The Monk’s Podcast 63 with Pyari Mohan Prabhu and Brahmatirtha Prabhu – Humor in Krishna consciousness

Podcast

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, Pyari Mohant Prabhu and Brahmadevta Prabhu, welcome to the Monks Podcast. Thank you very much for sparing your time. And Brahmadevta Prabhu, you have been here before.
We had a discussion on intellectual outreach. And, you know, you are, you have been one of the managers of VAST. You have been known very well as the perfect questions answerer or asker for Dushya Prabhupada.
And we’ll come back to you, Pyari Mohant. I’m very proud to be seen as an intellectual. I’m also very proud to be seen with intellectuals.
Yes, yes. But you have created a forum of intellectuals also. So, it’s wonderful.
So, Pyari Mohant Prabhu, you know, I got to meet you when I came to Connecticut. You have been longest serving president in our movement in Connecticut. You really connected with Krishna and connected with the devotees in Connecticut over there.
So, I remember, so today we are going to discuss the topic of humor in Krishna consciousness. And while I had seen it on many occasions, but probably with you, I saw it in the most provocative and most unforgettable way. I remember after a class, I asked you, what did you like about my class? You told me the class was wonderful.
So, then I asked you, what did you like about the class? You said, everything except what you spoke. I second that. So, I have observed this that both of you are hilarious and Brahmaditya Prabhu, you encouraged me to try to bring some humor into my classes.
For quite a few years, I had put as a sticky note on my computer, one of the thoughts which you had given me, that what is the use of a great class if nobody is awake? So, there are devotees who have told me that when I give classes, one devotee told me after a class that your class is like a one hour intellectual workout. So, I have been trying to do that, but I tend to go toward gravity. And I have seen that both of you are able to be both deeply Krishna conscious at the same time, be both naturally and spontaneously humorous.
So, I thought we could discuss on this topic today and thank you very much for joining. So, I would like to start with, maybe you can, whoever among you would like to speak first. Were you naturally humorous? Was that a part of your genes or your family, or was it something you consciously learned? Would you like to start? Piyari, would you like to go? Well, I mean, my family, my father was not very humorous, but my mother was very funny.
I grew up in New York City, in Brooklyn, where everything was, you know, everybody just joked around. I mean, that was the whole atmosphere. It wasn’t very serious or it wasn’t very intellectual.
But, I mean, I don’t know, that’s what I could think of, like maybe from my mother, she was funny. Oh, interesting. And also, it’s an Italian neighborhood and the Italians always joke around.
I just had this Italian man, he built a gate for our altar and I owed him $8,000, $8,000 more. And so, I called him up after he was finished. I said, how much do I owe you? I said, no, I didn’t say how much do I owe you.
I said, how much, yeah, I did say, how much do I owe you? $2,000. And he said, no, $795. And because he also grew up in New York, so he was also joking.
Anyway, I cracked up laughing because I expected him to say, $2,000, no, you owe $8,000. But he went the other way with it and went even lower, jokingly, of course. So, I think it’s just when you grow up, there’s a lot to do with it.
I don’t know. I can’t say. I don’t remember when I was a baby, if I was funny.
Okay, as a baby. So, yeah, please, go ahead. Okay.
Well, I started at a young age, when my uncle came to the nursery after I was born and looked in the window at the babies. And my father pointed out, oh, that’s my new son. And my uncle said, that can’t be.
In other words, you wouldn’t want that one. And so, it all began there. And a lot of humor is self-deprecating.
And I come from a Jewish family. And due to various historical reasons, the Jews have become the expert at self-deprecating humor. And so, I kind of brought up with that.
And as a devotee, I find the self-deprecating humor really takes the edge out. For example, one of my services is ISKCON Resolve, or another service is the Bhaktivedanta Institute. In ISKCON Resolve, people are very emotionally charged.
So, if I can introduce humor at the right point, it takes it down. If I introduce it at the wrong point, it gets people angry. In the BI, I’m dealing with intellectuals, people with brahminical service.
So, everyone wants their space, and it’s not always possible. So, I have to spice things up with humor to get people kind of relaxed. So, I was kind of brought up my whole life with kind of a little bit humor.
And I also grew up with a disability. And that made me really appreciate self-deprecating humor. Because what am I going to do about it? So, I have to, if I just make a little fun of myself, it takes the edge off.
And there’s a lot of different kinds of humor. There’s just one minute, if I may interrupt you. Sorry, before you go into the types of humor, it’s a couple of points.
When you said that, say, because of various historical reasons, and because of your personal, say, disability or whatever. So, is it means, did you consciously notice that you’re humorous and you try to develop the humor? Or was it something which is people told you and you realize, oh, I’m humorous? Was it like that? More like the latter. The secret of good humor is one thing.
One thing. And I’m not going to tell anybody because then people won’t think I’m funny anymore. Okay.
But there is one secret. Okay, I’ll share the secret, but everyone has to cover their ears for this one. The secret of good humor is timing.
It’s all in the timing. For example, I can tell a joke and people will just be laughing and somebody else will tell the joke and people are saying, what’s the punchline? Because it has to do with timing. And this is something that comes more by nature than nurture.
You can learn it and you can improve it. But I’m, a lot of it is nature. You have to have the nature for timing.
And if one has that nature, they can cultivate that and improve that skill a lot. One who talks about that a lot is one of the most famous American comedians is Jerry Seinfeld. And he says, yep, it’s in timing.
And then Prabhupada gave his own definition of humor. Would you like to hear that? That’s interesting. Yeah.
Yeah. This is from Shama Sundar’s book, Chasing the Rhino. So Shama Sundar asked Prabhupada, so what is laughter? And Prabhupada said, it’s a difference between what you expect and what really happens.
Well then, Prabhupada, why do you always make me laugh? And then Prabhupada answers, very self-deprecating, perhaps you expect too much from me. So it’s very funny. The difference between what you expect and what really happens.
And Prabhupada, you always make me laugh. And Prabhupada, very self-deprecating. Well, maybe you’re expecting too much from me.
And therefore, what I say is different than you expect. So humor has a lot to do with cognitive dissonance. I’ll give an example.
I was at a wedding one time. Just one minute. I also read one definition of humor.
It’s quite similar. It said that it’s a sudden resolution of cognitive incongruity. A little more of cognitive incongruity.
It’s a little more hybrid definition, but what Prabhupada said, what you expect and what you get. It’s a very simple example of putting that. When I mediate, one of my goals of mediation is to introduce cognitive dissonance.
Because when people are in a conflict, the amygdala in the brain is all lit up and MRIs prove this. That’s where all the blood flow is. So people are thinking with their emotions, but I want them to think cognitively in a solution-focused way.
So I have to get the blood in the cerebral cortex. So one of the things I’ll do, I have to do it very carefully, is I’ll introduce cognitive dissonance. We find this in the Bible, where King Solomon says, arguing over whose child is it, okay, we’ll cut the child in half.
And actually, that doesn’t fire up the amygdala. It fires up the frontal cortex and people start thinking and then come up with their own solutions. So if I’m mediating and people are arguing over something, I often, if I think I can get away with it, say something absolutely absurd.
Then both opposing sides all of a sudden are acting together saying, that’s crazy. Now they’re acting in unison and they’re thinking. And so Prabhupada would often use cognitive dissonance.
For example, Prabhupada was asked one time, why do you shave your head by a lady reporter? And Prabhupada’s answer was just brilliant. Why do you shave your legs? Okay, it’s completely unexpected. Completely unexpected.
What can they say? And then Prabhupada goes, better have warm legs and cool brain. You know, I’ve heard this, but I never thought of it in this context. This is not just brilliance, but it actually, it is actually conveying, in one sense, you know, it’s like a frivolous question.
Why make it, take it so seriously? It does a lot of things in one go while bringing some humor into it. Yeah, that’s true. So thank you, Prabhu.
So was it sometime at a particular time you realized that you had this capacity for humor or it is just, you just grew up with it because you said it was in the environment and you also learned to be a, like a magician. So was it that magician and being a comedian, both of them, you developed consciously together or it just happened naturally? I mean, I certainly didn’t plan anything. That’s not really my style.
And even like in this interview, I didn’t plan anything. So, because it’s like, I don’t know how do you explain humor when Brahmateertha is able to explain it in a very scientific way. So I can say I have no idea when I noticed I was funny.
I really don’t remember. What was the other part of your question? That’s interesting, because I grew up in an environment where I don’t know when or how, but being humorous was equated with being frivolous. And I used to think that we should be serious about our life.
And so I don’t really even remember when I used to watch movies, like cracking up with laughter while watching movies or even consciously appreciating comedy. And it’s not in India also, there are good comedians. But when I was introduced to Krishna Consciousness, it was all, it’s a serious philosophy.
We are going in the cycle of birth and death and death can come at any moment. So that only reinforced my seriousness further. And when I met devotees who used to crack a lot of jokes, I had a lot of difficulty appreciating them.
I said, Krishna Consciousness, serious business. How can you be so frivolous? But it is only when I associated with some devotees for a long time, then I realized that actually, being humorous and being frivolous are two different things. So one can be serious about one’s spiritual life and still be actively humorous.
So when you were introduced to Krishna Consciousness, did you notice, was it very naturally able to adopt your humor in Krishna Consciousness? Or there was some time of some kind of collision between the Krishna Consciousness and your humor? When I first moved into the temple, and even before I moved into the temple, when I went to the temple every day and did service, I was very serious. I didn’t joke around. I was thinking, I had this idea of spiritual life is very serious and no joking.
And I guess after I was a brahmachari and went on travel in Sankirtan, I started to loosen up a little and my true nature came out for myself. But at the beginning, I don’t remember joking at all about anything. There was no joking.
So, Brahmadev, you can complete some. I was artificially serious, which created extreme mental constipation. Oh, God.
Yeah. So it took a little while to get mental relief that way. And I realized a humor fits in.
And one thing I realized is Prabhupada was so much funnier than most of us thought. Because Prabhupada talks about in the preface to every Bhagavatam, he talks about the verse, though imperfectly composed, honest men will accept what he says. And in the purport, Prabhupada says, I’m speaking in a foreign language, therefore there’ll be imperfections.
When Prabhupada’s saying that, he’s not talking about his English because his vocabulary is more expansive than mine. Rather, he’s talking about the cultural differences. And one of those is some of the jokes he would say, when I listen to Prabhupada now, I see it went over our head.
I’ll tell you one funny one. When my wife first met Prabhupada, after I got back from India, now I’d lived in India, I was a teacher in the village. So the Indian accent when speaking English in no way was an issue for me.
I could understand virtually everything. But Prabhupada had his Bengali accent. And when my wife first met Prabhupada, she was asking a question.
And then Prabhupada started answering and she had that look in her face. Prabhupada understood. She couldn’t understand.
So he turns to me, it’s very funny what he said. And he goes, he was speaking English. And he turns to me and goes, translate.
That’s really funny. And the way Prabhupada said it too. And Prabhupada often had that sparkle in his eyes.
And I’m just guessing. I mean, no way I can know. But I’m guessing it was frustrating for Prabhupada that we couldn’t get his jokes because he joked around a lot.
And sometimes when he joked around, when he did joke around, he would wonder why we didn’t understand it. And I saw when Prabhupada with his God brothers, they’d be laughing hysterically, just joking at the kind of things we would joke. There’s one story I love that Prabhupada told.
One time he was with some of his senior men, including from sannyasis. And he comments, he says, so I understand the best prostitutes are in Thailand. What do you think? And these devotees are mortified.
How would I know? And then Prabhupada says, you might know something about this. And they’re horribly embarrassed because some of them really do know. And they just don’t know what to say.
Finally, one of them lurched out and said, Prabhupada, how do you know that? And Prabhupada says, well, when I used to sit in the barbershop way back, this is what people would talk about. And he would hear it. So Prabhupada would come up with these incongruous statements.
There was one story I like that. Prabhupada often told us to avoid cinema visits. And so a bunch of devotees were on the airplane with Prabhupada.
And they didn’t want to be in maya. They have their hands in their big bag and the big screens on the plane before they had individual places. And devotees are holding their eyes to avoid watching a cinema.
And Prabhupada’s watching the cinema laughing hysterically. And was Charlie Chaplin, who Prabhupada had seen in the 30s. And so finally, they asked Prabhupada, um, Prabhupada, was Charlie Chaplin Krishna conscious? Because Prabhupada’s laughing so hard.
He’s watching it. And Prabhupada said, no, he was not a devotee, but he did understand the essence of illusion and put it nicely in the form of humor. That’s interesting.
So Prabhupada would laugh at these things. Prabhupada also said something like Charlie Chaplin is manifesting Krishna’s sense of humor. I think Prabhupada quoted something in 10 chapters of the Bhagavad Gita where everything attractive manifests the spark of Krishna’s splendor.
Yeah. Yeah. Look at Krishna’s friend.
I’m just having a brain blown from him. Yes. Yes.
Who is always making Krishna laugh. So, um, um, just laughing, laughing at ourselves, laughing at the material world in a way that’s not cruel. Hmm.
For example, there can be racial jokes that are very cruel and there can be ethnic talking that is very funny. Jews are particularly good about self-deprecating ethnic humor. And I make jokes like I was at an Indian wedding and there were 1500 people there because the wedding was being put on by, um, the president of the Indian hotel owners of America, which means, and I looked at the wedding list of the 1500 people there, 1498 were named Patel.
And we had a big convention center and I’m like the family priest. So I was invited to, you know, give some blessings for the bride and groom. So I get up on the stage and I want to get everyone’s attention because, you know, at Indian weddings, no one pays attention.
I’m supposed to say something important. So I begin with very seriously, everyone, I’ve been given this important announcement. I’m looking at a pretend piece of paper in my hand.
Everyone, please listen. It’s a very, very important announcement I have to make. So I get a little attention and I go, Mr. Patel, you left your car lights on.
And everybody’s a Patel. Everyone’s a Patel. So then I got their attention.
So we can use humor to get people’s attention, to get them to listen. And that’s what Prabhupada did. Though sometimes the humor would just go over our heads.
Yeah. By the way, so you recommended that we have this podcast with three of us. So did you, when you and Paripramo met, did you first bond because of the mutual humor? Paripramo, how was, how did that happen? You remember by any chance? Well, I remember I was a brahmachari in Houston and he was a householder and he’d come in the evening and we’d, after the Sunday program, do you remember brahmacharita? What did we do after the Sunday program? And everybody left.
Remind me. We put up a net in the, I think a third or fourth floor in a big room and we played volleyball. Oh yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. We had all kinds of good times.
And then, you know, we just have, we used to have in the Houston temple, we were near the old Rosalie street temple. It was in an unusual neighborhood and we’d have a lot of kind of street bums would come because they get a free meal. And then we had a lot of respectable Indians.
This was the first temple in which the Indian community started coming in mass to the temple. And, and so we had to pack them in the temple and these people were really quite smelly. So I, when they would come, I’d say, well, we have a ritual.
We’d call them the stinky. So I say, we have a ritual you, you must do before you go in and they say, okay, whatever. So I say, stand like this and turn around.
And then I’d spray him with a can of Lysol from head to toe, disinfected spray. And then there were two shoe racks, one in front of the temple and one across the street by the park. So I tell them that to put their shoes over there.
And it was, I mean, the devotees found this hysterical and the smellies didn’t know what was going on. And they were fine. So everyone wins.
Devotees got to laugh and the smellies got to go in the temple and nobody. And then I did a mystical thing in the temple when I first was offering. So, I mean, what was the humor here? So disinfectant put some took away their smelliness.
Yes, they went away and they came back. So that disinfectant smell also went away by that time. No, but they had to disinfect and smell, which was a lot better than our armpit smell.
Um, okay. But then why ask them to put the shoes away? Or that is just a second rule? That’s not no, no. And then we had them put the shoes across the street because their shoes were so smelly.
Oh, okay. That that that it would make the whole entrance way the temple smell like a septic tank. So, I mean, to the devotees, this was very funny to the people coming.
They didn’t care. And to me, it made everything smell better. So good humor.
Everyone wins. No one gets hurt if somebody gets hurt in the humor other than ourselves. And that’s usually not good humor.
That can be, for example, sarcasm can be very biting, but it might not be very good humor. And Prabhupada said this at one point where Prabhupada was. There was a radio show host who was a real nasty guy, very nasty guy, Joe Pine was his name, Peory might remember him.
And he was famous, infamous for being sarcastic and really getting underneath his guest’s skin. And Prabhupada was advised, don’t appear on that show. And Prabhupada said, no, I get to talk about the holy name.
And so at one point he said, according to your cosmology, you say the world is flat. Now, what they were talking about is in the Bhagavatam, the plane of the ecliptic is all flat. And Prabhupada said many times, the earth is a globe.
But many devotees with flat head thinks the earth is flat. With a flat head or a fat head? Flat, flat head, a fat, not fat, flat. They have a flat head, I think.
Fat head is also. Exactly. Fat head means somebody full of themselves.
So he said, you say the world is flat. And Prabhupada replied, instead of getting into, he said, everywhere I walk it is. And then Prabhupada said, the host says, what would happen if everyone in the world became Krishna conscious? Meaning, you know, who would do the economic development? Who would do these things? And Prabhupada said, don’t worry, there will always be fools like you who don’t.
And then on the way back, and after that, the guy was so shut down, and this guy never was shut down, that he let Prabhupada speak for 10 minutes uninterrupted. Because Prabhupada could speak very biting, very funny. In this case, this was a loud mouth, so he had to put him down.
But Prabhupada said on the way back to the temple, to the devotees, I can speak like this, but you cannot. It is a special dispensation for old men and little children. They can go anywhere and say anything.
So we have to be cautious to use the humor that’s appropriate for the circumstances, but does not, we can’t imitate Prabhupada. Yeah, we’re all dead now. So you have a license.
Well, you know, till now, our discussion has been hilarious. So let us make it a little more serious now. No way.
Okay. No, my saying is, is all seriousness aside. Okay.
So I will ask you a I’ll ask you a serious question about humor now. So we’ll have humor. Okay, so no, I envision this like a circle.
The circle is the message of Krishna consciousness that we want to share with others. Now, some humor can act, it’s like at the center of that message. And it just conveys that message more forcefully.
Some humor is at the periphery of the message, but it softens so that the message can be received. And some humor is outside the periphery entirely. So where that humor in no way aids the message.
And at the end of the talk, all that people remember is the joke. And they don’t remember any of the message at all. So I put it as, so humor that enhances the message, humor that softens the message and humor that distracts from the message.
So now I have seen there are some devotees who are very good at humor, but I have talked with them personally also that when they give a class and at the end of the class, they ask devotees, what did you like? Devotees come and say, you like a wonderful class. And yeah, what do you like? They said the jokes were wonderful. Now for a speaker also who is able to share Krishna conscious wisdom, this is disappointing.
So what do you think about these three categories and what caution needs to be taken for this purpose when sharing humor? Any thoughts on this? Paripra, would you like to start? Well, if afterwards someone came up to me and told me the jokes, I would be encouraged. Really? But then are your jokes always Krishna conscious? Can you give an example? I hope not. Can you give an example of a joke that if people remembered, you would feel encouraged? Have you had any recent experience like that? I don’t have people talk and I don’t talk to people how my class was afterwards.
I just finish and it’s over and go on with the next thing. You know, I just try my best and that’s it. But I do remember once actually where I gave a class in Russia at a festival.
Like 7,000 devotees went to this festival. And I didn’t want to give class because I’m not one to really, you know, be enthusiastic about giving classes. But it’s named Chaitanya.
There’s a sanyasi. I’m not positive. He’s from England, I think.
Anyway, he was there and he said something that really encouraged me. So I decided I’ll give a class. Then when I read the verse and stuff, I thought of a magic trick that would really fit very well.
It’s about how you’re not the body. You know, there’s so many designations. It was about designations.
So I had three ropes, all different sizes. And I gave the class and at the end of the class, I just wanted to use some physical things to help people to remember, you know, these things. Because sometimes when you’re giving class, if you have like either a slideshow, you have something else besides just speaking, it registers more.
So I have these three ropes and I explain that this is the designation. Some people are rich and I show the long rope. Some people are poor.
I show the short rope and most of us are like, you know, average income. Some people are beautiful. I show the long rope.
Some people are not very attractive. I show the short rope and most of us are just average looking. Some people are men.
Some people are women. And then I have another rope and I say some people are whatever. And it took a while to get that one.
And anyway, so I said, but actually we’re none of these. And I put the three ropes in my hand and I just got to bring them up. And then they all become the same length.
So actually we’re all one ten thousand the tip of the hair in size. And I take the one rope, two ropes, three ropes and show that they’re all the same. So then people are amazed.
And then I put the ropes where, anyway, there’s six tops because there’s three ropes. And then I say and I put them up in my hand and I say, but actually some of us in the spiritual world are gopies. And I take out the long rope.
Some of us are parents. I take out the medium rope and some of us are coward boys. And I take out the small rope.
So they’re all different sizes. Then I also threw the ropes out into the audience because I knew they’re going to think they’re trick ropes and they’re not trick ropes. It’s like real magic.
But what I realized after that is nobody remembered anything from my class. All they thought about was the magic trick I just did. So that was kind of like really took away from whatever it was, even though what I said during the magic trick was Krishna conscious.
But I just think afterwards, like it really didn’t help at all the class. It just took away from it. So that’s an instance.
But most of the time, it does keep people awake. You say something funny in class, people become more sharp and listening more, especially when everyone laughs and the person wasn’t listening. And then they want to know, what do you say? What do you say? Yeah, that’s true.
You know, I was just thinking about these three categories just to continue this. You know, I think in a class of Rampad Maharaj in Chicago, he asked about… Oh, no, no, no, in Houston. That was, no, Dallas.
It was in Dallas. It was a temple president’s meeting. That was really nice.
It was a temple president’s meeting and Ramapadaswamy gave class. And then after class, someone asked a question that wasn’t even related to the class. But they asked, why is it when Lord Ramachandra came that the first demon he killed was a woman? And why is it when Krishna came, the first demon he killed was a woman? Why is that? So Ramapadaswamy, there’s all temple presidents there.
So many people he could pick. Sannyasis, there are GBCs. And he said, Priyari, do you know? And I said, ladies first.
And then everybody cracked up and that was the end of the class. So this, you could, this type of, this is similar to what Prabhupada did when he said better to have, say, cool heads than cold legs. So this is like a, almost like a, either you can call it softens.
It softens the Krishna conscious message. Or you could say it even dodges the issue. And sometimes dodging the issue is what is best required in that forum.
We don’t want to get into technicalities. So, so you have any thoughts on humor and conveying a Krishna conscious message, the category that I talked about on that or any, any related thing? Sure. A few different thoughts.
One, sometimes I’m asked very surcharge political questions. Well, do you think we ought to do this or we ought to do that? And, and I realized I don’t want to get into it. So it might be some political issue with ISKCON.
It could be over types of initiation or some surcharge issue. So they’ll ask me an either or question. And of course, you know, the obvious answer is yes.
What do you mean? That diffuses. Somebody will say, well, do you think we should do it this way or that way at the end of a class? Some political question that may, I don’t want to get involved with. So they’ll ask an either or question.
So I simply answer yes, which is a non-answer to the question. And then everyone starts chuckling. And then I go on to the next question because I want, I want to avoid it.
They teach martial arts that judo is more effective than karate. Because in judo, you use the weight of the person coming after you to knock them down. In karate, you have to use your own strength.
So at times like this, we can use humor as judo. Oh, okay. Yeah.
To answer the second part, too much humor. I mean, I could do a standup comedian routine. People will remember that class as one of their favorite classes, but they’re not going to learn anything.
I could also give a very boring philosophical class, and they’ll learn even less. So it’s a matter of proper balance. Because the purpose of the humor is not to make people think I’m funny.
It’s to make them interested. I mean, Prabhupada, for example, would often tell Gopal Bhan stories. At one time, my favorite one here, everyone knows this one, where one day the king says, Gopal, what’s the difference between you and an ass? And he immediately measures the distance from the king.
And he says, sir, it is three feet. The difference is three feet. So Prabhupada would tell these stories like this, the Gopal Bhan stories, because even a king and even Krishna liked a court gesture, someone that can make them laugh.
But it has to be done in the proper ways. I was giving a very heavy class in Vrindavan, one that had a lot of reaction after the class. And the topic was loneliness as devotees.
Because as devotees, we get a lot of cookie cutter. We have to look like this, talk like this, walk like this. And people’s individuality gets suppressed.
And in the beginning, that’s necessary to break us out of the bodily concept. But as time goes on, it becomes quite a burden. And so it was a heavy class.
People really, I think it went well. But at the same time, it was so heavy, I broke it up with some like Gopal Bhan type stories. And people, if it’s done in the proper balance, people will listen better.
I gave one class at Krishna house last year. One young boy who had joined the temple, living there a few months. And after the class, he came up to me and he said, I really, really liked your class.
I said, really, what did you get out of it? And he gave me the biggest compliment I have ever heard after anyone’s Bhagavatam class. It was a compliment that’s so rare, we may never get it in our lifetime. And the compliment was, I didn’t fall asleep once.
Oh, God, you’re getting better. So we see the really good class givers, they’ll talk philosophy, they’ll have some humor, and they’ll tell stories. Now, some people, let’s take Aradhana Swami, for example.
He is one of the best storytellers I’ve ever heard in my life. So he interlaces his class with a lot of stories, some personal, some not. But he’s just such a good storyteller that it keeps us focused.
And then he can circle back to philosophical points. So Aradhana Swami, sometimes there’s things funny and self-deprecating humor, it might be in there. But his main approach is to tell stories and capture us.
And he can go give a class for three hours and no one falls asleep. And it’s fascinating. Now, other people will give a class for three minutes and I’m sleeping.
Once I was at a class in Dallas, I won’t mention names. But one leading devotee was giving the class and he has a monotone voice. And I’m standing, and I’m watching various sannyasis or dandas falling over and then falling over as he speaks in his monotone.
And then he said at one point, and Krishna is a supreme personality. And then he paused. I said, what’s going to come next is going to be some incredible wisdom.
And finally, I realized he had also fallen asleep at his own class. Oh, God. Amazing.
Yeah, so if somebody has a sense of humor, introduce that. So he’s a good storyteller, introduce that. So we have to find every one of us, without any doubt, has the skill to present.
And then we can improve with to see what our strengths are and use that to present. And that’s a skill. It takes some years of cultivation.
Always after I give a class, find somebody I know and trust and said, tell me something I can do to improve my class. First of all, people will say, oh, that was very good. Okay, but now tell me something I can do to improve it.
Because I always ask that question, because there always is something I can do to improve it. And, you know, sometimes people have said that was too much joking, you know, so I have to tone it down. And it depends on my consciousness.
Sometimes I really have it together for class. And sometimes I was wondering, was I really there or not at the class I was giving? Oh, At least you didn’t fall asleep. Not yet.
Yeah, that really happened. That’s no exaggeration. So, you know, so, yeah, I also have this experience.
One time I was doing a recording for a class. And while doing a video recording, the camera for the recording person fell asleep. And I continued speaking.
And then I continued speaking. And then I fell asleep. And then somehow before that, the recording person was a devotee.
So he had been asking me about, you know, which ashram should he join? Should he become a brahmachari or should he become a grahastha? So I don’t know what happened. I nodded off and I woke up. And suddenly the first sentence that I spoke is, you should get married.
And then he woke up suddenly. And then the funniest part was that actually he forgot to delete it before uploading the recording. That’s even better.
You know what we call devotees like that in America? We call them creamsicles. You know what a creamsicle is? It’s a very popular ice cream. It’s ice cream covered by orange ice.
So we say it’s orange on the outside and white on the inside. So a devotee who’s wondering, a brahmachari who’s wondering if he should get married is usually thinking that he ought to be married. So we call them creamsicles, orange on the outside and white on the inside.
Creamsicle. That’s clever. I heard something similar about, say, Indians in America are called as ABCDs.
It’s American born confused deshis. Deshi is a local word for Indian. So ABCDs.
So it is said about them that they are like coconuts. They are brown on the outside but white on the inside. Because they don’t have creamsicles in India.
And I talked to one American devotee’s son who was brought up his first 20 years in Vrindavan. And so I said, how do you relate to this? And he said, I’m white on the outside and brown on the inside. Okay, that’s interesting.
Yeah, inside out coconut. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, I tell you one of the funniest things I do is when I’m with the second generation Indian kids, you know, devotee families for the most part.
And their parents were born in India and they were born in America. The thing they have doing that’s most fun is imitating their parents. Because of American accents.
So they put on the heavy Indian accent and act like their parents. And the parents don’t mind. But it’s just when we take absurd situations and we kind of make nice fun of it.
It allows us to look at it with a more with a lighter heart. One problem is devotees. We often are too serious about things that we don’t need to be serious about.
That’s going to be an example. Sure, we may get very serious about. Oh, I knew one devotee.
Who, 1973, he went to India for two months and came back American guy with a heavy Bengali accent. Because he thought if Prabhupada spoke Bengali, we should all speak with a Bengali accent, even speaking English. So it was kind of like, let me he outgrew that eventually.
But we had this imitation instead of following. So sometimes we can be very, in Rupa Goswami says, in the Bhakti Sindhu, that we have to distinguish between the details of devotional service and the principles. So the principles are, like it says in the Bible, love the Lord with all thy heart, with all thy might.
That’s the principle that those are the principles of devotional service. Then there’s a detail of what we’re particularly wearing and what particular rituals we do. And it varies circumstantially, for example, what we eat.
What I’m used to eating is very different than what somebody from Malaysia might be used to eating. And if I ate what they’re used to eating, I have a sensitive stomach. I probably couldn’t do very well.
So those are details of devotional service. But some people think, oh, the details can be more important than the principles. And that results in a very judgmental society.
And the one thing people want is us not to judge other people. When I met Prabhupada, one thing that really impressed me is Prabhupada didn’t judge me. Oh, I embarrassingly told him about my weaknesses and he just started laughing.
He didn’t take it very seriously. It wasn’t, oh, you’re bad, you’re bad. Because the principle was that I was trying to learn something about Krishna.
And the detail was I wasn’t very good at following. So looking at the principles is more important than the details. And successful places have that whole attitude.
And unsuccessful temples have the attitude that details count a lot. They count for something. I mean, the prajari has to do all the details.
I mean, it counts. And when we find the details count more than the principles, I notice in those places there is virtually no sense of humor whatsoever. And when there’s no sense of humor whatsoever, people are so hung up on details, they’re actually missing the forest for the trees.
So one of the symptoms of people who are spiritually advanced is they’re lighthearted. That’s not a symptom that I’m making up. It’s a symptom from Shastra.
They’re jolly. They’re happy. Prabhupada was very, very happy.
Even when Prabhupada would get angry at the craziest things people did, it would only last for a moment. Oh, okay. That’s true.
So when you talk about not taking, there are some things just seriously need to take seriously. But there are some things if we take it very seriously, then it can itself become a source of absurdity, actually. And so sometimes seeing things from that distance perspective, like I read at one time that it seems among the Christians in the classic, in the pre-enlightenment time, there was a debate over something like how many angels can dance on the top of a pinhead or something like that.
And there are books written on that topic. And there are also, there are some traditions where they had a, in the temple they had an elephant and which kind of tilak the elephant should be put on. Having that loyal elephant of the deities should have that.
And there was a fight for that. And the two groups went to the Indian Supreme Court. And by the time the case came to the Supreme Court, the elephant had already died.
So, I mean, this is very much possible in that some small things can be made very big. So we could, so what you’re saying is that pointing out the absurdity of making small things big is also a way of bringing humor. Hmm.
I think I remember you would like to tell that you met about Protestants and you know that there was a nun, you told me that. Yeah, there was a nun, a nunnery in Ireland and the young Matilda, 10 year old Matilda, the mother superior said, Matilda, what would you like to be when you grow up? And she goes, a prostitute. And she goes, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, oh my God, what did you say? And she goes, I want sister to be a prostitute when I grow up.
She said, oh, thank God, I thought you had said Protestant. Yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah, I know that’s one.
I told that in Bhagavatam class, because it does talk, when the verse relates to something about religious fanaticism, that kind of brings up that point. We’ll have more insight on this, I’m sure. Fiore, what do you think about this? What about this? You know, about being too serious.
Oh, yeah. And the danger of that. Yeah, I have actually, I got something from an old Back to Godhead magazine.
It’s, I guess, from March of 92, when the new Back to Godhead, I guess, came out. And someone, you know, they have things people write in, and they write down what the person that said, and then they give an answer. And he says, I enjoyed your Back to Godhead, but I believe it’s greatly lacking in one area, humor.
And he just gets into this a little bit. He’s a devotee, I guess, from Akron, not initiated, but Akron, Ohio, but wanted us to present it seriously. Still, I think you are right, that we can sometimes afford to be a little humorous.
And he talks about Bhagavad Gita, the devotee is joyful, is jolly, is jolly. So that joyful attitude should reflect in Back to Godhead. And sometimes we may have some amusing anecdotes.
We will try to keep an eye out for ways to introduce humor in BTG, while still keeping our overall sober tone. So it’s, you know, even people are noticing there’s no humor in it. It’s not normal.
It’s like, it has to be humor, there’s humor in everything. I mean, you even see these presidents, presidential debates and stuff. They hate each other, but they put in some humor, you know.
You know, it makes it a little more interesting. Without humor, it’s boring. You know, most things are, you have to have some humor.
Yeah. There’s a danger of being too serious. And the danger is, we’ll take ourselves too seriously.
And if we take ourselves too seriously, we become self-righteous. And if you want to be bored, stay with self-righteous people. For example, we have a certain president in America, who’s about, when he speaks, about as boring as anyone can get.
Because he’s very self-righteous, very, very narcissistic, and very, very boring. Yeah, I think, you know, this is the opposite of what you said, that if it’s self-deprecating, it becomes humorous. If it’s self-congratulatory, then it is not at all humorous.
It becomes unappealing. Very much so. Yeah.
So now, as devotees, you know, when they’re self-deprecating, self-deprecating humor is, I feel, much safer than criticizing particular groups of people or like that. So are there any examples of how self-deprecating humor could be done? I’ll give, there was a recent example in America I like. There’s a Senator Duckworth, who was a pilot in Iraq, and she lost her legs when a shell hit her helicopter.
So she’s in a wheelchair, and she’s a senator, and a very patriotic, good person. And she was recently criticized by our president, because she was oppositional to him, as being non-patriotic. So how did she respond? It was brilliant.
She said, I would like him, I would like our president to walk a mile in my shoes. Of course, she has no shoes. She has no legs.
Okay. Now, that is good humor. That’s so true.
That was very, very sharp. There’s a danger, you know, danger of being too serious and danger of not being serious enough. It’s very easy, easy to be frivolous.
When Prabhupada walked by a famous story, an ashram in Denver, and he heard devotees gossiping about one sannyasi who was having some trouble. Prabhupada was very, very upset, because he didn’t want gossip. So they were laughing at this person’s expense in a gossip way.
So that’s very, very dangerous humor. That’s not even funny. So that’s a dangerous kind of humor.
And it’s very easy to be frivolous and grumy kata. At the same time, it’s very easy to be artificially serious. Now, we never have to worry about that with Priyari.
So we’re safe here. Okay. Well, I was in the beginning.
Yeah, yeah. But you get over it after a while. Yeah, it’s enough of that.
Yeah. Like, for example, I was asked to give a class recently to the 25 to 40 year old youth. And they wanted me to speak about the four regular principles.
So I said, okay, I’ll give a title that will get some good attendance. So my title was four regular principles, no meat, fish or eggs, and what the hell is the other one? Everyone came. We had a good philosophical talk.
Oh, God. So that’s good. So basically, not, you know, there are two, I would like to go back to earlier to the point which you mentioned, that, yeah, that, you know, everybody has different talents, like some devotees can speak kata very nicely.
So we all have to find our talents. So how much should, as devotees, we try to develop humor? Especially when I spend time with Pyare Prabhu, he brings out the haseras within me. But as soon as I get separated from him, I lose it.
And then once I tried to do it consciously, and he told me that, you know, don’t try to do it consciously because it doesn’t work. Just focus on your strengths. So, you know, when does it? So one is that it distracts the audience from the message.
That is one danger which we discussed. We need a balance. But the other is it may distract the speaker itself.
The speaker might become, you could say, not natural to oneself or not authentic because of trying to develop humor. So how much should one try for that? Or one shouldn’t try at all? Or what are your thoughts on this? Well, there’s a big danger that if you try too hard, you could end up Jewish next life. Oh, God.
Well, let Pyare answer. Well, I don’t think you should try. It’s like you… I mean, I don’t… I kind of just see what’s natural, you know? I just don’t think it should be artificial.
And like Brahmati Yatha said, you know, the timing has to be exactly right, you know? And then it’s funny. So if you’re not really good with the timing, it’s not going to come out funny. So I don’t… I mean, everybody’s different.
Everyone has different abilities. You know, Krishna says, I’m the ability of man. So if you have the ability or you’re humorous and you can use it in Krishna’s service, if you’re not so humorous, but you can appreciate humor, then that’s also good.
If you’re not so humorous and you can’t appreciate humor, I don’t know where you stand in life. You’re kind of like a robot, but at least they appreciate it. Anyway, I don’t see how trying to… I mean, to be a little conscious of it, maybe I can do something to implement it, you know, to try to be funnier.
But it seems artificial to me, to make a conscious effort of how to be funny. To me, it’s almost like it’s there or it’s not. And you just accept it.
I got other abilities. You know, like a spiritual scientist, you can use that. I’m sure that’s more pleasing than saying a Jewish joke.
So are there… So, you know, I know… You have different… Yeah, Ramatir Thakur, thank you. Well, we have different abilities and then if you got it, use it. Yeah, it’s true.
I think Piari put it perfect. I mean, he said it perfectly well. And that’s why I emphasize, we get feedback.
What can I do to improve my classes? Now, if somebody says, well, in order to improve your classes, I want you to quote a lot more Shastra. They’re not gonna get that. You know, quote a bunch of Sanskrit verses.
Well, after three, I start running out of material. So, you know, that’s not me. That’s someone else.
And so we… There’s a song I played for some devotees in Vrindavan. These are Indian devotees who know nothing about the West. And it might be an odd song, but I was giving a series of classes on the loneliness of being a devotee that it was a serious issue in that part of India where I was.
And it’s… And the song I played was one of my parents’ favorite songs. And the song, you’ll know this Piari, Sammy Davis Jr. He was a very unusual personality. He was African-American, had one eye and was black and Jewish.
He was a very, very unusual personality with this great voice. And he sang a song, I gotta be me. Now we think as devotees, this is very counterintuitive to our own ego.
No, we just want to be a servant. But I played this for a few devotees who knew nothing about anything Western. And I had it on my iPhone.
And I said, yeah, that’s the problem. Because this is what Krishna’s saying in the Gita. He’s telling Arjuna, beating him up.
You’re not this body. You’re not this. You’re a fool, blah, blah, blah.
Then he spends the whole rest of the Gita trying to reconnect him to this body as a warrior to use in service of Krishna. So we can very easily make the pendulum swing too far on we’re not this body. And we can very easily make the pendulum swing too far that I have to be an individual.
And how to balance this properly so we have our own individual nature to use in Krishna’s service. Borejan Prabhu puts it brilliantly. He says, in management in ISKCON, we have a reversal that doesn’t work very well.
And a reversal is this. Management should be saying, what is your propensity? What is it your propensity? And devotees should be saying, I’ll do anything for Krishna. Instead, we have devotees crying out.
The ordinary devotee, I want to do my propensity. And management’s saying, no, you do anything for Krishna that’s needed. So we kind of reverse these things and how it should be.
So it’s a matter of developing our own propensity, our own style. And that takes us back to humor. And that wasn’t very funny what I just said.
So you can erase this part. I’d like to say something that can probably be erased also. But when I was a kid, there was a joke.
What is it? Oh, God. So you’ll probably erase this. But Piyari and I, both, our father’s favorite joke was the same.
And we just discovered this. So I’ll tell you the joke. But you’ll probably have to erase it.
But it has a good humor to it. It has some nice humor. It’s a place it fits in.
So there’s this teenage boy who had a wooden eye. And he was very sensitive about it. Those days, you lost an eyeball.
They replaced it with a wooden eyeball. But no one could tell. You couldn’t tell looking at it.
It was really perfect. But he was still sensitive. So he’s at a dance.
And he’s afraid to ask anybody to dance. And he sees this real fat girl in the corner who no one will ask to dance. So he says, oh, maybe she’ll dance with me.
So he walks up to her. And he says to her, would you dance with me? And she goes, would I? Would I? And he goes, oh, God. So that’s another kind of humor where we do play on words.
And play on words is a very popular humor. Now, in that regard, I’ve talked to Rita Anonymous about this, who’s an expert in Sanskrit. And he points out to me in the Bhagavatam, just like that joke I told you.
I can’t give you an example off the top of my head. But there are many examples of the sages in the Bhagavatam using humor that doesn’t work in English, but works in Sanskrit, just like that wood eye joke, where they take a word with a double entendre. And he points out to me in the verses.
And it’s hilarious. When you know it. I mean, these sages were having a good time when they’re speaking.
And they were putting jokes and puns right in these serious Sanskrit verses. And he points it out. And when he explains what the Sanskrit meetings are, it’s hilarious.
But we’re not going to pick up on it because we don’t know Sanskrit. It’s a different language. So even these sages in the Bhagavatam, they were not nearly as serious as we think they are.
They had a good sense of humor. That’s fascinating. Are there any examples of how the Sanskrit was humorous? Or it’s too technical? Yeah, there is a devotion about, I forget the Sanskrit word, but it says that Radharani is asking Krishna, where did you spend your night? And he separated the words differently.
And it says, the night has kidnapped you. And he said, how can I be kidnapped by night? I mean, before that, in the same section of it is qualities of Krishna. It also gives another example of Radha and Krishna.
And she’d say something. And Prabhupada would say the Sanskrit. But if you divided the same exact words, but if you divide it differently, it has a different meaning.
So that’s definitely in the nectar of devotion. I could find it. Yeah, I remember that.
That’s beautiful play of words. Yeah. And generally, these go over our head.
We miss these because we don’t know Sanskrit very well. You really have to know Sanskrit well to get the double entendres. Actually, at the end of that, Prabhupada says, and in this way, Krishna gladdened Radharani, but said gladdened the most, gladdened the favorite of the devotees of the gopis.
This way, he gladdened her. So by taking these words and changing them around, he made her happy. He didn’t answer her questions.
She asked two questions or three questions. And he just changed them all around. And it gladdened her.
So Krishna’s expert. He’s doing it. So why can’t we? Because we can’t do everything Krishna does.
But in this case, it’s nice and humorous. Krishna was definitely humorous so many times. And play of words is a very common humor in the Bhagavatam.
And we find in the writings of the Goswamis, we’ll see in the intimate pastimes, a lot of plays of words. Like the would I one, which works in English, but not in Sanskrit. So similarly, these work in Sanskrit, but not in English.
Yeah. You know, I thought that it’s still, it’s like to some extent, I am good at words. And I can play at words to bring about some memorable message.
But it’s one thing to phrase something in a memorable way. It’s another to phrase something in a humorous way. And it seems that even with wordplay, it can be done in different ways.
And the ability to word of wordplay is not the same as ability of humor. They’re two different things, but they overlap at some places. You’re the master of pithy phrases.
And one of the reasons myself and others like your classes so much, you come up with these easy to remember short phrases that are extremely effective. That’s your talent. And if that’s your talent, that’s what you run with.
I’m not so good at that. I’m not going to come up with pithy phrases that people remember. But you have a book you publish of pithy phrases.
And I keep it on my reading stack and sometimes look at it and try to, okay, I’ll remember this one. This is a good one to use. Because that is your talent.
You’re excellent at words. It’s not that you have to artificially add humor, but it comes up naturally. You can do it.
Yeah, true. You said you don’t do that, but you did it with the four regulated principles. No meat, fish and eggs.
And what was the fourth one? What was the other one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What the hell is the other one? Yeah. You got inspired by him.
That is superb. Yeah. And then it was a very serious discussion about them.
They had very serious, appropriate discussion. But it got people’s attention to come. It’s just like in the early days when they had the, in Haight-Ashbury, their first big event, they called it How to Stay High Forever.
Because if it was on drugs, it was a play on words, high on the mantra. So the main thing is to get people to be a little interested. It’s not by logic and reason that people become devotees.
It’s by the higher taste. And then they look back and they see all of this is logical and reasonable. So we have to attract people to try it out.
That’s the secret. That’s true. So ultimately, we need to get people interested in Krishna’s message and whatever works for us, each of us will do that.
Yes. So just one or two last questions. And then we could conclude if you have any concluding words.
So are there, say, some examples of humor that we would say is absolute no-no? Like you gave an example of making fun of some devotee who is going through some personal crisis. Hold on a second. You just coughed.
Okay. I’m wiping off my screen. Okay.
It’s COVID time. That’s true. It’s not a conspiracy theory to think that COVID can go through the internet also.
I’ve seen that theory. They really say that? Well, yes, they say all kinds of crazy things. Just as an aside, we’re beginning a newsletter now for the Bhaktivedanta Institute.
And I think the column that may end up being the most popular is going to be called Ask the Nerd. And we’re going to entertain questions like that. Is it going to be A-S-K or A-S-S? Ah, A-S-K.
I like that. That’s a good play of words. So, okay.
So are there some kinds of humor which you would say are unacceptable, which should be avoided at all costs? So one example you gave is, as I said, making jokes of making fun of devotees who are facing problems. Like recently it happened that there was one devotee, very good speaker, but he made some caricatures of certain classes of people. Say there’s tension between India and China.
And then he made some caricature of some Chinese people and some other people. And it really came off as he had a good heart. And he has used good classes also, but it came off as quite inflammatory for some people.
And it just backfired. So sometimes things can just go too far. Do you have any boundaries that we need to keep in mind? Any thoughts on this? Yari, what do you think? Well, I think if something’s like something you can… If it’s not like something’s very serious, somebody has some big problem and you’re making fun of it, that’s certainly wrong.
But when it’s like, I don’t know, it seems like when you exaggerate it so much, it becomes funny when you make it. Like if you have a little problem and you just exaggerate it, then it can be funny. It depends on what it is.
But I think you got to be careful and not… You have to know your audience and you have to not say anything that’s going to really offend anyone. Yeah, that is one danger that there’s much comedy that is getting cancelled now because of political correctness. And yeah, so yes, Ramadhir Thaparo, anything? If the humour is hurtful and puts people deeper in the bodily concept of life, it’s not very helpful.
So, I mean, there are wonderful Chinese devotees. And like take our president in America. He always refers to the coronavirus as a Chinese virus for political purposes because it began there.
But what good is that? The rest of the world doesn’t call it that, but he makes a political point. And we’ve seen Chinamen attacked in America just for being Chinese. And they lived here their whole life.
They were born here. So that kind of, that’s not funny what he’s doing. It’s nasty.
And if we’re going to be hurtful, that doesn’t help. So that’s why humour is often self-deprecating, not deprecating others. Now, sometimes we’ll, you know, Prabhupada gave the example when he was being challenged by a woman reporter, why do you shave your head? And he goes, why do you shave your legs? That’s fair.
It’s funny, but it’s a fair question. And it’s not horribly insulting, but to insult. And we have to also speak according to the time, place and circumstance.
So if we’re in, nowadays people are more sensitive to what’s being saying. And there were jokes Prabhupada said about certain minorities, especially in the early Bhagavatam. He would make these comments that at the time were not hurtful.
And even comedians of that ethnicity would talk, would say the same thing. But then times have changed, circumstances have changed, and now it doesn’t work anymore. And when Prabhupada was pointed out early on that some of his comments don’t work anymore, Prabhupada told his editor, oh, fix that.
Because they can be humour changes over time. So as devotees, our business isn’t to be humorous for the sake of humorous or to be controversial for the sake of controversy. Our business is to be ladies and gentlemen.
So to be ladies and gentlemen, we have to be very sensitive to our audience. And our audience is not just what I want them to be, it’s who they are. So we have to be very careful.
When I speak, due to COVID, it’s a weird thing. But nowadays I hear and give more classes I ever did in my life. And it’s the silver lining of COVID there’s so much more hearing and speaking.
So a lot of my audiences are overseas. So I have to be… First, it’s very hard for me to introduce humor because it’s being translated. Yeah.
Yeah, I just gave one in Russian, one in Latin America. So very difficult to introduce humor that way. So I don’t even try.
Second, they have different political systems. And some things that we may find very funny and easy to talk about in America would be very hard to talk about there. So I’m very sensitive to the audience I’m speaking to.
And if in doubt, leave it out. That’s good. I remember in Ukraine, I gave a class and I said something really funny.
I don’t remember what it was, but it was really funny. And they translated it and not one person laughed. Oh.
Yeah, all the time happens to me. Oh, well, when I take it back, one person did laugh. Unfortunately, it was only me.
Okay. That’s interesting. Yeah.
So I appreciate this point that if it is hurtful and if it reinforces people’s bodily concept of life, then it’s completely unhelpful. Those are good criteria. Now, hurtful also is very subjective.
That’s why it becomes a problem. Like you said, in different cultures or at different times, what would be considered hurtful, that will have to be seen according to time, place, circumstance. So when you said Prabhupada said, adjust those things, means Prabhupada told him to remove them from his books? Or what did he actually, what does adjust mean? He did certain things in the early Bhagavatam that was printed in India.
We’ll find certain statements are not found in the Bhagavatam. That was first printed in America. Because Hari Griva had pointed out that some of these statements would be not acceptable in America now.
It was a different context. And then Prabhupada was making the point that what’s important is that, I don’t have the exact quote in front of me, but that what be said have its impact. And he wanted to deliver Krishna, not some political statement.
So certain things he said, even in some joking way, that it would not be understood in that context. So he had it changed. Now, I’m not advocating on what we do with after Prabhupada passed on with book changes.
That’s a whole different subject. I’m talking about what Prabhupada did when he was on the planet and how he dealt with these things. Prabhupada, I’ve talked to his editors in great depth.
And Prabhupada, when Prabhupada was here, wanted his editors, things that would be offensive in a particular culture that were not essential to the sadhanta. He had no trouble with his editors adjusting it. None whatsoever.
Now, after he passes on, how do we deal with it? That’s a complex issue. And that issue doesn’t lend itself very good to a discussion on humor. Yeah, it’s not very funny.
No, no. If the people discussing it had a little more sense of humor, we’d easily solve the problem. And one time when there was a focus group in London, and they were looking, it was a panel of non-devotees looking at all of our books and saying, what was their first impression? It was very smart of the BBT in Europe to find out how do people like our books.
And I picked a good cross-sectional panel. So when they came across perfect questions, perfect answers, they said the title is presumptuous. And of course, Prabhupada gave the title.
I never thought of it that way, but I realized it could be. So I went to the BBTs doing a new edition. So I said to the BBT, well, why don’t we change the title with a subtitle? Because it can be presumptuous.
This is what the focus group you paid said. I said, why don’t we call it this? Perfect questions, perfect answers. A funny thing happened to me on the way to the Ganges.
It would take the edge out of it. And of course, the perfect questions took place, you know, practically on the bank of the Ganges then, you know, in my apartment. So of course, they didn’t have much sense of humor.
And they said, no, we can never do that. Okay. So then I said, okay, I’ll get my revenge.
So I wrote a new introduction, and I called the introduction a perfectly presumptuous title. And then I described why Prabhupada, because I just dealt with it head on. And I said why Prabhupada chose that name and why it was shastrically appropriate, even though it sounds presumptuous.
So we have to deal with these things. We have to, you know, my feeling is we have to be careful of how we present. Bhakti Siddhanta made an interesting comment on this.
He said, the disciple should make sure the guru is dressed nicely. Sorry, come again. Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati said, the disciple should make sure the guru is dressed nicely.
Should make sure he makes a good presentation. Dress, his clothing is very well attired. But for example, if you’re with Prabhupada, or you were with some Radha Swami or some spiritual mentor, and they had a piece of spinach in their teeth, right before they were speaking, would you say something to them or not? According to Bhakti Siddhanta, you should say something.
Oh, there’s some spinach caught in your tooth. Very embarrassing to speak. Have you ever spoken with spinach in your teeth? That’s horribly embarrassing.
When you’re done, you see the piece of spinach that you missed. You’re speaking from practical experience? Extremely. Yeah, I mean, these things do happen.
I mean, you know, when I walk in the room, and my zipper is open, I pray that somebody will tell me that I don’t have to spend the whole lecture standing in front of there like that. It’s very embarrassing. And there’s no man around that wear a pair of pants that hasn’t had that happen to him.
We don’t want to ever change messages, but we want to put our best foot forward. That’s delicate. I’m sure you have a pithy statement on this, but it requires nuanced intelligence.
Yeah, I don’t know what a pithy statement on this, but yeah, I think sometimes what we, I think it’s a well-known statement that outreach means to know when to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted. When to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted. Yeah, so that’s true.
So one last question with which would both of you like to give maybe one example of what comes at the top of your mind as one of the best humors that you have spoken or you thought of or you have heard or you have shared recently? It all happens so spontaneous. It’s hard to think of it. Piari, do you have something while I’m thinking? Yes, while you’re thinking, I’ll say something.
Let me know when you finish thinking. You know, I thought of a humor. I thought you would say this though.
You’re thinking so loudly that I can’t speak. I can’t even, you’re thinking so loudly, I can’t think. No, I can’t speak.
Anyway, I mean, probably one of the funniest ones is what I already said in Dallas with Ladies First. But I was going with Niranjana Swamy. It was in the summer, it was a hot day and we’re going to do a home program.
But the whole program was not at somebody’s house. It was just an apartment building, a lot of apartments. So when you’re going in the front door, there’s some teenagers who were just sitting around there and we’re walking in, dressed in, you know, kurtas and dhotis.
And one of the guys said, how come you’re wearing sheets? And I turned and said, because it’s too hot for a blanket. Oh, God, it’s good. And Niranjana Swamy said, did you just think of that? I said, yeah.
You know, I remember when we were there together at one devotee’s house in Connecticut. We had lunch together. And then they asked you, so, oh, you hope the lunch was good.
You said, yes, it was wonderful. So what did you like? So you said, I liked the speaking and I didn’t like the hearing. Thank you, everyone.
I’m very humble. Like lots of times when people tell me, oh, you’re so wonderful, you’re so great, you’re this and that. And I just generally acknowledge, yes.
There’s one thing funny. There’s one devotee. I observed this one devotee, the appreciating devotee.
We are so kind. And the devotee said, I know. I know.
Tell me something. Tell me something I don’t know. That’s even more humorous.
Yes, Brahmadev Dabru. I’m just, well, these things come so spontaneously that trying to think of something I recently said it just doesn’t come to mind immediately. Not necessarily recent, a long time ago also would do.
Oh, OK. We know your recent memories aren’t so as good as your long-term memory. And exactly, yeah, yeah.
Well, let me see. Yeah, well, we’ll go back. I was giving a class to, again, it was, oh, I know what it was.
I was recently doing a mediation with a bunch of, at a temple in America where the Indian community was fighting among themselves, especially these two people were in an argument. So I was asked to mediate it. So we get on video and everyone’s really serious.
So I understand I have to do something. So I kept calling this one guy by the wrong name and he corrected me twice. And I said, gosh, I’m sorry about that.
But all you Indians look alike. Do all us Americans look alike to you? And immediately broke the ice. You know, this is very striking.
I was reading a book by one Christian author about the existence of God. And he’s right that, you know, everything in this world is individual and different. So he says, every particle of sand is different.
Even if it looks, even if two particles look identical, they’re different. You know, every, it goes two, three lists to use. No, every leaf is different.
And then the last thing he said, you know, every Hare Krishna monk is different. Perfect. The same point.
Yeah. Simultaneously one and different. Yeah.
So Bruce, thank you very much. Yeah, go ahead. Okay.
And thank you. Thank you very much. It’s always fun speaking with you, Chaitanya Charan.
No, I didn’t want to interrupt you. You were saying something, please. No, that, well, the only thing I was saying is, it’s a real balance on humor.
And it has to come naturally and flow. And, you know, the message was, how can devotees use more humor? Well, watch people who use it well and learn from them. But if it becomes artificial, it can become dangerous.
Yeah. I’d like to say also about hurtful. It seems like, because I say a lot of things about different people, you know, to them, but they’re my friends.
And we have a relationship like that. It seems like we’re friends. You can do that more than if you don’t know the people, you don’t start saying something negative about them.
It’s only people that you know well, that you can do that. That’s what I find. Like I just did a few things with Pramath here tonight, but he’s my friend.
I don’t know if he’s going to still be my friend after. No, but this is what makes us friends, because we trust each other enough that we can joke with each other. As Prabhupada, I mean, you know, when Prabhu with his god brothers, sometimes they were laughing hysterically, of course, not knowing the language they were speaking, either Bengali or Hindi.
I couldn’t follow it, but my gosh, they were hysterical. And they were telling the same kind of things that we might laugh about. There is this, yeah, we don’t want to be dry.
We don’t want to be dry either. You know, overly dry means we’re too uptight. Yeah, that’s true.
You know, one thing we said about, you mentioned earlier about there’s a danger of becoming, I thought you will say there’s the danger of becoming too frivolous, but then you made the point that there’s a danger of being too serious also. So I think balance is the key. So maybe I’ll try to summarize what we discussed.
And then if you want to add, both of you want to add some words, we’ll try to. I’ll add just one point to that. We need to learn to be better Buddhists.
Better Buddhists, why is that? Yes, well, the Buddhists are always expert at the middle way. Oh, okay. The middle way.
Yeah. Yeah, it’s true. So we tried to discuss today on humor in Krishna consciousness.
So I think you mentioned that there is, it’s at one level, it’s a natural talent. It can grow by nurture a little bit, but it is natural. And then there was initially like, just for me, for all of us, maybe initially there was a little conflict within Krishna consciousness and humor.
Can we be Krishna humorous in Krishna consciousness? But eventually, Prabhupada, we gave several examples of Prabhupada’s humor also. And so we try to categorize different kinds of humors. So humor that strengthens the message we are given, humor that softens the message and maybe softens by not getting into technicalities or difficult questions, several examples of that kind of humor we had with Prabhupada.
And then there could be humor that distracts from the message. So the key point is that we need to get people interested. And if we can, if it’s too serious, the class people will not be interested.
But then if we start pursuing humor itself as an end, then that will backfire because we’re not sharing a message at all. So each of us can find out what is our particular strength and then use that to communicate in an interesting way. And as far as developing humor, we can learn, observe how other devotees do it and learn to some extent.
But that shouldn’t become too much of an obsession. And regarding boundaries for humor, especially if it’s hurtful, if it reinforces people’s bodily conceptions, then that is unhelpful. And even humor that might seem hurtful in one context might not be when there is this friendship and trust.
So in general, self-deprecating humor would be the best because we are not going to hurt anyone by that. And sarcasm, especially if somebody is facing personal problems in their life, the personal moral problems or something like that, to make fun of that is Prabhupada. I was very unhappy with that.
And it also talked about how there is the balance between taking ourselves too seriously, which also means taking small, small details too seriously, which can lead us to become fanatical. And then the other extreme would be that not taking even serious things seriously. So maybe, actually, instead of saying that we follow the Buddhist way, maybe the Buddhists adopted the middle way from the balanced idea of the Sanatana Dharma.
And that’s how the name came up. But following that middle way would be helpful. So thank you very much.
Any concluding words both of you would like to share? Pyare Prabhu? Oh, well, there’s so many things I could say. But about the middle way, I mean, this is what Krishna says, don’t eat too much, eat too little, don’t sleep too much, or sleep too little. So we have to use that.
I was just thinking of something. When I was in the Navy, there was this one guy, he was pretty puffed up. Anyway, we’re in the office, and there’s a bunch of, you know, sailors there.
And I was talking to him, me and him were having a conversation. He’s saying, you know, I joined this Navy to help out this Navy and this and, you know, this and that. He was just saying some stuff like that.
And I said, if I wanted to help the Navy, I would have joined the Army. So when I said that, other people, everybody appreciated that more than this guy who was saying how he’s helping the Navy so much. I said, if I wanted to help the Navy, I would have joined the Army.
So I was kind of putting myself down. And people like that. I had friends.
He didn’t have any friends, you know. So it’s not too good to think so highly of yourself. You got to be humble.
But anyway, I can’t, there’s just so much. You can erase whatever you’d like, and I’m fine with it. Yeah, I think it’s fine.
So this point about, sometimes, I’ve been a very poor book distributor whenever I go out. Because I just can’t talk with people for one or two minutes. I had to get into deeper discussions.
So I told once, the best way I can do book distribution is by not doing book distribution. By doing some other service. Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Brahmaditya, any last words? Humor can be used to make good points about the frailties of human nature. I mean, Krishna spent a lot of time pointing out to Arjuna certain frailties of nature. So we’ll end with a joke.
Please. And being from a Jewish family, I have to do a Jewish joke. Okay.
So a Jewish mother gives her son two ties on his birthday. And he’s so happy to get the two ties. And the following morning, he comes down to breakfast wearing one of the ties.
And his mother said to him, so you don’t like the other one? Anyway. It’s really a Jewish joke. I don’t know.
Very Jewish. Because where that comes from is Jewish mothers tend to be overbearing. So he comes down with one tie and she says, what, you didn’t like the other one? So, or here, we’ll give a different version.
There’s an old Jewish lady sitting on a bench. And she’s complaining. Oh boy, am I thirsty.
I am so thirsty. Boy, am I thirsty. I am so thirsty.
Somebody hears her and brings her a glass of water. And as he’s walking away, he hears her saying, oh boy, was I thirsty. Regardless.
We kind of make fun of the human experience. Yeah. And that’s healthy.
That kind of humor can be very healthy and helping us get sort of past our own ego. That’s true. So I have one question.
Among the two of you, who is the senior in the Monks podcast? Whose name should I put first? Piaris. Senior in what? Who’s older? I don’t know how old you are. No, Piaris got initiated before me.
Oh, okay. He’s the longest serving temple president in North America. No, he’s definitely, he’s definitely senior, even if I show him no respect.
If you call him senior, you don’t show him any respect. Yeah, we just show him respect with the mind. Thank you very much.
It was wonderful talking with you. And thank you for sharing your humor. Thanks.