The Monk’s Podcast 60 with Anuttama Prabhu and Rambhoru Mataji – Emotional challenges on the devotional path

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

Hare Krishna Anantamapuru, welcome back. Hare Krishna Ram Murmataji, thank you very much for coming on the Monks Podcast. This is the first time we are having two senior guests together.

So if I don't, I'm not able to conduct it so well, please excuse me. Thank you again for sparing your time and for coming today. Very happy to be here and thanks for the return invitation.

Our podcast has been appreciated a lot by several devotees. Today morning I had a podcast with Charu Prabhu and he told me that he liked our podcast and he has put it on his channel also. So a lot of people are liking it.

So thank you very much for coming again. Wonderful. Thank you.

So Mataji, thank you for coming. And generally in this podcast, we discuss the kind of issues that we might normally not discuss in normal ISKCON classes. Issues that are relevant for devotees, not so much for practicing bhakti, but as for engaging in the world and of course engaging with a devotional way in the world.

So now you bring to this discussion your distinctive experience and expertise in chaplaincy. So we could discuss something more about the intersection of the emotional and the spiritual in some areas of bhakti. But can you maybe tell us a little bit about your services? I know you distinguish yourself in chaplaincy, but specifics, if you could tell how you started the service and what you are doing briefly.

How I started the service? Well, I really started in 1999. I was living in Vrindavan and I came back to the United States and needed to find a way to engage. I had been living in the ashram for 30 years.

And so trying to figure out how can I do something to make a living and also maintain my bhakti path, to find some work that really resonated with my religious practice, bhakti. So I went to seminary, I did all kinds of study and finally ended up in Yuma, Arizona on the Mexican border doing a one-year residency at the Yuma Regional Medical Center. And at that moment, while I was a resident there, I totally realized that what I had been practicing up until that now wasn't truly bhakti.

I had totally missed the piece about being compassionate on human suffering because I hadn't really seen so much suffering living in an ashram. It's very protected in a way, you know, it's a very insulated and isolating kind of circumstance. And after 30 years of that, coming back out and working in an emergency room where you have every kind of suffering coming through that door, it became overwhelming, you know, that, oh my goodness, this is what we are here to try and rehabilitate, you know.

So I had a lot of work that year on myself to come to terms with my own misunderstanding or let's say neophyte or immature understanding of spiritual life at that moment. So that's where I started and that took me to a seminary at Claremont School of Theology and a professor who asked us a question in class which was, where is the scariest place you can imagine having to provide pastoral care or compassionate care to? What population? And I didn't know what she was going to do with that, but I wrote down on my paper, children who are victims of burns. And so then we passed our paper in and she said, okay, now the assignment is all of you, whatever you put on that paper, have to go to that place and sit and ponder what your theology has to offer comfort in terms of comfort to these people.

So I went to the Los Angeles Children's Shriners Burn Hospital. And when I got there, there was a woman who came out who I'd spoken on the phone, whose face was burned, her ears were melted, her hands were over her finger and she greeted me as my host and sat with me over a balcony as I watched 50 burned, seriously burned children come in on wheelchairs and crutches and stuff. And I had to sit there for an hour or so and think now what does Bhakti Yoga have to offer in terms of what could I say to these children that would give them hope? And as I thought immediately, karma theory, gosh, what did you do in your own to deserve this? And it just was the wrong message.

It's like, this is a victim blaming, this would not offer them comfort. So I sat with that a long time. And yeah, I come to the conclusion that that's not what I would want to hear if I were them.

So it began my search on what do you say to a suffering person that offers comfort? What can we offer as Krishna conscious persons to give hope and comfort when people are suffering? Well, that's kind of take that's where I moved into that, that profession really. Amazing. That was quite an intense question.

Actually, I'm thinking about before I was introduced to Bhakti, I was a part of a social welfare organization where I would go to slums. And I tried to teach have a free tuition classes to the kids over there. So in a sense, I can say that I encountered more human suffering then than in my 20 years of monkhood life.

So what you're saying is so true. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So then since then you have been practicing chaplaincy or? Well, it was a journey because when I was in Yuma, I had a supervisor in chaplaincy, our PhD is considered to be the educator, we don't have a PhD, you can get your PhD in pastoral counseling, but it's practical theology, it's not considered to be theoretical, but it's on the ground practical theology. And so your PhD is practical as well.

So I was so inspired by my supervisor or educator, who, by the way, his whole method of training chaplains was the same method that he used to train horses. He was a horse whisperer, who worked for many years with a famous horse whisper from Arcadia, California. And this whole very subtle connection he had with horses meant he didn't use any whips or ropes or anything, but just by inter heart connecting relationships with the horses, he could command their respect enough for them to follow him.

So he used that I was I grew up with horses. So I resonated with him that way. And he had such incredibly powerful, empowering way of connecting with his students, I thought, what does he do actually, you know, I was like, you know, he's got all this education, but I you don't find someone talking a lot.

You don't find someone promoting themselves. He's just sort of a silent presence in the class empowering us to find our answers. So that was new for me, you know, I'd never seen that certainly not in ISKCON where people are all the time telling you what you should believe and what you should be thinking.

This was a more Socratic method where, where the questions and the behaviors was to nurture to give birth to our own realization of the truths we were studying in our theology. And that really moved me and touched me. So I wanted to become an educator.

And from there, I went to Richmond, Virginia at Virginia was a VCU Commonwealth University and I studied there for our started studying there for becoming a supervisor. But it's a very long journey. You know, I probably have more years in graduate study than a brain surgeon to do this work.

And part of the reason for that is that when you are, are you an educating position, you can really hurt people when you're in a position of authority and power, particularly in spiritual life. They want to be really sure before they give you a certificate that you, you understand what it means to, to do serious harm to a person on a spiritual level. So I, I've had to go through some enormous self-scrutiny, brutally honest self-scrutiny and scrutiny by other professionals who themselves are quite realized to be able to be certified to do this work.

Thank you for sharing that. Anantama Prabhu, you know, this is talking about, you know, how we might harm others in official position. That's what one of the discussions we had in our previous discussion about outgrowing a cult image.

So, you know, you, you have any thoughts to share on this both aspect of compassion and both chaplaincy? Well, you know, I'm, I'm this, I'm learning more things about Ram Bharu and her path than I've known before. She and I've worked together on different projects for, for some time, especially when she moved to Virginia. And then ISKCON communications office kind of helped her when you were still in California with Claremont, you know, providing the documentation for you to be able to gain as, as, as a minister representing ISKCON.

So I really been appreciating her work and seeing that it really is cutting edge in ISKCON because so often, as she said, we've, we, we, we began the first 20 years or so very much as an ashram based organization. So all of us were isolated and insulated, as she said. So when she started doing this, I could understand this is really something that's necessary for us as a community to mature and to have specialists and people that have the kind of skills and, and, and empathy and, and concern that she has to go into this and be professionally trained.

So I, I've really been appreciating what she's done for years. As she was speaking, I didn't know all of the, the, the, the stories that one with your one professor sending you to the burn center. That's very, very moving story to hear that very much.

And then I, and I, when I, but I particularly took some notes when, when you mentioned, we can harm people spiritually, you talked about how they have to be very, very careful and how we need to have self-scrutiny. I think this is also a really important message for our society, because we know this, this very much is the early years. And Prabhupada not only transported the theology and the culture and, and the creating of community, but he was creating a whole, you know, international society for Krishna consciousness and, and hierarchies and, and institution.

And he, he only had 11 years of, of, of, you know, actually being here once he started ISKCON. As he said, sometimes he created the structure. Now we have to fill it in.

So I think Ram Bharu's work is an example of something where he showed us and taught us Lord Chaitanya's teaching about caring for others and compassion and respecting even an ant, what to speak of fellow human beings and people who are suffering. And we have to, as we mature individually as an organization, we have to be aware of those things and prioritize those in general as a culture. And then also certain individuals like Ram Bharu and people that she's teaching to take this up.

We need that expertise the same way we need experts on, you know, people that can, can, can dive into the Sanskrit of certain texts like the, you know, the Shastra Advisory Council, you know, they advise the GBC, not every GBC member is going to study Sanskrit, but we need somebody who knows that. So not everybody in our communities is going to know the kind of things that Ram Bharu does, but some people need to. And I think this concept that she's reminded us here and in the work she does, you know, we can have a lot of knowledge, but be really ignorant how to deliver that or share that with people in a way that's not harmful.

You know, and I think just if I can get, you know, the classic example, one of them, unfortunately many for ISKCON is in the early years, we kind of picked up on the idea that ideally you should give everything to Krishna, you should be renounced. And if you can be a Brahmachari, everybody, that's the best thing. And of course, that's always in a sense, the ideal to be so, so separated from material desires and all that, but it's not the reality where 99% of us are going to be.

So if we just, you know, if we teach principles of renunciation that aren't appropriate for people with families and children, it causes harm. You know, we see that we have marriages where men start thinking, oh, I just heard a class about how we shouldn't be too attached to my wife and my kids. They completely misinterpret that into thinking that I'm not supposed to be loving and caring and supportive and give my time, sacrifice my time for my family.

You know, so we have to read those things carefully and we need maturity looking at those. And I just use this as one example, but when she mentions this, being careful to not harm people spiritually, you know, that wonderful English expression, fools rush in where angels dare not tread, which is that second one I wrote down, you know, self-scrutiny. We need to be careful and always be asking ourselves, am I really in line with Prabhupada? Is this going to have the best effect? Whatever I'm doing, saying, is this having a positive effect upon the people I'm with? And be ready to go back and check with the scripture and check with others.

And even in the case what she's doing, be open to talking with other people who may not be in our community, but who have expertise in certain things and be willing to learn from them and take that on board as well. We can Krishna-ize it and put it in a bhakti context, but we can't think that we know everything about everything because we don't know all the practical applications of how to live in the world. Last point, then I'll listen to you two for a few minutes.

You know, prophets said we should go and study certain things from the Catholic Church. Prophets said we should learn some things from Tirupati and how they manage the Tirupati temple. So Prabhupada very much was aware of like, you know, take good examples and information from other sources.

And not that we change who we are, but we take that information on board. And I think that's what she's doing. And I think it's wonderful.

And it's a very significant step forward for ISKCON. Thank you. I was trying to, we could say articulate or come down on a subject that could build on what we have discussed till now.

So, you know, I think since you mentioned that topic of being with those children with the burns, and what you cannot tell them about karma at that time. So I thought that maybe we could have this discussion on something like how to reach a hurting world in a non-hurtful way. Sometimes the world is hurting and we speak in a way that ends up hurting people all the more.

If I may confess, after I became a brahmachari, I was a typical hardline brahmachari. And then my father had eye surgery. So I was not ready to go home at all.

Then the temple president told me, you have to go, just go there and come back in one day. But when I went there, my father was still in the mood of getting me back home. So at that time, instead of being somewhat supportive of him, I at that time ended up having an argument with him why I'm going to be a brahmachari.

And my other relatives were actually disgusted with me. They said, talk about this afterward. And many years later, when I look back, I feel embarrassed.

I apologize to my father afterwards. And he, of course, is very kind. He forgave me.

But when he's in a hospital bed, I realized how stupid I was. But I was thinking I was doing the right thing. I am practicing bhakti and I'm transcendental.

And I'm not saying I'm transcendental, but I'm on the transcendental path. So I have my, I've been guilty of this myself. But so how did you address that issue? Or did you speak to those children? Or what did you do at that time? No, I did not speak to those children.

But I went back, you know, as I in my journey, eventually, you know, I was in a hospital again with people who were suffering. And one thing I understood was that what people need to hear, no matter where they are, whether they're in the Hare Krishna movement, or whether they're suffering in a hospital or in prison or whatever, is that they are unconditionally loved by the Supreme Being, the source of life, or the God of their understanding, whatever you call God, Allah, Jehovah, Buddha, Christ doesn't matter. They need to know and what's healing is that I'm loved unconditionally.

It's not about earning somebody's love. This human race is absolutely filled with shame at the underneath all the posturing and the perfectionism and all the, the, you know, criminality and everything underneath. If people go very deep, they feel unworthy.

And so the whole effort to achieve things and to, to grasp things to fill that hole is, is, is their yearning for love and belonging. You know, there's, if you look at Maslow's pyramid, and there are many different pyramids, you know, people need survival needs, and they need safety needs and food and shelter. But the main thing everybody's yearning for that motivates everybody's activity is, how can I get my need for love and belonging met? And so we do it by maybe having a sense of humor, or being theatrical or achieving a lot, because in this way, we think that's going to get my love.

It doesn't. You have already the love, you don't need to earn it. And that's what I have bumped up against, not just with our philosophy, and our devotees, but people practicing all religions, we're not that unique in the stages of spiritual growth.

But we get, we get busy in a neophyte level of rule following, we do have rules we do have to follow in order to accelerate our love. But if we get too focused on that, then what happens is, then you start focusing on who's not good enough to be part of my association. Now, you start throwing away people who aren't good enough to be loved by Krishna.

That's not our philosophy. Bhakti is, you're already loved unconditionally. First of all, embrace that love and spread it around.

That's, that's why we're not Hindus. That's why we're not Gyanis. That's why we're not, we're just about loving and embracing that love and passing it along.

If we do that, if we actually discover, Prabhupada said on a morning walk, when I was in Vrindavan in 1976, he turned to us and he said, you know, if you can just tap into one drop of love that's in the core of your heart, the whole floodgates will come out. So Bhakti is, these principles are there to help us get to that piece of love and then passing it along. So this is what people need to hear, whether they're Krishna devotees or not, that you're loved and as a representative of Krishna, I need to help you feel cared for.

That's my job, you know, is to extend that love that's been given to me and passing it along as Krishna's representative. And, you know, it's funny because people won't remember what you say. Prabhupada used to say that too.

Give them a book. They're not going to remember a thing you're saying for all your talking, talking, talking, talking, but they will remember how you made them feel. So that's more important than all the talking, talking, talking at people is how do you make people feel? Do they feel cared for by you? That's the job of agility is to inspire people that they are included.

A couple of weeks ago, it came to my mind, I was doing a talk, I think for Africa or for South America or something. And I was trying to explain Bhakti in a way that made sense, not only to me, but others. But the words came to me, radical personalism.

That's what we're doing here. It's radical personalism. That means you really have to focus on time, place and circumstance to get it right.

So you cannot in good conscience really meet people where they are. If you speak in global language, we all everybody, we have to speak in I language, because that's the only true thing you can offer. Sure, we have a philosophy and that's all right.

But you have to help people from where they are connected that philosophy for them to actually grow from where they are, not where you think they should be. That's Bhagavad Gita as it is not how you'd like it to be. Does that make sense? My God, it's like a floodgate.

We have opened up so many points over here. Yeah, it's revolutionary. Tanya, one comment I'd like to make based on that, I don't want to get us too far off it.

But as I'm hearing this, Ranbiru, it's making me think of all the people in the world who are not sure that they're okay with God, with the laws, with karma, with heaven and hell, however they see it. And they want to check off the boxes. You know, I went to the church today, or I chanted 16 rounds today, or I gave my donation at the mosque today, or I did my puja at home today.

And that's what it takes to get God's mercy. And if I do anything other than that, I'm not worthy. And anybody else out there that says they have a connection with God that's not following my rules is a threat to kind of my understanding of the universe.

And therefore, they can't be right. You know, there can't be anything valid in this other tradition, because they're not checking the boxes the way I do. So in a sense, those people are kind of like a threat to my salvation or to my enlightenment or my liberation.

And therefore, it just causes, it adds to this conflict between people. It's like, well, they can't be right, because they don't follow the same set of rules that I do. And I have to be very focused and a little bit closed-minded on following these rules.

Because as you said, it's not about transformation and really touching into this love and connecting with God. It's really about following the rules. And then, you know, I look around the world today, there's a lot of hatred, and people looking at one another saying, you're not following the rules that I believe are the, with a capital T, the rules.

And therefore, you're them and you're lower. And you know, it enters into politics and religious conflict and nothing conflict. And it really, it's in this very, very deep spiritual level you're talking about, when not understood, manifests as the kind of tensions and conflict and violence and warfare and racism and class consciousness and all these things that we see eating up the whole world today.

And we're not supposed to be part of that. That's the ultimate message. We have to be careful.

We're not part of it and start thinking, well, because of my rules, you know, because I've got a more beautiful picture of God than you have. Therefore, I'm special and you're not. Those types of things are so dangerous.

Yeah. Well, in all fairness to people, people's stages of life, what you've described is considered to be conventional religiosity. And it's a stage in spiritual development, just like Kanishka is a stage.

We just have to know what it is, you know, when we see it in ourselves and others. Most people get stuck there in all religions, and not just Hare Krishna, but Prabhupada used to talk about that. You can, you know, if you're not all the time making progress towards, you know, the all-embracing love that we are understanding is to be Krishna, then you're stuck.

You can get stuck there. So it's really always good to be questioning, you know, our views and asking ourselves, what informs that judgment that we have or projection of other people? But if you're interested in learning more about that, you can study theologian, Dr. Scott Peck or James Fallow. They've done extensive research in interviewing people at different stages of faith.

And they've come to just like we've come to people progress in different stages. And of course, the topmost stage is what we see in Srila Prabhupada, that all-embracing figure, who understands everything's in God and God is in everything. I mean, that's just a real realization they have.

And we're not there yet. Yeah, just to try to put this together, and then we can take it forward. So what you said is what people need to hear is that they're unconditionally loud.

But we can't give them that message, because we are too caught in following our rules and judging people, judging ourselves, as well as others based on the rules. And then the some not only would be not come off as very loving to others, but then we might ourselves not feel loud by Krishna. Because if you start thinking that, you know, it's I have to earn that love by following the rules.

So the rules are for us to connect with Krishna at a deeper level. But it's not that by the rules, we earn love for Krishna. So could it be? Yeah, could it be? Go ahead.

Could it be to some extent that we have our regularity principles, and we have our 16 rounds, in a sense, Krishna consciousness does have significantly more rules than most religions. So could it be there's one devotee, or one friend of mine, he told me that actually, now, I don't know who he had met. But he said, ISKCON is the ideal example of being religious, but not spiritual.

So now, I don't agree with him. But maybe he met somebody like that. Definitely we are, we are religious and spiritual.

But could it be that, you know, in following our religion, we get so caught that we, there is both our practices and our beliefs, our philosophy. So we rate people based on what they are practicing. And we rate people based on their beliefs.

And in the two things, we don't see people as human beings. We don't see people as, we just get caught in that, that perspective. Any thoughts on this? Um, well, spiritual versus religiosity, the goal, you got to keep focused on the goal.

Prabhupada was very clear. What is the goal of all this? To always remember Krishna and never forget Krishna. And by the way, in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, that's the goal too.

And that's pray without ceasing. That's the whole point is that, you know, when Prabhupada came to the West, he told us to chant 64 rounds, which was Bhakti Siddhanta's standard. And we couldn't do that.

We couldn't do it. So he said, okay, so now you can chant 32 rounds. We couldn't do that either.

So then he said, all right, do 16. And that's a minimum. That's a start.

Just start, do the best you can. And so we did the best we could. But it's not meant that we should just be satisfied with that.

So these rules and regulations, particularly the four regulative principles, you can try to follow them separately from spiritual realization. You can do that. People do that and struggle with that.

If you find your love, you're not going to be interested in, for example, exploiting your body and other people's bodies for sex life. Why? Because you have a higher taste. You're not going to be interested to eat animals, because you understand they are Krishna's property.

I love them. Out of love. We don't do that out of care.

We also don't what are the what other principles are alcohol intoxication, because we have discovered self love and love for others. If I drink and drive, I can kill people. You know, if I'm intoxicated, I can hurt people.

So it's really born out of care. It's not about rule following, although people really get focused on the four regulative principles. And that's the goal of it.

The goal is, we want to be awake. If you're intoxicated, you can't be awake. But you also can, like yourself, people who are harming other people and other animals and harming themselves cannot actually experience true bhakti because it's about love and care.

Does that make sense? Yeah. So you know, we want to find find our love. What you're saying is that, yeah, I think that if you find your love, following the rules will become natural.

And if we don't, if we get caught in following the rules and struggling with that, we will not find the love and we will not come off as loving to others also. Yeah. Right.

So Prabhupada said this many times. It's not a naiti naiti. It's not not this, not that, not that.

It's positive devotional service. So his solution to everything is do some positive devotional service. Hearing, chanting, worshiping, you find something that gives you joy and offer it and all the other problems go away.

You know, spend a lot of time focusing on the problems. You know, we need to be focusing and engaging in the positive activities and solutions. Yeah, that's true.

Artha, do you want to add anything to these points? Well, just, you know, so many wonderful things she's saying. I like this point you made a minute ago about we we follow our principles. And of course, we know we're sadhakas and we follow because that's the way we get purified.

And, you know, we don't want to misinterpret and say, well, I don't feel the love, so I think I'll go smoke a cigarette. That's not at all what you're saying. But what you're saying is we follow these different principles.

You know, in the beginning, we do a little bit one step at a time and gradually becomes easier. But that to maintain them and to really go deep, it needs to be based on the principle of caring for others. And that should be one of the motivations, of course, to have us take up these these principles because we realize, you know, why do I want to get intoxicated? It's going to harm my body.

It's going to burn out some brain cells. And I could I could hurt others. I was a college student as you were speaking.

I was remembering I had one they call a suite made four people divided into two separate rooms. And one of my suite mates, you know, college students would drink a lot and he would get mean and angry every single weekend to the point that his friends were thinking he's going to just start physically attacking some of us. And I don't know what happened to him.

This was, you know, 45 years ago or so. But I'm sure he's dead long ago, dead. I'm sure he got in a fight with somebody just killed himself.

So, you know, you see killed himself with alcohol, you know, just just destroyed his liver or whatever. So so seeing that people understanding that just from that very basic point of out of care for myself and others, I shouldn't do these things. I don't want to gamble because everybody knows if you gamble, almost everybody loses a lot when you gamble.

I've got a wife or I've got kids or there's friends that depend upon me. Why do I want to risk in this way? Better that I just, you know, contribute in a positive way to people around me. So that really is a very, very positive point.

And I was thinking also, sometimes I feel that, you know, our Christian friends, they have this, they're one of their mantras, right? Jesus loves you. And it's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful mantra. And I think we should remember that that actually is also our mantra, you know, Jesus.

But, you know, the father, Krishna loves you. That's I think that that's what I'm hearing wrong with the underlying principle of bhakti. And I think all of us recognize I certainly do.

You know, there's something lacking in my heart. I feel some sense of, I've got one of my favorite quotes I've got on my wall over promises, when we chant Hare Krishna, we overcome our feelings of insufficiency. And we know from this very deep theological perspective, that insufficiency is because we're not connected with the supreme whole with this tiny part, we're not connected.

So, you know, hearing that message that actually Krishna loves us, it's, and then we know that better than some traditions. I mean, there's some traditions that says God loves you, but you reach a certain point and you could go to hell forever, you know. And not to disparage another tradition, but to look at ours is based on this principle that, okay, whatever we've done, we can become, you know, so sinful or harmful or violent to ourselves and others.

Krishna never leaves us in the heart. He gives us again and again creates whole universes and the whole universal time, who can, we can't even imagine that even a whole universe, and we can still be in a rebellious mood, and he just creates another universe to give us another chance to come back to him. So, I mean, the sense of how much, how forgiving, how loving, how caring, unconditional love.

And I think sometimes it's interesting, another thing is sinking in, we talk about unconditional love and our love needs to become unconditional to become perfect and all that. We forget that actually Krishna is the source of unconditional love towards us. It's already there.

We're just asked to, we're asked to kind of catch up with where Krishna is and where we naturally are. So these are really, really beautiful and important points. And I don't think we talk about these enough.

I don't think we teach these enough. Another insight I want to lift up is that Prabhupada explained how the whole of ISKCON was created for us to engage in these six loving exchanges, two of which are revealing the mind and confidence and hearing a person reveal their mind and confidence. And I have heard several senior devotees sit on the Vyasasana explain that in a way that is totally foreign to me, knowing what I know about revealing the mind and confidence.

And part of my starting this Corona Care… What do you mean by that? Or how do you think it could be done by revealing the heart? Can you explain that? Well, I'm explaining. I'm explaining. The thing that is missing and why people don't do it is because people don't have a safe place to do it with people who they can trust.

Our experience, if we reveal our heart, is tomorrow it's on Facebook or now it's a gossiping and telling everybody about your problem if you reach out to someone. So no one does. And they're sitting with their despair and their grief and their loneliness and holding that together because they don't know where to go.

And because there's no safe place to talk about these things, people then react out. If you notice, the canary in the coal mine in a community is when you have a lot of backbiting and gossiping and judging other people. That's simply a symptom of a person who has not grieved about their own shortcomings.

You know, they haven't, they haven't. So we're protecting it on other people, you know, and but it's underneath that judgment is really our inability to sit with our shortcomings and beat our breast and lament or grieve that we didn't live up to our values, which may be the values of our spiritual master. That's where it comes from.

So we have a lot of that going on in our movement and in other movements where, because there's no place to actually talk about my struggle in spiritual life. And it is a struggle. If you're really doing this work of becoming Krishna conscious, it's hard work.

It takes sustained, hard effort to get there, to clear those ten offenses, to weed out those anartas, which I believe are unresolved traumas and wounds that we are all the time not wanting to look at. And so we're projecting out on other people and now they're the one who have the problem that I can't see in myself. So, you know, Karuna Care education is to train people who can actually catch stories without judging, without telling everybody their story, without advising.

We love to teach and advise people. As soon as someone tells us something, we're going to tell them how to fix it. That's not what we do here.

And it doesn't help. It disempowers the other person and it disempowers ourselves to give them some cognitive solution when actually they need heart connection. That's what this Karuna Care education is about.

I see in our movement, since I've been doing this, like listening to people, there is a lot of loneliness in our movement. It's a sad, sad thing, you know. In fact, I met a brahmachari who joined us in Ireland, gosh, 30, 40 years ago, and suddenly left.

After 10, 15 years, he left. We didn't know where he went. And then suddenly he resurfaces after 15 years in Vrindavan.

I was living in Vrindavan. It's like, there he is with a wife and now two little toddlers. What happened? What happened to you? He said to me, you know, I joined the Hare Krishna movement because I was sad and I was lonely.

And I left because I was sad and I was lonely. What of that? What do you make of that? And since I've been talking to people or listening to people here in the last year, here in the West, it's been uncanny, the kinds of torture people are undergoing in relationships that are unresolved or traumas that have never been spoken about, that they carry around with them and they suffer lives of silent desperation. It is just unbelievable.

And you may say, well, they're not chanting the Hare Krishna mantra enough. That's the solution. No, the person I talked to yesterday is chanting 64 rounds every day, fully in Mayapur, living in the seat of the Holy Dham.

And when Bhakti Charu Maharaj died, we had a little grief session. I did a processing with devotees in Chicago and people were saying, everybody's telling me just chant, chant more and read, just forget about it. And they would say, well, I'm doing that and it's not helping.

It's not helping. So what do you make of that? So how do you explain that? Because, sorry, it's your role to ask the questions, but I'm curious because devotees will feel, I tried so many things in the quote material world, and maybe even I studied psychology, or maybe even I'm a counselor, or I got married because I thought I loved my spouse, or I had kids because I thought that would be, or I volunteered. So I came to the Christian consciousness because I had this more perfect understanding of love.

Now you're telling me that maybe it's not there. So how do you reconcile those two things? Because you're deeply committed to Prabhat and ISKCON and the Vaishnav process, but then you're reminding us of things that maybe we left behind. Okay.

Okay. So if you as a devotee, you have a broken leg, say you have a broken leg or broken arm, you can chant for the rest of your life. It's not going to repair that leg or arm.

You got to go get it, put a cast around it and do that. So same thing with our emotions. If you have a broken heart, you have to address and heal and resolve that on an emotional level.

So yeah, it might be, and we've seen in our movement who we've had leaders and sanyasis and people who might have been very, very sophisticated in their spirituality and intellectual ability to chant mantra and quote scripture and all of that. And then suddenly they're gone. They run off with money and women or something.

What happened there? Well, they're still emotionally children. They're emotionally immature. They haven't done that deep work.

And we call this in behavioral sciences that applies to all religions. Spiritual bypassing is that you use spirituality to avoid confronting and naming and owning your feelings. In fact, you don't even feel them because you're so dissociated from your emotions.

And if any religion is about emotions, it's bhakti yoga. Really, when you think of the deep prayers and emotion we see exhibited in relationships in the Chaitanya Charitamrita, you can't tell me that emotions don't belong in the bhakti process. It's so about mood and rasa and taste.

So we have kind of, and this is very, very predictable and typical of particularly people in the Western world trying to practicing Eastern philosophy is they think it's a way of escaping from looking at those hard things, doing that hard work. In fact, in my work, I've seen lots of folks who have been substance abusers, like they are addicted to alcohol, like bikers and stuff. And then they go to Alcoholics Anonymous, which has a very effective program.

But one of the most important things is they need to appeal to their higher power, you know, the God of their understanding to have the strength to overcome. But then God becomes their new drug. And, you know, God, it's a lot of God talk, and not accepting responsibility for things that happen to them.

And we have lots of magical thinking in the Hare Krishna movement, you know, where it's, I know people, astrology, and, you know, all kinds of things people are drawing from. But at bottom line, it's you that has the freedom to choose. Prabhupada was not into this notion of, well, by chance, this happened or by accident.

No, no, knowingly or unknowingly, you have made choices that have brought you to where you are right now, the consequences of the life you've created for yourself right now, you have chosen, maybe you were ignorant when you made those choices. So, you know, I'm just saying that we need to, first of all, be more honest with ourselves, and really get to know what is an emotion people don't even know if you say, what are you feeling right now? I'm going to test you now, Chaitanya Charan. Tell me, what are you feeling right now? Give me an emotion.

Delighted and disoriented. Those are not emotions. Tell me an emotion.

How is delighted not an emotion? There are six. Those are flavors of emotions. There are six emotions.

They're sad, mad or anger, glad, afraid, surprised and disgust. And all other emotions are different variations of that. So, we need to get real clear about what we feel.

If we're feeling uncomfortable, we need to know, well, I'm noticing I'm feeling angry. What's underneath that? What's that about? You know, often we will say, oh, it's that person who's made me angry. But no, that's not what it's about.

What in us is being activated? What about that experience is activating this anger? It's really about my history. You know, something that's happened to me, or maybe this person reminds me of Uncle Fred, and I always hated Uncle Fred, or I was abused by Uncle Fred, he used to beat me, or, you know, I don't know what else, you know. But often it's our projection onto others, instead of going back and being curious about, what is that feeling about? Why should I be feeling angry right now? Or for a person who's actually experienced a terrible loss, there might be a whole mixed emotions.

You know, when you're grieving, you're going to have anger, and you're going to be sad, and you're going to be frightened, and all kinds of things, because it's a disorienting dilemma. Can I ask you a question, Robert? I'm asking our interviewer if I can ask the question, because I'm hearing some people may have a doubt. You know, I remember taking my, you know, experiments in Buddhism, and it's there in our philosophy.

You know, the mind, so many things come and go, and you have to focus on Krishna, focus on the mantra, and just, you know, watch the thoughts, just let them go. So, someone may be thinking, okay, well, there's anger coming up. In fact, I think this sometimes, okay, there's anger coming up.

So, I just have to, like, I mean, dissociate may be wrong word, because it probably has a lot of connotations for professionals. But in a sense, just detach myself from that. That's not me.

I'm the spirit soul. I just have to let it go. And sometimes, if I dwell on it, okay, well, why am I feeling anger? Or why am I feeling bitter? This, that, the dwelling on it itself, right, while contemplating the object of the senses, one develops attachment with them.

So, if I think too much about these emotions, I'm kind of clinging and making it worse. So, it seems that what I'm hearing you saying part is, you have to be very, very conscious of all these things and kind of work through them. I'm hoping you get a chance to talk about that later, what you mean by hard work.

But it seems it's a little contrary to what at least I'm understanding, some people may understand about being detached from the mind and the body. So, can you explain that a little bit? I mean, you're senior to me, you've been devoting for almost 50 years. So, you're obviously blending what you know with Christian theology.

But someone may be hearing that and not understanding it exactly as you intend it to be. Well, yeah, true. But looking at feelings as information and being curious about it.

It could be, gosh, I slept too much last night and I'm in the mode of ignorance. I need to take a walk. I mean, it may be that simple.

It could also have something to do with unprocessed trauma or grief that you haven't looked at that needs to be just explored without attachment. You know, that, okay, there are possibilities. There's all kinds of possibilities.

And I think it's fair game to be curious and just explore and be, you know, okay, they're coming through and I have a cup of milk and a piece of toast, I'll feel fine, you know. But to know yourself well enough to know if there's a pattern, you know, a pattern happening again and again, you know, that this particular person shows up and I find myself withdrawing or hiding or I feel sick in my stomach, there may be some information that there's some unconscious things that need to be looked at that you aren't looking at. And why that's important is that when we carry around with us unprocessed grief or trauma, the body will try to get you to look at it by creating a physical circumstance where you have no choice but to look at it face-to-face.

And I've had experience of that in my own life where I hurt my back, you know, my granddaughter twisted me in the ocean and I was on my back for two months in a wheelchair and was working a lot, director of a big program and, you know, 80-hour work week, just crazy stuff, you know. And now I'm on my back and I'm in so much pain, I have to crawl to the bathroom and I can't sleep because there's no way I can move that is not painful. So I'm laying there for days and days and days and finally I realized, okay Prabhupada, what are you trying to get through to me that you have had to incapacitate me so I'm going to pay attention now because I've been so busy ignoring whatever it is you're trying to communicate to me that now I'm on my back and I have to listen because I can't sleep and I can't move.

And so for several days I had to do an enormous deep investigation and opening to listen to what Prabhupada was trying to tell me. And out of the deep, and this sounds real woo-woo, I know, but I had three instructions coming that I took as Prabhupada speaking directly to me. You know, you read about that kind of stuff and you think, yeah, but it was so clear that I started to move in that direction and change my life to being here right now.

You know, one of them is you have to teach Bhagavad Gita. Secondly, you need to sing kirtan with your harp. Third, you need to write.

So I started immediately, you know, the guy in LA who's organizing the Gita started doing that and then I started to sing with the harp. My life has changed since I stopped working so much. Now I'm part-time and it's opened up this.

So Krishna is all the time trying to communicate to us and we don't listen because we don't, we are not submissive listeners. Krishna can't get our attention. And if you're sitting in a hospital, you will see 99% of the people who come to the hospital, it's a spiritual crisis.

That's understood across the board for all spiritual care chaplains. They understand this is not about your broken leg. It's not about your diabetes.

It's not about you now, you know, having a car crash. It's about what precipitated those things. And that has to do with lack of spiritual integration and grounding and listening to that still small voice that we know is super soul within our heart.

That's what it's about when you're now having a health crisis. It's a spiritual crisis. So a lot.

It's amazing. You're talking about emotions as sources of information. No.

One of the things I talk about is that how the body, mind and soul are three distinct levels of reality. So just as if, if I might just add something to this, that if I have some small sensation of some discomfort in my back, okay, it's there. I tolerate it.

It goes away. But if it's like a constant pattern and nagging and severe, then I have to pay attention and fix something. So maybe we could say the same about emotions.

If there are some stray emotions or stray desires are coming and going, then just observe them and let them go. But if something is coming repeatedly, then there is some underlying issue. Like if I'm having constant back pain or repeated back pain, there's something wrong, which needs to be fixed.

And similarly, if there's constant, there is a repeated pattern of emotions coming, then maybe there's something I need to learn over there. Yeah, I think that's true. So, you know, we discussed a lot of things.

So I know, I just wanted to keep track of what we are doing. So, you know, we talked initially about being unconditionally loud. And then we have to do the hard work of processing our emotions.

And that can be painful, because confronting unresolved issues. So on one side, there is a good feeling or the assurance that say we are unconditionally loud by Krishna. And you mentioned that we don't speak this sufficiently, or we don't hear it sufficiently.

So quite often, what I noticed is in our classes, what we focus on is how we should be loving Krishna and how we are not doing that well enough. We should be chanting attentively, we should be reading Prabhupada's books more, we should be waking up in the morning. And so, in a sense, we end up feeling bad about ourselves, rather than feeling loud by Krishna.

So one way is that we might feel bad because we are not able to follow the rules adequately. And we are being reminded of that. Another side is that if we try to confront our emotions, and there are uncomfortable emotions, that can also make us feel bad about ourselves.

So how important is it that as devotees, we feel good about ourselves? And the word feel good has a negative connotation. But still, in the sense that we feel ourselves valued or valuable in whatever sense. So any thoughts on this? Yeah, one thing is coming to mind.

A few years ago, when we had one of our first Vaishnava Christian dialogues in India. And on the second day, one of the Christian professors who was also a minister, he said something really profoundly that at the time, I took as a powerful endorsement of us. And hearing you two speak today and your summary, I'm just now realizing actually, it's also insight on where we need to do better.

And I'll tell you what that story was. It's simple enough. He was listening to this dialogue going on for like 24 hours or so.

And then he said, I need to say something. And he said, I'm understanding. He said, we Christians, we really understand how God loves us.

And he was thinking in terms of Jesus sacrificed himself, and you know, the Father came as this only begotten Son and all of those things as part of their core theology. He said, but you Vaishnavas, you really understand how to love God, appreciate in our conversation about devotional service, and how we should hear and we should chant. And this wasn't me speaking, this was this man.

And I remember thinking, wow, we really have the most important part. I mean, I think I've been my own bias and prejudice looking back now it's been years, but filtering it through this conversation, I think I mainly kind of came probably, yeah, we know how to love God. And yeah, we already know God loves us.

But hearing this conversation, I'm realizing actually, we're not so good on that other part. You know, maybe, you know, we can learn from other people. Of course, it's definitely there in our tradition, as I even mentioned myself a few minutes ago.

But it's, I think, I think, you know, sometimes Christians are very strong and be able to walk around and say, you know, God loves me. They're very confident in that. And maybe some of them at least maybe minimize, okay, so what are you doing to reciprocate with that? Whereas with us, it tends to be a little bit like, I got to really work hard, because I know it's all about devotional service.

I got to serve God. And as Rob Bruce said, in a sense, maybe you have to kind of earn that. And that's not our philosophy.

You know, there's faith and works, we have to reciprocate. But I think that this is very refreshing for me to hear that that really is, in a sense, 50% of the formula. He loves us, we love him, we love him, he loves us.

We can't ignore either part of that, or our spiritual growth really is certainly is not complete at all. You know, just one experiment I did once after hearing this before I can mutter you. You know, in a class once I asked, does Krishna love his devotees? So everybody said yes.

Then I asked, does Krishna love you? And everybody was like half, nobody was raising their hands. So somehow, it's like, yeah, Krishna loves his devotees, but then am I that devotee who Krishna loves? So in that sense, there's a significant difference. So this is just vindicating what you are saying.

Yeah, we have shame. Sorry? Yeah, we have shame and part of it, we are ashamed of ourselves, perpetually ashamed. We can never repay Krishna.

And so it's like this unreachable goal that we try to say thank you by our service, we can never reach it. And we can never realize our relationship with Krishna unless Krishna allows us in, you know, the grace, and we can't earn it. But through surrendering process and humility and honesty, and also serving the devotees, we can please Krishna, we can't go directly to Krishna, we have to go through the Vaishnava Sangha.

And therefore, I believe, and this is where I enter the conversation as a chaplain educator is that we need to learn what bhakti looks like and feels like. So far, people are great at describing it. And we do that all day in our classes, we're describing bhakti.

But we don't know really what it means to love, you know, we use that word a whole lot. What does love mean? What does it look like? Well, you know, you can you can draw from people who've studied it, because we're not the only people who have thought about this thing. What does love look like? What are practical behaviors that would look like love or feel like love? And, you know, my one of my favorite theologians slash psychologist is a guy named David Rico, and he boils it down to five behaviors.

He said, love is not just a feeling, we throw that around a lot. It's, it's an active thing, attention, giving attention, giving appreciation, affirming, affection, and allowing, which means allowing people to make their own choices, freedom, you know, even Krishna at the end of Bhagavad Gita, he gives you the freedom to choose him or not to be in love with you or not. And so as Vaishnava, we're all part of Krishna's body.

In fact, part of why I'm doing this work is I had a dream in the 90s, where Prabhupada said, I won't tell the whole story. But basically, he's just, he's just asking me, can you ask your husband if you can take care of my personal body? And I woke up wondering what that meant. And of course, discovered he was talking about ISKCON as my personal body and gives the example of the, the sons who are massaging and brutalizing the father, because they're fighting.

And so that has, has put me into a quest to realize that, you know, we're all Prabhupada's body as the Sangha of ISKCON. And so we need to be giving each other these five A's, if I may say, you know, attention, allowing, appreciation, affirmation, if I can name them, attention, like to focus, you listen when people are talking to focus on each other, to offer each other appreciation, affirmation, affection, affection, and allowing freedom to choose, you know, to, to give each other the freedom to be where you are in your devotional life and not be more than you are. Sadly, we tend to be embarrassed about our performance of bhakti.

So we pretend that we're more than we are. That's sahajiya, that's a sahajiya tendency. And we tend to think everybody should be at the same level as I am.

That's impersonalism. So as we know, when you, you pray the Prabhupada mantra, who came to the West to, you know, get rid the world of impersonalism and voidism, that was his main thing, is getting us free from this impersonalism and voidism and sahajiyism. But we're all tainted by it, as long as we're not pure devotees.

We all have to acknowledge, I'm a sahajiya, and I am an impersonalist, due to conditioning. If we're not pure devotees, and we have not pulled out those weeds, and we are not chanting without offense, we have to know we have those two influences. And we really need to be skeptical about our own attitudes and behavior and question that, because these are not bhakti.

You know, it's really easy to fool our fool ourselves, and to point fingers at other people without pointing them also back at ourselves. So, you know, I'm trying to create a platform where people can come and get out of isolation, because in isolation, you think you're the only one who has this struggle. In Sangha, we're here to support each other, so we can make it, we can keep going long enough, so we can become free from offenses.

But you're not going to make it together if you're all the time criticizing and, you know, fault finding and gossiping about each other. We need to get in each other's corner and blow sugar on each other, in the sense that revealing the mind in confidence and hearing a person reveal the mind. And the problem is, Chaitanya Churan, people don't know how.

In this technological age, people don't know how to listen. They don't even know what they're listening for. They don't know how to hear.

They don't know how to respond. It's, it's sad. We're so detached from our natural compassion, that we don't know how.

So it's really about learning some skills. Yeah, so thank you for that. So are you saying that these are the reasons why devotees may not feel loved by Krishna? The point I was making was that Krishna loves his devotees, but does Krishna love me? You responded to that.

So all this you said was in the context of these are the reasons why devotees may not feel loved, because we have shame because we can't communicate with others, because we don't even know what love is. And those are the reasons, isn't it? Yeah. And, and the Sangha and the Sangha that we are getting and giving each other is based on not love.

It's really based on, you know, judging and rule following and measuring each other by our own standards and all of that. And what we need to, what we need in our journey is a lot of people affirming us, encouraging us, supporting us, we're not going to make it. You know, if you're thinking 30, 40 years of trying to chant and get that taste, you're not going to make it that long.

You're going to bail as soon as you feel so discouraged and alone. You might as well go to some other religion because, you know, the Hare Krishnas, they say, Krishna loves you, but we hate your guts. That's a message sometimes in Christianity is that, oh, Jesus loves you, but we really don't like you at all, unless this condition, that condition, that condition, that's not unconditional love.

So when we say, advertise ourselves as unconditionally loving people, then it means that I have to get really creative. When I have somebody who might have a little bit of a mental illness, even a quirk, behavioral idiosyncrasy, I need to get creative to stretch my heart around that person and figure out how can I engage them in Krishna service? How can I give them this chance? Let me embrace them with unconditional love so they can feel what it feels like, because they're so blocked by their own conditioning. They can't feel that love.

Krishna has given it to you. You've got to pass it along. And that's what heals.

And I know this from not just my experience, but I know this from lots and lots and lots of research done by the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health, where they discovered that the key cause of mental illness is isolation and loneliness. And the main thing that heals the human heart is caring community. So I like to think of ISKCON as the rehabilitation center, where ISKCON rehab from Kali Yuga.

Everybody's been wounded by Kali Yuga. This is a very, very violent time we're living in. I mean, just think, Kali Yuga, Kali, the personality of Kali is everywhere.

So there's practically nobody who's not been hurt, wounded, confused by this energy that's pervasive. So if we really do want to serve humanity, we've got to be the healing force for broken people, lots of them, and everybody's broken. Amazing.

Anitabh, do you want to add something? I'm just thinking this is another one of those places where you ponder for a moment, Chaitanya Charan, and summarize a lot of what we've heard. You're so, you're so expert at that. I mean, you want to end it or we have some time? I mean, you're asking me to stop? No, no, no, no, no, not at all.

Not at all. But okay, then let me, let me ask you a question. Rambo, you were talking about how we need to recognize part of not being impersonal is recognizing and accepting other people are at different stages.

But then you've also told us that we have to be accepting, we have to be appreciative, we have to be this and that, which really is, it's kind of like, except the fact to use our terminology, you're a kanishka, and you're grading everybody, but you have to accept everybody unconditionally, which is, you know, at the least, how do you bridge those two things? Honesty and humility, wherever you are, this is where I am, I'm reaching for the top, but this is where I am, you know, honest and honesty and humility, you know, okay, if I'm a materialistic devotee, that's where I am, I can't see it differently right now. And someone else may see it different to acknowledge, well, maybe, maybe they have a more elevated perception than I do. I don't see it, but I don't know everything.

You know, and someone who is in it. Okay, not that I say, okay, I'm a materialistic devotee, and I'm going to mistreat you, or I'm going to abuse you, or I'm going to be rough in the way you interact, because that's just the nature of materialism. I may be a materialistic devotee, but I'm striving to act with these five actions of love, attention, appreciation, affirmation, affection, allowing.

I can endeavor to do that, even from my current situation. That's part of bhakti, I'm trying, and this is part of what my trying has to be, to show that love to others. And to myself, really, we haven't talked about that a whole lot, but showing that love to ourselves also.

Yeah, exactly. But just, I think that the humility and honesty piece is so prevalent in Prabhupada's teachings, where he said, if one can learn these two qualities, the whole Vedas become revealed. I mean, you really do, it really boils down to that, being honest and humble about oneself.

I have not heard that before. Prabhupada said, if we become humble and honest, then the meaning of the Vedas… Purports, the purports of the Vedic scripture. I'll have to dig it up for you.

I'm not a real good scholar that can quote tons of stuff, but I know that stuck with me when I read it, and it has formed a lot of my own understanding. Just one point about this. See, we talked about not feeling loud, and then accepting others and accepting ourselves.

But to some extent, humility and honesty can actually make us feel uncomfortable, isn't it? I'm not where I am, and I have all these problems. So if we are thinking of, so this is my earlier question. Do we need to, say, feel good about ourselves? And then if we are doing emotionally confronting ourselves, then that is not really a very pleasant feeling.

So how important is for a devotee to feel good about themselves? And how does the devotee get that, if it's necessary? Well, you bring me to the conversation around grief versus shame, or guilt versus shame. This notion of, I don't measure up, but I know that I'm part of Krishna. Krishna loves me, and I'm on a journey.

And it's going to take some time. And so I'm not going to hate myself for not being perfect, but at least I can see the goal. Versus, I can't measure up, I hate myself, and I'm ashamed of myself, and it's hopeless, and therefore I better give up the process, because there's just no hope for me.

Or reach out and be angry and bitter towards others because of my frustration, because I can't have what I want, even on a spiritual level. Yeah, so I'm not saying it's comfortable. It is not comfortable to dig around in ourselves.

In fact, when you chant Hare Krishna, you are taking a stick to your life, and you are digging up all kinds of dirty things that are coming from samskaras, and your memories, and oppressions. They're coming up, and they need to be processed and taken out. And it is part of the process.

It is not always a comfortable process, and that's why we need to share that journey with other caring people who support us, and can affirm that you're not going crazy. You are worthy. This is just a natural part of spiritual growth.

Sometimes you have a dark night of the soul. Every person who practices spiritual life sometimes feels they can't see it. You know, they see Krishna's shadow because they have their back turned, and they can't see.

That's why we need sangha. Real appropriate relationships who can companion us through those difficult, dark times that we always have. We're not alone in that.

I'm not the only person who struggles. Other people do too. So to be able to hear other people share their struggle, and often identify exactly the same struggle that you have.

I'm not going crazy. There's hope. You know, this is a struggle.

That's what it is. It's an uphill climb. And Prabhupada says we say it's just chant Hare Krishna, be happy.

It's a simple thing. He said, actually, it's a really hard thing to become Krishna conscious, truly. And therefore we're just apprentices at this point.

We can't even say I am a Vaishnava. I'm aspiring, aspiring. So one of the main ways we can actually feel loved is through association.

And humility and honesty are not so much meant to make us feel bad about ourselves. But they're meant to say, let us get our guards down so that we can associate with people. So that we can, so we don't, as you said, mental health problems are caused by isolation and loneliness.

So we could say humility and honesty are meant to break down those walls of isolation and loneliness. And then we can connect with others and then we can feel accepted, loved. I have a doubt if I can express.

Okay. Okay. You're telling me I have to be in Sangha.

I have to be open. I have to be humble. I have to be honest.

Wow, this is beautiful. This is real. I can almost feel Krishna's love and I'm seeing the world differently.

And I go to the temple and I meet some nice devotees. And I say, you know, I just learned I really have to kind of express how I'm struggling and I'm not very pure devotee. And they say, yeah, you're not a purity devotee.

You're a rascal. And I noticed you do this and you do that. And you should come to class more and you don't chant your rounds attentively.

And you should do more service. And why don't you, whatever, you know, why don't you communications devotee? Or why don't you do book distribution? Or why don't you stay brahmachari? You know, there's a lot of judgment that comes out. You're kind of describing this lovely, humble and non-judgmental community and asking us to kind of bear our soul.

But I think we've all had the experience, you know, as soon as you bear your soul and somebody comes at you with a hot dagger and then you close up again and you put an extra three layers of steel around it. So how do you, what's your advice on that? Thank you for that. I was just getting ready to say that there has to be, you have to assess whether someone can hold your story.

You know, you really do. Not everybody you can trust to hold your story. Not everyone is that spiritually mature.

And therefore it's really helpful to have some spaces that are intended for that purpose. You know, where there's covenant making in the sense of, you know, we know in this space that when you speak, I'm not judging and advising and it's not going out of this room, you know. And people who are privileged to be part of your journey, they know there's a commitment there.

There's a commitment of being confidential and faithful. So I'm creating spaces for that. You're right.

You can't just now dump something on people that are not capable or trustworthy enough to share that journey. So it is about discerning who can hold my story and doing a little testing. So I compare it to poking the possum, you know, and sometimes on a road there's a dead animal and you don't know if he's really dead or not.

So you take a stick and you poke it to see if it moves. And so you have to sort of test people out to see are you able to hold something I might want to share, you know, how I'm really feeling or my struggle. So you might have to try them out on a little thing.

And if immediately they start judging and advising and now they're on their soapbox going to preach to you a lecture, then, you know, they're not the person I'm going to share my heart with. But we do have to learn how to have heart connecting relationships. And there's a language that accompanies that.

And people don't know that language. Sadly, they want to because the relational paradox is that although people yearn for love and belonging, they have developed since time immemorial behaviors that push people away. And they don't even know it.

They don't know how they're… Explain that a little bit. What kind of behaviors that maybe we're doing and we don't recognize are pushing people away? Well, just like what I said, compassion. We may think that I'm being compassionate by now downloading the whole Srimad Bhagavatam to respond to your grief.

Like someone, my loved one, my husband or wife has died, or my child has died. And now I'm going to tell you the story of King Chitraketu, whose child comes back to life. And he says, who is my mother? Who is my father? That is an inappropriate use of our philosophy because it totally negates or dismisses the person's current time emotions.

It may be in a lecture that's appropriate. But there's a sensitivity around if you are really going to offer care, you want to respond in a way that affirms, offers affection, support, and those kinds of things. So time, place, and circumstance is really, really important.

So that's one instance where we may think we're helping. In fact, so many people think they're helping by saying something like, okay, I have lost my baby. Say a baby dies in stillbirth.

And so often, and this is not Hare Krishna, that's everywhere, people well-intended will say, oh, not a problem. You can have another one. Doesn't mean it doesn't, or your marriage breaks up.

Oh, you can marry somebody else. They were crap anyway. You know, people say these things thinking that's really being compassionate.

It's not helpful. It's disempowering. And it really just offers you comfort because you're uncomfortable and not knowing what to say.

So you pull out something. That's all I'm saying. People don't know better.

Can I just ask, because not all of us are going to have an opportunity to get the kind of training you offer in depth. But all of us has those moments where you meet someone who had a baby that died, or had a relative that just died. You know, there's COVID.

People are dying all over the planet right now. So if we're not so well-trained in that, and I think the early part of our conversation on this today was a little bit, you know, looking forward in the future when we have devotees that are so much better trained and sensitive to these kinds of things. But just as an ordinary devotee like myself, what kind of, can you give us a few little tips on how do we respond when we interact with people that are experiencing that kind of grief, whether some failure in their own self or something that comes on us from outside, like, you know, the loss of a, you know, whatever, loss of their house, or the loss of a child, the loss of a spouse, or how should we respond? I know that there's hours of study, but help us a little bit so we don't mess up too badly.

Well, we're back to honest and humble. Gee, I don't know what to say. I'm really, I'm really hurting.

I'm hurting for you. I don't know how to help. Please tell me how I can help.

What would be help? How can I, how can I help? And it might be as simple as, can you take care of my kids for me? Because I'm totally so numb and shocked that my husband just died that I can't even think to take care of my children. So you want to now offer yourself as a servant to the hurting person and say, gosh, I really care about you. And I don't know what to say.

And I don't know what to do. I just want you to know I'm hurting on your behalf. Tell me how I can help.

And they may say in the beginning, oh, no, and people are shy to get, but don't give up. Don't say, well, I called them up and they said they didn't need help. Call back tomorrow.

Call back, you know, maybe even to go and be present. There's nothing more powerful than just silent presence, accompaniment to know that I'm not alone in this nightmare of a journey that I'm in right now. More, more effective than all the words is just to be silently present and let them know you don't, we don't have to talk.

I just will be with you. I'm happy just to sit here with you. And in ancient, in early times in the West, you know, that was the protocol when someone had a loss, a death of someone.

All the ladies in the community or the church would come over with their knitting and handwork and bunches of food. You know, they bring little casserole and they would just sit with the person just to accompany them. And they may cry or talk or do nothing or sleep, but they weren't alone in their pain, which is the most painful thing is to be alone in your pain.

So just to be there and be what be whatever they need you to be. That's the best thing. It's very deep.

That means before we connect with people, before we can offer spiritual help to people, we have to, we can say offer help at a human level, connect with people at a human level. Sometimes we see people's adversity as an opportunity to preach to them. And then that can be quite uncompassionate.

Although we may think we are being compassionate, but horrible. It adds more pain. It's insult.

You're adding insult to injury. You know, for you to dismiss a person's pain in the moment of suffering is like putting vinegar in a wound or salt in a wound. You know, you're just totally taking away their moment and they need desperately to be able to go through their grief.

And that's another topic, but, but a space where you can do active mourning, grief is a feeling, but we have to express it outward. Otherwise it causes us all kinds of mental and physical illnesses. And you need people to help you do that.

You can't do that by yourself. You need a listener who's caring and not judging you. Even if you look like you're crazy or you're doing things that seem crazy, because when a person has a huge loss, like the loss of a loved one, it totally, it totally throws them into role confusion.

I don't know who I am. I've been a wife for 30 years. Now my husband has died.

I don't even know who I am. Oh, okay. Well, you're a servant of Krishna.

You're part of Krishna. Yeah. Okay.

It's going to take me a while to get you get comfortable with what that means to be Krishna's part and because I've always approached Krishna through my husband. Yeah. What does that mean now that, that, uh, you know, he has died.

Uh, so it's, it's a long process, but we have to, we have to have spaces where we can do what's called dosing because confronting our grief or pain or hurt is too much to download all at once. So it's recommended to do it in doses, you know, where there's intentional spaces where like, say once every two weeks for an hour and a half, I'm going to sit with a couple of people who I care about. And they, I know they care about me.

And I'm just going to reflect on my husband who died a month ago. You know, I'm going to cry if I need to, I'm going to talk about what it's meant to be. And you're not going to say, suck it up already.

And that's what, what your friends and family are going to say after three days, when you have lost any major loss, they're going to go, Oh, you're, you talking about that again? It's what our society has learned to do. In fact, in the West, you get three paid days off. If you lose, if there's a death in your family, three days, like you're going to be over it and back to work in three days, cut off my arm and tell me that I'm going to be better in three days.

No way. But we have this idea that you are wallowing in your pain. If you should now talk about it.

So people then don't talk even to their loved ones. And they're holding this all the time. And now it comes out as cancer.

And now it comes out as heart disease, and so many things. You know, one thing I'm hearing it, I think it goes back to what we talked about earlier, pattern and time, place and circumstance, because we have within our philosophy, this understanding that the material body, the material mind, material desires, material, they're all entanglements of one sort of the other. And we have to become free from those.

So, you know, the little bumps in the road that sometimes people become so obsessed with, you know, we've all met people where they can only talk about themselves. And it's like, so boring, because, you know, they, you know, they stubbed their toe, and they want to talk to you about it for hours. And of course, whatever their needs are, that's another thing.

But we don't want to become absorbed in these smaller things. So we transcend those, we still chant Hare Krishna, we still study, we still work, and we put those things aside. But like, if you have a little child, I'm, you know, I'm picturing like, you know, a three-year-old that trips, okay? Now, you know, as adults, we know, look, nothing happened to you.

But still, the mommy's got to embrace that child. And, you know, within 30 seconds of an embrace, they're smiling again, everything's fine, because time, place and circumstance, that's what they needed. Now, if the mom just says, hey, you're not that body, chant Hare Krishna to a three-year-old, it's criminal.

It's actually criminal. And she's, or he was a father, making a judgment based on what they think everyone should need, or maybe what I need, without being sensitive and attentive, you said first thing is attentive, to where that individual is at. So time, place and circumstance, maybe in general, we say, okay, well, we know, ideally, these things are temporary, and okay, not the body, not the mind, not the emotions.

But depending on our level of understanding who we are, those things are more real to us, or more closer to us. And depending on time, place and circumstance, we have to be more attentive. Like maybe, you know, there's some great sadhu in the world, their hand gets cut off, and they can just kind of, you know, tie a bandaid around it, and they go on, and they're, but most of us, that's a major crisis, I need some help.

And it's okay to say I need some help, and also to be attentive to others. So it gets back to this sense of balance. You know, we have to balance between, I think our movement, I know, like in the ISKCON leadership course, we talk about leaders, you have to balance work, you know, your service, and your spiritual care, and your responsibilities for your body, and for your family, you have to balance all those things.

So in the same way, balancing our emotional needs. And in certain times in life, when there's critical moments, or some crisis, that demands our attention. The same way, certain times, if your devotee is a businessman, and you're going to work five days a week, but your business starts crashing, maybe you don't go to the temple for a few weeks, because you've got to be there in the office 14 hours a day, or else it's a crisis.

Or if your house catches on fire, you know, you've got to put everything, okay, I'm supposed to, you know, call the temple and say, you know, I'm going to do the arctic, my house is on fire, but I'll be there in 20 minutes anyway. It's like you, somebody else is going to cover for you, because you've got to take care of this particular aspect of your life. So that's how I'm kind of processing a lot of what you're hearing, that time, place, and circumstance, when there's a pattern, as you both mentioned earlier, when there's some kind of severity, that's like, okay, this is a warning, I have to take care of this now.

And we see that, you know, even looking at Srila Prabhupada's life, and even after he established this, sometimes his attention really went where there was a difficulty or problem, and he would focus attention on that. And he was still signing his letters, I hope this greets you in good health. And he was responding to devotees who are having health ailments, and prescribing how to help their toothaches and all of that.

Now you may think, well, why didn't Prabhupada just keep going on preaching about what Krishna's got? Because for that disciple, at that point in their life, and that's what they needed in order to take care of their body, take care of their emotions, take care of their family, which is ultimately prerequisites to at least have some balance there for us to go deeper in Christian consciousness. So it's such a beautiful, I always appreciate, in my generation, there was this buzzword, holistic, right? Everybody wanted to be holistic. I think in Christian consciousness, in Vaishnava and Bhakti, there really is an opportunity to be holistic, but we have to see the whole.

And you're reminding us of a whole, of a section that maybe there is a whole with an H, not a whole with a W ahead of it. So. I know Prabhupada used to say that, you know, take this whole and whole, just thinking about one thing, that we in the name of holistic, you expanded from the body to the soul, but there's a hole at the emotional level, which you are left as it is.

So in that sense, our holistic is filled with a hole. You've gone to the spiritual level, but you left the emotional level out to some extent. Yes, please.

Sorry. Well, I was just commenting that Prabhupada used to say that more important than chanting is taking care of your health, because if you lose your health, you can't chant. And I would say that's true of mental health as well, you know, that sometimes people are just so overwhelmed, they can't chant.

So it needs to be addressed, you know, and we need to help each other. We need to help each other reflect and process what's going on in order to overcome or to get healthy again, if we are maybe lost in negative thinking or abusive thinking or whatever it is, depression or so much. There's so much depression in our society, which to me, canary in the coal mine.

Thank you. Just like good parents, they're assuring, I mean, if they're devotees, they're assuring that there's spiritual opportunity for the children, and educational opportunity for the children, and there's health for the children, and there's recreation for the children, the children get clothing, and the children get care and affection. It's a whole package.

So I'm thinking that as leaders, in one sense, and elders, the same way like parents have to do the same thing for their kids, it's critical in our communities, in our little sanghas to also be concerned about these different aspects. I mean, we may have a temple that's got great, really, you know, my discipline, great relationships with the media and the police and the local scholars and interfaith, but are the devotees being cared for in all these aspects? We may have a temple, we're selling lots of books, that's great, but the devotees being cared for in this holistic way. So as leaders, we have to also, just like parents, okay, you know, my kids are really smart in school, but if they're emotionally not taken care of, the long term, it's a disaster for those children.

So it's make sure academics are there, but also the love and the care and the affection and the emotional support. So you're bringing, Rob, a whole other aspect of what we need to develop, what we need to be aware of and sensitive to and care for within our communities, without abandoning the other things, you know, you're not saying don't do those other things, you know, not get rid of the rules to show love, but balance all that understanding as you said, you know, what the rules are for, the rules are really to come out from a sense of care. One thing I've noticed, just this two semesters I've done this year have been like a pilot program for me to see how do I bring what I've learned in a professional environment with devotees, how much can they do, digest and relate to.

And I'm on my second, almost middle of my second semester, and what I've noticed and a real symptom in the profession of a person who is having a relational connection is zest. This word zest is kind of an odd word, but it means that there's a sense of enthusiasm, energy and a desire to have more of it. And so what I'm, you can talk to any of my students right now, I mean they're just so excited, they look forward to being in class, I mean they have developed relationships with each other, they're talking to each other, they're supporting each other.

Internationally, I mean I've got someone in Russia, I've got someone in South Africa and in Australia, they're creating in Australia resilience groups. I've created one as a place where devotees can come and hang out, it's not a training, it's a semi-facilitated space where people can come and I will break them up in groups of two or three and they can just get to know each other and have a place to talk about maybe a focused thing, but it could morph into whatever is on their mind, you know. But they're absolutely like, oh this is the missing piece, is we have now friends who are really our friends and they're there to support and if I'm in trouble and I'm sad or confused, I can connect and they will help me get back on the track, you know.

It's just, it's changed everything for so many people, including myself. I mean I'm not good at this, I teach it, I'm not great at it, that's why I'm always teaching it, because you tend to learn what you're teaching. I need to learn it better myself, yeah.

Something is popping into my mind, I'm thinking sometimes on different committees with different GBC members and a lot of them, they're sannyasis, they're all very senior people and some are, you know, gurus and, you know, very big people in our movement and once in a while, I just kind of like to tell a silly little joke and generally across the board, they like, it's fun, they like to have that little fun and sometimes I'm thinking 90 percent of the people that they associate with think, well, you know, this person doesn't have fun, they're just supposed to be serious and grave, you know, we see the pictures of Prabhupada standing with his dun and he looks so great, but then you read books like, I'm looking at my bookshelf here, Shama Sundar Prabhu's book about chasing the rhinos and Prabhupada was joyous and you said Prabhupada was zestful and joyous and everything was another challenge, another opportunity. I'm rereading Leela Amrita and I've just read the part, I think, when Hayagriva first met him and he's just walking on the street and he meets Prabhupada and you see he was just like this big smile on his face and he was just, he just felt like he's transcendental, like not a care in the world, he's got more cares than any of us can imagine, he's got limited time, he's trying to plant Krishna consciousness in the west, in one sense, tremendous stress and anxiety, no money, no place, but he's completely, you know, joyful, so I think that that whole aspect of it is something that is a part of us, it is a part of what it means to be a human and to be Krishna conscious and it's another aspect of our nature as human beings that we can't minimize and kind of, you know, grit our teeth and try to become Krishna conscious as opposed to, you know, accepting Krishna's mercy and recognizing that we're going to make an advancement by his grace and, I mean, I have to endeavor, but it's his grace, it's going to happen, it's a beautiful purport I just read recently, probably, I've just paraphrased, probably talks about how, therefore, something to this effect, by our hard endeavor and, you know, Krishna gives his grace or something that said, basically, you have to work hard, but it's all up to Krishna, so, you know, that sense of depending on Krishna who, as you said in the beginning, loves us so much and then also needing to reciprocate and not ignoring the fact that, you know, we're people, I mean, I just was on the phone the other day with a sannyasi, very senior devotee, was going to spend time with his sister who's passing away and I was just so relieved to hear that because I was thinking, you know, 20-30 years ago, my godbrothers who were sannyasis would have maybe thought that the appropriate thing is I can't do that, I'm a sannyasi, but you're a human being first, I mean, sannyasi comes and goes and human ultimately too, but human beings are a lot closer than some external social structure that we have that helps us in Krishna consciousness if we do it right and I was really glad to hear that, that, you know, he felt that's part of his duty, you know, really as a Vaishnava first and a sannyasi second and as a human being and a brother to go and be with his sister in her time of need and, of course, try to give her Krishna consciousness to the extent he can, but mostly, as you said, to be with her. So, I just thought, wow, one more giant step for the Christian movement.

I remember when Yaranath Prabhu, who's a professional stand-up comedian and a wonderful devotee in New York, came to the Festival of Inspiration years ago in New Vrindavan, he started coming every year and he was a comedian and he was making jokes about GBC members and gurus and families and book distribution and, you know, all the things that are kind of like don't touch this, too sensitive for us and it was so wonderful, you know, to laugh about how sometimes we're over the top with our book distribution or laugh about something, you know, don't talk to him, Ramchandra Hare Krishna. Well, Prabhu, your dhoti's on fire. Oh, oh, okay, didn't realize, you know, making us like take ourselves, be a little lighter in the way we, and I remember thinking, I stood, that was a, for me, I think North America made a giant step forward for Christian consciousness that we can kind of laugh at ourselves and the fact that we're not so pure and that we are humans, we are flaws, and I think in the same way what you're doing now, Rambhu, it's a giant step forward for ISKCON to be able to talk about ourselves with humility and honesty and really look at how these different needs that maybe haven't been fulfilled and to tell us, hey, it's okay.

I'll just end with this and forgive me, I've been going on too long, but I have a very dear friend of mine who was a temple president in my earliest days, and one of the messages I got from him, and I think I have to give him credit, half the reason I'm still a devotee, he just had this ability to kind of come up to everybody, especially me, I experienced it, but I think a lot of people, and just say, how are you doing? It's okay. Like they say, it's okay, you're okay. It wasn't like, ignore your practice, you don't have to go further, but it's okay, you're going to be all right.

You know, behind the scenes, of course, what he's really telling me, Krishna loves you and Prabhu is there to help you, but just took this pressure off, like, you know, wherever you are, it's okay, take the next step, just let that, and I really feel, I don't think I would have made it without, because there's a lot of other people that were like cracking the whip and putting the pressure on, and you're not this, and you're not this, and if you don't do this, you don't do that. Oh, you don't know that verse? You've been here for three months, and you don't know that verse? Everybody knows that verse, or Prabhu, I saw you, you felt, yeah, shaming, shaming, and those things don't really help us progress. They help, we get stuck, we get stuck, so thank you.

Thank you, Chaitanya Charan, for making these conversations happen in so many ways, with so many devotees, and exploring things that need to be talked about in many aspects. I think you're a real blessing to our movement, and Ram Bharu, in this area, and many others that we haven't really touched upon so long, it's a real blessing, and it's proof that Prabha's movement is moving forward, and that Krishna's mercy is manifesting more and more, so I'm really grateful. Thank you very much for joining.

Just two quick things, so if somebody wants to connect with you, or learn more about you, is there some online source, or how do they? There's a website, we have a website called karunacare.iskan.org, and they can start there. It'll tell a little more about what we do, and how to contact, and all of that. karunacare.iskan.org. Okay, I'll put that in the description also of the YouTube.

So, usually at the end, I try to summarize the talks, but you know, we went over a lot of directions, so I will make an attempt. This is when he shows his mystic powers. You're going to show my inadequacy now? But I don't want to stop.

He goes back and just be honest and humble, Chaitanya Charan, that's the secret. Now you can do that. So, we discussed today on the topic of broadly, it was, you know, discussing about the emotional side of devotees in their lives.

So, you started by how you confronted that, you know, you had never been in a hurting environment, and how to bring out our philosophy's wisdom, or compassion at that place, when you are encountering born children. So, then the point which you said we can bring out at that time is, be allowed unconditionally. And that aspect, we would elaborate in various ways that we talk about how we should love Krishna and how we are not so good at loving Krishna, but we don't talk so much about how much Krishna loves us and that can make us feel disheartened and lonely.

That's one source of why devotees may feel bad. And then also we discussed about at that time, we may get so caught in following rules, like my friend, he said that you seem to be more religious than spiritual, that if we get too caught in following rules, then we are not finding love, we are not feeling love, and we are not offering love to others. And then the rules are actually, in a sense, meant to help us find love.

And the rules are a aid in that, not a, you shouldn't get too caught in that. Otherwise, and you explain how each of these rules is actually meant for finding love. And then within that, we discussed also about the point that when we are, when we have to scrutinize ourselves, at one level, it is uncomfortable.

But another level, we might use the word spiritual, spiritual bypass, that we may not completely be out of touch of our emotions. And we may be going on with our bhakti, but then eventually there'll be a crash. Like we had many senior leaders also having difficulties.

So to understand what is the emotion and to get in touch with that, that also requires some introspection. And when we are in difficulties, like say when you were bedridden, then that was a very deep question. What is it that Krishna Prabhupada is wanting to tell me that I was not ready to hear when I was running around? So through that, if we hear, then we can get some further direction for our lives.

And one reason why devotees may feel unloved, that was a major part of the discussion is that we don't have caring communities. If somebody shares their heart, it's on the Facebook or it's in social media. So we need to test, like you said, what is poking a possum to check how much, check whether we can actually share our hearts.

And then based on that, we gradually learn. And then gradually we open and you have helped create some communities for that purpose. And then you discussed about how as devotees, we encounter a lot of judging people who judge us and often we may judge others.

So we have to find out those few people. And also that whole experience of loving Krishna comes primarily through the community of devotees. And then you said even something as lighthearted as humor for those who are the topmost leaders that actually they like it because they don't have any places to do that.

And people may think that this is not who they are, but it is very profound that we are, we will be sanyasis for a short time, but we are human beings at all time. So we talk about being holistic, but we include the soul, but we leave out the mind and the emotions. And when do emotional issues need attention? Sometimes they may just come and go.

Like if I have a small minor pain, it already goes away. But if it is severe, if it has, there's a pattern in it, and if it is causing some kind of disruption or in other walks of our life, then that is the time when we need to pay attention to it. And for paying attention, say Ramu Mataji, you and we hopefully future devotees like you are also creating resources by which devotees can heal, can be emotionally healed.

And the three distinct levels, physical, emotional and spiritual. So we can't just chant Hare Krishna and wish away emotional problems. In fact, if to dismiss people's pain when they are in pain, it's like adding insult to injury.

So we need to be at least available as human beings, even if we are silent and available, that can help them in healing. And then gradually, we can connect with each other and connect with people at a deeper level. So these are a few points.

I think we spoke a lot more, but I decided to speak a few. You did a good job. You did a very good job.

Oh my gosh, what a memory. Yeah, it's just mystic powers. It's just wonderful.

It was just wonderful. I mean, he's not taking notes or anything. He just remembers.

But one little thing she mentioned, because I know you love this, like you caught the poking the possum little thing. In the very beginning, she used a term that you don't hear too much on there. It's beautiful.

Radical person lism. Yes, that's so true. Yeah.

That was wonderful. You're a radical person. Listen, you know, I'm looking out the window.

And when you say that, then it's like, there's a tree out my window, like that's a person I have to start. Wow, that's a person. That's a person that there's a whole woods full of person standing out there.

And it's not just about me, the end of the woods that those are persons out there. When I was going to school, I was by myself a lot, and I didn't have anybody to talk to. So I would go in the forest and talk to those trees if I needed to reveal my mind, because I knew Krishna was in their heart too.

And they never gave me any criticism. So it was wonderful. Amazing.

You know, one thing struck me when you mentioned that Prabhupada came to remove impersonalism. So often we think of that as defeating the ideology of impersonalism. But it can also apply to like ending impersonal behavior.

But sometimes in the name of defeating impersonalist ideology, we may end up reinforcing impersonal behavior. That's very profound. I think that's a back to Godhead article, Chaitanya Charan Prabhu.

Yes, actually, I don't know, I got so many ideas for articles through this talk. And I hope that we can have this Sangha more in future. And there's so many issues we could discuss.

Thank you both for sparing your time and sharing your wisdom so generously. Thank you, Rambhuri Mataji for coming for the first time. And thank you, Arutama Prabhu for coming again and for facilitating this three-way association.

It's very, very nourishing for me to be in this conversation with the two of you. So thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Rambhuri Mataji. Thank you, Chaitanya Charan Prabhu.