The Monk’s Podcast 35 with Krishna Kshetra Swami – The dialogue between faith and doubt

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Thank you, Maharaj, for joining today for this podcast. It's an honor to have you. Thank you for having me.

It's nice to, to join you from Poland. Yes, Maharaj. I've read several of your books.

Of course, I read first thing that I read about, about you was your deity worship master's thesis, which broadened my understanding of deity worship. Then I've read several of your other articles, and I have appreciated how you bring both devotional fidelity and intellectual rigor together. So maybe we could discuss that as a launching pad for our discussion today.

Okay. Yeah. So, you know, maybe you can tell how, you know, you were a leader in our movement for a long time, and then you chose to go into academia for doing expanding your study and outreach.

So can you tell us a little background of what inspired you to do that? Okay. I was, I got involved in preparation of the ISKCON deity worship manual called Pancharatra Pradipa in the early 90s in Mayapur. And I was asked to be the main organizer of that, the chairperson.

We had a committee with five or six devotees. And so that involved various functions, gathering together research, work, and and coordinating and so on. And most practically, yeah, I would say all of the Sanskrit translation work was being done by His Holiness Bhanu Swami.

And this was all extremely valuable. He was part of this team. But as I was doing this work, one of my concerns was my own lack of Sanskrit knowledge.

I felt, you know, I'm supposed to be doing this compilation and who am I? What is my, I don't even know really basic Sanskrit, so I'm depending on others. But okay, I did the best I could. But this, there was a gradual increase of feeling I had that I would like to get some kind of training in Sanskrit.

And I was exploring what are the different options. There were some devotees in Vrindavan, who were teaching Harinamamrita Vyakaran of Jiva Goswami. And yeah, that looked interesting, but I wasn't so sure is that the way to go.

And then I met His Holiness Sri Dayananda Das Goswami. And over a period of two, maybe three years, he was encouraging me to go back to university because I had been a university student, a dropout really, before I joined the devotees. I was at University of California in Berkeley.

He said, why don't you go back to school, back to university, you can study Sanskrit there. And you can get, as he put it, you'll get credit for it. His point was, you can get a degree, you can get other degrees, which will be recognized in the wider world.

And being recognized in the wider world, you'll be a person that, you know, people may listen to outside of the small circle of devotees. Long story short, I was persuaded not only by him, but eventually by His Holiness Tamil Krishna Goswami to make the leap. Now, in those days, it was much more of a leap than it is today in terms of ISKCON ethos.

This was 1995. I finally decided to, I decided I will try. Let me see how I do.

Let me take one semester and see how I manage. So, it was easy to get back into University of California. Simultaneously, I transferred campus from Berkeley to Santa Barbara, because Santa Barbara has the largest department of religious studies on the western side of the USA.

They have a very large department. And they have Sanskrit training and other South Asian languages. So, that was 1995.

And I continued. First, I had to finish my undergraduate degree, which I did as a marathon. I sort of squeezed two years into a little over one year.

Then I applied for a master's program at a private institution. It's called the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. It's just two blocks away from the university.

This is essentially a Christian institution, but they were offering a degree in the study of religion as a secular course. Hmm, so I took that I did two year master's degree course full time. It was very intense.

And then, yeah, then I ended up at Oxford. Oh, okay. So, during these years, when you say full time, you, you had suspended your normal services in ISKCON at that time or you're continuing those also must have been very difficult.

It was sort of half and half my, my duties in ISKCON. By this time. Well, I had finished up this project of compiling Pancharatra Pradeep, we managed to get it printed in the Mayapur BBT.

And one, one duty I had, I was around this time, I was asked to be the ISKCON Minister of Deity Worship. So I was, I was doing what I could for that service, but it was quite minimal, because of my studies, and I didn't feel happy about that. So I was quite happy when it became possible to pass on that duty, which I, I did, I think it was 2005, to Kavaca Prabhu, who has, he has really taken it, you know, very seriously, and he's very active, and he's done amazing things with the ministry.

My other duties were, you could say, just traveling and preaching, as we say, mainly in Europe, East Europe. And what I did is, each summer, I came back to Europe and traveled as much as I could, visited devotees, temples, gave lectures, talks. And I kept up, I kept up correspondence pretty well.

And yeah, that was about all that I had to do other than the, the, the academic work. So somehow it worked out. Amazing.

So, so when you, originally, you said that you could also reach a broader audience beyond the ISKCON devotee audience. So do you feel that after having completed the doctorate, now through your books or through your seminars or others, you are able to reach a significantly broader audience? I think so, yes. One example, now I give a little plug for my latest book, Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics.

Because we managed to get the book published on what's called Open Access Platform through the publisher, which is an international academic publisher. Up until now, this is now six months, maybe going on seven months. The book's been out and it's been downloaded, digital download, because it's available free of charge.

It's been downloaded 31,000 times. 31,000, that's a big number. Very big.

Okay. So that's, you know, that's reaching somebody is hopefully, okay, they're downloading the book. Hopefully somebody's reading the book also.

Yeah. Also, immediately, was it immediately? No, I stayed in Oxford for another year. I did postdoctoral study preparing my doctoral thesis for publication.

After that, I had opportunity to teach at the University of Florida as an adjunct faculty for two semesters. And then through that, there was one conference that I took part in. And then after that one year, I came back to Oxford and was planning to settle in Oxford more.

And then I got a call inviting me to come teach at Chinese University of Hong Kong. And that ended up being on and off five years. And that has led to other, one thing sort of leads to another.

The people you get to know and the contacts, it was very nice. And yes, through that, we can say, it's also become possible. I've been visiting mainland China, the last, what is it now, eight years, seven years, because I missed this year, because of the pandemic.

And because of my, I mean, very specifically, because of my academic qualification, plus my, I think, also important has been where I got my qualification, Oxford. All over Asia, the name Oxford has a lot of ring, a lot of resonance. If you say you're from Oxford, oh, you're from Oxford, oh, okay.

The doors are opening. So I've had a lot of opportunity giving lectures in universities in China, on all kinds of subjects related to Indian culture and Indian tradition. I have to be very careful there because they're very nervous about religion, talking about religion is, yeah, it has to be done in very careful ways.

Yes, Maharaj, it's amazing. So when these more bigger doors open, then do we also have to say, reconceptualize our definition of outreach? Because here it won't be so much like making people into devotees. Is it more of enhancing, broadening the awareness and perspectives? Or how do you, what is the conception of outreach through such forums? Or do you call it, what do you, what would you call it as? I call it teaching.

Not so much preaching as teaching. And also, you know, lately, I don't know in India if it's the case, but somewhat in the West, there's been discussion among devotees about what's being called bridge preaching. And some devotees have expressed concern that what is this, what is the value of, you know, this bridge preaching, which they are, those who are expressing concern, the concern is that it's so indirect, that it's perhaps watering down the message.

And perhaps ultimately losing the message in something else, which are all legitimate concerns. But when I, some years ago, I was thinking about this, this image of the bridge. And it occurred to me that our whole tradition is a tradition of bridging, of bridge preaching.

This is what we are about. And if you read Chaitanya Charita Amrita, with this in mind, you'll see that what is Lord Chaitanya doing all the time? He is bridge preaching. So it's really a question of whether we're making good bridges that are actually crossing various gaps, to use this analogy, and facilitating for people to cross over the bridge to Krishna consciousness, or are we building that are going nowhere.

But bridging is, I think, what we're all about. When we use, when you use the word, and I like to also say that without, without the counterpart to outreach, which is in reach, hmm, to become Krishna conscious is to become also conscious of ourselves, conscious within, becoming more deeply reflective about ourselves in Krishna consciousness. The two go together, because if it's outreach all the time, eventually, it's not going to be an effective bridge anymore.

And of course, for this, we have our, our sadhana, but sadhana, which is not reflective sadhana may, may not be as effective as, as, as more consciously reflective. Yes, Maharaj. It is a beautiful concept that in one sense, all kind of preaching or teaching is bridging.

In fact, one of the names of Vishnu in Vishnu Sahasranama is Jagata Setu. Setu is a bridge. So, right.

So, in fact, the whole world is like a bridge to return to Vishnu. So, yes, that also. Yeah, that's beautiful.

So, just expanding this point that when we are doing, you're saying about building effective bridges. So, generally, it seems that the broader the audience we want to reach, it is more and more likely that the smaller the steps up this bridge of consciousness, or if you want to take the bridge as a, like a pyramid or going up a mountain, say, we give classes in the temple, we reach to a smaller audience, but we can give a more direct Krishna conscious message. When we are reaching out, say, even to the academic audience, there was a phase in my life, probably between, between 2003 to 2010.

When I was exploring which direction I should go, I joined as a brahmachari in 1996. So, I also explored the option of academic outreach. And I talked with my guides.

And I felt that I could, my interest was more in writing. And I have tried to reach out to mainstream academic publishers, not academic provision, mainstream trade publishers, you might say, and I've been able to get some books there. But one of the challenges I found is that there is a significant amount of critical examination of the tradition within the academic study.

And that can be quite, at one sense, challenging for one's faith. So, another sense, you could also say that the, what we learn within the tradition or the way things are taught, can sometimes make it seem that we have to choose between reason and faith. So, that's why I started by saying that there is this intellectual rigor and devotional fidelity that you, I seen that being brought together in your books.

So, did you face this challenge and or how do you deal with this challenge in your, either your study or your teaching? Yeah, I would say the challenge has been there from day one before, when I first joined the temple. And a nice, a statement that I've always appreciated since I read it from one very senior Christian theologian is that he said, faith is always in dialogue with doubt. Faith is always in dialogue with doubt.

Now, we often hear, no doubt, doubts are demons. And we hear that to have doubt means that one's faith is not solid and so on. So, the location of the doubt might not be within oneself.

It might be in the form of another person, or it might be partially within and partially without. It can be many configurations. Just a minute to clarify.

When you say within another person means that that person is… In other words, you may, let's say you meet an atheist and he is a convinced atheist. Okay, so now you are exchanging, speaking. So, now you are the person of faith who is in dialogue with a person of doubt.

Okay, but this dialogue could be internal also then. The dialogue can be internal also. Okay, yes, Maharaj.

That's a beautiful thought. So, I'm saying that's been there since day one, or even before I joined the devotees. But I think that with the engagement in the academic world, I was given a more sophisticated facilitation of thinking about how to do this dialogue.

And I want to say we sort of put on as a binary, we have faith on one side, reason on the other. The tradition of theology, as it's known in the West, which was mainly developed in medieval Christian Europe, is exactly this concern. How do we apply reason to faith? That was the whole project of theology since the 11th, 12th century in Europe.

Thomas Aquinas was a pioneer among that. Thomas Aquinas was like the Jiva Goswami of the Roman Catholic Church. Because he wasn't so much a pioneer, the pioneers were others in the previous century, but he was more the culmination in the 13th century with his Summa Theologica, Theologia, which was his attempt to sort of bring Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology to bring them together.

That was his whole project. How successful he was is debated. And then the whole project kind of collapsed with the famous William of Ockham, William of Ockham with his Ockham's razor, where he sort of made it a principle that we should question any statement, any theological statement that is superfluous, which is not based on something we can point to as definitely true.

And you could say that's sort of the early form of 20th century positivism. But anyway, my point is that theology is a practice that's been going on in the West since centuries. And this is a practice of bringing faith and reason together.

Now, we also have this in our tradition. It goes back also centuries. The whole commentarial tradition, we can say is a tradition, a theological tradition of reflecting on doctrine, reflecting on principles of faith, and applying reason to them.

And so we have the works of Jiva Goswami, for example, and Srila Rupa Goswami, all the Goswamis. But also, long before them, of course, we have the Vaisnavacharyas, all of them, Ramanujacharya, they were doing theology. So the challenge is, on one level, to update this practice, to apply sometimes modern language, and to comprehend contemporary issues, contemporary theological, philosophical, social issues, the whole gamut.

And then with a clear understanding of what are the concerns, to see how Christian consciousness can address those concerns. Yes, Maharaj. At one level, what attracted me to Krishna consciousness is also that we had rational answers to life's basic questions.

Say, for example, the existence of soul, existence of God, and then the problem of evil, to some extent, at least karma provides a reasonable explanation. Now, there is a reason applied up to a particular level. And then afterward, so at least this was my experience.

And what you said about getting more sophisticated ways of doing the dialogue between faith and doubt, that I, although I have not gotten the academy by studying the works of devotee academics, as well as other academic books, I also got some resources for this. Now, so I'll just give an, if you're okay, I'll give an example of this, then I maybe we can, that can, yes, can further. So, you know, I read, I read Shri Prabhupada's Nila Amrut, and that was the book that inspired me to dedicate my life to Prabhupada's movement.

And then over the years, as I read it again, there are some statements which, which I found it difficult to digest. So, for example, in one place in the Nila Amrut that is said that Prabhupada says that by 2000, there'll be so much pollution on the earth that nobody will be able to live on the surface of the earth. Everybody will have to live like rats underground.

Now, when I read that, I just couldn't understand this. Then I asked, so then I asked one of my prominent spiritual guys, and he told me that for one who has faith, all questions will be answered from within. And then the fact that you are having this kind of doubts means that you are on the track of falling down from spiritual life.

And then after that, he said that he gave some example that in America, in some places, the whole city has been one small or one small part of a city has been made into like a greenhouse where it's completely covered and insulated. That because it becomes the temperature extremes are too much. So I said that is not what Prabhupada is saying over here.

So I, so I, there are several statements like this, which I found very difficult to understand. And I felt almost tormented that I have to give up. We had to give up my common sense, my intelligence to accept this.

And then I think I read an article by Ravindra Surup Prabhu in one of his academic papers where he made this very simple point that even an acharya can learn some things from non-scriptural sources. And then when Nagaraj Prabhu told me that how the state Devendra Prabhupada has made the statement two days before, a devotee had given Prabhupada a doomsday prophecy, like a climate, a doomsday prophecy report he had read out to Prabhupada. And that report had said that by 2000, nobody will be able to live on the surface of the earth.

So Prabhupada was just quoting that. Yeah. So now this is such a simple point, but I had, till then I had the idea that having faith in acharya means accepting every statement of that acharya without questioning.

So I felt actually quite angry that I had been subjected to so much intellectual torture, if I may use that word, because of not simple principle. Intellectual torture. I like that.

Intellectual abuse, maybe. Yeah, that's true. So now within our, so this is an example.

And in India, generally many devotees who have some questions, they come to me and I try to answer their questions. Even many of our devotee teachers, teachers, if they have some students or more intellectual and they have some questions, they send those people to me, to my website or to me personally. And then I try to address their questions.

So I find that most of the devotee community, most of the people who come to our movement don't have too many complicated questions, but some do have, and sometimes their intellectual needs are not addressed. They are simply labeled as doubters. So one of the, this brings me to both the question as well as the paper, which I found, I got some explanations for various contentious issues, but one of the few places where I had seen an approach for dealing with such contentious issues is your paper on constructive theologizing.

So maybe if you want to address that also, but the question I had through all this is that within our tradition itself, for people who are directly coming to our movement, but those who have more doubts or we could say greater intellectual needs, what resources are available for facilitating this dialogue between faith and doubt or what resources can we provide them? Yeah, that's a nice question. And I think the short answer is that's a work in progress. Sheila Prabhupada conceived, as I see it, he conceived of his movement in many ways, first and foremost, as an educational mission, because he, in his, at least one of his very early articles, like 1944, Back to Godhead, he would speak, he wrote that temples should be places of education.

And that has sort of resonated with me over the years, and I've therefore been concerned that we develop educational facilities within our society, beginning from preschool and going through tertiary education. But these things take time. And we are still a very young society.

And we're dealing with, I like to say, we are very much on uncharted territory, in the sense of bringing a tradition from India that's centuries and millennia old, out of India, and trying to not just spread superficially, but to actually sink roots into other societies, takes time. If we look at the spread of Buddhism in China, for example, the early stages of that spread were in the early centuries of the common era. And it was a process that took several centuries.

And you could say it's something which is ongoing in China. There's all kinds of discussion going on within Chinese society on Buddhism. And so we are just very, we're very young.

And we have a long way to go in terms of developing good resources for devotees who want to delve a bit more deeply and are not so satisfied with the simplified answers and not so satisfied with the polarity of a kind of, I believe or I don't believe, there's faith, there's doubt. A lot of the argumentation, the discussion that goes on among devotees is unfortunately in this polarized form, that there's a kind of either or understanding and there's no real careful thinking about, well, maybe there's something of valid, maybe there's validity to what's being said on both sides. So maybe we need to use our intelligence to find some sort of middle ground.

And what's also missing is there was a lot of lack of knowledge of Shastra. Even we may be reading so much over so many years. I've been struck by this recently just by hearing occasionally Hari Parshad Prabhu in Mumbai, who is very knowledgeable of Shastra.

And things that he brings up are just so illuminating when you're struggling with some question, then suddenly he's there with a quote straight from Shastra that just bling makes it all very clear. So that's something that takes time for there to be more scholars on that sort of traditional pundit side. There's need for that.

There's need for more scholarship on the more, I would say, modern Western side to be in tune with the kind of thinking that goes on. For example, you mentioned the reasoning, which we accept for the existence of Atma of the self. Yes, that is there.

And there's a huge literature, which much of it is based in Buddhism, of course, where Anatmavada is one of their kind of cornerstones. Although if you read, if you read more carefully, you see that in fact, this was never in Buddhism clearly established. It was never clearly established that there is no soul.

And to the present day, some scholars I've read say it's still a matter of debate. So to know that it requires devotees who really spend time to get to know what are the current discussions. A third thing I would mention, I'd like to mention that's perhaps encouraging or inspiring for devotees.

It's something which is now in the works and will soon become available. And that is a course which is being prepared under the auspices of the GBC Shastra Advisory Council, of which I'm an advisory member. And this course is a course on Vaishnava hermeneutics.

Now, most devotees don't know what the word hermeneutics means. And we can be forgiven for that. Hermeneutics basically is the study of the discussion about interpretation.

How do we interpret what we read, what we hear? And of course, some devotees will jump and say, wait, wait, wait, we don't need that at all, because Srila Prabhupada said several times, there is no need of interpretation. But if you look at that statement a little more carefully, you see what Prabhupada is saying, is if a statement, if a literal, if the literal interpretation of a statement is clear and meaningful and makes sense in the context, then there's no need for further interpretation. But to say there's no need of interpretation is itself an interpretation.

Yeah. You cannot avoid. So what the GBC requested us, and this has been over a period of years now, the Shastra Advisory Council to develop, and you know this very well, because you're involved, is to develop resources and then a program so devotees can become expert in understanding how do we deal with Shastra.

We see here's one statement in Shastra, and over here is another statement, and they seem to conflict. What do we do with that? Do we just pile up quotes and throw them at someone we don't like? Or how do we come to clear understanding? So the idea is there's a skill of interpretation, and we want to facilitate that this can be brought for devotees, and it will be an ongoing process. It will certainly be over, it can be over a very long time that this course becomes refined, becomes improved, becomes enriched until we get really expert teachers of the course and so on.

Okay. Yes, this is quite systematic, these three points you mentioned. Now, when you talk about, say, a more sophisticated dialogue between faith and doubt, is it possible for you to give any examples, maybe from either some of your writings, you mentioned your book on cow, on cow care, maybe you could give some examples from there.

So also, are you going to introduce the concept of constructive theologizing in one of your papers? Maybe you could explain that, and this is, you know, say, for example, as devotees, and they have doubts, as you said earlier, doubts are seen as demons. On the other hand, in the academic context, often doubt is seen as an intellectual virtue, that you are not gullible, that you don't just believe. So I would say that there's almost a polarized view of doubt as a spiritual failing, and doubt as an intellectual virtue.

So, can you give examples of how these two could be in dialogue and how that could lead to a better understanding? Okay, well, we can start with my book on cows, I suppose. One of the subjects I discuss in the book is veganism, which has become something of a fairly hot topic amongst devotees. And, of course, that's a result of a very strong promotion, very vocal presence of people who call themselves vegan.

And we can say in the West, especially, there's a significant movement of veganism, the idea that not just being vegetarian, but avoiding all animal products is the right thing to do for various reasons, not least ethical reasons. And so, yeah, maybe I start with a bit from my own personal situation. A few years back, my doctor, who's a devotee, advised me that considering my age and other things, it would actually be best if I would become not necessarily 100%, but mainly vegan, that I should avoid taking milk products, would be good for my health.

And I immediately accepted. I just felt, yes, if that's the case, then so be it. And so, I began making that my standard, avoiding really, I don't know, 98%.

I basically, I just stopped taking milk products, dairy. And, well, I felt physically better as a result. And also, I felt kind of ethically better, if you like, because I understood that the dairy that we all take from the supermarket, where it's coming from, it's pretty obvious if we think about it, that the commercial dairies are, I mean, this sounds a little rhetorical, but I see it, they are, in a sense, extensions of the meat industry.

Because as soon as a milk cow, as soon as her milk yield begins to reduce, she is sent for slaughter. And so, I didn't feel very good about this. And so, while I was avoiding, I felt better.

And then came this opportunity to write this book. And I saw, okay, now, I'm going to have really deal with this subject. Because here we have our tradition, which people identify as Hindu, although I think it's better to just say South Asian, tradition of high regard for cows, such that they should not be slaughtered.

And along with it, we have this understanding that, especially Krishna devotees, we have to offer milk preparations to Krishna because they are very dear to Krishna. Krishna likes, he likes his rasgulla and sandesh. So, I was, I found myself, you know, needing to really think about this.

So, in the book, which is not addressed directly to devotees, although I'm hoping devotees will read it, because I think it can also help to give a deeper understanding of our tradition and where we may go with it. In, I think it's chapter five, I discuss the vegan argument. And what I say there is that actually they have a very good point.

The vegans have, up to a certain point, they have a very good point. And the point is that no animals should be exploited, abused. And there is every danger, even for those who are claiming to be protecting cows, there's every danger that they're actually exploiting the cows by taking the milk.

It may be in different ways. You know, how much, how much are they giving of the milk to the calves? Various, there are various ways that they may be abusing the cows. They may be keeping the cows throughout their natural lives.

And that's, that's the minimum, we can say, for the standard of cow protection, we understand. But there may be other issues. So what I suggest in the book is that maybe devotees, those who have value, put a lot of value in cow protection and in dairy products, because we like to offer them to Krishna, maybe we need to look again at how much milk we need.

Okay. And devotees have pointed out, actually, Birkrishnan Goswami makes this point, he, he read, Srila Prabhupada advised, devotees should drink one cup of milk per day. One cup, which is, I don't know, two.

What is the quantity? It's half a pint or something. Yeah, 250 ml probably at the most. Yeah, something like that.

But we are making so much cheese and yogurt and this and that. And, you know, and that's not healthy for us. When we eat, my doctor said the most difficult thing for us to digest is Paniyar.

Oh, really? You know, we, we all, we all love Paniyar subji, right? We, we fish out the Paniyar so we can have only Paniyar. And that's the most difficult, you know, that's what's, that's what's creating the kidney stones and so on. So, from the devotee perspective, I'm suggesting, what if we, what if we think about significantly reducing the quantity of milk? And then that milk, which we, which we take, we take only from protected cows.

And however small amount that is, it becomes a very precious, a very precious, precious thing. It becomes a delicacy. And most of it, after we offer to Krishna, we give to our children.

Because for children, it's important, they should be getting milk. Okay. The older we get, the less milk we need.

That's my understanding. I'm not a nutritionist, but the bit that I've read and heard, the less milk we need. And some argue that actually, we don't, in a modern, in the modern situation, we don't need any milk.

Certain things that milk provide, we can get elsewhere. So, and then what I'm saying to the vegans in my book is, okay, let's look at your argument. You are saying that to take dairy, to take the milk from the cows is exploitative, no matter what.

And so what you want to say is that ultimately, well, at least some vegans that are called abolitionists, they want to completely stop human relations with animals, period. Yes, a complete compartmentalization of existence. It's like that.

I read about this. Yes. So, because they say, as soon as we humans have anything to do with animals, we will exploit them.

And why will we exploit them? Because we will, we will own them. It's a matter of the mentality of ownership. So I'm, I'm suggesting in this book that this may be, you're not thinking this all the way through.

I don't elaborate so much, but the question is, if we say absolutely no relation between humans and animals, how are we going to get our grains for making bread? So they may answer, well, we'll plow the field with a tractor. Oh, so you're, you're going to use fossil fuel. What does that mean? What, what happened to taking care of the environment? What is going to be the long-term consequence of that for the animals which you are leaving alone? Are they going to, if, if that's not going to change the climate so that, you know, animal species are dying out and so on and so on.

It has to be a trade-off then between how much we say, put the animals to work to some extent now, or in the long run, we endanger their survival. Yeah. And, and also I bring in this idea of animal citizenship.

Yeah. I don't know if you got that far in the chapter. Yeah.

I read that. I read that. It's quite interesting.

Maybe you could explain that concept because as you know, maybe in a highly populated country like India, even all humans don't have citizenship. Yeah, that's a good point. It's a difficult conception because we have a certain pre-conception of what we mean by citizenship, which grows out of, well, it grows out of enlightened, so-called enlightenment, European thought and so on.

But the idea is to, to stretch the notion of citizenship to, to honor. And this gets back to something Prabhupada would say several times, to honor the notion of Praja, being protected by the king. Prabhupada would say the duty of the king was to protect the Praja and the Praja, you could translate as creatures, all of the creatures of his kingdom.

That's interesting because we have stories like say, where Maharaj Shibi or Maharaj Rantidev, they even protect the animals. Yeah. In a sense, if we consider that way, they might not have any registered system of citizenship, but they are entitled to the protection.

Yeah. Of course, there are many, many different aspects to those stories one could go into, but, and I'm taking this idea of citizenship. It's not, I'm not inventing, I'm not inventing it.

And of course, Prabhupada is, is referring to it, but also modern scholars, and I'm referring to two scholars in particular wrote a book called Zoopolis, Zoopolis, the city state of animals, something like that. And they're going quite systematically into a kind of, yeah, we might call it constructive, constructive thought on the subject of animal, animal rights, specifically. And they go through nine aspects of what they say would be important to think about animal citizenship.

So I discussed four out of those nine. The first one is to do with, with movement, or freedom of movement. How do you deal with, you know, are we just going to have cows running around in the streets? Well, hey, that's been going on in India since centuries already.

And I, you maybe saw I put a photo in one bull that's being fed a whole big pot of rice in the street by one, one local merchant. And then one of the subjects is sex and breeding. How do we understand that in terms of citizenship? I'm not thinking of the others at the moment, but there were there, there are two others.

Oh, yeah, work is one of them. How do we understand work? And here the point is, again, the, the more extreme vegans will say that to, to put an, an ox to work, or a horse to work is, is it's slavery. Yeah.

And I'm suggesting that's, that's an oversimplification. It's a use of a metaphor, which becomes easily a misuse of the metaphor. Because we, we can also turn it around to see animal as citizen, having a sense of use in the wider world, having a sense of purpose, which connects that particular being that animal, we would say with Dharma, which moves them up out of this sphere of being only an animal, as we know from Hito Badesh.

How does that verse go? The, the animals and humans share four activities, eating, sleeping, mating, defending, and, and human beings are distinguished by one principle, which is Dharma. If we're able to engage without exploiting, if we can engage bulls in work, then they, they are being brought into the circle of, of Dharma in a way which they would otherwise be deprived. That's a beautiful way of looking at it.

So, this requires a certain acceptance of spiritual metaphysics, that there is a circle of Dharma and there is a concept of spiritual evolution. So, but then in a sense, we could say in an ordinary citizen, ordinary citizenship also, a citizen has some responsibilities to the state. So, if animals are also citizens, then also they, they need to be a part of the circle and then they have to have some contribution.

So, yeah. And they have a contribution and they are rewarded appropriately. They are protected.

And Shila Prabhat speaks about this with respect to milk. He says, you're taking their milk. So, that makes them your, your mother.

So, then you must protect them throughout their lives. Otherwise, it is very sinful. So, just, this is quite profound, just backtracking.

We spoke a lot. So, I'm trying to understand that the question I raised was that about a dialogue between say faith and doubt. So, if I understand you right, what you did was the traditional understanding of cow care, you brought that in a dialogue with the contemporary ethics of maybe animal care or veganism.

And then in that dialogue, there are both ways. It's like a mirror by which, so the contemporary thought can offer us a mirror by which we re-examine our practices and the traditional thought can offer a mirror by which the contemporary vegan activists or animal rights activists can maybe examine, expand their understanding. Is that the broad understanding of that? Yeah, I think you have a nice analogy there of the mirror.

And for the vegans, because it's not that all vegans are abolitionist vegans. I think many in reading this, they will say, okay, this is reasonable. Now, how do I get him some milk? Now, I want to be vegan, but I also would like milk.

How do I get milk from protected cows? Then what we need is to have in place a full program, including courses, online course or whatever, how to start a program of cow protection on different scales. And that work is beginning because we have, there's a small group of devotees in the UK, in Leicester, Sita Ram Prabhu and others have this, it's a business, they're doing it as a business, Ahimsa Milk. They're selling milk all over the UK.

They send it by post and they're getting huge response. Despite the milk being much more expensive than what you buy in the shop, people are willing to pay that money. And now they're getting many people asking, okay, how do we do this now? We want to have cows.

Amazing, yeah. So, also the ISKCON Ministry of Cow Protection and Agriculture is also working on a course to facilitate. Okay, you're talking about all of this, this is all nice philosophy and theology and whatever.

Now, how do we do it? So, that's the next step. And the economics of it is, it's not simple. The economics of this is not at all simple, but I think what we want to say is that should not be the primary consideration.

It has to be sustainable economically, but there may be different ways of doing it so that it works. But that's in effect, that's where my book leaves off. I couldn't, in this book, enter into such details.

Yes, Maharaj. The economics is a challenge. In fact, I had a discussion of veganism and bhakti on the same podcast with Bhaktirasamudh Maharaj.

And he has inspired devotees in Australia to do a similar project for protected cows. So, they went to local Australian farmers and told them that if you make sure that you take care of these cows throughout your life, we will pay for their milk and you don't use any artificial materials for feeding them or for increasing their yield or anything like that, keep everything natural. And then that project is near Melbourne.

So, from Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, all our Australia milk is going now. And it's tough because as you said, the charge of the cost of the milk becomes more, but there is an increasing awareness all over the world about this. So, even devotees are also becoming conscious of the kind of milk that we take.

Yes, it's also since last year, a GBC resolution. It's not a law, but it's an advisory resolution that by 2022, I don't know, Janmashtami, all temples of ISKCON where deity worship is going on should have in place a plan of how they are going to convert to Ahimsa milk only being offered to the deities. So, Maharaj, you have been the deity worship minister also earlier and now you are also into cow care.

So, there is the idea that to worship the deities, we need to offer them many milk products. So, is that like a mandate or just there's an opulent food, but it doesn't necessarily have to have lots of milk products within them? In one of the temples that Srila Prabhupada said to take as a model for ISKCON is the Radharaman temple in Vrindavan. Radharaman temple is the temple established by Srila Gopal Bhatta Goswami.

And Srila Gopal Bhatta Goswami was, there's a controversy, but we've recently heard it's definitive now. As Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur said, Sanatana Goswami has written the Haribhakti Vilasa, but I believe Gopal Bhatta Goswami was also involved. And the Haribhakti Vilasa is our standard Shastra for deity worship.

So, for my doctoral research, I spent four months living next to Radharaman temple and observing their worship and meeting some of the priests and interviewing them and learning just what is it that they do day by day. And I managed to get their written daily prayoga in Vrajabhasa language and like that. So, what I saw from that is their sort of specialty of the house that everyone likes to get the prasad of is this kulya, this boiled down milk sweet, which I'm sure you know, they give out in little clay pots.

And this is a kind of replication of the pastime of Kshiracharya Gopinath. This is where that whole idea comes from. Okay.

And beyond that, I don't know, I didn't see a whole lot of milk product being offered. It is mentioned that Krishna likes milk products. There are descriptions of his, some of his meals, I think in Gopal Champu and so on.

And there is mention. So, where it's possible, why not offer, you know, lots of milk if it's a himsa. And if it's not there, it's not there.

Okay. So, it's, it's more of a, it's not exactly like an injunction, it's more of a recommendation, you could say if it's possible to do it, but it's not necessary. That's, that's my understanding.

Yeah. Aside from that, each, each deity has specialty, specialties of how they are worshipped. So, for example, we know that Lord Jagannath likes to eat.

And so he's offered 56 preparations every day in huge pots. So, that is the service to Jagannath. His, you know, his hands are never dry and so on.

The specialty of worship for Radha Krishna, well, there are three things. There's Sringara, ornamentation and dress. And then there's bhoga offering.

And the third thing is music. Okay. They, they told me this in Radharamana temple that they call it samajgayana, singing in, in a group before the deity.

And therefore, many times of the day you go in Radharamana temple, they're singing. So, that's, that's the specialty. So, different deities will have different specialties.

Okay. And so, going back to that point of, say, as we grow older, we may not need that much milk. So, these are also, as you said, these are realities that might result from the way we live.

We don't know how it was exactly in the past. So, although milk is an important part of our culture, it need not be that, that exact quantity or the exact thing. So, I'm trying to understand this constructive theologizing means that something might be yes, and something might be no, like black, white and black.

But through reason or through interaction of traditional thought with contemporary thought, we might encounter various shades of gray. And then we might position ourselves in a particular, particular shade of gray, which is not necessarily contradictory to the traditional understanding, but bring that direct tradition and dialogue with the, with the contemporary situation. Is it like that? Yeah, that could be, that could be one, one way of understanding.

What was it? I was just going to say something anyway. Constructive theology, you brought up that term, is, is where you're experiencing a particular current situation within the contingencies of, of the material world. And you look at our tradition, you look back at the tradition.

And what do we see? We see Sadhu Shastra Guru as our sources of knowledge. And of course, Narottam Das said, Sadhu Shastra Guru Vakya, Vakya, the words of the Sadhu, the Shastra and the Guru, Hridaya Koriya Aikya, may they become a unit, a singularity, one clear understanding, Hridaya, in my heart, in my heart. This is the prayer.

He's not saying everybody's heart, he's saying in my heart. Hridaya Koriya Aikya, and then what will be the result? Satatam Bhajibho Prema Majhe, I will be absorbed in Krishna, love of Krishna, always Satatam. That's an interesting reading.

Now constructive, constructive theology is saying, okay, here's a real situation in the present world. How do we deal with it? How do we draw from our own tradition to build, therefore this word construction, to build a solid foundation for action, in which we feel genuinely connected to our tradition, and we feel equally connected to engagement in the present conditioned or contingent world. So there's a conscious drawing from tradition and saying, this is important, this is important.

And here is something from Shastra, which is not relevant for us now. And this is a major function of the guru. Take, for example, again, we spoke of Haribhakti Vilasa.

The Haribhakti Vilasa is, it's like an encyclopedia of deity worship. Prabhupada said, if I told you everything that's in that book, you would faint. There's so much detail there.

You can spend all day and all night doing puja, if you like. But Prabhupada said, here's what's important. Everything should be on time.

And everything should be clean. Those were the two main things he emphasized. Get the arti on time and keep everything, he said, revolutionary clean.

And then everything else was kind of details. But he also said, you can learn to do more of the rituals, the practices and so on. So the point was that the guru, one of the important functions of guru is selection, helping us to select what's important from the tradition and setting aside what is not important or what is not relevant, or which is somehow even obstructive to our spiritual life.

This is a beautiful understanding that tradition is more like a resource that we draw on to equip us to say, face the world and engage with the world and serve Krishna in the world. So that's one way of putting it. Yes.

The way I had earlier heard this verse was Guru Sadhu Shastra Vakya, it was more that make your heart one with the words of Guru Sadhu Shastra. But the way you are reading is that in your heart, make them one. And that's a more, I would say, more realistic understanding because Guru Sadhu Shastra is not always one.

So if I want to make my heart one with Guru Sadhu Shastra, they are saying three different, they are saying different things. And with what do I make it one? So rather, these are three sources of knowledge. These are the three sources of knowledge.

And then we draw from them and make them one in our heart means that we take them, we draw upon them and find the necessary wisdom for applying in our situation. So is that what you're saying? Yes. Yes.

But all of which is only possible by the grace of Sadhu Shastra and Guru. Especially we approach Guru to make it possible for that to become a clear Ikea, clear unity in the heart. And yes, if you try to make, if you go the other way around and you try to sort of unify yourself with Sadhu Shastra Guru, you may be very easily confused.

Not only do you have three sources, depends how many Sadhus you're approaching. Yeah. If you've got five or ten Sadhus, and they're all saying different things, it can be quite difficult.

I mean, Guru itself is maybe one, but Guru can say different things about the same issue at different times. That also. Yeah.

Okay. So this is not just an intellectual exercise. It is, as you said, we need the grace of these authorities, but ultimately it is we who have to do it.

Yeah. It's putting the responsibility on ourselves. And it's also Narottam das Thakur is indicating what is the test of whether this has worked? Is there a blossoming of Krishna Prema or not? If not, then we haven't gotten there yet.

That's a very pragmatic test also, because sometimes we get caught in many cultural things. Say, for example, some of Prabhupada's statements can seem racist or sexist or whatever, but then even if you apply those statements, if somebody thinks that they'll be faithful to Prabhupada by applying those statements, literally, the result is not the blossoming of love for Krishna. The result is simply an increasing of resentment and victimhood and negativity.

So in that sense, that's a very pragmatic text. So if a devotee, say, applying this to some other issue, just as an example, this is very, I'm finding this very illuminating. Say, if we consider an example, veganism was more of a contemporary issue.

You look at it, at Shastra itself, sometimes in Shastra, there are astronomical figures used, say, to describe how many bodyguards were there for Maharaja Ugrasen in the 10th Canto. So there are places like that. How many was it? How many did he have? It was like a trillion or something like that.

Oh, only. So there's a conversation of Prabhupada where he was asked, how do we, if we explain this to the scholars, they laugh at us. And then Prabhupada says that in all the statements in the scripture, was that the only thing you found to speak to the scholars? So the point is that, what do we draw on from the tradition? So what you said, chitta te karya aikya, hrudaya te karya aikya.

We have to find out what is relevant wisdom from the tradition for the audience and speak that. Yeah. Yeah.

We don't start out telling people that this ancient king had 1 trillion bodyguards. That's not very conducive to starting a conversation. So would this apply also, say, apart from, say, devote, speaking to new people, if some devotees are not able to, say, rationally understand how Chitraketu could have had 1 million wives, or how the Himalayas can be as described in the fifth canto of astronomical height, far different from what we perceive.

So in the beginning, you had said that, I believe and I doubt. In between, or I accept, we said two polarities. So we could have, based on this, some place within the shade of grey also that there are degrees of acceptance, or we could say, suspend.

Ravindra Siruprabhu had mentioned to me that there are many places. Suspension of disbelief. Yeah.

No, he used the word suspension of judgment. Okay. There's another expression, suspension of disbelief.

Yes. I think that's used with the context of fiction. If you want to enjoy fiction, then I will suspend disbelief.

Yes. Yeah. But I think you can also use it here.

Here, what I like to suggest, because as we know, the Bhagavatam calls our attention from verse number three of the first canto, that the Bhagavatam is appealing to our sense of appreciation of aesthetics. And it says, pibita bhagavatam rasam alayam ahura ho rasikam uvibhavukam. Now, one of the important rasas, although it's considered a secondary rasa by Srila Rupa Goswami, is adbhuta, is wonder.

I've just been reading a very amazing work from one of our devotees, Gopinath Acharya Prabhu has written a book, his doctoral thesis published by Oxford University Press, on Kavi Karnapura. And Kavi Karnapura has his own very elaborate analysis of poetry, aesthetics, rasa theory. And this book goes into so much detail.

But one of the points that struck me is, I hope I understood him properly, it's quite complex. But I think he's saying that for Kavi Karnapura, adbhuta, or wonder, is there in all the rasas. But the point I want to make here is, when we hear about these astronomical numbers, what I hear is Shukadeva Goswami calling upon us to experience a sense of wonder.

And that is a sense of, oh, this world is something so much more, so much bigger, so much more wonderful than I perceive, or that we as a collective humanity perceive. It is so much more than what we think it is. And so the Bhagavatam, one of Shukadeva Goswami's tasks is, he's opening us, he's opening us up to recognize, to appreciate how limited our awareness is, so that we can be open to the, you can say, utter impossibility, which is Krishna.

And so it's not about trying to make these numbers somehow plausible by our understanding of astronomy and geology and whatever. For me, that's completely missing the point. So you're saying that the rational faculty is not the right faculty to use while approaching these figures, it's more of the aesthetic faculty that we open ourselves more.

Yes, but it's using the deeper rationality by which we can recognize how limited our rationality is. That is something which is even talked about in science, that we know so less about the universe, and that is so much more to be known. And that is fine.

But when we talk about, when you're talking about Krishna, for him to be able to do extraordinary things, Krishna lifting over the hill is something which can be understood. After all, he's God. And God means he has inconceivable abilities.

But Chitra Ketu, he's not described as God, nor is he described as having any particular inconceivable powers. So for him to have 10 million wives or a million wives, whatever it is, now that, is that opening us to a sense of wonder or is it just stultifying the intelligence, if we take it literally? I appreciate this point of opening us, like Krishna reveals the Virata Rupa, universal form, Arjuna is stunned to see its magnificence. So there is a sense of wonder, undoubtedly, when we see the greatness of creation or the greatness of existence.

But when something obviously contradicts our rationality, then is it really, are we, it requires a suspension of, as you said, Richard Dawkins defines reason, faith as the, as belief that is contrary to reason or belief in spite of reason. Now, I don't agree with his definition, but yeah, that's a very, I think that's a very impoverished understanding of faith. Yes, I agree with that fully that it's not the right understanding, but isn't this something like that when we are asking for belief in something which is, which is completely contrary to the way things work in our experience.

And there is no, as I said, there is a rationality to understanding that God can do things which are impossible for humans, but somebody who's another human being like us. Yeah. How wonderful it is that he had so many wives.

Okay. Let's go with Chitra Ketu and his 10 million wives. I completely agree when I think about how difficult it is today for a responsible householder, husband and wife, for the husband to maintain one wife.

I wonder, I really wonder how anyone would maintain two, three, five, 10. So what is this 10 million? Another way of understanding is the, I think again, we need to remember that the entire Bhagavatam, the format, except for several passages in fifth and some in the sixth canto, which are prose, it's all in the form of poetry. Yes.

And that's something else that Shastra, that the estheticians explain about poetry is that it's about what is called dvani, which means suggestion. So there's, I'm sure you know the famous example, Gangayam Gosha. Yes.

The village on the Ganga. Yes. It cannot mean there's some village floating on the Ganga.

Oh, so then you have the next step, which is the non-literal meaning. It must mean the village next to the Ganga. And then that's the connotative meaning, Lakshana, I guess it's called.

And then there's dvani, which means the implication, which is not explicit, is that this was a place with nice cool breezes coming off the Ganga. And it goes a further step. I just read again, this is mentioned in Gopinath Acharya's book.

There's a further implication that the Gosha is in a very, in a sense, very much on the Ganga because you can see the reflection of the Ganga, of the village, sorry, the reflection of the village on the water of the Ganga. And so it's a very beautiful scene also. So for me, when I read 10 million wives, for me, there's an image of a king with just, he had so many wives, he didn't even know them.

He didn't even know most of them. Okay. And this is a good example.

And by the way, most devotees don't know, but in Valmiki Ramayana, in the unabridged edition, Dasaratha had three wives and 300 concubines. Yeah. I remember that.

So this is a good, what you explained just now about the Ganga and Gosha, that this is a good example of a more sophisticated tool for the dialogue between faith and doubt. Now, whether rather than just, I accept it or I reject it. So this could be very helpful for, for avoiding, as you said, intellectual abuse or intellectual torture for getting beyond that.

So maybe just one or two last questions, and then I don't want to hold you for too long a time. If you would like to, as a concluding, speak something about your book, I will provide the link for the book in the YouTube description and the Facebook description. Yeah.

There's a new GBC resolution that no one should promote their book from the Vyasa San. So I'm not on the Vyasa San now, but this is my book. It's called Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics.

It's within, it's one volume in a book series on animal ethics. Animal ethics is a newly developing subject in the academic world. As part of what some scholars call the animal turn.

There's, there's a whole broader area called animal studies, where taking all the different disciplines, sociology, anthropology, sociology, politics, law, psychology, you name it. And thinking, rethinking, thinking through all these subjects again, taking seriously the idea of, that animals need to be taken seriously. Taking seriously, that animals should be taken seriously.

So within animal studies, then there's animal ethics. Ethics, of course, the broader topic of philosophy, is asking questions about morality, but it's, it's a very fundamental, major field of philosophy. How do we determine what is the proper thing to do? What is the right way to act in particular situations or more generally? And how do we, how do we, what do we base our decisions on? How do we make these decisions of what we should do and what we should not do? Much of modern ethical thought is being done with the presupposition of taking God out of the picture.

So now we as humans have to do all the work ourselves to decide what is to be done, what is not to be done. So one of the things I'm doing in this book is suggesting how this may not be so helpful to understand what is to be done, what is not to be done with relation to animals. Anyway, I was invited to write this book by the editor of the book series, who very kindly encouraged me to do so as a practitioner.

He said, I like that you are a practitioner, please write on this subject. And the publisher is Palgrave Macmillan. Macmillan, before it joined with Palgrave, was the publisher that published Srila Prabhupada's Bhagavad Gita in the beginning.

And now Palgrave Macmillan is itself a subsidiary of Springer Nature or Springer International, which is an academic publisher, which does a lot of electronic publishing and is included with the regular publishing. And they have as an option for an author to publish in what is called open access. Open access is a fairly recent development by which it becomes possible through a financial arrangement with the publisher, that the book can be made available legally through the publisher for completely free access to the digital form of the book.

So that's what we have managed to do. It involved some fundraising on my part, which was successful, a lot of help from devotees. And now the book is available.

And as you said, you can give the link. It's good if devotees download the book if anyone's interested in it from the publisher's website, because then it gets counted. And if it's counted by the publisher, then we know better how many people are downloading the book.

Yes. Yes, actually, this is remarkable. Otherwise, especially in India, to get books published by academic authors, by academic publishers, it becomes prohibitively expensive.

So this is wonderful. Yes, that's a problem. Yeah, I'm personally reading the book and it is illuminating.

There's so many different aspects which are there in that book. So it's wonderful to read it. So I'll just summarize Maharaj.

Yes. So and then maybe you could add a few things, anything I left out. So we discussed this broadly, the topic of, put in your word, the dialogue between faith and doubt.

And you explain your started with your experiences about how you were able to reach a broader audience by your study of Sanskrit and by your academic studies. And then the main issue we discussed was, as we study scripture, and we also interact with the world. So how do we bring together faith in scripture and a reasonable approach in dealing with the world as well as looking at scripture? So theology… Scripture plus guru plus sadhu.

Yes. Okay. Yeah.

Maybe I should use the word tradition, which includes both. And then you explained how theology has been done in the Christian traditions in the medieval times. And we are a relatively young organization and we are still got to get things done together.

But educational resources are slowly being made available. And you mentioned also about the paper will come up in the future, which will be like a good resource. And then specifically with respect to your book, you mentioned how with respect to the modern day vegan movement and the traditional cow care, how if we as practitioners consider the thought process of the vegans or the animal rights activists in general, then we can also become more conscious of the violence that happens when we consume milk and we can maybe make our consumption of milk a little more moderate.

And then from the perspective of a spiritual understanding of all living beings, the animal rights movement can also be grounded in a more holistic understanding of say animal citizenship. So then toward the end, we discussed about how this… You mentioned that through your academic study, you got more sophisticated tools for bringing about the dialogue between faith and doubt. And then we discussed some aspects where that dialogue could be applied.

And as devotees, if we become more trained to not think, see things in terms of black and white, the doubt is not necessarily a bad thing, but the doubt and faith can exist together and we can find out ways in which we can bring the words of Guru Sadhu Shastra together in our heart in a way that helps us to deal with the world or become more equipped to face the world and serve Krishna in the world. Then that way we can be both devotionally faithful as well as be rational. And then lastly, you talked about aesthetics and how the aesthetic sensibility is important when we study scripture and we don't get caught too much in the reason or rather we go toward the deeper rationality, which is grounded in aesthetic appreciation of Krishna.

And your book is an excellent example of applying this constructive theologizing for devotees to see and apply in various fields also. So any concluding remarks, Maharaj? Thank you. That was quite a good… I'm impressed that you remembered all these points.

It's not about making compromises or something like that. It's keeping the tradition alive. It's nourishing the tradition.

Krishna is speaking in Bhagavad Gita so much about buddhi-yoga. Yoga is the art of karma, of work, of action. So this kaushalam, this is where we need to bring in our skill and our art to keep the tradition a living tradition.

And that's what we've seen was so wonderfully accomplished by our previous acharyas. And our most immediate experience of this is, of course, Shila Prabhupada and so many of his immediate followers are doing wonderful things, keeping enlivening the tradition by engaging in the bridge building in fresh and creative ways. That's beautiful.

It's not just, say, resolving uncomfortable issues for us, but it's also enriching us more. It's enriching us and we enrich the world through the wisdom that we have in the tradition. Yes, exactly.

I actually have seen this when we have sufficiently sophisticated presentations by devotees presenting our philosophy in the contemporary world using the contemporary frames of reference. It's almost like we gain a very fresh appreciation. I never thought of it could be like this.

And this is brilliant. So in a sense, we could say this is what is realization, isn't it? Yes. Yes.

Yes. That's beautiful. Thank you very much for your time and your very intellectually and devotionally stimulating discussion.

I hope that in future we can continue this discussion on. Well, thank you. And thank you very much.

Yes, we can do something again. And all the best for your podcast. I appreciate that you are bringing up such subjects and you're interviewing so many important devotees and this is very good what you're doing.

It's a nice service. Thank you very much for your blessings, Maharaj. Humble obeisances.

Obeisances. Hare Krishna.