The Monk’s Podcast 47 with Madhavananda Prabhu – Who exactly is an ISKCON member

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

Thank you very much for joining once again for the Monks Podcast. Many devotees expressed appreciation about the talk which we had and many requests came also that we should continue it. So thank you for sparing your time also.

So I'll just try to do a quick recap of what we discussed. It's difficult, but we'll just set the background to take it forward. So basically we discussed about how to create room for individual expression within an institution.

And then we discussed about how the students, they become alumni and that way as devotees, we need to Bhakti involves expressing the heart. So there is art, there is creativity and that requires a certain level of individual expression. And for that, the space is needed.

So you give the example of the Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu supported organized religion in Jagannath Puri, but he also had his space in Gambira. And we had several, the example of Bhakti, Bhakti Saanthi Thakur and Lalit Prasad also about two different visions of how Bhakti is to be practiced and while Prabhupada established an institution, but Prabhupada also came, emphasized that Bhakti is individual. I think you mentioned ISV, Individual Spontaneous Voluntary, and then he also talked about how Prabhupada spread Krishna consciousness through love, trust, empowerment, and was it appreciation? Responsibility, love, trust, responsibility.

So in that sense, Prabhupada did not choke individuality at all. He gave adequate space for that. And then we discussed that for, if devotees are actually going to go about doing this, it should not be like institutional rebellion, but it needs to be more a call from the heart and then Krishna will respond and then a devotee can move forward.

And overall, the theme was that as devotees grow and mature, each devotee needs to be situated in Bhakti in a way that they can make their individual contribution. Bhakti is a personal relationship with Krishna. And then a couple of examples also you gave about how the water keeps the boat afloat when it is outside, but when the water comes inside, it sinks the boat.

So like that, the institution and its dynamics are outside. They are required for many of us to practice Bhakti. But if they come inside, if you become too obsessed with the institution, then it will become a problem.

So that was a broad summary. Thank you. So, two, three questions which we can follow.

You want to add anything on that? Or should I just start? I would like to follow up with some things. I don't know how extensively we want to discuss it. But one thing I very much would like to discuss is what is ISKCON and who's really a member? These are very, very important topics.

Legal terminology is really important. This is not legal terminology. This is heartfelt terminology.

But that's something I don't know. At some point, it would be nice to discuss that. I think devotees would find it valuable.

Yeah, I think then let's go ahead in that direction. Because that is very important in the sense that if we are saying the individual space, then we are presuming a particular definition of ISKCON. But often there might not be a clear definition for right now.

As far as I know, we don't have a clear definition of ISKCON member. Who is ISKCON member? I'll give you, if we want to start this, I'll give you something a little more radical. Think about it.

My grandmother sometimes would say, what is ISKCON? Pretty simple question in a way, right? And he would answer himself, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. And then he would say, who's really a member? Someone who's Krishna conscious. And at least on one occasion, in front of about 100 devotees, he pointed at me at that point.

He said, Madhavananda, not yet joined. So when devotees, they say, when did you join ISKCON? I say, well, it's a great idea. So bearing that in mind, for me, that's the real ISKCON.

And there's some external thing, just like the Ganga. There may be dead bodies on it. There may be urine and stool on it.

But that's not the Ganga. That's some external thing on top of it. The Ganga is always pure.

And ISKCON is Prabhupada's desire. And it's the Society for Krishna Consciousness. So it's always pure in that sense.

And if we bear that in mind, if we bear in mind, what Srila Prabhupada's desire for this society was, then I always want to be part of that society. And I'm not discouraged when I see stool and dead bodies and things like that on it. Because that's not really ISKCON.

That's something else. I remember having one of those terrible discussions on Facebook, which I don't know if you do. You may have heard about it.

And everybody was on the GBC. And I wasn't taking part in the discussion. But someone had tagged me.

And at one point, I'm a passionate person. I couldn't control myself. And I spoke up.

And there were a number of senior devotees, very senior devotees. And I didn't mention anybody's name. I wanted to be polite enough for that.

But I said, I find it very depressing that someone's been chanting Hare Krishna for over 50 years. And they're still going to treat me like I'm an institution, or like I'm an American, or like I'm a male. Yes, I'm a member of ISKCON.

And yes, I was born in America. I'm a U.S. citizen. And yes, I have a male body.

But I don't like when people take away my personality and individuality. Somebody's been chanting Hare Krishna mantra for 10 years, or in this case, it was over 50 years. And still, they say the ISKCON people.

I find that very depressing. Just like if you've been a devotee for so many years, and you're going to say, yeah, that American Madhavananda, or that male Madhavananda, those are some of the devotees' designations that I have. But if you're going to hang that devotee around my neck like a label, then what you're doing also is taking away some of my individuality and some of my personality.

And you may be doing that with a lot of people. It's a kind of violence, actually, to just say all the Indian devotees, or the Russian devotees, or the ISKCON devotees, or the Babajis. It's really crazy.

It's not that when I joined ISKCON, I got Kaivalya Mukti, and now I am ISKCON. Who would think like that? So I told them, I said, for me, I respect the managers. I want to work with the managers, because that's what you do to help the movement go on.

But I don't see the GBC or the temple presidents as ISKCON. For me, and I posted a photograph in that discussion of a picture from the Bhakti Sangam Festival in Ukraine, where there's about 14,000 Russian-speaking devotees who are crying and chanting Hare Krishna. And I said, for me, this is ISKCON.

So ISKCON is going to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And I would suggest that we should try to think, what is ISKCON for Srila Prabhupada? And how can I be a member of that society? And if I'm not, even if the managers don't appreciate it, but if Srila Prabhupada appreciates it, then I feel very happy. That's true.

So, you know, this is a profound point. Actually, just one by one, I would like to just say that when you mentioned about joining ISKCON, sometimes devotees ask this question, how did you come to Krishna Consciousness? Right. One answer I heard that actually I have not yet come to Krishna Consciousness.

But we are all struggling to come. And the second point about individuality, you know, I was reading a book on the existence of God by a Christian scientist. And he said that, you know, everything in this world is individual.

So every particle of sand is different. Every snowflake is different. And then he said, every Hare Krishna monk is different.

So that institution, yeah, that was in his book. So his point was things may look homogenous externally, but they are individual. Yeah.

You know, sometimes it is probably, maybe we are among the few institutions that if somebody says to us, you know, I'm not going to listen to you. I heard your class. Your class doesn't sound like ISKCON.

You know, we may consider that as a compliment and not as a criticism. So yeah, there is a certain amount of stereotyping that happens. And maybe that could be because we were to some extent, our origin was somewhat similar to a cult, although we were never a cult, but it was similar to a cult.

And there was a lot of emphasis on world rejection. So then there is a certain perception. So, you know, we could look at this from, just to expand your point of the question, you know, when we talk about ISKCON, who is a ISKCON member? So how outside people perceive us as ISKCON, then how we perceive each other as ISKCON or how we self-identify as ISKCON.

And then how, you know, if we all have certain definitions of what a devotee is, and if that somebody doesn't fit in that definition, we might say that you are not ISKCON. So Ravindra Swaroop Prabhu was telling me about how he, how congregation outreach started. Now we have many places where every week a program happens, but in the past, there was nothing like that.

So he said that generally preaching meant people should move into the temple. And many Hindus, when they started coming to our temples in the West, can you hear me, Ravindra Swaroop Prabhu? Yes, very good point. Thank you.

When the Hindus started coming to the temples, so we tried to preach to them to move into the temple and they had no interest in that. And after that, we thought they're not, they're never going to become devotees. And so we stopped paying attention to them.

So they would come to the temples, but we would not pay much attention to them. And he said that, but they were regularly coming week after week, after week, after week. And he said that if somebody on the streets had asked those people, which religious denomination do you belong to? So they would have said, yeah, we are Hare Krishnas.

But if somebody had asked us, are these Hare Krishnas? Are these Hare Krishnas? So I said, no, they're not Hare Krishnas. So he said only after years, we saw that they were coming regularly and they were already to offer support financially and otherwise doing services. Then gradually the definition of ISKCON expanded from somebody who resides in the temple to somebody who is committed to certain level of practices.

So now when you say somebody who is Krishna conscious, that is also quite at one level abstract. We could say nobody's Krishna conscious or anybody who even except knows about Krishna and the Krishna conception of God, even that can be called Krishna conscious. Yes.

So in principle, that definition is very inclusive. It can be very inclusive, but in the real world, I don't know how practical that definition would be. So any thoughts on this? Well, those things need to be there for a society to function.

You need Brahmins, you need thinkers who, some people may say what you're saying is not practical, but it's philosophy and it's ideas. And it's in one sense, very practical and important because it's philosophy and ideas which motivate everyone. But at the same time, it's a fact, we also need to have managers and leaders who are doing the grassroots or the hands-on type of work.

My personally, I'm very dedicated to Prabhupada's mission and I see ISKCON as Shiva Prabhupada's Seva Sangha that I'm wanting to join someday. I don't see it as an institution that causes pain in my heart. But at the same time, I recognize the fact that, as my grandmothers once said, the Prabhupada started the life membership program for people who like to play the white flute.

White flute is cigarettes. It means that people who are not going to join, but they could feel like they're part of the society. And in that sense, we have to see this very slowly and we have to think about it very deeply because what I'm about to say is going to sound very disturbing to some people.

But in one sense, the whole purpose of the society is for neophytes. How is that? The advanced devotees, they're very dedicated to the Seva Sangha of their guru and they'll never leave that. But for neophyte devotees, they need to be a member and there needs to be a hierarchy.

There needs to be managers and institutions and so many things like that. And someone who's wise, as Krishna says in the Gita, a wise person doesn't disturb someone who has a lower quality of faith because it's necessary. Srila Prabhupada wanted this society.

He wanted people to feel like they're a member and they belong to something. And yes, maybe it's a little bit of a lower kind of understanding of bodies and designations, but it's required for some people. And devotees who are wise and who have a heart to serve Srila Prabhupada, I feel will see it in that way.

And therefore, they'll want to support the managers. I often tell thinking devotees that we should always support the managers because if you don't support the managers, you may become a manager. So just to keep my life simple, I want to support the managers and I have no, what's the word? No sense of, no false misunderstanding.

I have no misunderstanding that the managers are always going to be perfect. Of course they're not, right? They're going to make mistakes. And we have to forgive them and let them go on because we need someone who can take that headache of dealing with money and politics and organization and things and dealing with single women and so on.

It's a big headache. We need someone who can take on that responsibility. And if there's someone who's a real thinker, we want to encourage thinkers, if someone's a real artist, they should support those managers because without those managers, where's the box going to be for them to continue to make the gift? We spoke last session about the box, which is like the institution of the gift, which is insight.

So if people want to work on making the gift, that's nice. But if you don't have a box to put it in, it may get lost. You may drop it.

And so that institution, the management is very important. Yeah. And of course they should be righteous persons.

They should be honest. They shouldn't be rascals. And there's so many things we can go on and say about that.

That's an entirely another topic. For me personally, maybe because I've been independent, from the institution for so many years, although I travel most of the year, I go to temples and I, whenever the first thing I do, when I go to a temple, I speak with the temple president. I asked him, what is the mood of your project? I want to know, how can I serve you? Because I don't want to just come in and create a disturbance.

I want to, I want to understand what is the mood of your project, how I can serve it. And I give them respect and I give them the support. Of course, if they're nonsense, if they're saying something, which I don't think Prabhupāda would like, then in a philosophical way in my class, I bring that up, kind of going in the back door, so to speak.

But I very much believe in working with the devotees because I've seen so many revolutionaries and today's revolutionaries are tomorrow's orthodox management. It always happens like that. The management is just something that needs to be there.

Krishna comes again and again to protect Indra. Indra is the supreme manager, but we don't pay much attention to Indra. We pay attention to the bridge bosses, even though Indra disrespected them and demanded that they worship him.

And Krishna, Jiva Goswami says, was angry thinking, my family members, the bridge bosses, my family members, my community, they're millions of times more exalted than Indra. And this Indra is so puffed up that he's demanding their respect from them. But still, Krishna smashed his pride, but he reinstated, he didn't take away his position.

He supported his position of Indra. And this is something we were saying in our last session also, that as unpalatable as it sounds, God always supports organized religion. Jagannath always supports the Pāṇḍas and Jagannath Mahaprabhu also did, but if you're a thinker, if you're an artist, if you want to do something more, then it's required sometimes to be a little more out of the box.

Devotees need to be empowered in whatever situation that can be in. Maybe it's remaining as a regular part of the institution, teaching and managing the institution, the society, the school or whatever. That's great, but you can't do it unless you're given some respect, some love and trust, and you're given some responsibility.

Otherwise, you can't reach your full potential. Of course, we have to earn that love and trust. Trust is not a one-way street.

You should just trust people who give you the keys to your car, and you don't even know what kind of driver I am. I have to earn your trust. We need to earn the trust of Guru, earn the trust of our Acharyas.

And obviously, we do that by being dedicated to Shiva Prabhupada and Prabhupada's mission. That's true. So I like that statement, you know, if you don't respect or we reject managers, we will end up becoming managers.

In many ways, actually, Brahmanas can do their own work, but the reach of the Brahmanical work will often depend on the Kshatriyas. And if we can equate roughly the Kshatriyas with managers, there can be nuances. But broadly, if we equate that, so, you know, say both of, I mean, you are much more senior to me, but both of us are traveling creatures.

But if there were no well-managed temples, we would be very limited in being able to go out and do any outreach. We would be sitting underneath a tree in Tompkins Square Park. I thought you would say sitting under a tree in Vrindavan, but Tompkins Square Park was really striking.

We could go there, but we wouldn't be able to do anything. Anything substantial. Yeah.

And then this point about, again, that God supports organized religion. This is quite significantly different from, there is a sometimes a vehement criticism that sometimes people say that the last Christian died 2000 years ago. Yeah.

Something like that. So there is a, that instead of having that extreme. So if you consider a pendulum, one extreme would be complete rejection of the rejection or condemnation of the institution.

That could be one extreme. And then second extreme would be completely identifying the spirituality with the institution itself. That means because I am ISKCON member, therefore, I am a devotee already.

So if we have a balance, that is, we respect the institution, but we also respect, we could, maybe you could use the word respect, respect the purpose of the institution. If you give more money, you're a better devotee. Oh, that's true.

See, there is this, there was a critical Bollywood movie about organized religion. Two movies were there. So one of the movies had this depiction that say, if there is a, if there is a temple and there's a queue for darshan.

So if somebody pays more, then you are given darshan quickly. Otherwise you don't pay, you have to go normally. So their argument was that religion is simply a business that this is simply in Hindi.

They say this is a business of faith. So, you know, I had written the response. I had written a small booklet responding to the accusation in that movie.

So I wrote back saying that, okay, even if you say that this is a business of faith, then this movie is doing a business of criticizing faith. So it is not that the movie is a charitable endeavor. So in some ways, there are certain things within the institution which can come off as quite materialistic.

And to some extent, the institution may also need to manage perceptions, but some things are just the way it will be. We can't avoid that kind of perceptions being created. But at the same time, if there is a due respect without institution, most people will not be really able to practice bhakti even at a basic level.

So sometimes like what you mentioned that about the neophyte, see, so we could put it this way two ways for the neophytes or for those who are new, often the institution helps them to, to start off on their spiritual journey. And for those who are, those who are maybe more experienced, more advanced, often the institution helps them to, to guide others. So if we see the institution, can you hear me Prabhu? Yes, I'm just, I'm drinking it in.

So if you consider the institution simply as a forum for say, younger as well as senior devotees to interact with each other, then we could have a much more, a non, a non-official or non-bureaucratic view of the institution. And one of my favorite quotes of Prabhupada from the lecture of instruction is, in that was Prabhupada says that the purpose of the Krishna consciousness movement is to nourish these sixfold exchanges among devotees. So this, that, that, so if that could be a non-institutional view of an institution or a non, non-bureaucratic view of an institution.

So maybe you could talk about a little bit about why sometimes as devotees also, we may perceive institutions negatively and how we can see them. You mentioned something, but maybe something about how we could see them more positively. Yeah.

First of all, let me go back a little comment and something you just mentioned about the managers being like Kshatriyas. I would bring that, that, although they're Vaishnavas and we, if someone's washing the dishes, they're a Vaishnava. Someone's managing the temple, they're a Vaishnava.

Someone's giving class, they're a Vaishnava. And we, we, we don't want to try to put them in a little box of being a Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Surya. But nevertheless, that function is a Kshatriya function.

And as we see, even in secular history, good kings supported the intellectuals, you know, like the thinkers of the world, and Aristotle and whoever, you know, doing their research and things, the kings would support them and they would support the artists. And that would enable those thinkers to be like, childlike persons. And they didn't have to get involved in all the politics and fault finding or this or that.

And, and practically never with those kings, perfect persons, they always had faults, but they were doing some noble thing. And that's what, that's an important thing to, to, to bear in mind. So, um, repeat what you'd asked me again at the last point.

I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah.

Just one more. I respond to this before I move on. I was thinking that when you talked about God supports the organized religion, you know, we could say from the Bhagavatam's perspective, the Brahmanas also represent organized religion and the Vaishnavas are devotees.

So quite often the Bhagavatam depicts that the Vaishnavas are superior to the Brahmanas. Yes. How many pastimes, but still in none of, in hardly any pastime are the Brahmanas condemned.

So for example, Shukracharya, he actually was advised against surrendering to Vishnu, but still at the end, Lord Vishnu very respectfully asked Shukracharya, what was wrong in his sacrifice? And he doesn't say that, you know, you rejected, you, it doesn't condemn him. So the Bhagavatam also actually, in the sense, respects the, the representatives of organized religion. The Brahmanas, even if they are wrong, the Brahmanas are not rejected or condemned or even publicly criticized.

They are allowed to, we could say, save face. They're not disgraced. So the question I had asked was that, you know, are there any particular reasons why people might pursue or even devotees might pursue the institution negatively? And how can that be avoided? Because one side is, as you said that we need space, but we also need respect for the institution.

Well, first of all, what is the institution again? I've never spoke to ISKCON. Who's Mr. ISKCON? I've never heard anybody who talked to Mr. ISKCON. And our experiences with ISKCON are relative.

And someone may have a good experience in Chopati. And someone may have a very bad experience in some other temple or vice versa. Someone may say, oh, this temple, this is ISKCON.

But they haven't been to every temple in the world. And even if they did go to every temple in the world, and even if somehow they met every devotee in the world, would they really understand ISKCON even then? Because we can't understand the hearts and minds of other persons. So when people become discouraged by ISKCON, what does it mean? It means that generally they had a bad experience with some person.

Usually the office because we're all personal. Yeah, usually when people talk about ISKCON, it's the office bearers of ISKCON. Somebody who officially represents ISKCON, people have bad experiences.

So I would say that for outsiders, it might be said some book distribution is very book distributor is very pushy. Or for somebody who's already devotee, the temple management may just reject their suggestions or force them to do a particular thing. So in that sense, somebody's office bearer.

So that person deals with them negatively. Then they feel as if ISKCON has treated me badly. Yes.

So when I deal with that kind of thing, it depends on the person, of course. If it's an outside person on the street, and they say, oh, you guys are just a bunch of beggars going to the airport, begging money and trying to sell your books. And you're too pushy.

Oftentimes I'll tell them, you're right. It's true. We've been too pushy in the past.

There's been some people like that. We should be honest and acknowledge the faults in our society if they're genuine faults. And we have a lot of genuine faults.

And it's not surprising. We're a young society, a lot of young members, passionate people. So I acknowledge that.

But I tell them that's not everybody. I remember once the author of Monkey on a Stick. I don't know if you've heard of that book.

It was a very, it's a monkey on a stick. It's a terrible book. Yeah, Monkey on a Stick.

And some of the terrible things that went on in Vrindavan. They had all kinds of worst things you can imagine. And when they came to our particular area, I was a president there.

The author had a public interview with someone. And our GBC and myself went. And we were dressed as devotees.

And at one point, somebody came down with a microphone and said, so you're hiring Christian devotees. What do you think about what they sing? And they pushed the microphone in our GBC member's face. And he said, such a good thing.

He said, like a small child. He said, this is not why I joined ISKCON. This is not what ISKCON is for me.

There may be some people who are doing like this. There may be stool and urine on the Ganga. There may be dead bodies.

But we have to distinguish. And for me, as Niranja Maharaj, I remember saying once in a meeting with some leaders in Kazakhstan, where we had the good fortune to be at, he told the devotees there, he said, believe me, I have every reason to leave ISKCON. I've been abused so many times.

I've seen so many bad things. I have every reason to leave. But I stay because I know Srila Prabhupada's desire.

It's very easy for devotees to become angry. Now we're speaking about devotees before we're speaking about outside people. And it's very different how to deal with them.

But speaking about devotees, I understand, I understand both why devotees, why non-devotees will become angry sometimes in our society with mistakes that have gone on. But I have no problem with the holy name. I have no problem with Srila Bhagavatam.

I have no problem with Prasadam. I have no problem with Srila Prabhupada or our previous Acharyas or this tradition. And I feel perfectly enriched and happy being part of it.

And let me tell you a little story. So this story perfectly illustrates the point of it. Some years ago, one senior devotee, very senior disciple, Srila Prabhupada, who was an Acharya, sannyasi, but he left ISKCON.

He had some affection for me. And he invited me one day to have Prasadam with him. And so I went to his ashram and we sat down and we had Prasadam.

And then he's speaking to me and the whole purpose of his speaking to me turned out was he wanted to tell me how bad ISKCON was and why I should leave ISKCON and why I should go and work with him. Now, it was very hard for me to argue with him for several reasons. One of which is you'd have to know this person.

Nobody defeats him in argument. It's extremely powerful. And the second reason is what he was saying, the bad things he was saying about ISKCON, they were true.

What could I say? So I was quiet for like one hour and he was going on and on saying so many things and I was just quiet. And finally he said, So what do you think? And I said, Well, Maharaj, it's like Kurukshetra. And he said, Kurukshetra? What do you mean Kurukshetra? And I said, Well, Shivalbhakti Siddhanta commented that at the end of his life, Thakur Bhaktivinoda wanted to go to Kurukshetra.

And that when some people heard about that, they were horrified. What do you want to go to Kurukshetra for? You want to go to Radhakund? You want to go to Vamshivat? Govardhan? What do you want to go to Kurukshetra with his lakes of blood? And you don't want to go to Kurukshetra. And Shivalbhakti Siddhanta responded, You're a Rishik.

You're not Rishik. You don't understand. Because Thakur Bhaktivinoda is a servant of Shri Mati Radharani.

And that service, which is the most needed, is the most appreciated. And that's why Bhaktivinoda wanted to go to Kurukshetra. Because there at Kurukshetra, Shri Mati Radharani had the greatest need.

There was Radhakund, Shamakund, Govardhan Hill. There were no Gopis and Gopas. Radharani's need was the greatest.

And so that service, which is the most needed, is the most appreciated. And I turned to the sannyasis and I said, So Maharaj, that's why I stay in ISKCON. Because I see the problems.

And I'm completely convinced that Srila Prabhupada will be very pleased with me if I stay and I try to solve the problem. And for me, Chaitanya Charan Prabhu, there's no problem. There's really no problem.

I give class whenever I want. I say whatever I want. I'm giving this interview, which may be very unpopular with some people.

But I can do this. I'm friends, I'm supporters of the leaders of GBC. Not every one of them.

I'm a human being. But I'm friends with many of them. Not that they're all perfect or good or whatever.

But I want to be a supporter of the mission. And there's no problem for me. I can have my artistic, intellectual expression and I can choose my association.

And if someone's obnoxious and stifling and trying to hinder my progress and trying to control me, well, I don't stay there. I go somewhere else. Politely.

I don't waste my time arguing with them because life is too short. And this is something I learned from my Gurmaj, who was a great radical in our society. And to this day, some people are nervous about him and his mood.

But at the same time, he was a staunch member of the GBC and a staunch member of ISKCON. And he taught me personally, he taught the devotees that you should work with the society. I can understand why people feel hurt.

We feel hurt because the outside devotees feel hurt. They don't like ISKCON for the same reason that the inside devotees feel hurt and don't like ISKCON. What is that broad reason? The broad reason is when we don't treat people as individuals.

When we treat people in a mechanical way and we're a book distributor and our relationship with someone is, excuse me, sir, are you from here or from out of town? Great. You get one of these. Here you go.

And we're just saying something mechanically. We're not treating them like a person and it makes them feel hurt. And in the same way, when I move in the temple and someone just says, look, new bhakta, just shut up and be humble and do what I tell you, then we feel hurt.

We're not being acknowledged. There's no trust in us. There's no acknowledgement that I'm an individual.

So this is such an important thing. And this is a lacking of bhakti because when bhakti is there, then we treat everyone as individuals. And there's no question of mechanical dealings.

Let me read something to you, Prabhuji. Is that okay? You want to comment on any of this? I spoke for a long time. No, no, please.

Okay. You can complete that and comment something. Yeah.

Okay. I'm going to read some very, very heavy things. The first is from Srila Bhaktasiddhanta Saraswati.

He says, The great ecclesiastical establishments are the dykes and the dams to retain the current, meaning like the current of a river, that cannot be held by any such contrivances, any such methods. They indeed indicate a desire on the part of the masses to exploit a spiritual movement for their own purpose. They also unmistakably indicate the end of the absolute and unconventional guidance of the bona fide spiritual teacher.

Now, this is a very heavy statement. Some people may feel disturbed by it. But this is a statement from our part of Gurudev, Srila Bhaktasiddhanta Saraswati.

And we won't do well if we just reject his statement because it makes us uncomfortable. In his language, in his words, he says, The church that has the best chance of survival in this damned world is that of atheism under the convenient guise of theism. The churches have always proved to be the staunchest upholders of the grossest form of worldliness, from which even the worst of non-ecclesiastical criminals are found to recoil.

And he says, It's not, don't mind me, don't be offended, please. He says, It's not from any deliberate opposition to the ordained clergy, the members of the church, that these observations are made. The original purpose of the established churches of the world may not always be objectionable, but no stable religious arrangement for instructing the masses has yet been successful.

Wow, what a statement. My God. But so then what is this movement? And Sheila Bhakta Siddhanta saw this, and this, I wrote some article about this, some comments on this article, Sheila Bhakta Siddhanta.

If he said this, then why did he make an institution? And why did Sheila Prabhupada make an institution? My suggestion is because there were two secret weapons, which they were very conscious of. And as long as those two secret weapons are there, then Putana, in the form of the false guru, and Kongsa, in the form of the head of mundane religion, will always be defeated. What are the two secret weapons? The holy name and Srimad Bhagavatam.

Now someone may scratch their head and say, excuse me, Prabhu, the holy name is not secret. We chant Hare Krishna on the street and Srimad Bhagavatam, we distribute that all over. They're secret because the Putanas, the little Putanas, and the little Kongsas don't take them seriously.

They take seriously an ecclesiastical position in the church. They take seriously money. Now I'd like to read something to you.

I titled it Tradition versus Convention. This is from a great thinker, secular thinking, Thomas Merton, from his book, No Man is an Island. Now bear in mind what we just read from Sheila Bhakta Siddhanta.

This is almost like a commentary. He says, in actual fact, conventions are the death of real tradition as they are of all real life. They are parasites which attach themselves to the living organism of tradition and devour all its reality, turning it into a hollow formality.

Tradition is living and active, but convention is passive and dead. Tradition does not form us automatically. We have to work to understand it.

But convention is accepted passively as a matter of routine. Therefore, convention easily becomes an evasion of reality. It offers us only pretended ways of solving the problems of living, a system of gestures and formalities.

Tradition really teaches us to live and shows us how to take full responsibility for our lives. Thus, tradition is often flatly opposed to what is ordinary, to what is mere routine. But convention, which is a mere repetition of familiar routines, follows the line of least resistance.

One goes through an act without trying to understand the meaning of it all, nearly because everyone else does the same. Tradition, which for us, I guess we would say parampara. Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it's always reviving, born again in each new generation to be lived and applied in a new and particular way.

Convention is simply the ossification of social customs. The activities of conventional people are merely excuses for not acting in a more integrally human way. Tradition nourishes the life of the spirit.

Convention merely disguises its interior decay. Okay. This is, I'm sure you must have a few thoughts about some of these things.

No, this is stunning. So I guess, you know, I should have taken what you suggested and responded to your earlier comments earlier, but there's a lot to discuss. Yes.

But first point about what you said earlier, like this is not the ISKCON I joined or this is not why I joined ISKCON. That is such a honest and human way of responding to criticism. Because sometimes we just, sometimes any kind of criticism is dismissed as blasphemy of devotees or blasphemy of Guru and Guru's movement.

And then, you know, that will suppress any honest self-reflection or self-criticism. We also make mistakes and we need to learn from them. So, but at the same time, so we are not denying those mistakes, not denying that, but at the same time, so that's not, that's not what attracted us or attracted us to something else.

So that way I, I found that that level of honesty requires a humility because just to some extent, you know, when you said, what is ISKCON, to that extent, there's also the question, how much do we identify with ISKCON? Now, if we identify too much with ISKCON, then immediately the criticism of ISKCON appears like a personal attack. And then we may respond at a knee-jerk level. So we, but if we, we are mature, there is like a, not a very attached identification with ISKCON, then we can also reflect honestly or we can reflect calmly without feeling threatened.

Yes, this is, this is a problem, but this is also there. So I think that honesty is very important. Otherwise, we live in a state of denial.

And then now in today's world, we cannot really survive like that because anybody can just go on Google and find every controversy that is there. And in some ways, maybe it is better that we discuss honestly. Otherwise people will get a distorted perception from other sources.

And that could be a problem. So that was one point. And then regarding this, I had several thoughts about what you said in Bhakti Nath Kedapur.

Do you have any idea when he wrote these quotes, was it toward the end of his life? Because he seemed somewhat disappointed by the way devotees were, were say, competing for like a privileged room and for some material facilities. Was it toward the end that he wrote these statements? That's an interesting question. Let me just look here.

I, I'm thinking it was written in 1931. Somehow that's what's in my mind, but I'm just trying to find the date. Maybe I don't have it here, but it's a good point.

Oh, it was published in 1932. Okay, 32. So now he started, if I'm not mistaken, he started that Uttaranga temple in 1919, isn't it? 1919 to 1920.

That was the big year in Kolkata. And 1937 was the year when he departed. So this, you could say, this is almost in the middle of his, so he was still a very active part of the institution.

And he, I mean, he was energizing and empowering the institution, but he was guarding against the, against the criticism, guarding against the pitfalls. And then another point that when he, when he was saying this, he's not immediately qualifying it by saying that this isn't applied to Gaudiya Mata because we are transcendental. It's so good.

It's so important. He's speaking of the principle. Yeah.

And we should always speak about the principle, not the person. Persons I don't understand. I don't know why they're doing what they're doing, but the principles are important.

So here, maybe this is a whole different subject to discuss, but in our tradition, the, because we are a personal, because our philosophy is personal and bhakti is also personal relationship. So there is a lot of emphasis on say the relationship between the disciple and the guru. So then when there is a problem with the, with the behavior of a person, that itself becomes very difficult.

So you also made an earlier point that when, whenever anybody is, anybody feels hurt, that's because they are treated mechanically. They're not treated like human beings. So this is from two perspectives now that say somebody in authority treats somebody impersonally, or sometimes I use the word instrumentally.

That means you just treat the person as a tool to get something done. And if you are, if you don't conform to the way I expect things to be, then, then get out of my way. Then that person becomes rejected or even demonized sometimes.

So, so from that perspective, the, the, the people in position may treat somebody in a way that is not respecting their humanity or their individuality. But on the other side, the devotees are also told that your inspiration has to come from other devotees. So for example, we say that bhakti sanjayate bhakti, bhakti comes from the bhaktas.

So now at the same time, so how do you differentiate between the principle and the person? Because we are told we have to surrender to a person or we surrender to the person because that person is manifesting that principle. Is it how we put it? I think that the nature of a neophyte is they can't distinguish. It's very hard for them.

And they need to have some kind of designation, some kind of upadhi, just like someone goes to the fashion, the mall, and they buy clothes off the rack to give themselves an identity. And so also we have ISKCON as our identity. But I'm not ISKCON.

You're not ISKCON. Who is ISKCON? ISKCON is not a person. It could have been the League of Devotees.

But there's Srila Prabhupada's Seva Sangha. That I identify with. But if someone comes and complains about ISKCON, I can be as detached as they are.

Depending on who it is and how they're criticizing. But I can acknowledge, as you pointed out, in a humble way, in an honest way, you're right. Because it's not a reflection on me.

Because I don't feel that I am ISKCON. I'm not accepting that upadhi. Rather, I'm a servant of ISKCON.

I'm a servant of Srila Prabhupada's Seva Sangha. And I'm always an individual. So that's an important principle.

If we lose that understanding of our individuality, then it's very difficult. So for new-ified devotees, it's hard for them. Because they're not mature enough to have any kind of idea about themselves as an individual.

So often, that's a gross generalization. Sometimes I've seen new devotees who are very mature and very individual. And I've also seen older devotees who are very mechanical and rigid and institutional and wrapping themselves up in designations.

Okay. So I am not ISKCON. It is a very… Obviously, we are not ISKCON.

ISKCON is much bigger than us. But at the same time, we need to have that differentiation. So when you say that this Prabhupada Seva Sangha, is this something which you coined? It's a beautiful construction.

That's my phrase. And that means, what is Prabhupada Seva Sangha? That's the real ISKCON. And that doesn't just mean leaving the managers and whatever.

Sometimes devotees say that Prabhupada said, I am ISKCON. But Prabhupada also said, and you can't find that in the folio, but I take it, I accept that Prabhupada said it sometimes. But Prabhupada many times, Prabhupada may have said, I am ISKCON.

But Prabhupada many times said, Prabhupada said, ISKCON is my body. Excuse me. ISKCON is my body.

But Prabhupada many times said, I am not my body. I am not my body. Yeah.

And Prabhupada told Brahmananda, it's in his remembrances. When I read this, it blew my mind. They were in Los Angeles.

There was some ISKCON politics going on. And one day, Prabhupada turned to Brahmananda and said, I'm leaving ISKCON. I'm going to leave ISKCON.

And Brahmananda was completely shocked. He said, but Prabhupada, you are ISKCON. But I said, never mind, I'm going to leave.

So what does it mean? How Prabhupada can't leave ISKCON? ISKCON is Prabhupada's desire. That's what I see as ISKCON. And there's a certain box for that, that's called the management, and the buildings, and the temples, and properties, and all that.

And that box is needed. And we should take good care of the box. But the gift inside, let's talk about that.

This is what Srila Prabhupada's desire. Prabhupada told the GBC, if I didn't say this last session, I definitely should say it at least once this time. He walked into a GBC meeting.

This is in a Prabhupada-Villambi time. And he told them, everybody stopped and looked up to him. Prabhupada said, this chanting should go on.

Instead of meetings, resolutions, dissolutions, revolutions, and no solutions, there should be chanting. This is the Hare Krishna movement. And this is the solution.

There's a beautiful remembrance we saw from Mahatma Prabhu, who was a temple president in, I don't know, 1974 in Vancouver. And he came to the San Francisco Ratha Yatra. And when he was there, he was informed that there was going to be a meeting of all the temple presidents with Srila Prabhupada.

And so he was thinking, well, I've seen Prabhupada morning walks. I've seen Prabhupada getting in class. I've seen Prabhupada Ratha Yatra.

But I've never seen Prabhupada as a manager. I want to see what he's like as a manager. So he went to the meeting.

And Prabhupada, the first thing he did, he gave everybody prasadam. He just greeted everybody in a very informal, loving, personal way. And then he just started talking to them about preaching.

And there was nothing about management. And Mahatma was waiting. When is he going to talk this about the accounts and how to organize this and that? But there was nothing.

And he said, over the many years of his association with Prabhupada, he never saw Prabhupada doing management like that. And another point he made, I thought was very interesting. He said, as managers, we all have crises.

Every GBC member you ask, and practically every second or third day, they get a phone call. There's this crisis. Maharaj, there's things going on.

This problem and this. And we're always trying to scramble. There's always emergencies.

I can't go to Bhagavatam class today because this crisis is there with the New York temple or with this thing or that thing that I can't do that. But Prabhupada never had a crisis. There was no crisis situations for Srila Prabhupada.

He was taking shelter of bhakti. And that was how, Mahatma said, it was amazing. Here's someone who has over 100 temples all over the world, over 10,000 disciples.

And he's written, writing books constantly. He's managing a worldwide movement with all kinds of accounts and monies and management things going on. And he doesn't have a fleet of secretaries and telephones.

He very rarely used the telephone. And what was his management style? Prabhupada's my hero. He's my management hero.

That's beautiful. If I may just present a slightly different perspective. Yes, please.

I've been reading Giriraj Maharaj. Giriraj Maharaj has just completed a book on the Juhu temple. It's not yet published, but it's a magnificent book, over 600 pages.

So actually there in many ways, we see Srila Prabhupada as the manager. In the sense that Prabhupada was involved. Okay, how much did you pay for the cement? How much did you do for this? Prabhupada would actually scrutinize things also.

And then we see Prabhupada was quite, we could say he would change strategy. At one time, when the local, when the local government said that this temple is a nuisance and we should not be, we don't want it because it's too much noise. So Prabhupada said, we will get all our patrons.

We'll all get all supported and we will do a dharana. We will do a protest march against it. And then after that, Prabhupada said, no, maybe a protest march is not a good idea.

We don't want, because we have to live with the government. We don't want to antagonize the government. He said, we'll just, we will contact our life members and we will find through them if we can influence the government to change his decision.

So the point I was making here is two points that when it was necessary, Prabhupada could do management and Prabhupada, in fact, the way Prabhupada dealt with the Juhu case, you know, when the person, when Mr. N was trying to take the temple away after taking the money also, Prabhupada was a warrior trying to make, to protect the temple. So Prabhupada would do that when it was necessary. And especially in India, he felt it was necessary because in India, often Western devotees were cheated.

They had to pay too much. Indians thought that Western people are loaded with money. So they would take too much money.

But when he had the option, especially after the initial few years in the West, Prabhupada did not get much involved in management. Now he more or less entrusted his disciples to his disciples, the responsibility of managing. So the second point I wanted to make here was that first was that Prabhupada preferred not to manage, but if required, he was ready to step forward and do that also for Krishna.

And second is when he came to management, he did not treat even his own decisions as absolute. I told this, this is not like this decision is the word of God's representative and you have to accept it. No, I thought of this today and no, this is not working.

Let's try this out. So in that sense, if Prabhupada also did not approach management with the attitude of divine omniscience, then if we are dealing with managers, we can't expect them to be perfect. That sometimes they will make mistakes and there's a lot of pressure in management and that leads to different kinds of maybe lack of judgment or impulsive decisions or so many things can happen because it is a, it is like a pressure cooker situation.

There's a lot of pressure in that service. So, Managers need friends and they need someone who's thoughtful and they need sadhus who are detached and are not political and not trying to just bash them or hate managers because all managers are bad, which is such a childish thing to say. I find it very shallow.

I'm sorry to say I find it very shallow when people just complain about ISKCON, the institution. I find it a very shallow statement because it means you're being institutional. It means you're being shallow like that because I'm not an institution.

You're not an institution. The people here in the room with me right now, they're not an institution. I don't want to treat them like that.

Now, I may be unhappy with XYZ, GBC member or temple president. I may disagree with their policy or something. That may be there.

But why do I want to take away the personality and individuality of so many people and speak in an impersonal kind of way and just lump everybody in and say it's all bad? That's a very shallow, that's a symptom of a shallow thinker, a shallow person. Far better too with these managers, as you said, I find so many of the time they really need a friend. They need some help.

And if you love them and care for them, it touches their heart. And then oftentimes, they're very eager to take advice. But if you just want to go like everybody else and just start lecturing them without showing that you have love and affection for them, if you haven't earned their trust, then they're very guarded.

And they're thinking, oh, there's another person doing politics and this and that, and oh God. And it's so painful for them. We really need managers.

There's so many managers. The temple president in Detroit was one famous example. He wasn't chanting 16 rounds.

He wasn't following four principles. And the devotees revolted against him. And they wanted him out.

They finally kicked him out. And Prabhupada came and Prabhupada brought him back. And the devotees complained and they wanted to kick him out again.

Prabhupada said, no, he's a good manager. Or maybe he wasn't such a good disciple in his way, whatever. But he had some good qualities.

And Prabhupada saw that to be a good manager is such an important thing. Narada Muni is friends with Kongso. You know, there's saintly persons who are friends with Robin and so many demoniac persons, not because they like those demons, but because they have an important position.

And let me try to be their friend and give them some good advice if I can. But they may accept us as a friend. It's like Kongso accepted Narada Muni because he really considered Narada Muni was a non-political person.

He was a detached kind of person. I really liked, by the way, your comment. It was a kind of correction in a way.

And I'm delighted with it. Giriraj Maharaj's remembrance of Prabhupada. Thank you.

That makes things a lot more balanced. It's not just that we're hippies. But at the same time, I think Prabhupada didn't, personally, he didn't want to take that role.

But in India, as you pointed out, there was one big manager who said, Prabhupada, I'm not able to chant my rounds properly. And Prabhupada said, never mind your rounds. You just do the service.

I'm telling you to do this. But he wasn't able to do it. It was too much for the Westerners.

I know very well for a Westerner being in India, it's very difficult. You feel like sometimes everybody's trying to cheat me. Once somebody told it to Prabhupada, famous conversations, the Westerner said, Prabhupada, all the Indians are trying to cheat us.

And Prabhupada said, yes, I'm also an Indian. I'm also cheating you. I told you it's such a fun, easy thing, chant, dance and be happy.

And then you find out about four regulated principles. He said in this way, I cheated you also. I think what we need, Prabhuji, we need community.

And we need love and trust. And this is for me, this is a path I want to see with ISKCON. I want to see ISKCON continue.

I want to see the properties continue. I want to see the temples continue and the management continue. But all of that's just a box.

And the heart of the box is loving Vaishnav exchanges. It's our community. And it's artificial for me to say, I love everybody.

If you're an ISKCON devotee, I love you. That means I'm not very mature. It means I'm sentimental.

It means something impersonal because to love everybody means you love nobody. But I love people because of their qualities, because of the interaction with them. So I should find that place where there's the Govindankul village or it's Chowpatty or where there's Bhuvaneshwar or Mayapur, wherever, where I have my Sangha, where people love and trust me and I can get responsibility and I can be empowered.

We need that. Beautiful. Yes, Prabhuji.

I just thought I had to love everybody is to actually love nobody. There's an American comedian who said that, you know, I love humanity. It is just human beings with whom I have a problem.

So I think it's, if we don't differentiate, then we will not be able to actually connect deeply with anyone because we might superficially say, I like all devotees, which is fine. We don't want to dislike devotees, of course. But if you want to go deep, we'll have to find out who are like-minded and finding that out at each place or whichever places we get our Sangha.

That's important. You know, going back a little bit earlier, you said that you go to each temple. When you go, you try to understand the mood of the temple and then you try to see how your presentations can fit into the mood.

So now there is, there are two distinct things in this. I'll give two examples of this and then maybe you could comment on this. I once said that one temple gave a class and then the devotee came and he said, your class was wonderful.

Then I asked him, what did you like in the class? So he says, it was not, there was no contamination of any management agenda in the class. There was no contamination of any management agenda. On the other hand, there was, I went to a temple and then the temple leader told me that we need to, that we need to, the devotees are not coming forward to do services.

So, therefore, we, devotees are eager to do services like Pujari on the altar or giving classes, but say cleaning temples and clean temple hall, washing vessels, devotees are not ready to come and do that service. So then can you speak on this topic? So then I spoke on that topic about how for Krishna, all services are dear to him and we can serve in various ways. Then one devotee came and told me that there had been a preacher who had come for the last previous day and there had been a preacher who had come the previous week and they said, how come all three of you spoke on the same topic? It's like, I think in our last session, maybe I mentioned about the artists that I'd met who asked me what I thought of her paintings and I did something I usually don't do.

And I said, well, actually tell you the truth. I, I'm not, I don't, they don't really touch my heart. I'm not impressed.

And she said, really? I also don't like them. Yeah. They told me exactly what to do.

And so I find this same problem when we travel. Sometimes people, they want to use you and they're not treating you like a person. They're trying to use you as an instrument, as you would say, for their own particular agenda.

And that's a kind of violence against you. It's violence in the sense that they're stripping you of some of your individuality and personality. And they're, they're also stripping other devotees of that and just demanding that they follow them, whatever, follow their management.

It's painful. And it requires some expertise. And sometimes a Prabhupada would flatter people.

My grandmothers once told me, Madhavananda, he said, you should learn how to cheat them. It's very important. And what he meant by that, I would see how he would cheat people sometimes.

He would flatter some people. The Prabhupada flattered some people. And he would say, oh, you're like an incarnation.

You're like this and that to get them to cooperate, to get them to work together. So it's one thing to flatter someone. But the saying is that I like very much that empathy is not the same thing as endorsement.

I may empathize you or someone. It's a very important point, but I'm not necessarily endorsing what you're doing. And that, again, is something which requires maturity.

And these are just growing pains that we're talking about. And I very much hope that anybody watching this discussion between us doesn't get the wrong idea and think that either you or myself are against ISKCON or against the institution. I think nothing further from the truth.

Both of us have dedicated our life to Prabhupada's mission. Yeah. But my life is not given to an institution.

My life's given to a Seva Sangha and the teachings of Prabhupada. And I also help serve the box that those things come in. But the box is secondary for me.

And the gift inside is the primary thing. Yeah. I think coming back to that example is important.

And I love this difference between empathy and endorsement. So we could say, for example, if there is some manager who is facing a lot of problems because of a particular devotee. And conversely, that devotee is facing a lot of problems because of that manager.

So it's both ways. So we could offer them a caring, attentive ear and a caring heart. But we don't have to endorse anyone in that sense.

So that's a very good, you could say. I think in Chaitanya Bhagwat, isn't there a passage where Rindan Das Chakur says that if two groups of Vaishnavas are fighting, then don't take sides. I think that that may not be like an absolute statement in all situations, but it is a good advice.

It is a good principle. And I think that echoes with what you are saying of being empathic, but not endorsing. The institution is always going to have a little different forms as we travel.

Bhakti Rasamrita Maharaj was telling me a few years ago, I was saying something about how it's healthy to have traveling preachers because they don't know the politics, they're not attached to a place, and then they can go somewhere and people have faith in them. You speak the same thing, the last three speakers also spoke, because the temple president is coercing you. But it's good because it's a fresh person.

In both sides, if there's two different parties, and it always happens that we have the phrase, Gramya Kata. Gramya Kata means in the Gram, in the village. That's what happens when you live together.

But then you have a visiting preacher, a sannyasin, and their qualifications, they're not attached to either side. So I was telling this to Bhakti Rasamrita Maharaj, and he liked that. And then he told me, he said, and the other thing is, it's very good for the preachers.

Because you get to go and you see so many different ways that people are spreading Christian consciousness. And it was such a profound comment for me, I always remember that. And it's one of the most valuable things in my life.

When I travel, I always look to see how different devotees in different temples are doing things. Because the box comes in different colors. It comes in different shapes.

Sometimes hard, sometimes it's soft. And in so many different ways, the box comes. And the box is interesting, the box is important.

And then also the gift inside. Some people, they shine it in a particular way. It comes in a particular color than the inside gift also.

And we can learn so much from them. But when we demand, when we have this idea, instead of, as Thomas Merton was saying, let's go back to that. Instead of following our tradition, our parampara, we just have convention.

And we're just repeating something in a blind mechanical kind of way. Then we lose the essence. And this is what Bhaktivinoda spoke about.

Asarvahi and Bharavahi. Essence seekers and the person's care and help both. That's so true.

And so, you know, this is the same point about the variety we see within the movement itself in each temple. Each temple has a different mood. And although they are doing the core, same core activities, but so in a sense, within the institution itself, we see individuality flourishing.

So each temple, we could say, is the manifestation of the mood of its leader or whether it could be the temple president or it could be the spiritual master or whoever is there usually. So in that sense, it's not the individual, the institution always suppresses the individuality. So Prabhupada, sometimes I use this word, maybe there will be a better word.

ISKCON is like a joint, is like a set of joint nuclear families. So each temple is like a nuclear family, but then it's joint. So that means individuality does flourish for those who take up responsibility.

And if they're ready to take up responsibility, they get empowerment. And once they get the empowerment, then they can develop their individuality even through the way each temple manifests. So the striking thing to me in this regard too, you look at every single leader in our society, they're an individual.

And the reason why they're leaders because they're a strong individual. So if in a subtle way, we're trying to discourage individuality, it doesn't work because all the leaders are the persons who are the great individuals. Yeah.

It's required to be mature enough to balance these two things. Yes. And I see artists who have money people, people who are buying their paintings because a money person will buy a painting from you for a thousand rupees and then turn around and sell it for 10,000 rupees.

And the artist feels angry and cheated because the artist doesn't have a brain for money, generally speaking. That's the way artists work. They're just idealistic persons.

Thinkers are like that. They're idealistic persons. And it's natural sometimes a very common thing amongst artists and intellectuals to be angry and distrustful of managers or financial people because they've been cheated.

And they think all these people are like this. But it's necessary to find good, honest managers and financial people because the intellectuals, the Brahmins, they're like children. The artists are like children.

And their childlike nature is there because they're not putting their mind so much toward money and toward external things. And therefore they can explore the world of creativity and thought. And we want to support that from them.

And that's why the Brahmins are supported by the Vaishyas and the Kshatriyas and other persons. It's important. Beautiful.

Now, this point about Brahmanas or artists being like children, that's such an important point. In one sense, that's what is required for them to do their role. If, say, an artist becomes very calculative or then they cannot even do art properly.

So if somebody is just making the art that is going to sell, then it's not really art. It's more of a business. And same way with Brahmanas also.

So that better to say Vaishnavas, I think, than Brahmanas. Yeah. When they fall down and they become mechanical, then that's a Brahman.

That's a good way of putting it. Yeah. So somebody is playing a Brahmanical role in society while being a Vaishnava.

So now I would like to outline some dynamics. So that if somebody, so there could be individual institution. Broadly, there could be three possibilities.

Say one is that the individual grows and makes the institution grow. That means that individual becomes an institution's leader. It's like some devotees, they come, they join, they become, they distribute books, they become Sankirtan leaders, then they become a temple president or they start their own temple.

So for those kinds of people who become institutional leaders, for them, expressing their individuality is not a problem. But there could be some people who do not become institutional leaders in the sense of the institution's hierarchy. And then for them to develop their individuality into institution becomes difficult.

So some people, they grow individually and they make the institution grow. But some people, they may find it difficult to grow because of the institution or because of the institutional constraints. And the third kind of people, they grow simply because of the institution.

That means they don't really make the institution grow so much. So no offense to anyone, but say if we have in a temple, everyday different devotees give classes. So now some devotees may be really very good speakers.

They're not just good speakers, but they will be good scholars. And there may be some who may not be that good. So now if that devotee were doing a program on their own, not many people might come for their program.

But when that devotee gives a Bhagavatam class, then because it's a Bhagavatam class, so devotees come for that class. So similarly, if somebody becomes senior and just because somebody is senior, they are made into a manager. But they may not have the competence for managership, but they grow simply because they grow, but they don't really make the institution grow.

Because they are growing because of their seniority and they get some position. So somebody is senior and then they are asked to do kirtans. They may not be very good at singing, nor might they be very advanced devotees so that their devotion, their kirtan is surcharged with devotion.

So now if these three categories, if I may repeat that those who themselves grow and make the institution grow, those who can't grow because of the institution or those who can't grow within the institution, say somebody wants to do some, maybe do some service painting or some other service, which is not institutionally productive. And some people who grow simply because of the institution. So, my observation is that to some extent, the biggest problems come because of this middle category.

Those devotees in the first category, in the second category, the first, they will themselves grow, they'll make the institution grow. The second category, they will find their own space. They'll have to create their own space, maybe have their own time and have their own resources.

So then create their own space and move forward. But this third category, that means they don't have any core competency and their qualification is only their seniority. Then sometimes that could be what Thomas Merton says that somebody has simply followed a convention, but they are not really internalized.

Then sometimes these people become very rigid. So they feel that because if somebody has competence, then they may see that competence is a threat to them. And then that's where I think the problems come because the first and the second, both of them will be able to move forward in their own way.

But the third category can stop both the first and the third, first and the second to move. Any thoughts about this? Yes, I like your analogy, your analysis, and I quite agree with it. I think it's really important for thinkers and artists to know how to deal with the third category.

And if they want to be able to continue with their art, with their freedom of thinking and things, they should be mature enough to understand that there's a lot of people who are mechanical in their behavior, and I'm gonna have to be very careful with them. It's a sad thing today in our society. I see, I read, I've met a lot of Prabhupada disciples when I traveled.

I remember there's one devotee I traveled with for a couple of days during sankirtan, and he hadn't taken bath in like a month or two weeks or something like that. And his body odor was so bad, I had to have my head out the window while I was driving the car because I would just get sick. It was just so toxic.

And later I saw him, we stayed the night in the van, he left and came back smoking a cigarette, smelling like alcohol. This is a very gross example. But my point is that no one today could know how to deal with him.

But Prabhupada could deal with him. Prabhupada could still love him. Prabhupada could still engage him.

I see this a lot of times, I speak in a very blunt way, it's a little social difference. I'm coming from America. In America, gay people are very common, homosexual and lesbians are very common.

In India, it's there, but it's not spoken of so much. In India, if you have someone who becomes interested in Krishna consciousness, but they've got a girlfriend, a lot of times a brahmachari in the temple doesn't know how to preach to them. And what to speak if they have a boyfriend? And they want to practice Krishna consciousness because they don't fit in the kind of box that we're used to.

But Srila Prabhupada was such a personality. And I'm appreciating your comments about these three different types of persons. And in the second category, I see people during the time of Prabhupada, there was a number of devotees, including at one time, Krishna Maharaj and Vishnu Maharaj, who were two of the biggest devotees in the society later.

But they were very independent with the Radha-Damodara party. They just did what they wanted and Prabhupada let them do that. Jayananda Prabhu, for a short time, he was a temple president in San Francisco.

But mostly he was just a mature person who had a vision and he worked very hard for a spiritual master. And he didn't exactly fit with any institutional role. Jamuna was another person who was very, very artistic and very, very thoughtful.

But she didn't really fit in. In fact, there's a conversation you can see in her biography where some of the leaders came to Prabhupada and they accused her of being Benadric, which is what we were speaking about in the last session. That's Bhagavatam 329.8. Benadric is a separatist.

Prabhupada, she's a separatist because she wasn't following everything that they gave. And Prabhupada, and they said she's not working with ISKCON. And Prabhupada said, anywhere there are two people or more chanting Hare Krishna, that is ISKCON.

And he said, she is ISKCON. Of course, Prabhupada also said some other different things. But Prabhupada considered Jamuna to be very much ISKCON, although she didn't fit in any particular role.

I personally spoke with her about this. It was a long discussion, our conversation, which is something I'll keep with me for the rest of my life. Very, so many profound things.

I asked her because I respected her as an artist, a thinker, an individual. I said, what happened? I heard about the early days and there was one bathroom and everybody wore the same yellow cloth. The ladies wore like a sari, the men wore like a dhoti and everybody used the same bathroom and the women gave class and the men gave class.

And what happened? And she began to speak something about the history of things. And that's a long discussion. But at one point, she couldn't tolerate it anymore.

And she loved Srila Prabhupada and Prabhupada loved her. And Prabhupada would have her sit on the stage next to him and sing and sometimes get talks and things. But when things became, in the language of Thomas Merton, more conventional and more mechanical and devotees started in a certain role and it was all based on Upadis.

That's when she checked out because it was too painful for her. And she came back to America and she moved initially to Northern California and then later to Oregon. And she had with her Dina Tharny Mataji, her old friend.

And the two of them were ISKCON. And they had their deities of Radha Krishna and they were cooking for Prabhupadas. And she was a complete ISKCON devotee, completely dedicated to Prabhupada.

But she wasn't working with the institution. And in my humble opinion, this is my personal opinion, but I consider Jamuna to be one of the great acharyas in our ISKCON line, one of the great saints, who's a great, great example. But she's someone who didn't work exactly within the box of the institution always.

And I don't think it's always necessary. That's my point. My God.

So this is, I think these are examples which we really need to maybe study and analyze a little bit more. Those devotees who, with special artistic abilities, couldn't or because they couldn't fit in the ISKCON, how Prabhupada dealt with them. That is, now her memoir is also quite moving.

The book about her life, it is so two points about this specifically, that he said about the second category needs to deal with the third category properly. So that means those who need their independence, but don't get it within the institution. So sometimes I tell devotees that if you want to do something, there are two things which we will never, we will rarely get together.

There is freedom and there are facilities. If you want your freedom, then don't expect facilities. Create your own facilities.

And if you want facilities, then you may not have your freedom. At least you have to subordinate it to some extent. And we see this right from the time of Prabhupada himself.

You know, Prabhupada did not get any facilities from Gaudiya Math. But he had the freedom and then he created the facilities. So I feel if the expectations are moderated, quite often the complaining happens when we want the freedom and the facilities both.

And we think, why am I not getting it? But in general, if somebody wants freedom, the world is so big. And in a sense, ISKCON is so small, as compared to the, how big the world is. That is, some devotees want to do something.

They want the freedom to do something. It's very rare that somebody will go on their case and suppress them. So it's only when freedom and facility, freedom is wanted and then facilities are also sought for that purpose.

So then it becomes a problem. So just to give an example of this, that say, if somebody, then like even you for yourself, when you do Krishna Katha Amrit Bindu, if you had stayed in a temple, then you wouldn't have had the, had the facility to do this. But when you had the freedom, I think it must, it took few years to create the resources.

You had to go through a phase where, I think once we were in Puri, you mentioned it to me. You had to go through a phase of like total dependence on Krishna, of how the resources were going to come. And Krishna eventually provided the resources by which you could continue.

So it's only a thing when we expect both. So if the individual expects both, it's going to be a problem. And if the institutional leaders deny both, then it will be a problem.

But if there is a model, and there is a model, if the expectations are moderated, I mean, the expectations are moderate, then there can be space for everyone to practice bhakti. And we should also understand, I think too, that we have to earn respect. We have to earn trust.

When we speak about freedom and facility, if you're a new devotee, and you haven't earned the trust of the leaders, they're not going to want to give you freedom and facility. But if you're someone like Genevieve Harrison, who mentioned her last session also, who, by dint of her dedication, she's earned the trust of many devotees. And so she's gotten some facility and some freedom, although now she's getting her own facility.

And you're saying, this is one of our purposes for our project, our Gopalji publications. I think it's one of the purposes of your publications also. Usually different things in your publications in some ways than we are.

But in general, we're trying to encourage people to think. And I'm trying to do something for devotees which is out of the box. It's not totally rigid with the institution.

And we like, we have our curriculum as Emporium where devotees can come and there's no big management, GBC, temple president thing. It's just hearing and chanting. And everything is based on that.

And that's very, very nourishing. And we're fortunate to have some opportunity to do that. But to do that has taken me as an individual 35 years of working to earn the trust of devotees.

It's not something which just happened overnight. I often hear some of my intellectual friends complaining, artistic friends complaining, oh, they're so mechanical. And then they're not giving me any freedom.

They're not giving any facility, this and this. Well, two things are there. One is, we should be ready to earn that.

We should be ready to respect the devotees and we have to earn their trust. And the second thing is, if someone's just completely unreasonable, then go somewhere else where you're appreciated. This is what I love about ISKCON.

I remember there was one senior preacher, Sanyasi Guru, who they requested him at a certain place in the world. I won't say names. They said, Maharaj, we love you, but maybe it's better if you don't come here, because we have a very different mood.

And two of the temple presidents in that area contacted him and asked him not to come. And some of his followers became very angry. And they said, this is a great offense here.

But I thought of it, why is it an offense? For me, as an individual preacher, if someone doesn't want me, I think that's their good intelligence. They understand what I'm like, and therefore, they don't want me to go there. They see my bad qualities.

Why should anyone want me? And why should I want to go there if I'm not wanted? Life is too short to go and dance with those people. Let me go where I'm appreciated. So these two scenarios are there.

One is if I can earn the love and trust of those devotees and work with them. And if I can't, because they're completely unreasonable, then go somewhere else. It's a big world.

And people will appreciate your sincerity. I have full confidence in that. People don't appreciate politics and fault finding.

But if you're a genuine, sincere person, you really want to help Prabhupada's mission, people will love you. And they'll see that. We have to, in that sense, I feel strongly that we have to create community.

I was having a discussion with a senior devotee about this recently. And telling him how I find this in my own life, that wherever I go, I'm always trying to create community. And not just so that they go and give a class in the temple.

It's 100 people and it's great. And they clap their hands and say, wow, wonderful. And they maybe throw money at you or something.

But I want to make friends and have a dinner program with three or four intimate persons and have a discussion like I'm having with you. And wherever we go, I'm always looking for like-minded devotees where we can come together in a small group because I need that. I need that nourishment.

And I don't find that in a big temple, even if they all clap their hands and say, wow, that was a great class or whatever. It's not satisfying in my heart to just be what we're about to see down to Sarasvati called a platform preacher. You're not going to change the heart of people.

We have to get to know individuals. And it's a disease when we can't see the individual because all we see is the institution. And then we start judging everybody by, oh, he's a senior person in the institution.

Or he's a temple devotee in the institution. He's an outside devotee in the institution. He's a brahmachari in the institution.

He's a grihastha in the institution, but he's a good grihastha. Or he's a grihastha who's independent. That's not good.

Or, oh my God, he's a babaji. Or he's a Gaudiya Mutt devotee. Or he's a Christian.

I'll say this very frankly. I make better friends sometimes with Christians and even with Muslims. There was a Muslim couple who came to Jagannath Puri and we made such good friends with them.

I made even better friends with them sometimes than I am with some of my own God brothers. Because friendship is not just based on having the same guru or being in the same institution. Empathy doesn't indicate and it doesn't necessarily mean the same as endorsement just because I'm friends with someone.

But that friendship doesn't know any rules. I can be friends with someone and I can be myself. But sometimes we're not mature enough for that.

But Prabhupada was. Prabhupada was friends with Dr. Mishra who was a hardcore Mayavadi. When Dr. Mishra came to London, you know, Prabhupada got his institution.

Everything's, he's become a lot more successful. He doesn't need Dr. Mishra anymore as he did perhaps in New York, right? Dr. Mishra comes to New York. Prabhupada comes to London.

Prabhupada immediately invited him for lunch and was so loving with him. My old friend, how are you doing? But Dr. Mishra is a Mayavadi. How can he be friends with him? And Allen Ginsberg, Prabhupada was friends.

Allen Ginsberg is a drug addict, homosexual, decadent person. But Prabhupada was friends with him. Friendship doesn't know rules.

Beautiful, huh? Friendship doesn't know rules. That's amazing. And the examples that you give are very, very poignant.

I think sometimes this is where we may lose our humanity in trying to stick to rules. Rules are important, but sometimes in sticking to rules, we may lose our humanity. Maybe this is a whole different subject.

Maybe we may have to discuss in the future, but I just mentioned this. I was talking with one devotee and they said that maybe they had some problem with one of the regulatory principles. And then it was their guides or their authority.

It came like a thunderbolt on them and that you have no sense control. You are a lusty animal and this and that. That is not a very serious thing.

Like you said in India, even for a person to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, even a girlfriend is also considered scandalous sometimes. So it is something like that. And this devotee told me afterward that ISKCON is only a place for devotees.

It is not a place for human beings. That's a beautiful comment. I don't want to be part of that.

But you know something, Chaitanya Chandragupta, I belong to another ISKCON and I have a lot of friends. You're one of my friends. There are so many thinkers and artists and individuals that I'm friends with.

And we're ISKCON devotees. And I'm very happy. It depends on which direction you're looking at.

The cup is half full, it's half empty. A beautiful story to illustrate your point that Rabindranath Maharaj personally told me. I don't know where he heard this, but it was an exchange between Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati and his disciple Srila Bhakti Raksha Sridharmaraj.

And Bhakti Raksha Sridharmaraj was a temple president in some temple. And there was a brahmachari who fell down with a girl. And so they came and made a complaint to Srila Bhaktisiddhanta.

And Srila Bhaktisiddhanta was a very heavy person. He called for that brahmachari. And he told him, you can go wherever you want, but you can't stay here.

And the brahmachari began crying, Ramaraj, please, please, I have nowhere to go. And Srila Bhaktisiddhanta said, out, go. And he left.

And as soon as he left, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta turned to Bhakti Raksha Sridharmaraj and said, now you go and bring him back. And Sridharmaraj became confused. And he said, but Guru Maharaj, how can I bring him back? You've rejected him.

And Srila Bhaktisiddhanta told him in the same way that Kala Krishnadas was rejected by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, but the devotees, they brought him back. So in the same way, same way you go and you bring him back. It's so personal.

We can't lose the devotees. We work so hard to get the devotees. We should love them.

And even if they have problems, even if they can't, even if they can't follow any of the principles, but if somehow still they're appreciative of Bhakti and Srila Prabhupada, then they're our friends. And I'll always appreciate them and love them. And I want to see the good things that they did before.

The poet Devaki Nandan Das describes this in a very beautiful way. That I offer my obeisances all the devotees in the past, all the devotees in the future. Fakir Mohan Prabhu once explained this verse to me and he said, by the grammar, it has another meaning.

That means all the people who used to be devotees, but they're not devotees anymore. Now they became Christian, they became a Mayavadi yogi or whatever, and they stopped practicing Bhakti. But they were a devotee for two months in the ashram.

So I love them and I give respect to them. Hoya chena and hoya bhena. I'm respecting all the people who are not devotees yet, but who will later become devotees, which means everybody.

Excellent. This is our tradition that Merton, who by the way, if you didn't know Merton, I think you must know, but Thomas Merton was a Catholic monk and a great thinker. He's coming from a religious practice and this is what he's speaking, the difference between tradition and convention.

Our tradition is Bhakti. Our tradition is to love the Vaishnavas especially. And then we may have some convention.

Convention means we have to act within the institution in a certain way and we may do it in a mechanical way. And then the person principle gets lost and our movement no longer serves the function the Prabhupada wanted. That is true.

So this is, you know, again, the purpose of loving devotees and connecting with devotees. So the rules are important, but when we forget the purpose of the rules, and those rules, instead of bringing people together, they actually pull people apart. And I've seen sometimes, you know, spiritual standards, spiritual standards become like weapons in ego battles.

So, and then it becomes very unfortunate. So, you know, I am doing the right thing. You're not doing the right thing.

So then I will beat you down with this right thing, beat you down with this standard. What you mentioned earlier about, again, this could be a big subject about homosexuals. When people ask me this question, what I generally say is that there is the sexual energy can be a big distractor on the spiritual path.

And there has to be some regulation of that sexual energy. Now, exactly how that regulation is to take place. Now, there is a convention or you could say there's a tradition of marriage.

Now, but in certain other situations, like seven people with our different sexual orientations, then how that is to be regulated, that may vary from person to person. But community, yeah. But if we just impose one absolute standard and demonize people who don't fit in that standard, then we are, we will not only lose a lot of potential devotees, but we will also be actually doing disservice to our tradition because the tradition is not just a tradition of rules.

The tradition is a tradition of compassion. So the rules, the rules shouldn't interfere with the flow of compassion. The rules are meant to help people access that compassion and rise to a higher level.

So you mentioned something about community. I liked your comment very much. Yes, please.

About community. I like very much your comment about joined nuclear families. Yeah, this is what's required.

And there'll be some Vaishnava communities, whether you like it or not, who are gay. And there'll be some Vaishnava communities who, maybe there'll be some Vaishnava communities we meet even, but they like to chant Hare Krishna and do this and that. And maybe you and I wouldn't want to go there, at least to have prasadam.

But they're Vaishnavas if they're chanting. And I'm going to give some respect and appreciation to them. Those are very gross examples.

But there'll be so many different communities. And if you study Prabhupada's, what is it? I think it was in 1968. What was it? Statement of Management.

What is it called? Nar Narayan was really into that. Anyway, Prabhupada came out with a certain document for ISKCON, which apparently he kind of dropped the idea. It was an idea to do.

But at one point, he made a statement that every temple should be autonomous. Autonomous, should be independent. And the DBC, the function of the DBC is not to manage, but it's just to make sure everybody's chanting Hare Krishna, chanting 16 rounds and doing the business of the society by going out and book distribution and Harinath.

But each temple, the mood is there and they are headed by the local leader and the devotees would vote that person in. I was always very inspired by that. And I think that practically that's what's going on today.

We have our temples and they're important. They're important places, but they're largely meant for kindergarten students, for new people who are coming. And it's very important for new temples.

I'm not at all trying to minimize them. It's very important. A place for new people so they can get an introduction to Krishna consciousness and they can learn basic things.

And that's part of our society, but that's not our whole society. Now, some people, when they grow up in that university, the bhakta program, when they graduate, they may decide they're going to stay and become a teacher in that educational institution. Some of them may become a manager in that educational institution.

And that's great. And they're serving a purpose. But their function, their role is different than the new bhakta.

And it's just so important that we become individuals. We have individuals in our society because our society is individuals. When we speak about community, it's such a necessary thing.

Community means common unity. We need unity, not uniformity. Unity, not uniformity.

So uniformity doesn't necessarily mean we have unity. But when we have common unity, that becomes community. So the unity of a group of brahmacharis may not be the same as a group of grihasthas or some Western people living in San Francisco.

They're going to have a very different mood than some traditional persons born in a Vaishnava family in Gujarat or in Orissa or something. But we can respect each other and appreciate someone's chanting Hare Krishna, someone's initiated. I respect that.

But I have my community. And then devotees can become more empowered. They can be more happy when they fit in with that community.

But if you take some very strict Gujarati-raised brahmachari and you try to put him in San Francisco or Boston or some such place, it's going to be very, very hard for them. They're going to have a crisis. They're not going to understand how to deal with things.

So we need community. Like in Prabhupada, we may sometimes think that's maya, but it's not maya. If someone says it's maya, you're being maya.

Maya means that we want everything to be one and everybody just to be part of the impersonal whole. For Prabhupada's vision, he wrote a letter to Satsvarupa Maharaj saying, yes, it's a good idea. The black-bodied devotees in Philadelphia, they can have their own separate center.

And he wrote a letter to Jamuna saying, yes, it's a good idea. The ladies, they can have their own program together. It's a good idea.

And it's necessary. I find it personally very difficult when I go to big temples and they don't really have a strong sense of individuality or identity for the temple. You go to a smaller temple, like the Govind Ekavillage has a very strong vision for what I've seen of it.

You don't have so many different members. But you go to a very big project like Mayapur, or like ISKCON New York, ISKCON Los Angeles, or ISKCON Bhubaneswar. There's so many different visions and everybody's accommodating that for the purpose of a mission.

We appreciate that. It's important. But then it's difficult for individuals to develop further.

And I think it's a very healthy thing to create community. This is why I repeat again, wherever I go, I'm always trying to create community for myself and trying to encourage devotees to create their own small community. This is a point we were making in our last discussion too.

It's important. Yeah, I'm sorry. This is a good point.

I sometimes say if you're giving a class to say 100, 500, 1000 people, it's almost like everybody feels the class is for everyone else. And then nobody really connects properly. So when you define a community, are you defining that primarily by the ethos? That how would we define that they have a shared understanding of how they want to practice bhakti, a shared understanding of how would you define a community? Well, it begins with this shared sense of values.

Okay, that's the first thing. And the values that you may find to give these examples we were giving before, which are a little gross and they're bodies, I'm sorry. But someone living in San Francisco may have a certain sense of values.

Someone else living in Gujarat will have another set of values. And they would do best to work together with people who have similar values. Or you want to bring people up to your values, or you want to change your values and go up to someone else's.

But to the first thing in community, people talk about vanashram in our society. And it's a great idea. And Srila Prabhupada wanted it.

But I consider it to be very controversial. It's not actually, I don't disconsider it. It is controversial.

There's so many different people quarreling about it and disagreeing. And why are they disagreeing? Because the first basic principle is not there. We don't have shared values.

So if we want to create vanashram, the Prabhupada wanted us to do that. The first thing is, we have to have vada discussions. For discussions in the mode of goodness.

We're not just trying to beat the other person up and defeat them and get them to accept your point of view. But you're actually listening to them, considering their perspective. And then, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

And then through such discussions, you need to be able to come to having shared values. And the values of devotees in Sweden may be different from the values of the devotees in England, may be different from the values of the devotees in Orissa, may be different from the values of the devotees in UP, different from the values of the devotees in Mumbai, everywhere you go. And Bhaktivinoda speaks about this in Chaitanya-6amrita.

There's so many different communities with little different sense of values. Some communities are really into brahmachari life. The Denver temple, at least for a long time, they had a very strong brahmachari community there.

Other communities are really into grhastha life. And some communities, they can accept gays and lesbians and that's their mood. There's so many different sense of values.

And it's not for us to say one is right, one is wrong. We respect all of them and they're chanting, but what's right and wrong is what is my sense of values? What do I relate to? What can I be appreciated in and grow as an individual? I think it's very, very important for devotees to start creating community. For our society to expand and be faithful members of the society, work at the GBC, work with the local temple authorities, but create community.

With like-minded devotees and just don't waste your time in some place where they have a different mood, a different set of values. It's so practical, you know, that don't waste your time. It causes irritation to that community if we have a different set of values and it causes irritation, discouragement to us.

And yeah, so I had a discussion with Rajvi Hari Prabhu, the mediation, you know, who pioneered it. So he told me something interesting that he was a pioneer for passing a resolution that in the same city, there can be different Sanghas. There should be one temple and to form a separate Sangha, you don't need the permission of that temple.

So that's, that's good. Actually, if you can find, form our own Sanghas and of course, like earlier, you said you have to earn respect. We can't just do it in the early stages because then we will, we need some guidance and some shaping.

But over a period of time, if we do that, then so it's not just that maybe this will kill. I don't want to keep you too long. I'll talk about one point about cooperation.

You know that when we, if Prabhupada said, your love for me will be shown by how you cooperate. So sometimes the call for cooperation is treated as simply a covered or a concealed call for submission to authority. But that's not the only way of cooperation.

So that means at one level, if the individual should be willing to, needs to be willing to submit, but the authority needs to be willing to give space. And when both are there, then actually that's genuine cooperation. So cooperation, so cooperation means both people's individuality is acknowledged.

And okay, the temple leader is an individual. The temple leader has a particular vision. And if some other devotee comes and said, let's do things like this.

Well, no, this, this temple leader has their vision. And if they're also doing something constructive, then you cannot, we cannot overrun their space. So at the same time, if this devotee has particular inspiration, and they can do it in their space.

So cooperation has to run both ways. So any thoughts on this, Puru? Thank you very much. That's such a really good point.

Yeah. Sometimes we find, as you were saying, that somebody says cooperation means you do exactly what I tell you. But ultimately, cooperation means to serve Christian Guru.

That's real cooperation. That's pouring the water in the root of the tree. Not just the leaf demanding attention.

The cooperation means you should do whatever the leaf tells you to do. A good example. I've seen it, it reminds me of one senior devotee who's a friend of mine, who I won't mention his name, but he's over 70 years old.

He's an artist. He's an intellectual. He's been a long-term bhakti-shudra, long-term faithful member of Prabhupada's society, Prabhupada's disciple.

And he's having a crisis now. He's in his 70s, and he finds that he goes to the temples and they don't appreciate him. They appreciate the younger devotees.

And I told him, I said, please Prabhu, you need to create community. Because you just go somewhere and you have a little different mood. You know, you and I can talk and we can be friends or something.

But then if I go to a community where you're in charge and I'm going to stay there for a long time, that's another thing. It's one thing to be casual friends, but to start living with someone is more of a difficult thing. So we want to cooperate.

But cooperation means what? Cooperation doesn't just mean that you do what I tell you and that's cooperation. But cooperation means we're cooperating with Srila Prabhupada's desire. Cooperation means we're cooperating with Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Krishna.

And if something's in the way of that, that's not cooperation. That's some external mayic thing that we're putting a label on. It's cooperation.

These are things which, again, someone may say, oh, Prabhuji, that's not very practical. We need to… Okay, fine. As you pointed out, there's three different types of persons.

And there's a group of people who just need to live in the temple and work with the institution like that. And let's respect them. That's fine.

But we need to have that kind of broad mindedness that we see in the history of ISKCON when Srila Prabhupada was present. Where he could allow devotees to come. And he could be friends with Dr. Mishra and with Ellen Ginsberg and with my friend who hadn't taken a bath in one month.

Well, great initiative. And Prabhu could love them. And they really felt like they had a place in society.

But today, we want things antiseptic and propylactic. We like everybody has the same kind of shoes and same kind of kurta and everybody follows the same rules. And it's neat and orderly.

And that's okay. And a certain class of people will like that. But I've been to places like that.

And all the artists, they come and they cry to me. And they say, my God, I don't want to have the same shoes as everybody else. I don't want to.

I don't want to be like this or that. That's true. Mishra, in sometimes it's thought that surrender means conformity, but it's not necessarily so.

There may be conformity for some things, but it's not necessary that conformity itself is surrender. There are some amount of conformity is fine, but Prabhupada is quite accommodating about devotees to help them develop their individuality. Yeah, I can imagine somebody who's artistic and they may want to do things in a particular way, even something about their dress, something about maybe their hair or whatever.

No, that's not simply Maya. To call it as Maya is actually, as you earlier said, it could be violence to their individuality also. So we don't want to necessarily encourage that, but we don't want to discourage that also.

Give me your screen again. Share the screen with me. I'll show you something nice.

I'm still there. Okay, I got it. Okay, here we go.

I'll go ahead and read this. I like reading. I like dramatic reading.

He says, The Supreme Lord, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, in pursuance of the teachings of the scriptures, mandates all absence of conventionalism for the teachers of the eternal religion. You have a good vocabulary, but for those who don't, this is what Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is doing. He's pursuing the teachings of the scriptures.

He's saying that to really follow the Shastra means there's no conventionalism for the teachers of the real eternal religion. It does not follow from this, however, that mechanical adoption of the unconventional life by any person will make him a fit teacher of religion. Okay, so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mission is an unconventional kind of religion.

So I'm going to have a mechanical adoption of it. No, that's not going to work either. Regulation is necessary for controlling the inherent worldliness of conditioned souls.

But no mechanical regulation has any value even for such a purpose. The bona fide teacher of religion is neither any product of nor the favor of any mechanical system. That's, sorry.

So, this is from Shilobhakta Siddhanta's article called Putana, by the way. Yeah, you know, maybe you could, sorry, maybe you could share this article and then I can put a link to that in the video so that devotees can refer to it if they want, readers. So it's interesting, he says that regulation is essential, but mechanical regulation is not.

So how would you use the word mechanical earlier also? Mechanical would mean like a one size fit all or what exactly would we mean by mechanical? Mechanical in the same way that Thomas Merton is using the word convention where it's just passive or in the language of Vishwanath Chakravarthy talk or to use more Vaishnav language, he says that there's three things, abhyasa, manana, and smarana. Abhyasa, Krishna says in the Gita, abhyasa yoga yuktena, but you should practice, abhyasa. I think that's the same word in Hindi, isn't it? Yeah, abhyasa, yeah.

You should practice. And when we're practicing it may be mindless. The new bhaktas sweeping the temple room and thinking about the nonsense movie he saw before he joined or thinking about his girlfriend or whatever.

But he's doing this activity. But after some time of that activity, his heart may become a little purified and then it comes to the platform of manana. And manana means when he begins to evaluate and think, why am I doing this? What is the purpose of this? And that type of faith is a much higher type of faith whereas the previous one is just low-kick shraddha.

It's just common faith because everybody's saying so and I'm practicing this abhyasa in a mechanical way. But we have to come, and I feel this is a very important principle for preachers and thinkers in our society, not just that we're like magicians, wizards where we have bhakti, we put our hands on someone's head, now you have Krishna praying. But the function of the preacher, I think, is to make people think, is to get them to start considering things from different perspectives.

Because Vishwanath says from abhyasa may come manana and then from manana will come smarana. And smarana means just spontaneous remembrance of the Lord. It's beautiful.

You know, train people to think. I read a very interesting difference between education and indoctrination. Education and indoctrination.

Education teaches us how to think. Indoctrination teaches us what to think. So that means each of us, we ultimately want to think about Krishna, but each of us will think about Krishna in our own individual way.

So we can't, we can't mandate. This is the way you must remember Krishna. Each of us will be attracted to our one particular pastime, one particular, whatever manifestation of Krishna.

So it's remarkable. One more point in that passage that you read that Bhagwan Vedapur also uses the word, I think conventionalism over there. There is a regarding the differentiation between convention and tradition as Thomas Merton talks about it.

So if preachers are meant to help, if yeah. Yeah, we're meant to help people give up this conventional life. It's the absence of conventionalism.

Another place. Let me turn on the thing again. This is some of my favorite quotes.

Our attires are just so brilliant. Bhaktivinoda Thakur is one of my favorite. He says, in fact, most students are mere repositories.

This is a famous quote. You must remember this. In fact, most students are mere repositories of facts and statements made by other people.

But this is not studying. The student is to read the facts with a view to create and not with the object of fruitless retention. Students like satellites should reflect whatever light they receive from authors and not imprison the facts and thoughts, just as the magistrates imprison the convicts in jail.

There's another one I was also thinking about. This is this. That was from an article, The Bhagavad's Philosophies, Ethics and Theology.

And in Krishna Samhita, Bhaktivinoda says this next one. Ask like the devotees who are simply interested in the regulated principles under the control of gross discrimination are unable to attain a higher platform. So when we speak about all these things, it's not just that we're saying this because we're frustrated and we want some intellectual freedom.

We want the best for Prabhupada's mission. We want it to fulfill its potential. We want Prabhupada's desire to be fulfilled.

And that's not going to happen if people are just memorizing facts and rather they should reflect the light from authors, not just imprison the facts and ideas. It's so striking that sometimes, you know, memorizing verses is wonderful. You know, memorizing verses is wonderful.

But sometimes some people think that just the capacity to memorize and recite verses itself is scholarship. But scholarship is much more than that. And devotion also is much more than that.

So what can be applied to facts can also be applied to verses. Now, again, I'm in no way minimizing the importance of verses and reciting verses and being purified by that. But this is a powerful quote.

And so the essential, if I understood right, the point you are making through this is that we need to keep always the purpose in mind and not get caught in conventions or rules, but move forward to ensure that the purpose is served. So for some devotees, the purpose may be served through conformity. And for some people, some devotees, the purpose may be served through individuality.

And whatever is required for serving the purpose of moving closer to Krishna, that is what we need to pursue. And so cooperation, like we are discussing what cooperation means that ultimately we all should go closer to Krishna. So if say by submitting to an authority, a devotee is feeling so choked that the devotee is not blossoming in Krishna consciousness, then that kind of cooperation is not actually cooperation.

So the purpose of cooperation is, as you said, Prabhupada Seva Sangam. And each devotee should develop their relationship with Krishna and growing that relationship. And for some devotees, and in some stages, it may be that submission is the way to move forward.

But for some devotees, it may be creating the individual space. Yes, Prabhu. So.

Would you like to make any concluding comments? I think we need to wrap up. Yeah. Just Chaitanya Chahar and Prabhu, I'll say this again.

I get so much nourishment, so much hope from discussions like this. What I find is like-minded devotees. It gives me hope.

Otherwise, you spoke about people becoming discouraged. When I only meet the people who just want to blindly retain facts and repeat them in a mechanical way, it becomes very discouraging. When I see you and what a beautiful thinker you are and how you're encouraging people, it makes me, it gives me so much happiness.

Thank you very much for giving me some opportunity to discuss this with you. Thank you. You're giving me so much hope.

Prabhu, you're giving me so much encouragement, so much food for thought. Thank you. Can I just summarize in a couple of minutes? If you don't mind, I'll try.

We went to a lot of this directory. Basically, I think we discussed on what is ISKCON and who is a member. So you mentioned that if it is a society for Krishna consciousness, then whoever is Krishna conscious is a member.

And then we might say that this is a very lofty definition, but Krishna consciousness itself can be very flexible. So anybody who is trying to even chant, later on, we say that even somebody is not following the regulatory principles. So there could be a community of meditators.

And, but there could be a Vaishnav devotee community of that also, Vaishnav community of that. So in an inclusive sense, everybody who is Krishna conscious is actually a devotee. And you quote, I think Fakir Mohan Prabhu's interpret reading of that verse, that even if somebody is not Krishna conscious now, or somebody is going to become Krishna conscious in the future, they are also to be respected.

And that means everybody is to be respected. And then we discussed about what might cause disillusionment with the institution. And then mentioned it's primarily because of mechanical behavior.

And the way to avoid mechanical behavior is to actually see that the essence is developing relationships. And while developing relationships, we saw that every temple has its own mood. That means individual mood is manifesting the temple.

And some devotees may be able to manifest their individuality through the institution. Those who cannot, if they need the space, like Prabhupada supported Yadurani Mataji and others. So those devotees need to be intelligent enough to create that space.

And we can, we shouldn't minimize or criticize the managers. If we don't become managers, if we do, if we criticize the managers, then we will end up becoming managers ourselves. So that was, and also in conflicts, we can be empath, we can offer empathy without offering endorsement.

So that way we don't have to take sides. And then you quoted a lot from, I think Prabhupada, from Bhakti Sanso Thakur, about how no mechanical arrangement can actually lead to the transmission of spirituality and Thomas Merton's differentiation between convention and tradition. So we need to take responsibility for our spiritual growth, not just swallow some formulae.

And then we discussed about how even moral standards, if somebody slips and falls, so at one level there is strictness, like Bhakti Sanso Thakur was strict and told the devotee to go. But then he told Sridhar Maharaj that get the devotee back. So we don't reject regulation, but at the same time, friendship, that is a beautiful thought that friendship does not know rules.

And if rules obscure, rules block friendship, rules block relationship, then it could be a problem. And then I think toward the conclusion, we discussed about different kinds of devotees, how they might work with institution and we can't expect freedom and facility both. So cooperation doesn't simply mean submission to authority.

Cooperation basically means that we all work centered on Krishna and every devotee flourishes in their individual growth. Did I miss out anything major Prabhu? No, I like these points. I learned a lot from you that join with your families.

Yeah, I thought… Freedom and facility, and education needs to teach you how, and indoctrination needs to teach you what. Yeah. Many very nice points I'm working with.

Thank you very much. I look forward to continue our association in the future, Prabhu. Such exchanges, it'll be wonderful to continue if you have the time.

The COVID virus stops and we're back in Jagannath Puri. I hope you'll come and we'll feed you if you come to our ashram and we can have a beautiful talk then. Thank you very much.

Humble obeisances to you. Jai. Thank you.

I look forward to coming to Puri whenever it works out. Okay. My pleasure, Srila Prabhupada.

Jai Srila Prabhupada. Thank you.