The Monk’s Podcast 58 with Krishna Kshetra Maharaj – Using our imagination in Krishna’s service

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

Hare Krishna, Krishna Chitra Maharaj. Thank you very much for joining here today. It's my pleasure to be with you again.

I've got a lot of positive feedback from devotees about our last podcast. Especially the point that, you know, faith doesn't have to require the elimination of doubt, but they can have been a constant dialogue. But I gave that title itself of the podcast, but that was a illuminating point.

Many devotees said that we never heard of it. And that was brilliant. Well, I'm waiting for when, when do I get in trouble for that? Hopefully, I think maybe we have as a movement graduated past that stage, where maybe 10-15 years ago, this would have been a scandalous statement.

But now, I think, as a movement, we have, we recognize that somewhat broader horizons. Yeah, I hope so. Yes, Maharaj.

Thank you. So Maharaj, today I was thinking of discussing on the topic of using our imagination in Krishna's service. I got this inspiration from two ways.

One was, no, I'll tell both and then I can, we can move forward. In my childhood, I had read a Ramayana and I had liked it very much. And then recently I revisited it.

And I wrote the, read the author's preface. And there the author writes, now the author is known to be not a, not a ISKCON devotee, but a Krishna bhakta. So, but a Krishna bhakta.

So he had written that in this book, with all the devotion of my heart, I offer to Ram, all the imagination he has given me. So that was a very striking usage for me that normally we think of imagination as something, you know, we don't want imaginary things. But using the imagination in service, that was a very striking phrase.

And then I also remember that you have authored or encouraged devotees to write for a series of Smaranam books. Where there is some amount of visualization of Krishna's pastime, especially those pastimes that speak to us. So then I thought these are two backgrounds, two stimuli for having this discussion.

Yes. So maybe you can speak on this topic and especially how you felt inspired to do this Smaranam book, series of books. Okay.

Yeah, let's, let's start with how, how these books started. And I might as well sort of show one of them. This was the first volume that we did some years back.

It's called Krishna Smaranam, Krishna Smarana. And then subtitle is devotees creative monologues, elaborating Krishna's pastimes. This is available, by the way, on Amazon Kindle.

Okay. For free. It can be downloaded.

If you just search Krishna Smarana, you'll find this one. And we did three altogether, Krishna Smarana, Rama Smarana, and Gaura Smarana. And I'll explain later what we're working on now.

The Rama Smarana, just now I checked, it's not available online, but this Krishna Smarana and Gaura Smarana are both available on Kindle. So, yeah, this was back in, which year was it? 2010. We had this summer camp retreat in Serbia, in Southeast Europe.

And I was, we were discussing different pastimes of Krishna after killing Kamsa. And I was thinking how to engage the devotees in really thinking more deeply about the pastimes. And I was encouraging devotees to write a sort of monologue.

And I suggested, take some minor character, you know, someone who is perhaps on the sidelines, who somehow or other is observing, and what would they see? What would they experience? What would they think? And so on. So the devotees, they all kind of stared at me with blank looks. What are you talking about? And I thought, okay, there's no use in just asking them to do something.

I need to show an example. So that same evening, in my room, I had an idea and I put it on computer. I was thinking about the story of Krishna's wedding with Rukmini and how Rukmini Devi sends this Brahman with a message to Krishna.

And I thought, okay, here we have something, the Brahman. I don't think we get a name of this Brahman in the Bhagavatam. He's journeying by himself to see Krishna.

Presumably he's never met Krishna before. What is he thinking on his way to meeting Krishna? So I imagined, you know, what would one think in anticipation of going to Dvaraka and seeing Krishna? And I made as a kind of, how to say, a formal restriction for myself. Every sentence in this little piece, which is just a couple of pages, I don't remember, less maybe.

Every sentence is in the form of a question. And so he's kind of asking questions of himself and he's anticipating. And so then I brought that the next day to the seminar.

I read it out and then devotees were, oh, okay. Yeah, I kind of get it now. I could do maybe something like this.

So questions means, is he asking, okay, how will Krishna receive me? What will Krishna look like? What will Krishna's palace look like? Something like that? Yeah, things like that. But also, it's been a while since I've looked at it myself, but also maybe reflections on himself. Who am I to be qualified to go see Krishna and so on? Yeah, but that's just, you know, that was just my particular idea for this particular writing.

It's by no means anything like, now we should all write everything in form of questions. Yeah. Yeah, so that was the first inspiration.

And then I made some specifications. I think I said, please, you know, don't write more than X number of words. We don't want it to be too long.

And most of those who participated in these, English is not their first language. And so we did some English editing. At the same time, in my introduction, I say, please don't mind.

Sometimes the English may be a bit awkward. So the idea was just to get devotees, well, you know, first of all, get devotees reading. Because I strongly feel there's a difference between active reading and passive reading.

Where active reading means you're looking for something, and you're reading with the idea of one way or another passing on what you read. There's Shravanam, and then there's Kirtanam. So as we read, if we think about what it is we read in terms of how would I communicate this to someone else, immediately becomes active, it becomes interesting.

But as far as imagination goes, I want to read, I put this in the introduction to this first book, a quote from Shila Prabhupada, this was in a lecture on June 1st, 1974 in Geneva, on Srimad Bhagavatam 1.13.10. Prabhupada said, You can imagine that, quote, In my heart I have placed now a very diamond throne and Krishna is sitting, unquote. That is accepted. It is.

Actually, it becomes. Even within the mind, you think that, quote, I have kept one diamond throne, very costly throne, because Krishna is coming. He will sit down here, unquote.

That is not false. That is a fact. So you create some situation within your heart.

Quote, now Krishna has seated. Let me wash his feet with the Ganges water, Yamuna water. So, of course, Prabhupada here is describing a very standard aspect of Archana called Manasa Puja or Manasika Puja.

And it's a standard step in the full practice of Archana that you first meditate on offering the Upacharas, the different items. And I've always found this potentially, I've always found it a wonderful aspect of Archana, because in one sense, there's no limit to what you can bring to Krishna in that meditation. We always have a problem in Western Northern countries, lack of flowers, or even if we have flowers, they hardly ever smell.

And flowers are very expensive. But with Manasa Puja, you can offer heaps and heaps of wonderful fragrant flowers like you have there in India most of the year. And of course, you can offer a whole feast, and you can make up a procession with elephants.

I mean, there's no limit. It can be quite some fun, actually. So, the point I want to make here is just, Prabhupada is suggesting, he uses the word imagine.

And then he says, imagine what? Imagine a diamond thrown in your heart. And then he says, it is not false. It becomes, Prabhupada says, that's true.

It is not false. And so, that led me to think, because I'm a little bit anticipating, maybe one question that may come up is, sort of, where do you draw the line? But also, when we read some things that our Acharyas have written, when we read Srila Jiva Goswami's… Maharaj, just one minute. About this quote, if you don't mind, we can go to that a little later.

So, to Manas Puja, there are certain things which are, say, traditional, and it's understood. Say, we would like to decorate Krishna with beautiful jewels or ornaments or place him on a wonderful throne. So, that is something which we would like to do in real life.

And if we can't do it in real life, at least do it in the heart. So, we have precedence for that. Say, for example, when Vasudev couldn't give charity on the birth of Krishna, at that time, he gave charity mentally.

And later on, he gave practically. So, that is, in one sense, imagining what we would like to do for Krishna. So, now, different from that is maybe imagining what Krishna is doing.

Or imagining how things were when Krishna was performing a particular pastime. So, the first has many precedence. But the second is what I think you are going towards.

But I am just clarifying the difference between the two. Because one, I don't think it will be ever controversial. But the second is where some issues might come up.

Where we are, can we actually, not imagine, maybe imagine is a slightly provocative word, visualize what Krishna is doing. So, you were saying something about some of our Acharyas, pastimes, you can continue that. Yeah.

So, one thing that comes in to the subject, of course, is the idea of Adhikar. Who has qualification? We may say, who has qualification to imagine? And we may look, I mentioned Jiva Goswami, Sanatana Goswami, with his Prihat Bhagavatamrita. And we look at this and we say, okay, these are our very exalted Acharyas.

They are eternal associates of the Lord. And so, what they are describing is not something they are just imagining. It is something they are visualizing.

It is something they see. It is like we get the idea, you know, maybe they are getting transcendental television reception, like Sanjaya from the battlefield of Kurukshetra, something like that. Yes, that may be the case.

Or, and I am just, I am thinking aloud here a little bit. I was reflecting on this this morning. That in advanced spiritual life, the advanced devotees, Krishna is reciprocating with the desire of the devotee.

And what this suggests to me is we may be able to go a step further with the idea of an Acharya's imagination is such that it becomes reality. And this goes back to what Prabhupada is saying. Imagine a diamond throne.

It is not false. It becomes a reality. And then the famous example Prabhupada so much liked to tell, which is referred to in Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu, Nectar of Devotion, of the devotee who is doing this Manasa Puja.

He is testing the sweet rice to see if it is cooled down. It is not cooled down. He burns his finger.

And indeed his finger is actually burned. So there is this crossover between imagination and reality that seems to happen when there is very high Adhikar and Krishna wants that to happen once. He allows it to happen by the will of the devotee.

So we often say, oh, that is just imagination. But at some point in devotional life, it is not just imagination. It is something more than that.

So just to clarify this, when you are saying that the two distinct explanations you gave, one is that something is already happening and a devotee basically sees it like tunes into a radio or television. And the other is when a devotee is imagining, then Krishna makes it happen. Krishna makes it a reality.

Is that the two things you are saying? Yes. So in the second thing, when Krishna makes it a reality, are you saying that Krishna performs that pastime in the devotee's heart or actually Krishna manifests all those details in a particular universe where he is doing those things? Who knows? See, this gets to a point which in the academic study of religion comes up that there are basically two major camps of theorizing about religion, what it is. One we may call the receptionist understanding.

And the other is the projectionist understanding. The receptionists say there is some transcendent reality. And that transcendent reality is being communicated to human beings, to certain human beings, special beings, humans, whatever.

But it is something out there or someone. And that is being received. And then the other camp says, no, no, no, no.

You are too religious. What is really happening is that people with fertile imaginations are projecting what is going on just in their heads out into the world. And that becomes religion.

What it seems to me, Vaishnavism, what we understand is there is very much a transcendent reality which is being received. And it is also, as it is being received, it is awakening in the heart. And then the heart is being activated.

And that leads to, yes, a certain projection becomes the wrong word. But it is something like projection. But what it is, it is kirtan, it is glorification.

And that glorification is expanding the glories. Because the Lord is unlimited. His pastimes are unlimited.

And they are happening as we speak. And part of how they are happening is that we participate in them. I always remember His Holiness Loganath Swami in a Bhagavatam lecture talking about how we practice hearing and picturing Krishna's pastimes.

And in the course of practice, as we become more and more practiced, at one point, he put it this way, he said, at one point, you may notice a gap in the pastime in which you belong. That's where you fit. That's amazing.

And that's when you enter into the pastime. Okay. That's striking.

Just going back to this receptionist and projectionist. So I thought that the general academic study of religion is usually more skeptical. But still within that also there are these two ideas.

That most of the times it is people think that there is nothing transcendental and it is more of a sociological or psychological kind of phenomena which we analyze. Well, I would say there are two major sorts of scholars of religion. But this is also overgeneralizing.

But there are scholars who tend to be reductionist. They want to say this is nothing more than a phenomenon which can be understood through sociology, psychology, politics, economics, and so on. And there are those who say all those things are there and we can study them.

That's fine. And we can see how they may indeed have influence on people doing what we make all religious practice. And there's something more.

And that something more is something which you can never reduce. One scholar from the previous generation at Harvard, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, made this point. There's two things.

He said there's what he called cumulative tradition, which is all the things that are visible, maybe measurable, which are phenomenon that scholars can look at. And there is the reality, he insisted this is a reality, which is the faith of people. The faith in the heart.

And he said that's something that we as scholars will never access. We can listen to what they say about their faith and we can listen. We can read their writings, et cetera, et cetera.

We can hear their singing, analyze their architecture and their painting and on and on. But you can never get to that thing in itself, that faith. Therefore, he wanted to insist that religion is something to take seriously as a human phenomenon.

He says we don't have to argue about whether or not what is being believed in exists or not. That's not our business as scholars of religion. That's for theologians to discuss.

So academic study of religion, of course, Bhakti Siddhanta Thakur would call this probably licking, trying to lick the honey from the outside of the bottle. But it's a sophisticated field. It's, you know, there's a lot of engaging discussion, which I think can also be enriching for devotees, some devotees to engage with, to reflect on.

Yes, that's another subject. Yeah, yeah. But thank you for.

So you mentioned about this. We can't know faith. I think I read in Tamal Krishna Maharaj, one of his books that he says there's a difference between knowing God and knowing about God.

Yeah, something similar to knowing about the expressions of the faith and knowing that or experiencing that faith itself. Yeah. So now.

And there are scholars of religion. There are there are highly religious scholars of religion. And they will.

They can function in both worlds, so to say. I think you are a vibrant example of that yourself. Isn't it? I don't know.

So going going back to our point that. So you are mentioning that in our tradition, we could say it's a combination of both. Both.

Or what is it? Not projection. That was reception. And then maybe you could say glorification or expression, not projection.

Right. Yeah. So then just going back to those, an example of Gopal Champu.

Now, I was thinking of, say, three levels of description of Krishna Leela or the Lord's pastimes. One is, say, we have the Bhagavatam, which is we understand Shukadeva Goswami at least at some level describing what has happened in the 10th Canto. Then we have Gopal Champu or Gopal Champu especially we would consider.

And then we have some of the things which are explicitly written with the name Natakas, dramas. We have, say, Chaitanya Chandrodaya Natak or some, I think, some dramas. So now that are the dramas are also considered to be, say, of the first level or second level or are they considered to be dramas to be enacted? What has been the attitude of the tradition toward these? Oh, that that in itself becomes a huge topic because, as we know, Shilarupa Goswami in particular.

And then also Kavikarnapura were both writing dramas. You mentioned the one from Kavikarnapura, Chaitanya Chandrodaya Nataka. And they are writing these dramas within a very rich tradition of theorizing on the nature of poetry and drama of Sanskrit poetry and drama, which goes back to the work of Bharat, Natya Shastra.

And and then out of that, there are branches and sub branches of theorizing and arguing back and forth. And then we come to Rupa Goswami, who then transcendentalizes the whole discussion by saying that the essence or the core, the core of rasa is bhakti, bhakti rasa. And Kavikarnapura agrees with this.

They didn't they didn't collaborate. They were in different parts of India, but they they're both saying the same thing. And they both wrote short manuals.

I was trying to remember. The name of the manuals on poetics, on the rules of Sanskrit poetics, as they understand. Rupa Goswami's is Nataka Chandrika, I think.

Yes, that's it. Yeah, Nataka Chandrika. And I think it's Tamal Krishna Goswami who explains that in Nataka Chandrika, Rupa Goswami says that for the purpose of establishing rasa, for bringing out, for highlighting a particular rasa in a particular narrative.

It is permissible to make some changes from the Shastric source, whether it's Bhagavatam or Mahabharata or whatever. And Kavikarnapura does this in a very interesting way. I've just been reading this wonderful, elaborate analysis of Kavikarnapura.

I have his book here somewhere I can show from Gopinath Acharya Prabhu. And he explains toward the end of his book that Kavikarnapura does something interesting with the Bhagavatam's description of rasa-lila. In order to highlight the Shimati Radharani's feelings of compassion.

And I won't go into the details, but he makes a definite shift in the story in order to bring this out. And someone might say, oh, how dare he? Well, he's Kavikarnapura, and furthermore, he's doing what is allowed in the tradition for the purpose that he's doing it, which is highlighting this rasa, in this case of compassion, to go with Madhurya. So, in terms of these three categories you mentioned, that's not in his drama, that's in his Champu, the Ananda Vrindavan Champu.

Okay. So, yes, there's these three genres you mentioned, but whether you can make the same distinctions of degree of reality or something to fit each of those, I don't know if that'll work. Oh, yes.

I think in the Ananda Vrindavan Champu, when I read it also, it struck me that he analyzes Radharani's… Radharani asks Krishna to stop because he says she's concerned about the other gopis. Yes. And is that what you're referring to? Yes.

Yeah, basically, that's it. Yeah, so that is not mentioned in the Bhagavatam specifically at all. Right.

Yeah, so that's… I found it a very inspiring point and when you speak it also, it makes that transcendental pastime so accessible and relishable at our level also. That even while being with Krishna, Radharani is concerned about other gopis, not just about Krishna herself. Yes, that's it.

So he's saying, what is Gopinath Chaturthi saying that this is what Rupa Goswami, what Kavikaranapura has done a distinctive shift in emphasis. Is that? Yeah, he highlights that. Now, I think another aspect of this we can reflect on is from Chaitanya Charitamrita.

As we know, poets would write poetry inspired by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and they would bring it, they wanted to recite it to Lord Chaitanya. But they had to go through Swarup Damodar. Yes.

He was the gatekeeper and there's at least one story where he throws out one applicant because he gets the rasa wrong. Yes. So… Is the rasa wrong or it's almost the siddhanta wrong? I think, yeah, he got the siddhanta wrong.

And with that, he probably got the rasa wrong too. Yeah. Anyway, so there's a couple of things here.

And this comes from some, forget the name, but one respected historian of Bengali literature who points out that there was a huge explosion of literary activity with the advent of Chaitanya. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu with his movement. There's almost a major beginning point of a major type of activity in Bengal, of literary activity in Bengal, inspired by Lord Chaitanya and his associates.

Suggesting to me that it's integral specifically to our tradition that there be literary activity and creative literary activity. Which literary activity this scholar mentioned? Which literary activity arose because of Lord Chaitanya? The writing of songs, the writing of poetry, the writings of drama in Bengali language. Okay.

That's interesting. One Chaitanya Chaitanya also, one of the qualities of Vaishnava is mentioned as a Kavi. Kavi, that's also in Bhagavatam.

And the other point is that Swarudama represents, he sort of embodies a tradition which we see in modern secular culture, and that is of the review process. Now in the academic world, if you want to get an article published in an academic journal, it goes through what's called peer review. There'll be one or two anonymous scholars who are qualified in the field and so on.

So that's a sort of self-regulating system. In the general sphere of publishing, you have book reviews, which are published in magazines and newspapers. And there's the New York Times review of books.

There's the London Times, I guess, review of books. And people take those reviews very seriously. And decide whether or not they're going to buy this or that book based on those reviews.

And the review can be anything. It can be praising a book like anything, or it can be completely smashing the book. That's the system.

So there's a culture there, which I think would also be of value within the society of Vaishnavas. What I mean by that, years ago, quite some decades ago, there was concern in the GBC that devotees are writing books and they're publishing them themselves. And all kinds of things are getting out there.

This should all be controlled. And so they set up a review system. But it failed miserably because it was way too slow.

It just became a bottleneck. And in the end, devotees said, hey, I don't care whether I'm approved by the GBC or not. I'm going to publish my book.

So that was very quickly abandoned, that whole concept. And now what we have is, in a sense, completely unregulated. By which I mean, we don't have any self-regulation, which is unfortunate.

In one sense, it's unfortunate because what the reviewing culture provides, it educates readers to be more discriminating of what is good writing, what's good publishing. And it educates authors to be more self-critical so that we get more quality of publications, which then in turn will be taken more seriously by a wider public. That's true.

It's tough. One time when I was asked to be a part of a review for some books, and it becomes not just time consuming from us to read, but you have to actually communicate with that person. And often if that person is much more senior to us, then how they will take it.

It's very difficult. I think in the Catholic tradition, they had something called an imprimator. And this book doesn't contain any objectionable theology.

Yeah, I mean, that's what the GBC was trying to do, but that fell flat. And I don't think that's what we want. Yeah, it's tough.

I think we want more of an open culture. We want to encourage. Prabhupada encouraged, actually Prabhupada more than once said, all my students, all the devotees should write.

So, of course, writing is just one sort of creativity. It's one that I'm trying to encourage. We see a lot of music creativity, a lot of graphic arts creativity.

And what else? Even architectural depiction also, a lot of creativity in that. Yeah, I think personally, I think there could also be more creativity in clothing design for deities. That could be controversial, but I think there could be some very much more.

I mean, there's nice, wonderful clothes, but I think there could be more interesting things done as well. And we have clothes designers amongst devotees. Oh, okay.

The first thought that came in my mind was, I think several years ago in one of the Vrindavan temples, they had dressed Krishna in T-shirt and jeans. And that created an outrage and there was protest. And then the Pujari was, I think Pujari had to leave or something like that.

So maybe there again also some limits might be required, according to time, place, circumstance also. But Maharaj, your point is significant that somehow the amount of reservations that we have with respect to using creativity in words, that seems to be much more than with respect to music or graphic arts or architecture. Yeah.

So is it because the word is considered more authoritative or is there any other reason for that? Authoritative and also there's something very fixed about words in print. And I mean, the ambivalent, the sense of ambivalence to the printed words or just the written word in the West, it goes back to Plato who wrote books, but he expressed ambivalence that once you write it down, it's fixed. And whoever reads it, they're going to misunderstand for sure.

And then within the Vedic and we can say broader tradition from Veda, there's also ambivalence. The Veda was not written down, it was heard and memorized. And only when we get to Mahabharata, the epics, Mahabharata, Ramayana, and then the Puranas.

And with the Puranas, it's also problematic because the mode of communication of Purana in particular is oral. The Bhagavatam is telling of a layering of several oral recitations and speaking of the Bhagavatam. And with each retelling, something changes, but it's understood, it becomes more enriched.

If the person speaking is qualified. And that's the whole understanding of why do we have Bhagavatam classes? It's a retelling of the Bhagavatam by the speaker. So the written word has, in a sense, always been problematic.

And I shouldn't say this, but we have quite an issue in our society about the editing of Sheila Prabhupada's books. And I'm right in the midst of that because I'm part of a panel to review the editing. And in a sense, I feel like this problem wouldn't be there if we had just been able to keep, at the time, all the tape recordings of Sheila Prabhupada.

Because Prabhupada did not write books, except for Bhagavad Gita and Easy Journey to Other Planets. He didn't actually write books, he spoke. And there's a world of difference.

There's a world of difference between speaking and a written word. And we're struggling with that gap. So you are saying that means if Prabhupada's audio recordings of his Bhagavatam purports and Sheila Prabhupada's purports, it might have been better if they had been kept like that rather than published as books at all? No, I'm not saying that because Prabhupada wanted books.

Yeah. But I'm saying it would have been nice to have as resources, if nothing else, for this process of editing, because there's multiple issues. So many of them are lost.

Most of them are lost. Oh. Most of them, because the way Prabhupada did it, he would record a tape.

And these were these reel-to-reel tapes. He would hand it to, say, His Holiness Satsvarupa Das Goswami, who would then type the tape. And then that tape would go back to Sheila Prabhupada, who would then record over what he had recorded previously, because they only had a handful of these tapes.

My God. The only tapes we have original are for Krishna book. Somehow for Krishna book, they were saved.

Yeah. I've heard them also. Prabhupada says comma and full stop and Prabhupada's transcription.

Yeah. Okay. So now, so regarding the using of imagination.

So you said that in each retelling of the Bhagavatam, it becomes richer. And that's why we also have Bhagavatam classes. So at, you know, with respect to retelling, so there are times when Prabhupada also takes some creative license.

So, for example, Prabhupada would say, Prabhupada would quote Sarvadharman Parittajya and he says, Krishna is telling, give up all your nonsense. And just surrender to me. Now, Sarvadharman Parittajya and give up all your nonsense.

They're not really. Yeah. So, so in that sense.

Yeah, because, yeah, because he has the Adhikar to do that. But he's also teaching us to develop Adhikar for, for preaching, for represent, for re-presenting. But also speaking of Bhagavatam and Prabhupada's purports.

Now, I haven't been able to find, you know, a recorded reference of this, but I believe it's His Holiness Bhakti Vaibhava Swami who says that Prabhupada said once, it's one of these Prabhupada saids, that, that eventually people will write purports to my purports. Devotees will write purports to my purports. And what we're finding, one of the things we're finding in this editorial review process, I find is this doesn't, this becomes a necessity.

There are things that Srila Prabhupada writes where we feel like we have to say, wait a minute, this needs some explanation. This needs some elaboration. This needs, we don't want to change Prabhupada's words, but we want to give opportunity to understand what we may feel is, could easily be misunderstood.

So things like that. I think that's the whole universe in itself, because there are many things that are very easily misunderstandable. So, Maharaj, going back to this retelling about say, like, about the epics, I have been writing a series of books on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata especially.

Maybe drawing some practical lessons from these epics. It's more like human values and some spiritual values. I have been looking at the spectrum of literature that devotees have written and also non-devotees have written on the Ramayana.

I would like to talk about these levels and say, of using imagination. So, say, now, if I, at one level, the very translation requires some level of imagination. Say, now, the first Mahabharata that I really read and could connect with was Krishna Dharma Prabhu's, his Ramayana and Mahabharata.

He has a, his writing has a power to bring like vivid visual imagery to the mind. And then I read a literal translation of the Ramayana by Kisari Mohan Ganguly whose Mahabharata is there in the freedom, public domain. So that's stylized and that's almost archaic English.

So it's a struggle to read it, to what to speak of, relish it. So it's one thing is just when we put, when we say that's also in English, Krishna Dharma Prabhu is also in English. But then it's more maybe contemporary or more fluent, more natural English.

So the words we choose to translate itself require some level of imagination. Yeah. That's one thing.

And second thing is that quite often the atmosphere that is there, that might be described to some extent, but we might create some more of the atmosphere to transport the readers. What is happening over there? So when the coronation was happening, there might be some description, but we might create a little bit more of description. So one is imagination and translation.

Second is in the atmosphere. Then the third is in the dialogues. So I see this most often done in dramas that quite often we could make the dialogues more, whatever is given as a translation, we could make it more punchy, more memorable, more rhetorical, whatever, so many ways.

Then there is also the inner thought processes. Quite often, many of the, at least the Ramayana, Mahabharata, many places, they don't describe the inner thought processes. And this I find that as compared to a drama, there is a dramatization and there is a novelization.

Dramatization is like a depiction. So novelization, I find it actually better because we can see the thought process if it's described. So then the thought process also, there is some, to tell the thought process, there's some amount of imagination.

Then beyond that, there are certain actions. So that means the narrative itself is changed a little bit. So I find that when we go to the fifth level, that's where the red button starts, the red signal starts coming in very strongly.

That is, there is a popular Indian author who calls his series as Rama stories or Ramayana, but then he says this is a complete work of fiction. And he uses all the names of Ram, Lakshman, Sita, Rao and everyone. It's completely different stories.

It's got nothing to do with the Ramayana. And now that is something which is problematic. But what do you think about the earlier four levels? Because they can actually bring the characters more to life for us.

Yeah, I personally have no problem with this. And what I see is it just affirms the greatness of the Ramayana. The fact that the Ramayana becomes like a reservoir, a wellspring from which elaboration, enrichment and so on can come.

There's a recently done Ramayana by a young woman devotee in America, Vrinda Devi. Do you know hers? Yes. It's three volumes.

Yes. I haven't seen the third volume, but she's an excellent writer. And she's written on a level which is accessible for young people.

And she goes very much into, she gives a lot of attention to character, which I find very, very relishable. Yeah. So, I don't know.

I like to encourage that sort of thing. Of course, there's a long tradition of this. You mentioned with the Ramayana specifically, you probably know of the Kamban Ramayana.

Yeah. The Tamil Ramayana. So, I haven't read it directly.

I've read little excerpts, but an example I read about of how he elaborates in the Valmiki Ramayana, the description of Dasaratha traveling from Ayodhya to Mithila. Is two verses. In Kamban Ramayana, I think it's over a hundred verses.

I don't remember. It's very long. It's going into extensive detail about the scenery and what's going on like that.

Yeah. And that's considered, just like in the North, it's the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas. People are more familiar with that than with the classic Sanskrit Valmiki Ramayana.

Similarly, in the South, I think they're more familiar with Kamban Ramayana. Yeah. So, in a way, it's a matter of time that decides what's going to be taken as useful, valuable and so on.

That's interesting. Yeah. So, it's a matter of time.

These are two good examples, Ramcharitmanas and Kamban Ramayana. So, now there are three. And they change.

Speaking, your last point was about making some change in the story. Excuse me. Yeah.

I know that Ramcharitmanas, as I remember, Tulsidas completely eliminates the punishment of Sita. And I forget what he does with the killing of Bali. But, you know, the things that are more difficult, he just goes around them.

Yeah. That's true. Also, the idea that Ram accepts the berries that Sabari has half eaten.

That is there in the Ramcharitmanas, but that's not in Valmiki. And also, the Lakshman Rekha. There's a lot of… Yeah.

Yeah. There's a lot of things like that. Yeah.

So, is it just because, say, you could say Hinduism or whatever term you want to use, was such a… it was geographically so widely spread that there was just no possibility for any central authority to be there. That whoever wrote something and if it evoked Rasa in people or if people found it acceptable, then it became acceptable. Is it something like that? Overall? Well, yeah, we could say that geographical spread is one factor.

I think there are others. The fact that… The fact that, yeah, there's no… It's not like the Abrahamic traditions in so many ways. There's the whole idea of sampradaya is sometimes Prabhupada would speak of the chain of disciplic succession, like you just have one person after another.

But the other image is in Chaitanya Charitamrita of a tree, a tree with branches and sub-branches. And when you get branches and sub-branches and sub-branches, you're going to get, in the course of time, different visions. So that would be part of it.

That's also a big subject. Yes, ma'am. So interestingly, what you said about different differences between these renditions.

Sorry. Excuse me. So initially, when I wrote my… I started writing my Ramayana articles, like half of the article would be a description of the past time and the half would be the analysis.

And initially, just to avoid like imagining things, I kept the whole past time in indirect speech. And then for one article, I made a direct speech and it was almost like night and day, the difference. The whole past time came alive.

So then several devotees told me that I should do it in direct speech. And then I started doing that. So here, you know, what was done in the tradition, it's very difficult to know why it was done and what were the limits.

But for us, what we can do now regarding the various Ramayana… I think… Yes. Can I give some example? Sorry. Okay.

Yeah. You can. Well, I think a solution is very simple.

And that is in your… You have some kind of an introduction in which you say, I'm taking certain liberties here and this is what I'm doing and this is why I'm doing it. And especially with Ramayana, you can say, and also this is very much the tradition. I'm not doing something new in that sense.

Everybody does it. I'm not disrespecting Valmiki Ramayana. But in order to highlight… Yeah, in order to highlight rasa, in order to bring out something, I am taking some… I'm carefully taking some liberties.

So you just say upfront something like that and then… Okay. Then the reader knows, okay, this is what I'm getting. Okay.

Yes, Maharaj. I think that's… Krishna Dharmapal also does that in his book. And I also done that to some extent.

And now just two examples of say Ramayans published by devotees. I won't use names over here because we are all exploring. Yeah.

There's one devotee who did a Ramayana in which when say Ravan… When Dashrath is about to retire. At that time, to explain why he's retiring, Dashrath talks about the six anarthas. And Dashrath gives an exposition of how human life is ultimately meant to conquer all those anarthas.

And now I ask this devotee… Now there's no such description in the Ramayana that Dashrath gives a monologue like that to anyone. But he said, you know, I am using the Ramayana to give a message. And I feel that's the appropriate place to give that message.

But the problem is that now devotees read that Ramayana and in the Vyasasana, Dashrath says this, this, this. Then it becomes a slight problem. So when… But then I suggest to the devotee that maybe wherever you have used something which is like a product of your imagination.

I saw some Christian books on say some Christian saintly characters or something like that. They say they have a… They have a fact fiction index or fact imagination index. Where they say, you know, this is from this source and this is a product of my imagination.

But then this devotee said, you know, it required too much work to do that. And now I'll complete this point. There's another devotee who did a Ramayana.

And for doing that, they portrayed as if in the Kaikeyi, the queens, they constantly used to have tensions and they were quite quarrelsome. And the final Ram being set on exile, that was just a culmination of a long, long series of quarrels that were going on. Now, at least from what I have seen in the Ramayana and we have you hear the stories of Ramayana when we were children.

So usually the agency or the cause of the problem is more of Mantra's instigation, where she's also empowered by the Devatas. So to show that there's a long history of quarrels among the queens and the queens were themselves quarrelsome. And that seems, it seems to go against the mood that we learned.

From that devotee's perspective, that devotee said, I'll just give you a context to explain how such a big thing could happen. So, but I found that quite jarring to hear about the quarrels. So now, where do we, first of all, we don't have the authority to legislate because devotees are going to do what they're going to do.

But at least some frames for thought, because I don't think any devotee would consciously want to do something which is objectionable or wrong. Every devotee, we can presume that they have good intentions. But if there is some discussion and then some guidelines can emerge and then devotees can decide how much they want to follow the guidelines.

Any thoughts on this Maharaj? Again, I would go back to a culture of review. I would say, let someone who's written like the second example you've given. If they're going to do that and they're justifying, well, you know, this calls for some context and so on.

Okay, so then now I'm going to read this and I write my review in which I say, you know, I found this very jarring because, and maybe you want to argue, it's not necessary to have this. In fact, it spoils it for me because it was the whole focus on mantra, which, you know, made much more sense to me. But it does raise interesting questions, whatever, whatever, you can go on and on.

So the reviewing culture, I think that's a form of regulation in which, again, you're educating readers, educating authors, and creating a culture which is, let's say, constructively self-critical. And encouraging of reflection. Because, again, same example, part of me may want to react against such an approach that the wives were always arguing and so on.

But then another side may say, well, there's a certain realism to that, which, I don't know, for whatever reason, one might argue could be justified. So that would be one thing, I think, this culture of writing and review. And another point is that, back to the question, what is it about the printed word that seems to have some kind of special quality to it? As authors, we have to be aware that we are always taking a risk.

Because of the fact that there is this sense of permanence to the printed word, someone is going to criticize. Someone is going to be not happy with what we write. And maybe a lot of people are not going to be happy.

And we have to be ready for that. I mean, it doesn't matter what you write, especially the printed page. Now, of course, the Internet, you get instant response to some things.

But it's part of the process, which, if we take it in the right way, can be nourishing. If criticism is given in the right spirit of genuinely wanting the best for everyone. And if there isn't false ego in the criticism, it's constructive criticism.

And, of course, any of us as writers, we should want to have mentors. And this, of course, can be one role of guru, or it can be of another colleague, another devotee. Someone we can work with who can be openly but constructively critical.

That can be very helpful. Yeah. So you're saying it could work both ways, that maybe the authors before publishing, they could get it reviewed.

Or even if they get it published, then if there are reviews available, then readers, when they're going to read it, they will be more discerning. And then maybe authors in future rounds of publishing will become more discerning also. Yes.

Even back to Godhead, I'm one of the editors. So we discussed about publishing reviews of books. Then our chief editor mentioned that for a review to be a proper review, you can't just praise.

You have to praise and criticize. And he says, we don't want to criticize devotees' books. Yeah, this is part of our problem.

How do we do this? How do we do this in a proper Vaishnav, within the scope of Vaishnav etiquette? There is one website. It's not an ISKCON website, but one of the Gaudia groups. They have, I have to say, quite a nice website.

And they're including on their website some book reviews, which are very nicely done. I don't remember if I've seen any fierce criticism of anything there. But yeah, maybe back to Godhead is not the right place for it, but somewhere.

That's true. Yes, very much. So, you know, I had talked with, continuing this topic of imagination then.

So, if I understand right, reviewing is the main thing that we could do at this stage. And mentoring, if it's there, that's even better. So now, going forward to the discussion on say, like Natak Chandrika, I think Tamal Krishna Maharaj also wrote a book where he actually had, Prabhupada Antya Leela, where he had that whole Bhakti Devi and Vrinda Devi and how they were interacting while Prabhupada's earthly pastimes were going on.

And this is almost a case of, we could say, transcendental characters being depicted doing something which is not really described in scripture. So that is more for the sake of building rasa. That's what he writes in his book.

So that could be an example of, say, using imagination. Yeah. Yes.

And take that example of Tamal Krishna Goswami's Prabhupada's final Leela. And now let's imagine, since we're talking about imagination, let's imagine a performance, a live performance of that drama with these, we may say, allegorical or otherwise transcendental characters, whatever. I suspect that we would very much appreciate, we would simultaneously understand, ah, this has been, you know, this is the creativity of the author.

It's not in Shastra. And I suspect we would have no problem with it. We would feel, yes, this is really good.

It feels right. It feels like it's heightening the significance of what is happening. This great devotee is preparing to depart from this world.

I would think, you know, I would think anyone who objects to it, I would be looking, you know, like, what is your problem? Why, why do you have a problem with it? And I think Srila Prabhupada would also appreciate. Or take, perhaps you've seen some of the performances of His Holiness Bhakti Mark Swami in Mayapur. Very creative and very, yeah, imaginative.

But in ways which you really feel it draws out characters, it draws out the drama, it draws out the rasa. And I think this, we want more of this. As Prabhupada said, and I think we can find the reference for this, if we looked, that, how was it? By cultural conquest, this movement will spread.

He used that expression, I think, cultural conquest. And I also always remember one devotee who had been present in New York, not at 26 2nd Avenue, but at the next temple. It was Henry Street in the New York area.

And he was saying that in those days, they would, every Sunday feast, they would have a short skit, a short drama. Typically, it was something based on something Srila Prabhupada had said in a lecture. It would be the boatman and the professor, or it would be the fish out of water, you know, something like that.

And I should turn this off, excuse me. These little skits, you know, or some of the stories that Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur would tell to illustrate something about Krishna consciousness. And they would kind of throw together, they wouldn't spend a lot of time to do it, to prepare, but they would put on this skit for the Sunday feast.

And this devotee was saying the temple was packed every Sunday, because this was the highlight of the week. This was, people loved it. And I've often said, I've often encouraged devotees, what often prevents us from doing these Sunday feast dramas is we think, oh, it takes too much time to prepare.

But it doesn't have to take any time to prepare if we do it in the format of what's called a radio play in the West. A radio play means everybody is holding a script and reading from the script. You don't have to memorize anything.

Okay. But you read dramatically and maybe you act out. Okay.

Maybe you act out some things. It depends what a particular thing is. But you can make adjustments.

There can be a lot of improvisation. And a lot of drama is very much about imagination because you're asking the audience to imagine the scenery, to imagine so many things. Yeah, you don't need costumes.

You don't need anything. All you need is the script, the parts. Maybe you do one practice before you read through it so nobody's stumbling through the text.

And you maybe emphasize, no, when this comes, then you should really speak more forcefully like that. That's interesting. A lot of points there, Maharaj.

Firstly, about this cultural conquest, which you mentioned. And I have seen there are two distinct readings of this within our movement. One is that cultural conquest means that it's all over the world.

People will adopt Indian or Vedic culture and that's how we will conquer. And the other understanding is that through the Bhakti culture, Bhakti being presented in culturally appealing ways will attract people and they will be transformed. Yeah, that second one is my understanding.

Oh, okay. Because if you say we're going to get everybody adopting Indian culture, I mean, good luck. It's not happening.

That's true. It's interesting that I have seen some devotees feel that say the culture is in fact the biggest obstacle for people to come to Krishna. But then usually when we try to impose the culture on them, but as a matter of curiosity, people are interested in the culture.

Yes, some curiosity. But what you're talking about cultural presentations, not so much like cultural imposition, but more of presenting through culture. Yeah, and that makes historical sense also because throughout India, the Bhakti culture spread through the vernacularization of the tradition.

And in a sense, that was the local, you could say the various parts like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, whichever, they took ownership of the culture and translated in their own language and depicted in their own ways. Exactly. And then it took root in the local culture.

Our movement is very much about spreading. We're spreading, spreading, spreading. And that's good.

That's important. You know, every town and village. But once we get to a town and a village, we want it to also take root.

Otherwise, you know, it's going to be like tumbleweeds. When the wind blows, another something else culturally interesting comes along. And then what happens? And so taking root, what do you think, what all are required that people should feel, express it in their own way or what all does taking root require? It takes, one thing it takes is an openness to the existing culture.

And an appreciation of whatever is valuable in that culture. I think we make a mistake. Of course, we know famously Mahatma Gandhi when he was asked in London, what do you think of Western civilization? He said it would be a good idea.

But, you know, okay, that's a nice quip. But there are aspects of Western civilization, which I wouldn't throw out with the bathwater. I think there's a lot there that is valuable.

And if we look again, historically, the spread of Buddhism in China, for example, over centuries, involves integrating so much of what was the original Buddhism. And some, of course, will argue that it ended up being something completely different. Okay, but I would say there are recognizable aspects of Chinese Buddhism connecting with earlier Theravada Buddhism.

Anyway, that's just one example that there was some kind of integration, some sort of responding to the local culture. And again, this took centuries. It involved also huge challenges with regard to translation.

How do we translate these concepts into Chinese language? So, and that comes back to the whole issue of editing Prabhupada's books. People are very concerned. Yeah.

You know, this point about taking good from the existing culture, that's something which I grew up in India. And especially after we became, after we started practicing Krishna Bhakti, there was a culture of bashing Western culture. And that was a prominent part of our preaching also.

But after last, maybe last five, six years, I've been traveling abroad. And, you know, it struck me in a major way that the Western culture is not a monolith. And what we call in the Western culture also, there was a religious or even a spiritual aspect to it for quite some time.

So nowadays I try to speak more in terms of, say materialistic culture and spiritual culture rather than Indian and Western. So, so this intolerance toward the culture or intolerance or disrespect or dismissiveness towards the culture which is there, which we seem to have quite a bit. And that also leads to suppression or neglect of cultural, contemporary cultural expressions.

Now, where do you think this comes from? Is it just our, like a new converts, zeal, neophyte enthusiasm because of which it came? Or is it, what are your thoughts about that? Yeah. It's a kind of cultural chauvinism, which I think in part, at least, and very big part is a reaction and a very understandable reaction to the imperialists political and cultural situation in India. You know, the dominance of Europe in India in the last 200 years, especially.

There's now a big reaction to that. And that's understandable. But as I said, it easily becomes throwing of babies out with bathwater.

And that's, I think, very unfortunate and has really the counter effect of what we want. We want to spread Krishna consciousness. We don't want to spread Hindu.

Prabhupada was not interested in Hinduism. He was interested in Krishna consciousness. And because he had such a clear understanding of this distinction, I think because of this, he was successful in his mission more than others who tried and failed.

Despite the fact that he actually did bring so much of the cultural visual aspect with him, more than so many of the others he brought with him, the dress and the food and so on. Yeah, that's what I was thinking when you said this, that at an intellectual or ideological level, Prabhupada distanced himself from Hinduism quite strongly. And yet Prabhupada, we could say, brought a very specific form of Hindu culture.

We could say Bengali 19th century culture to the West. So you are saying that Prabhupada was successful because he didn't impose that or he was able to adjust? Because if he's bringing cultural specifics, then what is the point you're making exactly? Yes, as you said, he didn't impose anything. In fact, I remember when I first joined the devotees in Germany in 1972, I don't know how it became the practice, but it was the standard, speaking of dress, that all the men, brahmacharis, householders, we all were wearing the uttariya of the sannyasi.

Okay, that's interesting. Because Prabhupada was wearing it, we're also wearing it, so it was imitation. But my point is that I think he saw that.

Whoops, you lost light now. Yeah, I'm sorry. I should come back in a minute or two.

I think Prabhupada saw that, but he never said anything like, no, no, this is wrong. He just wanted to encourage everyone. Okay, you're going to imitate like this, whatever.

Of course, he was then, at some point, he became very strict on certain things like, the men should all have a shaved head and so on. I think also Prabhupada was exploring what works, what doesn't work. And of course, in the very beginning, 26th Avenue, he wasn't telling anyone, shave your head.

He just wanted to get everyone to chant Hare Krishna, to take prasadam. Yeah. So what am I saying? I'm not quite sure.

But Prabhupada, he was not a missionary for Hinduism. That I'm very sure of. And I make that point in my book on cow care, is that he never said, Indian desi cows are the only cows.

And the Western breeds are not really cows. He never said that. He wanted everyone to do cow protection with whatever the local cows are.

Just one or two last questions, Maharaj. I hope, how much time do we have? Okay. Thank you.

So now there is one genre which I have seen, which is quite popular in Christianity. That is, they call it Christian fiction. And some of it is just Christian people interacting and it's mostly centered on the relationships and how Christianity helps people to deal with life challenges.

But they also have Christian historical fiction, where they have imaginative retellings of the characters of the lives of Christian saints. And that keeps things alive. So that means, that makes those characters come alive for people today.

So is there any tradition of Bhakti fiction that you are aware of? Of course, I don't think within ISKCON we have anything, but within the broader Bhakti tradition or Gaudiya tradition, say… There is Jiva Dharma, Bhaktivinoda Thakur's. Of course, that book is very much, it's a kind of presentation of what Roman Catholic Christians would call the catechism. But it's done as a kind of narrative.

And then this other shorter book of his, what is it called? Prema Pradeep. Prema Pradeep is done in a similar way. And I think he was inspired by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.

I'm on the mic? Okay. Yeah, whatever, whatever it was. Okay.

There was many years ago, I don't remember the name, it was an ISKCON devotee who wrote a novel, which I found very, very well done. It was called, what was it called? Something like The Life of the Vaishnav Sages. And it was historical novel.

It was taking place sometime after Lord Chaitanya. And it was something in South India. And I thought it was very well done.

There's another book, and I don't remember the title of this, that's been done in German language some years ago, which goes back to a few thousand years. Like if I remember it was a thousand years after the age of Kali begins, something like that. Yeah, I remember now it was called Kali Komt.

Kali is coming. And I didn't read the whole thing. It was quite a long novel, but also I found it very good.

So I don't know. I think anything we can do to, oh, and also we have one, I like to tell, we have one devotee in Finland who writes, he's written at least 10 novels in Finnish language. So I can't tell you anything about the quality or the content, but he tells me that he's weaving into these, he does different genres, sort of mystery, adventure, historical novel, but he's always weaving in ideas of Christian consciousness.

And he writes the novel, he publishes the novel himself. Okay. And he goes out on the street and sells the novel.

Oh, that's very resourceful. And in this way, he is maintaining his griha. He's doing the whole thing himself.

He's writing, publishing and going out and distributing himself. That's amazing. Actually to maintain a livelihood through writing is not easy unless one does really reasonably well through the books.

Yeah, that's inspiring. Maharaj, with respect to Bhakti fiction, I thought of three different categories again. One is say we have non-historical characters and we have non-historical storylines in which we bring in some Bhakti philosophy.

I think nobody is going to object to that. But then that's as long as the philosophy is reasonably accurately presented, that should be fine. Then other is we have non-historical characters in say historical settings.

So that means we create a character which who say is that present at the time of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu or at the time of Krishna and tell something from his. So I think something similar to what you recommend in the Svarana series. And the third is say like we could say historical characters in non-historical settings.

That means we… So there are some stories which are like that. There is a story, for example, Prabhupada says of a person tried to evade death and he covered himself with human refuse excreta and then Yamaraj came as a hog, licked him clean and then took him away. Now whether actually Yamaraj did like that and, you know, it's open to question.

But there seems to be, there are some stories of Narada Muni doing some funny things. I heard a story once of a person who was chanting the name of who had no time to change the name of Ram and then a saint told him, look at his schedule. He said, yeah, no time.

Okay, so chant in the washroom. And he was chanting in the washroom and Hanuman heard the names being chanted. Hanuman came there and he got angry and Hanuman went into the washroom and slapped this person on the face.

How dare you chant Ram's sacred name in the washroom? And then Hanuman went to Ayodhya and met Ram and Ram was holding his face. He says, why are you holding? He says, you see the slap had gone on Ram's face because he said I was in his mouth and Hanuman felt embarrassed. Now I don't know whether this story is given anywhere in the scripture.

So in some ways are all three, you would say acceptable if they serve a right purpose? Yeah, if they serve a purpose, I think they all serve a purpose. And there will, whether or not we like it, there will be these kind of expressions because there is this impulse to, it's our human impulse, something has to come out. So I think this will be there whether or not someone likes it or not.

And then it's a matter of time, what survives and how it survives. And then you just, it's time becomes the judge. That's interesting.

So time means enduring interest or it has an enduring impact. So people preserve it and follow it and pass it on. Yeah, yeah.

That's interesting. From, again, pardon referring to the scholarly perspective, but I once took a course where the subject was sacred scripture as this concept of being sacred. What makes a scripture a scripture? What makes it canonical? What makes it authoritative? So again, it's from the outside of the bottle, but the basic idea was a scripture always belongs to a community.

Take away the community and you no longer have a scripture, you no longer have an authoritative text. So it's, it's always situated within a community. Oh, so this is, we could apply this for, especially those which are not considered revelations in our tradition.

So whether they, they may never become canonical, but at least they may, if they're accepted and if a community accepts that, then they'll continue. Yeah. So rather than trying to legislate or police this, like, I like the way you explain the review.

I found it jarring rather than saying this is a deviation. So we present it from more from a perspective of not a judgment about fidelity to tradition, but of its effect on us, then that would be, yeah. That's the best way to move forward other than trying to legislate.

Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I think legislation is in our modern world.

This is very problematic. Yeah. The less legislation, the better.

Yes. And in one sense, that's how creativity will thrive. Otherwise, if you're constantly looking over our shoulder, otherwise we can't thrive.

Yeah. If we want to have, you know, like Soviet Russia situation where the creative impulses are, you know, very carefully controlled. And if you write, if you write the wrong thing, you end up in prison.

You know, that's not going to work. That's a very, you could say a very powerful load to sort of conclude this discussion on creativity. It's a very, we don't want to legislate.

And if we can curb all artistic expression and bhakti is actually flourished because of the artistic expressions of devotees throughout the generations. Yes. Yes.

And, you know, to get it back to, okay. Am I saying kind of forget about tradition? No, I'm saying, let's keep that. Let's keep the direction of the guidance of Sadhu Shastra and guru.

We have those as our guides, Sadhu Shastra, Guru Vakya, Hridaya Kurya Ikea. And, but then when that becomes an inspiration in the heart, how does that inspiration come out? Let it be expressed as genuinely coming from the heart. And, and then it becomes authentic kirtan.

And then it becomes authentic Sankirtan. And what we want is authenticity. So you are saying authenticity is not necessarily suggest just fidelity to the tradition, but authenticity is in a sense, the effect of the tradition on our heart then expressed through us.

Yes. Otherwise, if we're only, if we're only becoming parrots of the tradition, then we're actually losing the tradition. The tradition becomes an artifact, a museum artifact.

A living tradition means real people are experiencing, are renewing the tradition. You know, again, Sheila Prabh about how many times he said, I'm simply repeating what my spiritual master said, but where will you find, you'll find very little in Sheila Prabh's writing, which is word for word, what Sheila Bhakti Siddhanta Thakur wrote or said, because Prabh is writing, speaking his own language, which is, that's what we want. We want his realized, you know, what is coming from his lotus mouth.

It's not just repetition, even though he says I'm just repeating. And in some sense, he is and in an important sense, he's not, he's not just repeating. So Prabhupada is using the word repeating in a somewhat different sense from what we might consider literal meaning of the word repeating.

Yeah. Yeah. He's obviously taking the message and he's not compromising the message.

So in that sense, he's certainly repeating. But it's not, it's not like a parrot. Yeah.

Parroting will make us look like a museum artifact. That's quite graphic also to think about it. Yes.

Well, and then you can put everything into some glass case, you know, and you can look at it from the outside. And you can have a label, you know, oh, this is what they were doing back in the early 21st century. Very interesting.

What else is new? You know, there is what else is new. It just struck me that echoes with your point of renewing the tradition. So, yeah, in a sense, we need to, when we experience it and we articulate it, it's not just that we are, when you use the word renew, in what sense are you using it that it's a new expression or it's a new experience or what do you mean by renewing? It's, it's.

Keeping alive simply. I think Prophet used the expression old wine and new bottles. Yeah.

Old, which is, it's a Christian thing actually. That renewal is, what is it exactly? There's, there's revival, which, which Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is doing, for example, when he sends the Goswamis to Vrindavan, they're excavating the, the holy places of Vrindavan. So that's a kind of, it's a kind of revival you can say.

And then renewal, it may mean a lot of things that can mean bringing in a new expression of language, a use of language. As you were saying, the whole Bhakti tradition in India was established through vernacular languages. So that's a process of renewal.

You can say it's renewal and it's also an expansion to reach more people. What else? I don't know. There can be so many aspects of renewal.

But what I wanted to say is the, the getting back to holding on to tradition, the Guru's duty is twofold. The duty, the Guru's duty is to maintain tradition, to represent tradition and simultaneously to innovate. In order to make tradition accessible to newer, to new audiences, the Guru has to, has to be innovative.

I would say. Yes. One way or another.

I think Prabhupada says in an earlier lecture that this Krishna consciousness movement has been practically invented by me. And he says that in the context of, the spiritual master has to think of ways and means to get the disciples to find out Krishna. Yes, that's the expression.

Thinking of ways and means. And on the other side, he would say, this is not stereotyped. It is not a stereotype process.

Yeah. And this is a, so in a sense, if some devotees are culturally say, using creativity, they're actually following the tradition, although they might be giving some new expression, but they're in a sense following a very vibrant tradition. That's very reassuring and encouraging.

Yeah, well, you know, you can look at the whole story of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's preaching. It's, it's all, I think we could argue, it's all, he's being innovative. Yeah, that's true.

He uses different strategies at different places, meets with different people, talks in different ways. Yeah. That's quite a striking way of looking at it.

Yes, Maharaj. Can I try to summarize? And then if you have. OK.

Yes. All right. So now you discussed about the topic of using our imagination, Krishna service.

And then you mentioned about the Krishna Svaranam. Devotees were blank. But when you give an example of what were the thoughts of, say, the Brahmin going from Rukmini to Krishna, then that triggered the imagination.

And then we discussed even our tradition. There is, there is Gopal, the Gopal Champu, Anandavan Champu, which has a distinctive shift, especially in how Radharani's compassionate nature is being portrayed. And then there are dramas which are written according to very strict, strict rules and dramaturgy principles.

And also you quoted that there is a, the Lord Chaitanya's led to a expansion of literary expression. So being a Kavi is very much a part of our tradition. And historically also Bhakti has spread that way across India.

And there are various Rama retellings, Ramayan retellings. And the retellings are often more popular in North and South India than the Sanskrit epic also. And then we discussed about boundaries.

So from Chaitanya itself, you said that Sarodamodar Goswami is trying to stopping something which had wrong sadhana, wrong rasa. That could be seen as a representative of the reviewing process. And rather than trying to legislate and decide which books can be published or not, but if we could create a reviewing culture by which the authors become more discerning and then readers also become more discerning, then that would be helpful.

And then there have been cultural, there are already quite a diverse cultural, creative cultural expressions in art, in music, in architecture. And in words, in writing, because it's more authoritative, more, you could say, unchangeable or it's forever there. So there is more gravity and more concern about it.

And we will not be able to legislate it in today's age. But if devotees also have mentors and they take feedback when they're doing this, then we could continue this tradition, cultural and actually this vital. Like dramas, you said, there is clear fiction, but it is creativity which has a pleasing effect.

In Mahakrishna Maharaj's book. So when Prabhupada said cultural conquest will share Krishna Bhakti, what that means is not that people will necessarily adopt Indian culture, but through their contemporary cultural expressions of Bhakti, people will become attracted and that will require some respect for the existing culture and appropriate presentation accordingly. And then lastly, we talked about how tradition itself is, the spiritual master has to have some amount of innovation.

So the renewal of the tradition means that there is experience of Krishna and then there is a expression of Krishna by the living individual. So that's authenticity, not just fidelity to tradition, not just like a parrot-like repetition, but sharing one's own experience. So and if we don't do that, we will become like a museum piece.

But if we do that, then our tradition will be renewed and will expand it. Anything I missed out, any concluding words you would like to say, Maharaj? That's a very nice summary. If you like, I could now read this little piece that I wrote in this book of Krishna Smarna.

Shall I read it? Please, Maharaj. It's about the Brahmin from Vidarbha. Yes, please.

A Brahmin has been dispatched by Rukmini to Dvaraka to inform Lord Krishna of her desire to marry him. That's in brackets. Quote, Is it so? Is it true? Do I now enter the glorious city of gates, Dvaraka? Do I stand before the grand palace of Lord Krishna? Then why do I hesitate to enter? Am I not the Brahmin sent by my lady, the glowing sapphire princess Vidarbha? Do I not carry her urgent message, her call for help, her plea for rescue, her bid for marriage? And why is it I whom she has sent on this crucial mission? Was it fate that led me yesterday to join in the Vedic chanting at her daily yajna? Was it planned from above that she would notice me sending her maid to fetch me to her private garden on the plea of an astrological reading from me? And did I not hear patiently her missive of dangerous intent, her detailed instruction how the Lord of her life may give all opposition the slip and whisk her away? And why is it I who finds himself here amidst the Lord's eternal associates? Was it not the prediction of the astrologer at the time of my birth, as my mother would always remind me years later, that one day I would see Lord Krishna face to face and speak with him? Have I not longed throughout my days to know when and how this would come about, imagining in every possible and impossible way the circumstances and the words I would speak? So why, at this long-awaited moment, do I hesitate? What holds me from approaching the guards? Indeed, what will I tell them? Would it be not right for me as a Brahmin to tell the truth, that I carry a message from my princess, the dark-eyed Vaidhari? But would that not spoil everything, letting loose a flood of rumors that could reach too soon the ears of my lady's dreaded intended recipient of her hand? And upon finally seeing my Lord, the Sainajur of the Vrishnis, the full moon of Dvaraka, will I not be so dumbstruck that I will forget everything? Who I am, where I am from, what is my purpose? And horror of horrors, if it is as they say that Lord Krishna honors the Brahmins, what if he honors this poor fellow right in front of his courtiers, even massaging my feet? Will I not be like a duck among swans, a jackal among lions, a meteor among the stars and moon? Should I perhide my Brahmin thread and come as a Vaishya or Shudra, saying some story to explain? But is this not foolishness to think Krishna will not know my identity? And for that matter, will he not also already know the content of the message I carry, being the all-knowing Lord of all? Then why indeed should I enter, simply making a disturbance when the Lord has more important matters to attend to? Oh, but what is happening now? Are these Dvarakavasis who pass me by as I stand hesitating, eyeing me curiously, wondering what is this strange Brahmin? Will they not at any moment approach and ask me who I am, what it is I want? What will I tell them? And look, is it not the abhijit-muhurta, the high noon moment to victory, the time to commence with important business? And does not Lord Krishna reassure, aham tvam sarva-bhāpebhyo mokṣayi śyāmi mā śuca, is there anything other than foolishness that makes me hesitate? Then let me act now.

Guards, do be so kind. I come from distant lands with a message for Lord Krishna, bringing him gladness and thus great joy to Dvaraka and the world. And then the guards speak and say, Do be most welcome and enter.

We happily bring you before our glorious Lord, the primeval Supreme Person. Please enter. That's so vivid, so engaging.

You actually feel the turmoil and the anxiety and the emotion in the heart of the Brahmin. And few things can actually absorb the heart in the pastime. Just narrating the pastime would not do this as much as telling it from a first-person narrative.

Thank you, Maharaj, for sharing that. I think that beautifully illustrates what is the purpose of using the imagination in Krishna's service to actually increase the remembrance of Krishna, increase the attraction to Krishna, increase the emotional connect with Krishna's pastimes. Thank you.

Is this particular passage available online, Maharaj, somewhere? Or it's a part of the book? It's in the book. The book is available on Kindle for free download. If you search Krishna Samarana, you'll find.

And also this Gauri Samarana. Now, if you search my name within Kindle, just Krishna Kshetra, as two words, K-R-I-S-H-N-A-K-S-H-E-T-R-A, you'll also find a couple of other books or three other books, which I have written over the years. One was my master's thesis.

That's the theology of deity worship. One is called From All Angles of Vision. Another book is called In Praise of My Preceptor.

It's mainly some of my Vyasa Puja offerings over the years. But also two or three, I wrote some short dramas on Srila Prabhupada's life. Those are included.

Oh, okay. Thank you, Maharaj, for your time and sharing your wisdom. And I hope that more and more devotees can relish your wisdom as well as your creativity in Krishna's service.

Thank you for your association. Humble obeisances. Jai Srila Prabhupada.

Jai. Thank you, Maharaj. Humble obeisances.

Jai Krishna. Jai.