I look forward to having more discussions with you in future also.
Please, let’s do that. Thank you so much, Prabhu.