The Monk’s Podcast 57 with Caru Prabhu – Building a seeker-friendly culture

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.

Hare Krishna Charu prabhu, humble obeisances. Welcome to the Monks Podcast. Thank you for having me.

Hare Krishna. It’s an honor and pleasure to have you. My only visit to Utah was incredible, incredibly memorable, not just because I had your personal association, which is illuminating, but also to see the magnificent project that you have developed in the Mormon heartland.

For those of our readers who don’t know, the Mormons are especially strong in Utah and it’s almost impossible to actually start a center where everybody is so strongly affiliated, not just religiously, but as you mentioned, it’s a family culture. So people’s bonds are very strong and for people to actually have a temple there and then eventually to do such a good bridge building that actually they supported the temple and that was a remarkable thing. So maybe you can start with your experience of how you pioneered that project and then we could do a discussion about seeker-friendly presentation of spirituality.

When we came to Utah in 1981, there were no books on the subject, but when you started a church in a virgin area, it’s called planting a church, and it’s a much-written-about subject now. At that time, it wasn’t. But if we’d known then what we know now, we would know that the research says that before you plant a church, you go around in that area, you go door to door, and you try to find out how many people are already going to church.

If 60 percent of the people or more are not going to church, then you can go on and ask other questions. But if you find that more than 60 percent of the people or more than 40 percent are churchgoers, then your chances of being successful go down proportionately. In our area, 90 percent of people are not only churchgoers, but they go to the same church, which is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

So according to research, which has evolved over the last few decades, we didn’t have a prayer. We didn’t have a chance of establishing a Hare Krishna temple in Mormon-dominated Utah. But as they say, fools rush in more wise than fear to tread.

All I knew was that Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said that the chanting will echo in every town and village of the world, and I thought, well, why not? If it’s going to go everywhere sooner or later, why shouldn’t it go to Spanish Fork sooner? It was interesting, too, because I had been on the BBT library party in 1976, and we would visit colleges and place standing orders of Prabhupada’s books in the college libraries as reference material. And in order to get the acquisitions librarian to make the order, we would take professor recommends cards around during the day, meet with professors, and get them to sign a recommendation that the acquisitions librarian make the purchase. It was about $700 for the books that were published, and then any book that would be subsequently published would automatically be sent and billed.

So most colleges, we sold one order, one set to the library. The most we’d ever done was Dartmouth and Harvard because there were three libraries on campus, and in each case, three professors happened to take sets for themselves. So our record prior to coming to Provo, Utah, Brigham Young University, was six sets at Harvard and Dartmouth.

I was on the Harvard crew. Now Buddhimanta and Ganesham, who later become Bhaktatirtha Swami, were the two-man crew that came to Brigham Young University. Normally, we’d arrive on campus at eight o’clock, and we’d be done by one.

We’d have the order in our hand, and we’d drive in our van to where the next campus was, stay overnight at the KOA. So normally, we’d spend four or five hours on a campus. The two-man crew, Buddhimanta and Bhaktatirtha Swami, that visited BYU spent three days on campus, and they sold 18 sets of books.

So when I was looking for a radio station to purchase somewhere in the country, and I heard that one had become available in Provo, Utah, and I remembered from 1976 how, by my calculations, the Mormons were at least three times more God-conscious than anybody anywhere else in the country. So Krishna wanted to happen. That’s the only way you can explain it, because it goes against all the data, all the research.

And when people walk in the door, they’re amazed by the location. The temple itself sits on a high hill. It overlooks a lot of beautiful farmland.

It’s visible from Interstate 15, which is one of the main arteries in Utah. The temple architecture is stunning, but also the very fact of its being there is so unlikely that people say, how did this Hare Krishna temple come to be in Utah? And my short answer is, I point to a picture of Krishna. He’s there with his flute to his lips, a peacock feather jauntily in his hair with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

And I say, God has a sense of humor. He did it as a prank. That’s amazing.

I would also say that it’s also your humility. I’m sure you must have had years and decades of dedication and re-envisioning and re-planning, re-strategizing to actually make it happen from your side. My orientation has always been towards the public.

I’ve always enjoyed radio. I’ve enjoyed festivals. I’ve enjoyed public speaking.

And so we didn’t really, if we thought about making devotees, you know, making people temple residents, getting up for Mangalarthi and doing everything strictly, Utah wouldn’t have been even on our radar. But really what we wanted to do was introduce Krishna consciousness to as many people as possible. And having done that, let them take it as to their ability.

The example is given that there’s the air, there’s the sky, and in the sky, in the greater bowl of the sky, birds fly high or low according to their capacity. So let us just give Krishna consciousness to people and then let them fly high or low according to their capacity. I think this is an approach which slowly our movement is learning to.

Otherwise, we have had a very, I like to call it a digital approach rather than analog approach. Either you are in or you’re out. And to be in, they have to accept like the full program.

Otherwise, we say they’re not serious and we dismiss them. So was this something which you are always oriented towards, like letting people grow at their pace? Or was it something that you realize this is what will work in Utah? When you come to an area where there are no devotees, and there were nothing of an Indian, there were really no resources here when we arrived, which meant we didn’t have to be prejudiced in any way from our point of view. For us to be successful, we realized right off the bat that we had to see everybody as a devotee.

We didn’t have any resource. We didn’t have any constituency. We didn’t have any devotees.

We hardly had any money. So we just had to assume that everybody here was a devotee placed here by Krishna to help us out in some way, shape, or form until they prove themselves obviously otherwise. I think there’s a school that tends to assume everybody’s a non-devotee.

Everybody’s a karmi until they prove themselves a devotee by getting up at 4 30 in the morning. But we gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. And we assume that everybody’s a devotee until they prove themselves otherwise.

And I’ve been amazed over the last 35 years, people just out of the blue have contributed financially in terms of volunteer hours in so many different ways to a greater level than most devotees I know. And they wouldn’t even call themselves Christian devotees, but they would be God-conscious, pious people who resonate and appreciate and sympathize with what we do. And this segment of people has ended up doing more to establish and maintain Krishna conscious in Utah than the ones that I know as devotees.

That’s amazing. I initially first thought that you were talking about at a uttamaadhikari level where everybody sees people as devotees, but you are talking also at a functional level that people do have a virtuous instinct within them where they are ready to contribute in some way. So is that what you are saying? When you say that see everybody as a devotee? It’s what I’m saying and it also hinges upon their interaction with you, especially their initial contact.

So if we are friendly and welcoming, then they also reciprocate. But if we are judgmental and we are condescending in some way, then it becomes a problem. Well, we started off right away by improving the property, taking a rundown old radio station, five acres of land, planting trees, getting some animals on here.

We’ve been broadcasting Krishna consciousness on 1480 AM, a radius of about 40 miles for almost 35 years. And in recent times, the technology has allowed that to go international. You can basically get Krishna radio anywhere there’s internet, anywhere in the world.

Our festival India, which we unfortunately had to cancel this year, would have been in its 37th year. So even back from practically the very beginning, we had public festivals. We invited people onto the property.

And our festivals were tailored for the public. They weren’t like in-house festivals. They involved a lot of dance, a lot of kirtan of a style that people could relate to with contemporary music, dramas, fireworks.

We’re always awake to any hooks that we could throw into a festival occasion that would bring the maximum number of people. So we started out very early to plant good seeds. We knew the soil was fertile.

We knew it was a good, conscious, God-conscious area. So through festivals, we had a little gift store in the old building. We received people during the week for the gift store.

The llamas were a big hit. I mean, there are people now who are in their forties who are successful businessmen, politicians, who came here as little toddlers in the eighties to see the llamas. The llamas and animals are a good draw.

Gift stores are a good draw. Festivals are a good draw. All this helps you to get a good reputation among the people in general.

And then when we announced that we’d bought some land to build a temple in 1992, it was interesting because we didn’t have much money and we just put a down payment on this extra eight and a half acres of land that adjoined the original five acres of land. And we thought it would take us 10 years to pay off the land. And then maybe we’d think about building a temple.

So one Sunday feast in an old, in a house, and I say old, but it was, it was brand new in those days. But I’ve always given a Sunday lecture and there was a few BYU students there. And she mentioned we bought some land to build a temple eventually.

Well, one of the students was a reporter for the newspaper on campus at Brigham Young University. So lo and behold, that was Sunday. On Tuesday, a big article comes out with a very positive, upbeat mood.

Krishna’s are going to build a temple. And they included by Bobby’s artistic rendition of it. And I thought, I wasn’t sure how people would receive us, you know, imagine building a Mormon temple in Vrindavan.

So, so, but it seemed really positive. It seemed like they were really up for this and that they’d even help us. And then that was Tuesday.

By Thursday, the clipping services from the main newspapers, the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News, had picked up the article from the university paper. And there were big one page spreads about the imminent Krishna temple. Well, we had all, we had taken a cautious conservative approach.

Maybe we’ll start after 10 years, but we felt that Krishna was trying to tell us something. Come on, guys, there’s more support here. There’s more sympathy here than you realize.

Start now. Strike while the iron’s hot. Before you started the whole temple, you just created a welcoming atmosphere for people, where people could connect.

And so, so how did you present yourself as a Hare Krishna’s, but with a variety of things, like people could come and see the lamas, people could come and you had started, what were we doing at that time, which created a positive vibe? There were several prongs. One is a radio station, as I mentioned. Yeah.

The other was would you directly present Krishna conscious philosophy or was it like a more customized for them to understand? Because it’s 40 kilometers means everybody would be Mormons. So was it more like a bridge for Mormons to understand what you are speaking? There’s so much material required to run a radio station full time. We just took whatever we could, just like dumped thousands and thousands of songs, lectures, Mahabharata, Ramayana, How I Came to Krishna Consciousness.

We took the Back to Godhead column that ran for many years, the Vedic Observer, and mixed in contemporary songs, called it Cutting Commentaries on Contemporary Life. We read articles from Back to Godhead. We, you know, Raghunath Swami gave me an interview for Radio Krishna many, many years ago, which contained all the elements of his Journey Home, many years before it was actually put to paper.

We had a series of interviews, and he told all those stories, basically, and those are vintage tapes going all the way back to the early 80s. We had an interview with Vishambhar Goswami, who was Prabhupada’s friend and the mayor of Vrindavan. He came to America and Los Angeles on a couple of different occasions, and we interviewed him.

So no, the answer to your question is no. We just threw everything that we could. As long as it had something to do with Krishna, we figured there would be an absolute benefit.

So that was one prong. The animals is another prong. Having a little gift store is a must.

You know, it gives people an excuse to visit the temple during the week. If you just have a worship building that’s only basically function is to open up on Sundays, you’re not going to get any visitors during the week, and that’s a huge opportunity for preaching. We get more visitors during the week than we do on Sundays for our Sunday programs.

So a gift store is a good excuse for people to come and browse and, you know, ask questions. Just an icebreaker that they wouldn’t otherwise cross your threshold Monday through Saturday. And then the other thing, of course, is the festivals.

So those four things. And then, of course, we dreamed of architecture. There’s really nothing that can compare to architecture for making a public exhibition of your culture and your religion.

So we dreamed one day of building a temple. R.K. Narayan said, of all the different forms of art, the most public is architecture. You know, when people drive by the temple, they think of Krishna.

They think of India. They cannot help but do that. That’s amazing.

So just going back. So when you say gift shop, did you keep devotional stuff or draw Indian stuff that would attract people to come? General things. Of course, you have bead bags and you have shawls, japa beads and incense and tilak.

But you also have skirts and tops and, you know, sandalwood, sandalwood incense holders and little elephants and bells and candle holders. Just general bric-a-brac. So, yeah, that’s good.

Thank you. In a sense, what you said is help people to cross the threshold. That is a kind of… Make it easy.

Give them an excuse. They don’t want to go to the Hare Krishnas per se. That’s a little bit of a leap for them.

But, you know, they’ll be happy to tell themselves, why don’t I stop into the gift shop and buy a pack of incense? And then, of course, that will occasion getting to know a particular devotee, maybe having a conversation and things develop from there. Amazing. So were you the first in temple in Iskcon to have lamas or animals in general? Because now in Govardhaneko village also we have animals and not just cows.

But I think that must have been quite radical at that time when you did it, isn’t it? I remember getting one critical email from some devotee. It was just a two-word email. It said, Lama consciousness question mark.

Oh, God. I never answered him, you know, because people like that, the last thing you want to do is get into it with them. Because basically that means they’ve baited you successfully.

They provoked you. But my mental response to him and people like him was, if I had devotees that brought hundreds of, not thousands of people to the temple grounds every year, rented themselves out for camping trips and packing at really, really handsome rates, increased our attendance at our normal festivals like the Festival of India and the Festival of Colors, a lot of extra people come just because of the lamas. If I had devotees who not only brought that many people to the temple and brought that much money in, but who only ate grass, I only had to feed them grass, I didn’t have to cook for them, but they would be content eating grass, and they never criticized or never talked back to me I would consider those would be pretty darn good devotees.

Oh, God, beautifully put. That’s amazing. So how did you come up with this idea? And how specifically lamas? It was interesting.

Utah is a paradise, as you know, you’ve been here, the mountains, the hot springs. What was his name? Thomas Cook was a world famous traveler. There were traveler’s checks named after him, and tour offices all over, Cook’s Tours and Cook’s Traveler’s Checks.

So he had traveled all over the world. And at one point, he was asked to write down his seven favorite places in America. And when they reviewed the list, five of them were in Utah.

You’ve got Moab, you’ve got Zions, you’ve got Bryce Canyon, you’ve got Sundance Resort, you’ve got Deer Valley. It’s an outdoorsman’s paradise. And we hadn’t been here very long before we figured out that if we had a couple lamas, we could do a lot of backpack hiking, keeping shape.

We could bring guests and visitors along with us and have nice picnic lunches with readings from the Bhagavad Gita. So we got a couple of llamas in California, brought them up, and they were spectacular. They did everything that we’d hoped they’d do for us and for others and more.

And after some time, it became apparent to us that there weren’t many llamas in the country, and there was a great demand for them. And so it occurred to us that we could probably raise llamas and sell them. And we did that for a number of years.

According to the law of supply and demand, we got as much as $8,000 for one of our female llamas, and the other females routinely sold for between $4,000 and $6,000, and males would get about $1,000. So in the course of fundraising for the temple you see behind me, we had a couple of years where we raised $80,000 selling llamas, and then a couple of the years where we raised $60,000 selling llamas. So it turned out very profitable, very helpful for raising the funds to build the temple, but it started out just as a desire to get out and see some of this beautiful country in Utah.

That’s amazing. You know, maybe for most Indians, they have never seen llamas. So what was special about llamas specifically? And you know, you use them for pregging, or maybe you could just elaborate on that.

They’re pack animals primarily. They’ll carry your food, your water, they’ll carry about 70 pounds, and they’ll just follow behind. You just hold the lead and they just walk behind you.

All they require is grass. You tether them out at night when you camp. They’re extremely environmental friendly.

They don’t require you to pack in any extra food for them. They, as ruminants, they get all their nutrition out there in the backcountry. I should say we do have cows as well, but they’re not as popular as the llamas.

I hope I’m not struck dead with a lightning bolt by saying that, but we do have cows, three miniature cows we’ve had for 15 years. But this is an amazing example of how context is so important. From a transcendental perspective, we might say, what are you doing having animals? But actually, as you rightly said, those llamas brought more people to come to the temple than what devotees themselves would have been able to get.

No question about it. And we have many school trips. We have over 3,000 young people from primary, secondary, and high school, as well as college level.

They come on field trips. A field trip takes an average of three hours. We have kirtan.

We have yoga. We have a Q&A. We have lunch for many of them.

But there’s nothing better than just breaking the ice by having them halter up the llamas and take the llamas for a walk and have a little llama race and pet the llamas. Everybody’s just eating out of your hand after that initial llama segment. You can practically put a sari on the girls and shave the men up.

That’s an exaggeration, but everybody’s so much more open after having spent time with the llamas. Yes, that’s amazing. One of the things I was talking with His Holiness Anand Maharaj, and he mentioned to me that somehow we need to help people, provide people opportunities to associate with devotees.

And if you give them, then many of their mental barriers and preconceptions and discomfort, they go away. So this is such a non-threatening and appealing way of them to come in the proximity of devotees, isn’t it? It’s been very effective. Thousands and thousands of people come here every year, and it’s non-threatening.

They get a positive impression of Krishna consciousness. We try to be very conscious of TripAdvisor also. Nowadays, in the days of internet, you can’t really run an institution, especially one that receives a lot of visitors and tourists, without being very conscious about the internet.

One dissatisfied customer can write a very negative comment, and there are a lot more unhappy people out there. There are a lot more critical people out there than there are positive people. And so if you’re running a temple and you’re concerned about the public’s opinion of you, you need to be very, very careful to receive each and every visitor in such a way that’s beyond reproach.

We had an Indian family come in for our buffet about six months ago, and the papadums had run out. It was late in the afternoon, and we really only commit for lunch. So they came after lunch, but we went and we got them hot food and all, and they said, are there any papadums? And we said, no, they sold out.

But nevertheless, the cook went into the kitchen and cooked up some papadums for them. In the meantime, they had finished their meal, and they were moving out, and another family had come in. So the cook brought papadums out into the kitchen and gave them to the new family, because they were available and they were hot.

So this lady gave us a one-star review, accused us of treating people differently, when all the devotee had done was go into the kitchen and try and cook papadums for them, and then we get a terrible review. So that’s just an example of how double, triple, quadruple careful you have to be to build your good reputation, you know. It’s amazing.

So you must have needed a very resourceful team of devotees with you, isn’t it, to address this particular mood, to cultivate that kind of welcoming attitude? Or was it mostly you and gradually a team built up? We try to impress upon the devotees the importance of a first impression. And when people walk in the door, they should be greeted, you should stand up, smile, ask them that they’ve been here before, inquire if they would like a guided tour, you can take them around. Some people are a little apprehensive, they want to know, well, how long will the tour take? You tell them five minutes, unless you have more questions.

Whatever you can do to welcome them and make them feel at home, and offer yourself as a resource, should they have questions that they’d like answered. Too many devotees, I think, when people visit the temple, first of all, temple visits are infrequent, they’re not a regular thing, especially during the week. And so devotees don’t have a department, they don’t have a mindset to receive visitors who just pop in during the week.

And so what happens is devotees sort of learn the art of being busy, you know, of kind of looking the other way or going the other way when an unexpected visitor turns up, you know, they see it as an interruption to their service. And another impediment is they don’t necessarily see a member of the public as becoming a committed, initiated devotee. And so if their only focus is making devotees, they can’t see any profit in stopping what they’re doing and spending time with a casual visitor.

But because we have people coming in all the time, it’s rather the norm than the exception. And we’re not about, you know, getting people to move in the temple, we’re just about making Krishna consciousness generally available to the general public. So we try to adhere to that standard of smiling, welcoming them, standing up and offering them to a tour, so that they get the very, very best first impression that they possibly can.

Yes, true. So I think then you also mentioned earlier that the center was more a tourist destination than basically like a religious place to visit. And the religious place was, before it became an explicit religious place like a temple, it had already become an attractive tourist destination.

Isn’t it? The temple was what capped it. I mean, this is the only, when it was opened in 2001, this is the only Rajasthani-style building in all of America, and it sits on 14 acres of land. It has a lake, you can see the lake here behind me.

There are animals, parrots, llamas, peacock. In that lake, there are 150 beautiful koi fish, as well as water lilies and a waterfall. It’s the site of the largest color festival in North America for the last so many years.

So we really built the temple as a tourist destination. A lot of devotees might think, well, we can’t afford to build a temple. I would say you can’t afford not to build a temple, really.

At the time, we had no money. We didn’t know how we’d be able to build a world-class temple. We just knew we had to do it.

It was just something that if we were going to be on the map, if we were going to be taken seriously, if people were going to listen to us as serious players, we had to have a world-class temple. And some or other, it was do or die, temple or bust. And it cost $1.2 million to build the temple between 1998 and the time it opened in 2001.

And it was worth every penny. I mean, it was worth every penny. And here’s an interesting fact.

We could have built a building with concrete block, plumbing, electricity. We could have built a simple building for half a million dollars that would have been approved as a place of worship, been approved to greet the public for half a million dollars. We spent $700,000 extra dollars on the decorations.

And every one of those dollars, 20 years later, has come back to us 20 times over. I think you earlier quoted also that architecture is the most visible form of art. Right.

Everybody owns it. And the thing is, the local Mormons, knowing that this temple is being built, knowing it would be a resource in their midst, they started coming during the construction phase in hundreds to help out in whatever way they could. The Mormon LDS Foundation, which gives donations to charitable causes, in May of 1999, they gave $25,000 to help us build the temple.

There’s a doctor in the next town. He’s a Mormon. He gives 10% religiously, as all Mormons are required to do.

But every six months during the construction process, he would drop by with $1,000 donation. And I would say, doctor, what motivates you to give $1,000 to the Krishna temple? And he’d said that when this temple is built, and I drive past it with my grandchildren in the car, I want to be able to tell them that I helped build that building. Amazing.

So, in general, are the Mormons quite inclusive and broad-minded? Or is it that because of your interactions, you created the atmosphere and then they were welcoming? Weren’t they concerned that you would take their flock away? I haven’t sensed any of that. I haven’t sensed any of that at all. In fact, when they gave the $25,000 in May of 1999, they didn’t accompany that with any brouhaha.

They made no announcement. They didn’t submit a press release. It was just very quietly done by them with no desire for recognition.

It was I who sent out the press releases and ended up getting coverage all over the nation. I thought this was such a good template of one religion opening up its arms and welcoming another religion into its very heartland, that I felt that this should be shared. Articles ran in the Dallas newspapers and St. Paul, Minneapolis newspapers, especially in 2002, which was when the Winter Olympics came to Utah, and everybody was focused on Utah.

There were a number of articles that coincided with the opening of the temple, and they all mentioned about this donation on the part of the LDS Foundation. I remember an NPR segment on All Things Considered that talked about the Christians and the Mormons and how they interacted. The conclusion of the program was that it was a very, very happy synchronicity.

The final words of the commentator were, it seems that people who take their religion seriously appreciate others who do the same. That’s beautiful. This is an amazing amount of PR.

And then when they offered the support, it was you who also reciprocated by giving them that positive PR. Exactly. And, you know, I get interviewed a lot because of our unique position in Utah.

We kind of stand out in some ways. And I get interviewed a lot over the years. There’s been lots and lots.

You know, when the Columbine shooting happened, they asked me about it. When the statues were torn down in Afghanistan, they asked me about it. They almost always want to know what the Krishnas think.

And I always find an opportunity in there to say something good about the local people, the local culture. By they, you refer to the local Utah newspapers, the local Utah media, or who are they referring to? No, they ask you. Who are the newspapers? Yeah, the newspapers.

They’ll call me up and want to know what’s our take on, you know, current events. And in the course of explaining the Krishna conscious, or at least my individual point of view, I’ll always try and find opportunities to say nice positive things about the local Mormon culture. So these things appear in public, they appear in the media.

So is this a part of, I’m just trying to understand from their perspective, is it a part of their attempt to promote diversity? Did they do it specifically with the Krishnas? Or have they done something similar for Muslims? And something similar for others? Before we got our $25,000 grant in 1999, the main grant for which they had gone outside of Mormon Church, and for which they were noted for, was that they had given $250,000 for the renovation of a huge Catholic church downtown Salt Lake City, the Church of the Madeline. So a few years prior to giving our grant, they had given quarter of a million dollars to the Catholic Church for renovating it. Ours was the first grant given to a non-Christian group.

Subsequent to us, the Ganesh Temple, which opened two years later, got $25,000. The Sikh Temple got $25,000. So they have given to other denominations, other sects.

Ours was the first non-Christian one they gave to. It’s also interesting to note that when Brigham Young came to Salt Lake Valley, and he laid out the grid for Salt Lake City, there’s a street downtown called Second Avenue. And even today, you’ll find the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church.

It was part of Brigham Young’s original design of the city that all the various denominations would have land allotted to them and support to build their own places of worship. So even the Mormon who founded Salt Lake City, his vision was of a religiously pluralistic municipality. That’s amazing.

So, you know, often in India, there is to some extent a negative perception of Christianity because there’s a fear that they convert. And they do convert a lot of people. But it seems that a lot depends on the vision of the leadership at a particular place and the orientation of a church at a particular place.

So I don’t think you can talk about Mormons and Christianity in the same. Mormons are Christians. They would be the first ones to tell you it’s called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But Christians in general, apart from the Mormons, I’ve noted that same lack of tolerance and that same aggressiveness that you have. Happily for us, the Mormons are different. They’re a little more Oriental in the Christian constellation.

They’re more Oriental in many ways. They have articles of faith in which Joseph Smith tells them that there is truth in other religions and they should be open and they should be willing to learn more about God from other religions. There’s a point at which Brigham Young says, what is Mormonism? It is anything that’s right, that’s good and true.

So with those kinds of guidelines, any far-thinking intelligent Mormon would be more open than he would be close. Amongst other brands of Christian, I haven’t found that same level of tolerance. In fact, it’s interesting that, well, that’s another story altogether, for another, I won’t tell it now.

This is amazing. So somehow in the mainstream, America, I’ve seen Mormons are sometimes seen a little negatively that they are like an off-group among themselves. But from your perspective, they are more inclusive and more broad-minded than Christians also.

That’s remarkable. The Mormon group that’s dominant is the one that made the right compromises. There are still Mormon groups that feel they follow Joseph Smith and Brigham Young more strictly, more literally, and they still exist in Utah in enclaves.

They still, some of them practice polygamy and they feel that they’re more strictly aligned with the original teachings. And I think they’re probably right. I think that historically speaking, and you would know this better than anybody, you have to give in order to get, in order to spread amongst the masses of people and to gain the leverage that you get from a mainstream position, you have to deal, you have to wheel and deal.

And so when we say the Mormons, these are not the only Mormons, but they are the Mormons who have been shrewd enough to keep up with the times, to keep current and to keep relevant. That’s why they’re in the position of influence they are. And that’s what I want for Krishna consciousness, to be honest with you.

That’s so true. The same thing, this is a very Viking phrase you made, we have to view in order to get. So could you elaborate that in the Krishna conscious context? What that would mean or how you have done that? Yeah, if you’re fishing, it would be tempting to put on the end of the hook, the foods that you like.

But if you really want to catch the fish, you have to bait it with what the fish likes. See what I’m saying? So preaching, the older I get, the more I’m convinced that preaching, of course, is time, it’s place and audience. If you’re a preacher and you don’t study your audience and you don’t determine what your points of intersection are, the things that you can agree on and build on, if you don’t do that, you’re going to maybe do more harm than you are good, in fact.

So we need to, in my opinion, without compromising our high standard, we still need to reach people where they’re at, give them what they can digest in order that they get their baby, get their spiritual footing. Maybe from crawling, maybe they can stand or maybe if they’re standing, maybe they can walk. Too many of us, we want to take them from crawling to running and they just can’t take it.

It’s just overload and they just see us as fanatic, unrealistic, impractical and judgmental. You have to recognize that Krishna is in everyone’s heart and it’s up to Krishna how much advancement someone’s going to make. Krishna knows when they’re ready.

You might plant the seed, but it might be 10 or 15 years before Krishna causes that seed to sprout. So you can’t get frustrated that you planted a seed and 24 hours later, the person’s not moving into the temple. That’s just not realistic.

We’re quite happy here, just planting thousands and thousands of seeds and then depending on Krishna to determine when those seeds germinate and fructify and grow and produce fruits. That’s a lot of things you said. So crawling to running is a good example.

So when you say, can I say that, say that lamas is a good example of giving so that you can get, can get people to visit the temple by having that which you normally not have in a temple. Is that example giving and getting? I wasn’t thinking specifically of lamas, but perhaps, I don’t know. Okay, interesting.

Yeah, but I agree with you. So now you mentioned earlier about a temple being very important and I, in India, Srila Prabhupada emphasized a lot on building temples. And since you already had like a vision of how the temple is going to attract people, but then the temple became a resource by which people who are visiting, you could also lift them up higher.

So are there some things which you also do to create a welcoming atmosphere in the temple? For example, the talks? Definitely, absolutely. What we do is we have tours and stations. So in other words, if someone’s coming and they indicate they would like a tour, then the tour guide takes them to various stations.

And in each station, there’s an aspect of the philosophy that is presented visually, graphically, and then they can explain it verbally along with it. And so when people enter in the door, we greet them and we say some general things, when the temple was opened, how long we’ve been in Utah, the festival colors, some things that they already know about. Then we go up the stairs, our temple room is on the second floor and right at the top of the stairs, there’s a big changing bodies, big changing bodies.

And you can’t help but notice it. So right there, you talk about how the body changes every seven to 10 years, all the cells of the body die and are replaced by new ones. So you want to talk about the change of body.

If you live to be 80 years, you’ve already changed your body eight or 10 times, even in this lifetime. You see what I’m saying? And then of course, you know, there’s all kinds of possibilities. And people usually ask really good questions.

My question to them is, is this one person or many different people? That’s my first question. That’s an easy one. I get all the people, I say, look at this picture now.

I have two questions. The first is easy, the second is not so easy. I say, is this one person or many different people? And they say, well, it’s one person.

Okay. Is it one body or many different bodies? And that really gets, they really like, you can see that, like the wheels turning, the smoke coming, and they know that there’s something very deep there. And they still would like to say it’s one body, but they know that the answer is different.

And so then I just explain, you know, it’s changing bodies. You know, we have different bodies. We are always the same, but our mind changes and our body changes.

And similarly, at the time of death, we don’t die, but we take another body. So anyway, that’s one station. And then the next station is the Vyasasana, where Prabhupada sits.

And you talk about the guru. And then that beautiful, I think, had them printed. It’s the Sampradaya.

That should be right there. So you can not only explain about Prabhupada, who connected us in the Western world to this ancient Indian tradition, but you can also point out the lineage of spiritual masters going all the way back to God. Those two illustrations, the Vyasasana and the chart, really, really complement each other.

And there’s all kinds of things you can say about it. How does the lineage help? It just gives grounds in antiquity that we are not like a new kind of thing like that? Well, one of the points that I make is because we hear sports guru, fitness guru, nutrition guru, the word guru has found itself in our language. So I try to explain to them what is actual guru.

He’s pure in character. That means he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t eat meat. And then he knows the scriptures.

Not only does he know the scripture, but he personifies the scriptures. And then the third thing I say, even if someone’s pure in character, someone knows the scriptures, they still can’t be a guru unless they were the disciple of a previous guru. And then I give the example, you can’t practice medicine until you’ve done your residency.

You can’t practice law until you’ve clerked. Similarly, you can’t declare yourself a guru. You have to have been a disciple of a previous guru.

And then you point, this is my guru’s guru, this is his guru. And then you say, not all these gurus just had one disciple. Many of them had thousands of disciples.

But these are the ones to whom we have a connection. This is our living link back all the way to the creator of the universe and to Krishna himself. So it’s essential for understanding the bona fides of a guru to have that chart visible to people.

I think you mentioned smoking, drinking. So these don’t put off people. They also consider these to be virtues.

Usually in Mormon, Utah, I tell that we have four, a guru follows four principles, three of which you guys already believe in. So that’s good. They already believe, the Mormons already believe in chastity.

They already believe in not taking intoxicants. They already believe in not gambling. The only one, and in the Doctrine and Covenants, which is not a mandatory scripture, but it’s advisory, Joseph Smith said one should eat meat only in times of famine.

And his brother Hiram Smith further clarified that. He explained it further by saying that in times of famine, the animals are going to die anyway, because there’s nothing for them to eat either. So then to save your life, and he specifically uses this word to save your life, then you can eat meat.

So I explained it all to them, and I’m quoting their scriptures. So it definitely makes an impact on them. It definitely gets their attention.

That’s amazing. So they themselves, do they abstain from alcohol and gambling, or it is recommended that they give it up? Or is it a principle for them or like a recommendation? No, it’s a recommendation, but it’s one they, if they’re mainstream, they do follow it. They do follow those other three.

But meat eating, they consider meat eating is optional, much more so than the other three. That is also a significant difference from Christians then, because otherwise, wine is a very standard part of their diet itself or partying and everything. So then the next station, after having gone to changing bodies in the Guru, then we go to the deities.

And of course, that’s the big one, because nobody has ever seen anything like one of our altars. If they’re Christian or Catholic or Hindu or, I mean, not Hindu or Muslim, Muslims have no iconography at all. Christians just have the cross, that’s all they have.

Catholics have a bit more, they have the saints and all, but Jewish don’t have anything. So coming before a Krishna conscious altar, for most Westerners is, there’s nothing they can compare it to. There’s nothing they can compare it to.

And so of course, I use the example of the post office box to show how it’s bona fide, it’s not made up, this isn’t idolatry, but it’s actually bona fide worship. I also tell them to look at Krishna and notice his flute playing, his gentle smile, his relaxed demeanor. And I tell them, this is the same God that you read about in the Old Testament, but here he’s in a much better mood.

And they always like that. They always laugh at that. It relaxes them.

And then I tell them, what else do you notice about Krishna? And they sort of hem and haw around. And eventually I get out of them the admission that he’s not old, he’s young. The default image of God in most Westerners’ minds is an old guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

And I say, you know, I’ve been to India and I’ve been to America, and I noticed that in India, there’s a lot more fervor to worship God and to go back to the spiritual world, whereas in America, it’s much more reserved. And I wonder if that isn’t because Americans are thinking of God as an old guy. And how excited, anticipatory, and eager can you possibly be to spend eternity with some old guy? You know, I mean, if that doesn’t dampen your fervor, I don’t know what could.

Like, keep your voices down. God’s taking his afternoon nap. You know, no pecoras today because God’s watching his blood pressure.

No Kofi, you know, because God, I mean, I tell people if you’re, you know, if you’re a God-centered person, do yourself a favor and just add it up. God is all powerful. If there’s something that would make your version of God age, then that’s not God.

God is independent. He’s omnipotent. He doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do.

I didn’t want to age, but I’m not God. So I find myself forced later on and later on in the life. But if you’re God, nobody can force you to do anything.

So think about it. God would never grow old, plus God’s eternal. If you’re eternal, then you never die.

And if you never die, you never get old. So pretty much within about 30 to 60 seconds, I feel like I have relieved them of the misconception that God is old. I really feel strongly that most of the people that I give that pitch to go away and forever after think of God as being youthful.

So then that’s the altar. And then we sit down, we have a little kirtan, we explain the Maha Mantra, the music and everything like that. So basically, you’ve got reincarnation, you’ve got the guru, you’ve got the deity, and you’ve got kirtan.

And we have it set up really systematically here. We do it like dozens of times every day. And many temples aren’t set up this way for tourism.

But I think that if you do get visitors, I think that it’s very easy to make these simple adjustments so that you have stations in your temple. So when people do visit, a particular devotee who greets them has a course to follow, you know, a sequence of steps to follow with them, a template, you might say. I think any temple can do that.

And it’s worth the effort to do that, to give people the best experience. And who knows, they may go tell a few friends and you may find that the number of visitations goes up exponentially, according to how you host them and how you explain things to them. That’s beautiful.

And just going back to your point about explaining God. So do they find that as a minimizing of their conception of God? Or if they don’t have a conception and you’re just refining? And have you had any pushback on saying that God is not old, or this is the same God? About that? It’s happened so rarely, like maybe once in a decade. And it’s usually from teenagers that just unquestionably accepted something their parents told them and were really narrow-minded and dogmatic, not even worth considering, you know.

Mostly when you make that joke about this is the same God as the Old Testament, only here’s in much better mood, people laugh. They really enjoy that. And then you hit them with the youth and it’s like a one-two punch, you know, it really works.

And the Mormons are not that way iconoclastic. Because there is a history of, you know, bashing idols. Right from the Old Testament, it is there.

Idolatry is condemned. So that’s not a big part of Mormonism. Anytime you find Christians, those references are there in the Bible.

And so how I deal with that, as I say, you know, if there are false idols, just like if there’s a false $20 bill, in an indirect way, that proves the existence of the counterfeit $20 bill indicates that somewhere there is a real $20 bill. You know what I’m saying? So the process of deity worship is not necessarily being maligned, but the process of idol worship is, and one should know the difference between bona fide Arch of Yggdrasil and idol worship. Also, it helps that the Mormons believe in demigods.

They don’t call them demigods, but they believe in a pantheon of gods. They believe that they themselves can become demigods. Anyway, it’s a whole other branch, but let me just quickly explain that one of the Mormon prophets said, as man is, God was.

As God is, man will become. You understand? As man is, God was. As God is, man will become.

So because they’re talking about becoming God, some Christians brand them as heretics, because you can’t become God, and God means one anyway. So that’s heretical to mainstream Christianity, to talk about becoming God. However, they’re not talking about becoming capital G-O-D.

I tell them, why don’t you guys just use the word demigods? Then it would clear the whole issue up. You know, as man is, demigod was. As demigod is, man will become.

I say, we use that word, and nobody accuses us of trying to become God. We’re just trying to be godly or godlike, but the word we use is demigods. I say, it’s very clear, very concise, and it refers to a being that’s not entirely mortal and not entirely immortal.

And they believe in that level of beings. That’s amazing. So you have been able to position our theology in a way that doesn’t come off as a threat to their theology.

So I remember that when I had come and given a Sunday feast, I think that was the only place in the whole America where we had so many Americans who were coming for a program. And you mentioned to me that the university recommends the youth to come there and visit the Sunday talk also, isn’t it? Yeah, professors are behind us all the way. But we don’t, I mean, we don’t challenge them.

I don’t think that anything I’ve shared with you tonight is particularly impugning Christianity or Mormonism in particular. Yes. We haven’t had any pushback, at least from the talks and reception that I’ve done.

Yes, definitely. So then, now, if like you said, this idea of stations and visits, a planned visit, I was thinking of that also in like intellectual terms, that it is not just a physical landscape that you’re visiting, but also introducing them intellectually to the main figures in our philosophy. So are there any other aspects of Krishna Consciousness that you have also customized? One aspect could be like about, say, motivational speaking and inspiring people where they are at, instead of, say, talking about Krishna Consciousness, about Transcendental Philosophy.

I believe that’s also an area where you have focused on. Would you like to talk about that? I would. I think the place to start is the Sunday feast.

Yes. I believe that the purpose of the Sunday feast is to welcome new people. Do you agree with me? First time comers.

Yes, of course. I do not think the Sunday feast is a forum where a visiting devotee can harangue the crowd for an hour, an hour and a half, and then have a similarly long kirtan. I don’t think that’s how Prabhupada envisioned the Sunday feast.

I think that when we plan the Sunday feast, we should plan it from the point of view of a first-time visitor. And that tells us a few things. First of all, talk should be no more than 30 minutes for a first-time comer.

Kirtan, we do half an hour kirtan, but it’s 15 minutes in the beginning and 15 minutes in the end, so it’s broken up. You know, one thing people say, and maybe it’s okay if you just have an Indian audience, I don’t know, but if you have a mixed audience and you stand up and you say, who’s here for the first time? That’s a no-no. Almost every temple does it, and like I said, maybe it’s okay if you just have an homogenous Indian audience and just Indian people that want to get to know the new people who have moved into town.

Maybe that’s okay. But where you have a diverse audience, Latinos, African Americans, Westerners, who are very, very tentatively, they don’t even know if they should have come here, you know. They don’t even know if they should be here, and all of a sudden, you’re pointing them out to everybody in the room, and they’re like, you know, they’re trying to melt into the wall.

That’s a big no-no, you know. Don’t point out, because they’ll be embarrassed. They won’t be happy with it.

Just leave them in their anonymity, you know. If they want to come back, if they want to repeat the experience, it’ll be because you soft-pedaled it, and you didn’t put them on the spot. That’s very, very important.

And then, of course, yeah, go ahead. Why is this such a big thing? I mean, people, as you said, they are not sure whether they should have come there also, but the thought was that we are welcoming you. Thank you for coming.

You can do that. You should do that on an individual level. There should be someone that they can, whose name they know, they can put a face to.

But what’s the point during the announcement period of just pointing out people who have come for the first time? They’re very tentative. They’re very hesitant. They’re just checking you out.

The last thing they want to be, they want to be put on the spotlight and drawn attention to. And again, like I say, it doesn’t seem to create waves with the all-Indian crowd. In fact, it has its virtue of letting the regular people know who’s just arrived in town, who’s looking for an apartment, who’s transferred their job from Dallas or Seattle and like that.

They like to keep track of people within their own different ethnicity and all. So like I said, it may not be as big a faux pas in most of the temples, as it would be in a temple like ours, where there’s more diversity. But I think the main point is that if the Sunday feast is meant to be comfortable and seeker-friendly, then like you said, the topics have to be carefully chosen.

One thing is, it’s better if you’re talking to a first-time audience to be thematic rather than talk in a verse. I do not believe that the Sunday feast talk should be on the Bhagavad Gita 217. I believe the Sunday feast should be talking about shine brightly.

These are some of my feast topics here. Stay open, gates to the soul, making mountains into molehills, switch on your joy, release your gifts, let your conscience be your guide, comfort versus character, the art of waiting, walk without fear, clean out your mind, keep filling up, beating the odds, burn brightly, divine connections, and so on and so forth. That gives people tools, practical tools, that they can use to cope with modern life.

They can go to the work or to school on Monday morning, hopefully with some ammunition by which they can navigate the day and still maintain some level of spiritual consciousness. You know, the topics which you read out, two things struck me. One is that some of them are, of course, some things which can add value to people’s lives, but you’re also talking about divine connections.

So it’s not just self-help kind of thing. But when what you contextualize afterward, often what we talk about in our classes is how to practice bhakti better. But rather what you are talking about is how to how to face life better and how your spirituality can be a resource for that.

Exactly, exactly. The problem with self-help is like the secret, having a positive attitude. The problem is, Prabhupada gave the example, the rich man, he wants to protect his valuables.

The thief, he wants to break in and steal the valuables. Okay, so who succeeds? The one with the biggest positive attitude. The point is, the whole point is about self-improvement and motivational talks and positivity.

The whole point is you have to get in the middle of what God wants for your life. If you’re not in sync with God’s plan for your life, all the positivity in the world is not going to do you a bit of good. And even if you are in sync with God’s plan for your life, you have to be patient.

You have to let him do it in his time and in his way. You can’t force him. You can’t think, well, Krishna, it’s for you.

Why is this not happening? Why has it been so long? Why have I had these setbacks? Why have I had these difficulties? Because Krishna is doing a work in you. He’s more interested in what’s happening to you while you’re doing the work than he is in the result of the work itself. That’s a very beautiful understanding of karma nivadi ka raste.

Like 247 in the Gita, that be detached from the fruits of the work. It’s a very beautiful and appealing presentation that God is interested in what is happening to you while you are doing the work. A lot of people interpret that just to give in charity or go to the soup kitchen or work without ego.

But if you work for Krishna, like you want to build a temple, you want to organize festivals, you want to print books, you want to establish a mission, whatever it is you feel anointed to do from Krishna, I guarantee you that by doing that, by pushing forward towards that goal, Krishna is going to strip you of anything you don’t need. You may have your way, but Krishna has his way. And he’s going to do it his way in such a fashion as to divest you of all of your misconceptions.

You see what I’m saying? So when Krishna says work without the fruits of work, the fruits are there. We have to have goals. We have to have dreams that we want to fulfill for Krishna.

But Krishna is of such an omnipotent and an unpredictable nature that he’s going to do it in such a way that we don’t have the time. We don’t even know what he’s doing, how he’s doing it, or how he’s going to get there. But that’s we have to learn faith and trust in him.

But if we trust him in all setbacks, in all difficulties, in all delays, when it’s taking longer than we thought, when it should have happened a long time ago, during the pandemic, if we trust him during the hard times, then he’s going to fulfill our beyond what we could possibly do ourselves. The whole point is to learn in the course of serving the Lord to trust him. And that’s where the positivity comes in.

Just one minute to, I mean, a lot of points, the whole idea of God’s plan for your life. This was something which I used to read in before in my pre devotional days. In say, I used to read some books like by Norman Vincent Peale on positive thinking, which is not just mundane self-help, but it is not really religious proselytizing also.

But after I was introduced to Krishna consciousness, at least the idea I got that the God’s plan is that we should go back to Godhead. And what we do along the way is incidental and unimportant, but for most people, their life journey is far more challenging and say, demanding of attention than, than the ultimate destination. Of course, the destination is important, but is it overall consonant with our philosophy to think that God has a plan for our life in this world or God simply wants us to get out of this world and come to him? The plan for our life is to be God conscious.

That’s the plan. It’s not how do we live our life and at the same time figure out what God’s plan is. Like, how do I know whether God’s plan for me is to go away to college or stay home? How do I know if God’s plan is to major in science or major in the humanities? How do I know if God’s plan is to marry this girl or that girl? All kinds of conundrums come up when you talk about God’s plan for my life.

You’re absolutely right about that. So what we need to clarify is that your life is God’s plan. In other words, God created you to fulfill an assignment for him.

It’s not like how do I juggle my life and God’s plan for my life? My life is God’s plan. In my own case, a couple years after I joined the movement, I was traveling. I think it was the BBT Library Party and a devotee named Pramanavan was with us.

He came up to me. He said, Chiru, you’re a pretty quiet guy. You don’t usually say much conversationally.

You’re not like a dazzling party personality. He said, but when you open your mouth to give class, it’s amazing. And I had never recognized that particularly in myself.

But once he said that, what he did was something stirred, something leaped from inside. I realized that yes, that my life, God’s plan for my life is to be a communicator, is to be a preacher. And everything that I’ve done since that moment has been towards that end.

Festivals, I’m the master of ceremony on stage. Radio station, I can go on and preach whenever I want. Tour guide, you name it.

Everything, even the building of the temple, the purchase of the radio station, the organization of the festivals, it is all driven by God’s plan for my life, which is to preach about him. That’s what we’re talking about. The talents and abilities that God gave you, how he placed his thumbprint on you, determines a plan for your life.

And if you’re trying to juggle what your parents want for you and what your grandparents want for you and how much money you need to make and all that kind of thing, and then somehow or other make it mesh with God’s plan, that’s not God’s plan. God anointed you, he created you to be good at something. And when you recognize that and place it on the altar, then that’s God’s plan for your life.

Okay. So this is two things now. One is that what you said is your life is God’s plan.

That’s a very beautiful way of putting it. But within that also, it doesn’t necessarily have to be explicitly devotional. That like say you are directly sharing God’s message, but people may have individual talents.

They may go into the professional field, they may go into their relationships, but they do it in a mood of service. Because why I’m asking this, the point I’m making here is that often our presentation of the philosophy is quite world rejecting and world minimizing. I remember one of the things I, you know, when I came to a first time, I visited a temple and I went to the visit to the restroom and there was a notice written over there, like a thought or a quote, it was in the temple.

The world is like a toilet, get out of here as soon as possible. So, you know, there’s one idea of completely minimizing the world. The other is that in the world also, I can contribute, I can make a plan.

So it’s talking in that terms and a more world affirming or a life affirming view of bhakti. If it’s not directly preaching, such as my case, then you can be the best that you can be with the talents that you’ve been given. And that will be your platform.

That will be your leverage. If you’re the best architect, then other architects will look up to you. If you’re the best physicist, then whatever you say will be the standard.

If you’re the best auto mechanic, then other auto mechanics will key on you. If you’re the best auto mechanic, youth will come into your garage. The local college will get you teaching courses.

You’ll have apprentice, you’ll have disciples. You can basically tell them whatever you want. The point is that Krishna is a God of excellence and his devotees are also supposed to reflect that excellence.

So whatever it is that God has embedded within you, become the best at that. You’re the go-to guy. You’re the one they go to to find out about that.

You’re the one they apprentice themselves to. You’re the one that teaches the courses. You’re the one that writes the books.

You’re the definitive authority in the area. And when you have that influence, that leverage, then you can use it directly to preach Krishna consciousness. Okay.

What if somebody doesn’t have the talent to become best in any field? There’s no such thing. Everybody’s got talents. Everybody.

There’s nobody can say, well, I don’t have any talents. I don’t have any ability. God didn’t create you that way.

He didn’t create second-class living beings. He only created masterpieces. Everybody has a difference to make a difference.

Everybody has the ability to shine. You just have to maybe clear some viruses out of your software, get rid of some conditioning that might’ve come down to you through your previous generations, and find out how it is that God has his thumbprint on you. I don’t believe that God, who is the most dazzling, talented personality, I don’t believe that from him could come someone dull, average, mediocre.

That’s beautiful. We don’t hear this kind of, you could say life affirming or individual affirming message so much within the standard presentations of Krishna consciousness. Just hearing it is so encouraging.

Thank you for sharing that. So, is this something which you naturally, this was the way you always understood and presented Krishna consciousness? Or you also evolved from a more say world rejecting to a more life affirming kind of? I think so. I think it happened maybe 12 years ago.

I’ve been a devotee for 38 years and I hadn’t changed in certain fundamental ways. I hadn’t really changed. Some of the same things that always pushed my buttons were still pushing my buttons.

Some of the things that had always upset me were still upsetting me. And I’d even taken to using the phrase, well, what you see is what you get. I would say to my wife, this isn’t what I am.

Maybe next life, maybe with my next body, there’ll be a change. But I finally came to see that for Krishna consciousness is much more vital. It’s much more immediate than that.

We do have that magical day. When we’re 10% engaged in Krishna consciousness, Prabhupada said that’s when the magic begins. And we’re all hopefully working towards that.

Hopefully this year we’re much closer to 24 hour a day engagement than we were last year. Hopefully next year we’ll be even further on the way. Hopefully we won’t have given up.

Hopefully we won’t have retreated. Hopefully we’re moving forward. But having said that, we need to show signs that we’re becoming better human beings, better teachers, better husbands, better fathers, better wives.

And I felt that dryness in me. And so I think in response to that, I encountered more positive themes and messages that gave me hope, that brought tangible, measurable changes in my behavior. And then I, of course, I want to share it.

And of course, in the sharing of it, when you give a talk, you hear, you know this very well, you hear more intently than any many of your audience. So wanting those changes for the better so much for myself, part of that was sharing and teaching it to others. So you are saying it’s happened almost over 38 years.

That’s amazing. So it’s often a struggle if we don’t have a positive message for uplifting us, then pure love for Krishna seems to be very far away. And our life seems to be like just a complicated struggle externally with the world, internally with our conditionings.

So affirmative message is much more energizing. Yes. We need to always, they say, look within and look out, look, look within and look ahead, look within and look ahead.

When you have troubles, like we’re all going through now with a worldwide pandemic, no matter how dark it is, no matter what you’re faced with, no matter how long it’s lasting, look within. Krishna created us. He blessed us in the manner of our creation.

He made us so that we cannot be burned. We cannot be drowned. We cannot be dried.

We cannot be cut by any weapon. So we cannot be conquered. We cannot be defeated.

We cannot be struck with a pandemic. We cannot be struck with an illness. Why? Because Krishna loved us so much that he created us with a blessing on ourselves.

And nothing you can do, no bad choices that you’ve made, no terrible circumstances, no wars, no pandemics, will ever change the original fact that Krishna made you as eternal, full of bliss and knowledge. So whenever you chant in adversity, you always cannot help but remind yourselves of the indestructibility and the invincibility of the soul. Then the second thing you do is you look ahead.

Okay, the pandemic’s lasting a long time. I’ve been in financial trouble for a long time. I’ve been at this company a long time without having gotten a promotion.

I’ve been dealing with this illness a lot longer than I should be. Still, if you look ahead, it’s all temporary. It’s all temporary.

Janmāda sādhi me bhava dvīṣṭhā dāsyana anātmanam kālaṇeśvara dvīṣṭhā pālādmāraśa says, birth, growth, reproduction, birth, growth, duration, reproduction, dwindling, and vanishing. Everything goes through those phases, even your enemies, even your critics, even your circumstances. So because you’re eternal, even if you can’t figure out the solution to the problem, you’re still going to outlast it.

You’re still going to come out the other side of that problem. So no matter how you look at it, Krishna intends the last chapter to be victory. He didn’t create us for defeat.

He didn’t create us for sickness. He didn’t create us for stress, for anxiety. He created us for overcoming, for being victorious, and moving forward towards our ultimate destination of going back to home, back to Godhead.

Oh, this is so affirmative. And so these are the, you mentioned a list of the topics that you take, and these are topics you take in your Sunday talks usually. And I mentioned this difference that one is about, quite often our emphasis may go on how we should be practicing bhakti better, and how we are not doing it better, not doing it so well, which sometimes seems to be like one more challenge on top of the many challenges I already have in my life.

But I can’t, that is so true. That is so true. Like, you know, that’s exactly what I feel, and that’s exactly why I feel we need to be merchants of hope.

You know, when we have a loving father like Krishna, who is so dazzlingly beautiful and so compassionate, you know, why should we be made to feel less than? Why should we be made to feel not up to the standard, you know? Raghunath Das, Goswami, he used to offer obeisance to anybody who would chant Hare Krishna, like up to 2,000 times a day. Chanting Hare Krishna, that’s good enough for me. You know, anybody who shows even sympathy to Krishna consciousness, we should prostrate ourselves to them.

Krishna just, you know, in the hospital, to demand that the patients be healthy is crazy. You know, you can’t go into the hospital and say, you got the measles, you got the chicken pox, you got to deal better, you know, with the mumps, you know, you need to do a better job with the cancer. What’s that going to do? It’s just going to make them sicker, more depressed.

You need to show, you need to, you know, encourage people, paint a picture of wholeness and wellness, going from disease condition to a healthy condition, going from bondage to liberation. So, yes, you talk about merchants of hope, is that, that’s a beautiful phrase again, that when we talk about practicing bhakti, there are many reasons why we can feel inadequate and often we are expected to cultivate humility. So, you know, this, sometimes that sense of humility can be mistaken to a sense, mistaken to be a sense of inadequacy.

So, how do you address that? One side is that, like you earlier said, that God did not create, what was it, second grade people. He created masterpieces. So, these are some beautiful thoughts and these are, when you speak them, they strike us as true.

Yeah, how can it be wrong? But somehow, we focus on something else, like we have to be humbler, humble, which is important, but there is a, there are different messages that need to be heard at different times. And sometimes if you keep hearing only one message, then it can become problematic. How do we, how do we give glory to God as his parts and parcels were made in the image of God? So, and our business as devotees is to give glory to God, to honor God.

So, how do you do that by dragging around with your chin on the ground, talking about poor little old me? You know, I don’t have any devotion, I don’t have any of this, and I don’t have any of that, you know. How, do you think Krishna enjoys hearing that? Do you think Krishna resonates with that? In fact, you become what you speak. And so, when you belittle yourself, you actually make yourself smaller.

Krishna may have blessings, he may have empowerment, he may have dreams on your way, but when you demean yourself, when you run yourself down, you’re, you, you who were created as a child of the most high God, when you talk about yourself as a C student, not a very good father, a bad parent, a lukewarm devotee, what do you think happens to those blessings that are on your way? They’ve been dispatched, they’re on your way, but when Krishna hears what’s coming out of your mouth, he says, hold up, he’s not ready, he’s not predicting victory, he’s not talking about the future, he’s not speaking blessings over his life, he’s cursing his life. Krishna blessed us by creating us eternal, immortal, insightful, compassionate, loving. He put all that in us, and so then if we go around cursing ourselves, why are we gonna enjoy the fruits of the blessings that he has sent on our way? He’s gonna arrest him, he’s gonna stop him and say, hold up, stop right there until he starts speaking victory, speaking positivity, speaking with expectation and excitement for the future.

You can’t speak negative and have a positive life, you can’t speak victory, you can’t speak defeat and have victory. So we honor God by chanting Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. It means, oh Lord, oh energies of the Lord, please engage me in your service.

I’m open, however you want to use me, whatever you want to do with me, I’m open. We don’t take ourselves off the board, you don’t get to do that and still enjoy the blessings that Krishna has for you. If you take yourself out of the game, then what can Krishna do for you? I remember a story, who was it? Yeah, it was Fran Tarkington.

You probably won’t know this, this is all football stuff. Fran Tarkington was one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of NFL, but he couldn’t run very fast, he wasn’t very big and he didn’t even have like a strong arm. So he was like a third string quarterback at Tulane and Tulane was in the conference championship game with their rival, I don’t know, LSU or something and it was down to the Tulane Tigers had the ball in their own 20-yard line and they had a minute and a half to run down the field and score a touchdown in order to come from behind and win the game.

So Fran Tarkington put himself into the game, he walked in, told the quarterback he was replaced, the one coach thought the other coach had sent him in, the other coach thought the other coach had sent him in. He fooled everybody, he walked in, he took over, he ran the team down, scored the winning touchdown, won the conference and went on to become one of the greatest football players in the world. That’s what Krishna wants to see.

Don’t take yourself out of the game that Krishna puts you in, but have confidence knowing that you’re a child of the Almighty God. If you put yourself into the middle of what Krishna wants, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. So, so humility is not so much about we don’t have any glory, it is rather, it is about we are meant to give glory to God.

Humility means to brag on Krishna. Krishna gave me a great speaking ability. It’s not me, it’s not my credit, but Krishna gave me the ability to speak.

Krishna gave you a brilliant scientific mind, one of the best minds on the planet, but you don’t get the credit. You didn’t create the mind, Krishna created it and he blessed you with it. Now you have to use it to honor him with confidence, saying, this is not my mind, this is not my talent, my ability, this is Krishna’s.

And so wherever you go, you’re bragging on Krishna and that’s humility. Okay, so humility doesn’t mean to minimize our gifts or to even minimize ourselves, but rather… The difference between arrogance, arrogant people pretend they’re good at something they’re not. You see what I’m saying? Arrogant people pretend they’re good at something they’re not actually good at.

Humble people practice what they’re good at, giving the credit to God. Yeah, and that’s so true. Arjuna was an archer and he didn’t deny that my archery is useless.

I am not a good archer. He was ready to take the lead when he had to fight, but he didn’t pretend that he say he was the best at mace fighting or something else. Akirtim kartumarjan kathiyashanti sambhavah maranaratharichite.

Arjuna, you’re famous, you’re anointed, I blessed you with the ability to fight. If you walk off the field and pretend to be a brahman, maranaratharichite, better you die. Better you die than deny the talents and abilities that I put in you.

So in a sense, Krishna is saying, rather than drag around, being all down on yourself, oh you know me, I’m just little old me and I can never do anything big for Krishna. Krishna is saying no. Where was this verse from Prabhu, you mentioned just now? You don’t know that verse? Akirtim chapi bhutani kathiyashanti.

People have spoken about you. Dishonor is better than death. If you deny or ignore, or worse yet, you take that God-given talent and then you use it to do harm to yourself and to others, then better you have died rather than neglect or misuse the gifts that Krishna has given you.

And in fact, if someone’s not recognizing and not acting according to Krishna’s plan, how vigorous, how purposeful, how meaningful, how joyful are they going to be anyway? If they’re not being who God created them to be. That’s true. See, you’re taking that verse, that Akirtim chapi bhutani, often that’s seen in more in a people will dishonor you and you will not be able to tolerate that dishonor.

But you are actually giving it more of a devotional reading that if you are not doing what you are meant to do, then what is the use of your life? Yeah. Beautiful explanation. And Krishna is telling this to his friend.

He’s saying to his friend Arjuna, if you’re not going to honor the talents I put in you, you’d be better off dead. That’s what Krishna is saying to Arjuna. So these are all nuanced and beautiful readings of our scripture.

But often these are not the readings that we get. So I suppose this is your realization that you have got over a period of your own evolution. I go online, I go on Facebook online seven times a week.

And Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I do scripture. We’re going systematically through the second chapter, first Khandav Bhaga, we call it Motivational Monday, Transcendental Tuesday and Wisdom Wednesday. And I do that every morning at 730.

I’ve been doing it for weeks and weeks. And we have a following. We talk very scripture.

We just talk basically from that point and from that scriptural reference. And I feel that’s our duty to thicken the milk. That’s our duty for the devotees.

But then on Saturday and Sunday, we have our Sunday feast in Salt Lake City on Saturday, and then we have the Sunday feast. So I feel that I have a different obligation to the people who are coming to check us out for the first time. My obligation to them is to give them the best experience that they could possibly have.

And the best way to do that is to give them hope in their own lives, especially in this time of pandemic and all. People are looking for the silver lining. They’re looking for something to look forward to.

Not only are people not able to go to work, not only losing income, not only being evicted from their homes, but they’re cracking up mentally. Suicide, depression, drug addiction, all these things are becoming even more formidable. So I feel that if someone’s coming to Krishna, they’re like crawling up out of the ocean of birth and death, and they’re getting a little purchase on the land.

I can’t go way over their head. They need something for now. They need something to hold on to now.

If I overshoot them or if I talk above them, they’re just going to slip back into the ocean of birth and death, and back into the depression, back into the negativity. And I feel like I owe them more than that. They took the time, the trouble to come to the temple or to tune in on Facebook.

And so I feel that I need to give them hope. If they don’t want to take it, if they listen to the message and it doesn’t make any difference, then that’s fine too. But what I want to do is give them something they can use to bring light into their lives.

We are light. We are creatures of light and love. God has all good qualities, and we also have all good qualities.

It’s only forgetfulness of Krishna that causes us to forget what precious living beings we ourselves are and what we are capable. So remembrance of Krishna not only ensures that in the future we’ll go back to home, back to Godhead, but remembrance of Krishna also ignites self-realization, self-awareness, self-actualization, so that you can be the best person, the best devotee, the best difference maker, that you can be right here and now as well. And I believe that’s equally important.

Yeah, and most people are concerned more about the here and now than about the future world. And we can’t just dismiss that as material attachment, because they have to live in this world. And what difference we can make, our philosophy, our practices can make in this world also matters.

Sometimes in the name of, say, not having any material desires, we sometimes dismiss all concerns about this world. And that can come off as very insensitive or very, that can make us irrelevant. Isn’t it? This world is like the dress rehearsal before the spiritual world is like the practice lap around the track before the race starts.

You dismiss this world at your own risk, because we’re not where we need to be. We’re not on that level of love and trust by which we’re ready to be transferred to the spiritual world. And in order to get there, we need to pass the test that Krishna sends us here and now.

In times of pandemic, we need to be able to exhibit trust and faith. In times of sickness, in times of debt, in times of challenge, in challenges at work, and with the boss, and with our coworker, with our children, with our spouses, these are all tests. They’re essential.

You cannot ignore them or blot them out and expect to have the maturity that you need to go to the spiritual world. So often we get complaints from devotees. Well, I can’t live with this person, or I don’t like this person, or I can’t tolerate this person.

We’re all living in a community where the center is Krishna. We wouldn’t normally be living in this community, except we’re living in the community for the sake of Krishna and for the sake of being Krishna conscious. So any test that you encounter while living in the community has to be considered Krishna’s test to mature you and to make you the kind of person who’s eligible to go to the spiritual world.

So instead of complaining about your devotees and what irritates you and all like that, recognize this is an opportunity to take your Krishna consciousness to the next level. Maybe it’s a different issue for a monk living in the temple, but 95% of our members are not monks, not living in the temple. 95% of any members that are going to come to this in the future are going to be have a job, they’re going to have a family, they’re going to have financial issues, and they need to see how Krishna works through these areas of our lives in order to qualify us to go back home, back to God.

You can’t just dismiss all that, leapfrog all of that, and go to the spiritual world. It’s not possible. Yes.

A satsanghe tyagi, you know, Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, when he was approached, what’s the best thing I can do? He said, stay where you are, stay in your job, stay in your family, stay in your village, but just sort it out. Avoid undesirable, un-Krishna conscious association. That means avoid friends who are not Krishna conscious, avoid DVDs and movies that are not Krishna conscious, avoid food that’s not Krishna consciousness, avoid books that are not Krishna consciousness, but stay where you are because Krishna’s got you there for a reason.

Krishna has got you here for a reason. It’s beautiful. So the only reason is not just because I messed up and I fell away from Krishna and I am filled with my own problems, but in spite of all my mistakes, Krishna has his own purpose in getting me here.

And maybe they weren’t bad mistakes as you thought they were in the first place. It’s beautiful. Look at the mistake that Maharaj Prekshat made and look what came about of it as a result of it.

You know, he put a snake on a sage’s neck, which he shouldn’t have done, but yet the result was the Srimad Bhagavatam. And this doesn’t apply only to pure devotees. This can apply to us also that Krishna can transform our mistakes, even if they are mistakes, into something from which good can come about.

Right, right. That’s beautiful. You know, the whole key is to place your trust in Krishna in times of adversity, when things are not going well.

Have faith that if you pass the test, you keep a cheerful attitude, you do the right thing when wrong things are happening, then Krishna will restore whatever you’ve lost, double over. So the whole idea is to keep smiling, smiling, keep moving forward, keep your faith in Krishna in times of adversity. Now, where does the adversity come from? We created it.

It didn’t just come out of the blue. Krishna gave us a garden and we made a garbage pit out of it, didn’t we? Krishna gave us paradise, we’ve got acid rain, we’ve got polluted water, we’ve got toxic chemicals. That’s our doing.

You know, hurricanes, tornadoes, we did that more than ever due to climate change, because of our fuel consumption, our driving habits. So, you know, the beautiful thing is we created most of our own adversities individually and collectively. Krishna gave us something beautiful, something perfect, and we destroyed it for all practical purposes.

And the adversities that we’re experiencing right now, war, doubt, depression, disease, virus, cancer, we created them. We created them. But Krishna is so kind that even so, we can still offer them back to Krishna.

We can still offer them to Krishna, keep our faith, keep our trust, even though most of our problems, most of our adversities are self-created. So that means that even if the problems, whatever be the reason the problems have come, the important thing is we should keep our faith in Krishna. Sometimes we start beating ourselves up so much for our mistakes or our conditionings that that may cause us to not keep our faith in Krishna.

And then we are not really being Krishna conscious, even if we are thinking that we are humble or whatever. So I think this is a beautiful, this affirmative spirituality or this, this is not just what you, the kind way you presented bhakti right now. It’s not just mundane motivational message.

It is in a sense motivation to perform for Krishna. Like what you said, you can shine today. So you can shine today for Krishna.

So, and I think we as devotees, as a community also, we need more of this kind of messaging that, and especially as you said again, repeatedly you are saying that times of pandemic where there is so much problems. So everybody is challenged physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially. If we become spiritually also challenged, then it will be crushing for us.

Our spirituality should be to strengthen us. So it’s, I don’t want to extend you too much beyond your time. Are there any, how much time do you have and are there any other points you would like to speak? Any issues you would like to address? Oh, you’ve been like the cowherd boy that’s been milking me now for almost two hours.

So maybe I need to go somewhere and wait for my milk bags to fill up again. I don’t know if I was milking you, you were showering your milk. So maybe I will try to summarize what you spoke briefly and then if you want, you could add some concluding words.

So we spoke today broadly on the theme of a seeker friendly presentation of Bhakti. But overall, I think our talk became, went wide ranging. You started with your example of reaching out in Utah where from a point of your starting of a new church, it was all unfavorable, but then Krishna had a plan and you started off as creating a welcoming place by the, instead of Lama consciousness, I would call it as Lama preaching.

So how you use the Lamas to make people shed their barriers and become comfortable. And then it is amazing to see how the Mormons, you also connected with them well and they supported. And now we have a magnificent temple, which is an architectural wonder and it has become a popular tourist destination.

And the idea of having, when people visit the temple, we welcome them and give them a guided tour with stations and each station giving a philosophical point also. That’s a brilliant way of having tourism, having architecture, having spirituality and all coming in a non-threatening kind of way. And then we discussed about how you talk about, if somebody is crawling, you can’t just expect them to start running.

You have to gradually lead them from where they are. And using the example of the Mormons, you also mentioned that we have to give in order to get. So, give means give people what they need so that, like if you are fishing, we can’t put on the bait food that we like.

We have to put what the food, the fish needs. And from that was a good segue to our discussion about the motivational outreach, especially in the Sunday programs, that rather than berating people for not practicing bhakti properly, we need to help them see bhakti as a resource that can help them face life’s challenges better. And then we discussed about humility doesn’t mean that we take ourselves out of the game, but rather we use, we see that the gifts that we have been given are being given by God and are meant to be used for His service.

And the idea that this world is, we can’t have a dismissive attitude because this is a practice run and we need to practice well to get there. And God has a plan for our lives. In fact, our life is God’s plan and He doesn’t create, what is it, second grade or third grade pieces, He creates masterpieces.

So, we have to find out what gifts He has given us and offer the best to Him in directly through preaching, if that’s our gift or whatever is our gift in various areas of our life. And with this affirmative kind of motivational, not simply to make it big in the world, but to do big things for Krishna, that is a message which especially is very valuable in the times of the pandemic today. So, any concluding words Prabhu or anything I missed out? How did you do that? How did you recall that whole hour and a half conversation so perfectly? How, of course, what I’m asking about is it’s a mystic power.

I mean, but our talents that we have didn’t arise from combinations of matter. Every one of us is touched by the hands of God. And what you just did is absolutely unfathomable to me, how you went back and just rebuilt that whole structure and played it back to me.

I couldn’t have done that in a million years. So, that is a mystic power, a yogic power given to you by God. My ability to express things in some ways is a power that I don’t even begin to understand.

And so, everybody needs to be confident that there’s something, many things, but maybe one predominant thing, which is amazing in them. And they need to have faith that it’s there because God doesn’t create second-class living beings. They need to find it and then run with it, use it to honor God.

Beautiful. Thank you very much, Prabhu, for such an enlightening discussion and such an energizing presentation of bhakti. It’s been memorable to us having your association.

Likewise. Back at you. Humble obeisances.

Thank you.