The Monk’s Podcast 68 with Radhika Raman Prabhu – Harmonizing faith and reason in bhakti

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Harmonizing faith and reason in bhakti – The Monk’s Podcast with Radhika Raman Prabhu

Summary from 2:39:42

Chaitanya Charan Prabhu: So we discussed today you could say broadly on the topic of faith and reason, in devotion, in bhakti. In started with your experience. You had education, home-schooling, but that was protection, not isolation. And so you develop critical thinking at that time itself. And it was not a big culture shock or intellectual shock when you entered into academia.

The “us and them”, mentality comes primarily when we don’t interact with people, except to say, speak down to them. Or so we, we can see our faith is special, but at the same time, respect other people’s faith also be seeing that there are different ways to approach Krishna.

And then within the faith and reason dialogue in the academic world. I think two main themes we discussed were the historicity and the principle of Revelation. So historicity- it was very beautiful. Before answering a question, we need to question the question that why this question is important, and in the Abrahamic traditions, because they have a linear conception of history. So history is going somewhere. And that’s why where what happened, when what happened and how becomes important. But in our tradition, history is not going anywhere, the soul is going somewhere. So the historical events promote the souls evolution; is more important than the specific history or geography of those events itself. So, we discussed Srila Prabhupada’s quote about not denying that Ahobilam is where Narsimha appeared, but not insisting on it. It’s not we are not historical or non-historical, but history is simply like a departure point for us to go to the transhistorical.

So, for us, if we start giving an exam that we are not prepared for, then we will get into trouble. Do we want to do that exam also? What is central for us is not the specific history. So, it is like a pyramid. One is to say a little history is itself important and this is how it is whatever the tradition says. The other is that Oh! it doesn’t matter at all. It’s what we taught is more important, it is all mythology. So, we understand its history, but the more than history is what is critical for us. What is the trans historical that is taught, that’s what we focus on. And even in the historical like say, we say Krishna appeared here in Vrindavana, it’s not the literal geography of Rādhā Kunda, but Radha Kunda as it is seen in the pratyaksha, Vidusha , that is what is important for us.
So historical question, if we want to change the frame of the discussion, you discussed earlier to go inside and there is a lot of area for going into the, into the academic world. And then like Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya spoke for seven days to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and then Chaitanya Mahaprabhu got to speak.
So, some devotees who have the requisite supportive association to sustain that hearing of things which are of a non-devotional perspective to things and then they also have the intellectual skills, they have the nature and they get the training for that. Then when they speak, then they will be heard. And then the the mainstream dialogue itself will, the mode of that dialogue itself can be changed significantly. And we can see that other religions have done that significantly, but we Hindus have not done Hinduism Vaishnavism or even our movement has not done that so much.

Then we discussed about the revelation question. The religious or the traditions approaches that religion is something which is consistent, comprehensive and timeless, whereas, the academic scholars’ approach is that it is something historical, philosophical, social, cultural or psychological – these factors. So, when this conflict comes up, so, same as the Upanishads, they are other revelations or are they discussions and because of a political conflict between different regions that happened at a particular place.

So, both can go together, because we see that Krishna can act by breaking through history, descending into history or Krishna can act through the movements of history itself. Both can, it seems inclusive and they can increase our faith.

So there’s the transcendental circumstantial, we could say both of them are, are overlapping, are two simultaneous or overlapping modes of explaining the same thing. And that way, it doesn’t have to necessarily challenge one’s faith. We discussed various examples for that purpose.

And then, specifically with respect to faith and reason, we had a long discussion towards the conclusion that, reason is always a part of the okay if you want about faith. Faith is in our tradition; faith is not simply based on beliefs. Okay, this is what I believe that apart from beliefs, this is what I practice. This is what I have experience. This is how I have seen my saintly teachers to be and this is how what I have, say, learn by studying scripture. So there are so many aspects to faith. And when one area becomes weak, just as when one leg is weak, we rely more on the other leg. And that’s why while specializing in one according to our nature, you also need to have enough time to appreciate the other sources of faith also, because they may become the source of our survival at some time.
And overall, then we talked about, how faith can rely on reason at the initial stage, and faith can partially rely on reason and faith can ultimately transcend reason. But when it even when it transcends reason, it doesn’t reject reason it just doesn’t rely on reason. Because even in our tradition, there you talked about Ramanujachaya using reason to show how reason cannot prove the existence of God – the Shreebhashya.

Also, our tradition has critical scholarship where you know, okay, this versus has this versions. So, there is the critical attitude with the tradition also. And ultimately for us the challenge is that the rationality is just one way of thinking. It is valuable for both- for us to understand Krishna better and for us to explain Krishna better to others, and between academic scholarship and sages, the devotional practice the devotional way of looking at things. There could be traditional scholarship also. So, that is something which has not been so developed. But as our movement is evolving, that kind of spaces will be created. And for us, the same rationality which can help us to fix our mind and Krishna can also obstruct us, if we start thinking that this is the only way or this is the superior way or this is the best way and we start looking down upon on the rational devotee. So, if we have that Vaishnav understanding that ultimately, we are here for Seva, and my scholarship is one way of serving, then we all can contribute in the Lord’s mission in the way that he has gifted us.

Radhika Raman prabhu: That was amazing. Your ability to summarise everything we spoke about, points to your own brilliance as a devotee and as an intellectual. So Thank You for that. I have nothing to add or subtract from what you just said. I think that’s a good overview.

I am just really really grateful that I have the opportunity to discuss all of these matters with you. So nourishing for my own Krishna Consciousness, to have your association like this today. Whether this video gets any views on YouTube or not it really not matter. To me it’s completely successful to just have your association to discuss these wonderful topics. It was for me a wonderful morning for me in the US and for you in India.

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Transcript

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Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Radhe Karman Prabhu welcome to the Monks Podcast it’s been a desire to have you and many devotees since I started the Monks Podcast said that you are one of the best persons for this so I am grateful that we could make it happen now every tradition has its pride in its you could say wonder kids so you are like that for our tradition from the time I was introduced to Krishna Consciousness I used to read your BTG articles and then from a distance I followed how you have gone from a devotional upbringing to become a well established devotional scholar so I think it’s a trajectory that’s an inspiration for many devotees and also many you could say third generation devotees, second generation devotees so thank you for being who you are and thank you for being here today thank you for having me Chaitanya Charan Prabhu this is really an honour and a privilege to be here in conversation with you I think I could give quite a long introduction for yourself and your wonderful qualities and accomplishments and contributions to our movement but since you’re in the role of interviewer and not me I’ll avoid doing that but just to say that it’s really a privilege to be here in conversation with you and to have this opportunity to discuss some really interesting topics and your podcast in general I must say I’ve met so many devotee friends of mine who have been really very deeply affected by and grateful for the work you’re doing in the monks podcast so thank you in particular amongst your many Sevas for this Seva of doing the podcast and I’m really grateful that I can participate today thank you so usually when I do the podcast I try to focus on that devotees say area of specialization or area of experience so I thought we could discuss and you grew up in a very devotional background and then in some ways you went into an academic environment which is often quite critical of devotion so in a sense from a environment of faith you went to an environment of reason where reason is valued almost at the expense of faith so now that balance of faith and reason it’s a tension which every devotee faces but I think you may have faced it in probably to a degree greater than most devotees so I thought we could discuss about that topic today yes definitely that sounds good so can we start with maybe can you tell me a little bit about your upbringing you know you I think you are the first in the second generation of homeschool devotees and I have attended yours and your mother’s seminar on homeschooling so maybe you could tell a little bit about that and then how you went into academia what inspired you to do that especially religious studies yeah actually the tension that you described in my life between faith and reason and that transition I think you hit it spot on I think it’s very well described articulated actually my childhood as you stated it was in homeschooling my parents homeschooled me and by home not just the home properly speaking but the home as a temple because my parents were running a very nice temple in Boise Idaho and as the temple as I grew up the temple also grew up and so we kind of grew together and as a result of that we had a lot of opportunities so first of all my education itself was grounded in the study of Srila Prabhupada’s books especially Srimad Bhagavatam and it is through the study of Bhagavatam that I learned English language skills and writing and comprehension and critical thinking one of the things that my mother would do which I think was really turned out to be the heart of the heart of our education and in many ways brought together the faith and reason aspects very early on in my life was the fact that we would read Bhagavatam together seated in a circle myself, my younger brother Gopal and my mother and we would read each one translation and then we would discuss and the discussion wouldn’t be in the mode of a teacher quizzing the student what was this do you remember that but it would be more with the idea of going deep into the text and we would have the privilege of raising difficult questions just as much as my mother did and so it became a real critical thinking and even debate sometimes exercise where there wasn’t an assumption that we were going to get to the student had to find the one right answer that the teacher was seeking but rather that the teacher and the student were on a shared journey of exploration through Srila Prabhupada’s books and from that experience I developed a love for study of Srimad Bhagavatam in particular that has really sustained my Krishna consciousness for my entire life and I think that early influence was possibly the most important aspect of my upbringing that I can remember and that and then the temple alongside it that’s fascinating you know one of the criticisms of say homeschooling that is done is that often religious communities prefer that because they would like to indoctrinate their children in their own ideology and in fact there are atheists like Sir Richard Dawkins who calls it a form of child abuse to indoctrinate a child in a religion before they have the intelligence to choose it but your education seems to have been very different in fact it was not so much it was more like as you said raising questions and discussing so yeah please homeschooling can definitely have the negative aspects that you described and I know of people who do it in that way and they always make it into the news because the children were as you said abused in the context of being given a very very stifled and limited scope and indoctrinated into a particular word perhaps I think any form of education can become a negative experience for a child when not done correctly but in our case there were two things that helped avoid anything close to that one was this process of critical reasoning and thinking and exploration that came from really what we can call a tutorial method of studying Prabhupada’s books where there is discussion and engagement but then the other thing was the existence of the temple and the fact that we had so many opportunities to express ourselves to newcomers to the general public as we were one of the very few devotee but also Indian but also Hindu families in Boise Idaho this small town in the northwest region of the United States and as a result we were invited in the town to pretty much any important event that happened which had some cultural or religious aspect to it and so you know if there was a new memorial being established in town or if there was an interfaith service happening or a Thanksgiving service or Christmas occasion we were the Hindu family we were the Indian family we were sometimes representing all of Asia so in this way I was I was encouraged to express I was asked to express who I was in many different contexts and having to say this is my identity this is why I’m a devotee and this is what it means to be a devotee and I think it’s that process of continuously expressing myself to a variety of different audiences Western, Indian, young, old, politicians interfaith leaders that eventually led to my transition into the academic world so it was less of a dichotomy as it might seem in the beginning because in academia in scholarship the primary activity of teaching is all about being able to express yourself and make yourself present in the classroom to your students and I had been doing that since I don’t know seven or eight years old trying to explain and describe who I was and that aspect of describing my identity to others I think that’s what eventually led me into taking up the profession of teaching and scholarship.
Interesting. So I can say that you were by your education you are protected but you are not isolated you are still connected with the community and you’re contributing to the community I think the real indoctrination happens when people are completely like in a cult sort of environment disconnected from the rest of the world but that never happened to you so I appreciate this point. We emphasize my mother and I we emphasize this many times in our sorry we emphasize this many times in our talks that homeschooling should not mean isolation in fact any form of education should not mean isolation it means protection of the child but not isolation the two are very different things protection involves giving them opportunities to engage with the wider world in an environment of care where they always know that they are taken care of they’re protected and within certain boundaries and boundaries are very important for children so I think you’ve stated it very well that isolation is not the answer for any form of education so did you grow up with a sense of we they mentality because in one sense you were representing a distinctive religious group you know hindu indian asian whatever you want to say so and there are others who are different grouping so sometimes the we they mentality can lead to the demonizing of the other so did how did you deal with that or did you encounter that at all I don’t recall thinking about us and versus them because you know we were the them who the people who might be other to us we were so closely engaged with them I mean in other words we were meeting them on regular basis they were coming to the temple so we had a sense that we were different and we were proud to be different we understood the beauties and the advantages of Krishna consciousness but we also recognize that there are people of other faiths and other backgrounds and people of no faith and there were good people amongst them right that they weren’t all bad or negative or horrible in some way no they were everyone has goodness in them and that was the point of connection if you want to speak to someone at an event or we used to go to high schools for example and make presentations you have to see where your audience is at find what is good and positive and uplifting in them and use that as your starting point for a discussion for a connection that’s the job of a teacher that’s the job of a preacher and otherwise if we don’t begin with where they are and see the goodness in them then it becomes a download where you’re imposing your idea on them and it may feel satisfying to you but it has very little impact on the audience who takes a defensive posture and says wait you know I don’t want to be attacked verbally through your ideas I don’t want your ideas to be imposed on mine people want to see a connection they want to see a relationship they want to see where things come together and for that a teacher must begin where the other person is at not where they are at where the other person is at that’s effective teaching that’s interesting so in one sense we can have a distinctive identity to recognize that others are different but that difference needn’t create either an insecurity in us that I am doing something wrong nor does it have to create a judgmentality about others that you know they are wrong or they are down there it is just that we are different and we have an opportunity to connect them if they are interested it’s a challenge actually yeah please sorry I think the delay apologies but I think I would modify that a little bit that it’s not just that we are different and equal I think as devotees and I think this is true of any person of faith that ultimately if you are grounded in a tradition there have to be reasons why you consider your tradition to be special to be unique right and why you choose to be grounded in that tradition so it’s it’s not just in terms of separate but equal or different but equal but there is a sense that yes Krishna Consciousness includes other expressions or it can understand other expressions or there are aspects of Krishna Consciousness which are special and unique but that does not prevent ourselves from looking at others and their love and affection for God and saying that there is also something unique there and by appreciating it even though that is not my tradition and my preferred way of loving Krishna but by seeing their love for God their love for Krishna I can grow appreciation of my own deity and my own way of loving Krishna by seeing oh there is another aspect to my Lord which is so beautiful and so special so it’s a process of mutual growth and there is a sense of specialness or uniqueness to your tradition that is why I’m grounded in it but that uniqueness and greatness of your own tradition as you said does not entail putting someone else down right this is a form of psychological weakness even in an individual if my sense of self esteem can only be held by putting down others only when I look at you and I see your false then I feel good about myself such a person is considered to be a there is some issue there that needs to be resolved my sense of self esteem does not have to be based on your false we can both have a healthy sense of esteem and I can appreciate who you are while also recognizing that I have certain abilities and certain opportunities to give to others yes that’s true so same as I don’t think I said the word equal because that is almost like depersonalizing all parts and it’s almost in the name of equality we strip all parts of potency we can’t say that simplistically everything is equal what I meant to say is what you again articulated that you know sometimes if someone else is correct that makes me feel insecure am I wrong to prove that I am correct somebody else has to be wrong so there can be different paths to Krishna that’s true so now so moving on how did you choose to enter into religious studies in general Indians go into STEM fields and I remember one devotee he told me that he wanted to enter into religious studies and his mother she reacted as if he was going to become he said if you don’t go study engineering I’m going to commit suicide so eventually he studied engineering only but so was there I said because you grew in America maybe that career pressure to become an engineer or doctor might not have been there but still religious studies how did you choose religious studies specifically yeah so I actually my I’m very grateful to my parents for being open to this career not only being open but encouraging me my mother and father both I remember when I was first considering doing a career in Sanskrit and religious studies my father visited Harvard University he was on a business trip to Boston and he decided why don’t I go over to go to the Sanskrit department and just meet with the chair of the professor and see if it would be a good place for Ravi to come and join and so and I think my mother accompanied him on that trip and anyway they sat down in front of the chair of the department and he told them do you know that you are the first set of Indian parents who has come to me looking for a place in Sanskrit for their son and they were surprised they said really and you know this is Harvard so we’re not talking about some small university that no one would want to go to I mean this is like the dream Harvard department of Sanskrit so I I can’t remember now I must have been so my trajectory was what I went to the university a little early so this was looking for graduate school yeah that’s an understatement the humble so what age did you go so I think I started at 12 and actually I was almost 13 I was almost 13 and I graduated when I was 17 so this was just before I finished my undergrad I think maybe I was 16 something like that and so this is now what 22 years ago and maybe things have changed a little bit but the other thing he said he said do you realize that if you if your son goes into studying Sanskrit you will be feeding him for the rest of your life he was really testing he was really testing my parents because he didn’t believe that they were actually serious that I was serious about this possibility so he was not joking or he was joking in some way but not entirely yeah halfway joking I mean it’s it’s not a clear career path you know in the way that it is for an engineer where you just go so to this day I mean the vast majority of Indian kids in the United States or anywhere go into or I try at least to go into fields like engineering or medicine or law or something like that but but anyway so but my own love for Sanskrit came from and for religious studies came from childhood from my Sanskrit teacher my parents were able to find a wonderful Sanskrit teacher named Gary Thomas he was a colleague of my father’s at Hewlett Packard and when they discovered that he knew Sanskrit and he wanted to teach Sanskrit he had actually taught himself how Sanskrit very very well and was self-taught scholar and so he was eager to teach and we were eager to learn so he would come once a week to Govinda’s restaurant and enjoy the food there and then we would sit and we would study for an hour officially but it would go on for two or three hours and it was just it was something that I felt I came to love very very early on and just could not get enough of I mean every grammatical rule and every exception I would just you know memorize and discuss and I loved it and at that point I started to realize that I could actually have a career doing what I loved and that’s when I started to go in the direction of religious studies there was no religion program at Boise State University so instead I went into philosophy which was excellent training in terms of good critical reasoning, thinking writing, understanding arguments and then from there to Oxford University for the Masters and PhD and this time in religious studies in Hinduism in particular So Oxford means Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies? So we were admitted to Oxford University, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies does not admit its own students then we received some of our teaching and instruction and guidance from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies but most importantly our Vaishnav community that it really Shona Krishna Prabhu there has cultivated a community of scholar practitioners which is so rare to find looking back I realized that that was one of the most important factors in me being able to maintain my Krishna consciousness while pursuing rigorous academic academic study was the fact that I had a community of Vaishnav scholars to do that in I had good role models and good associates and friends with whom I could pursue that and that was invaluable I mean I cannot overestimate the importance of the Oxford Centre in my Krishna consciousness as well as in my academic development so thank you for sharing this journey so during your studies did you do you remember any specific moments when say your studies challenged your faith in a very strong way and so have you at one level the tension between faith and reason is a ongoing experience for us as devotees and especially as intellectually oriented devotees so I had earlier podcast with Krishna Kshetra Maharaj where he mentioned that you know faith and doubt they continue to have a dialogue in the hearts of a seeker so it’s not that faith permanently defeats doubt it goes on but there are some moments of special tension and then how does one go about resolving that do you have any such experiences specifically so I wouldn’t say that there were some key moments where it was really like you know a moment of tension or explosion or self-doubt it was more like you know a constant knocking a constant hammering a constant drip of this tension that was always been there and always really been part of both my academic pursuit and my Krishna conscious life that tension between faith and reason or faith and doubt or maybe instead of tension we can say that dialogue that dialectic that debate has always been there and it comes up in different ways at different places sometimes in relation to the question of dating for example that’s an early one where anyone academia even if they don’t go into academia they watch it from a distance they go wait they date the Vedas differently than we date them or the question of historicity are these stories are they historical truths or not does the view of history match the Bhagavatam’s view of history or questions of eternal truth versus relative truth and temporary truths the question of the origin of truth is truth created by human beings is it a human phenomena religion or is it a divine phenomena is it Golokaera Premadhana Harinayanam Sankirtan or is this a sociological event that takes place because of certain historical contexts and reasons this last one I mentioned was probably the historical issues and the dating issues are an initial shock that seem big but in the end they become rather small over time and the question of just a minute it becomes small because you realize it doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things I read one scholar on Hinduism he says that when the Hindu epics were written is not as important as what is written in them so in a sense the dateline for the wisdom doesn’t matter as much as the wisdom itself is that why that is not so big or how does that work so what that scholar described I mean I think that’s a typical you know kind of liberal Hindu way of approaching the dating question and okay I mean it is true that the content is very important and the date is less important but I think it’s not just that I think the question of dating historicity we have to go back to the very nature of the issue and ask ourselves why and when does it become such a big issue for our faith because here’s the thing we have to question the question itself this is what I mean to say the question of dating when we raise it we have to question that because we so many of us work in a environment that is saturated by the Judeo Christian tradition and it’s true even in India because while the numbers may be small but the reality is everyone in the modern world works in a context where the West and its framework of thinking is super most it’s kind of overarching it’s always present and we’re always working in relationship with it and this is true in India for reasons of colonialism but also reasons of modernity that are present to this day and of course here in the United States this is always the case and for the Judeo Christian tradition God reveals truths through history history itself is the work of God over time you can see what he wants through the movement of history history is his hand at work and therefore the question of when something happened where it happened exactly where is the evidence the historical evidence for that question is crucial to the faith of Christians this is very important to remember and this is why there’s been such excellent historical work done in the Middle East for example I remember the first time when I when I was studying world religions in an academic context there’s the question of the destruction of the second temple this was a major event in the history of Judaism remember scholars were debating it happened in 70 in the year 70 CE and scholars are 80 they were debating did it happen in the first six months of the year or the second six months of the year and I remember going really I mean you have the ability to figure things out that closely do you know that in Indian studies in Sanskrit studies if we can date a text to within two to three hundred years we consider ourselves very accomplished right so if a scholar says that the this text was written between 200 BC and 200 AD that’s a 400 years spectrum we think we did very well right now you come later in history it’s a little easier to date things but the point being is that this is not just initially scholars saw this as merely a failure on the part of the Indian mind to not be able to record dates properly but we have to recognize that there is a fundamental difference in intellectual focus in orientation that from the perspective of Vedic culture from the perspective of Vaishnav culture history is moving but it’s not moving anywhere in any one direction it’s going in circles and the same ideas return the same people return over the Lord returns again and again through avatars scriptures are revealed and then they disappear and then they’re revealed again and so when there’s a difference a problem for example there’s two different Varahas one is described as white and the other is described as red the Acharya say oh this is Kalpabheda this is a difference in different cycles so the both things could have happened one happened in this cycle one happened so there’s no need to identify exactly this is the spot this is the time this is the date because it’s that question is not part of our not just faith our cosmology our cosmology does not necessitate looking history is not going anywhere it’s going in circles right we are going somewhere through the circles of history but history as a major phenomena is not moving in one direction it’s going to be wrapped up and then it’s going to start all over again right so our cosmology does not support emphasis on the question of dating and historicity I do not mean to say by this that Vaishnavas do not think that these Leelas or these activities actually happened of course they happen and I think those who say that oh this is all mythology but the truths within them are important I think they are missing something very important this is a modern view that is not held by any of our Acharyas so it is true it happened it is historical truth but when it happened where it happened exactly and where is the archaeological evidence these are questions that have never been important until the arrival of Christianity on the scene then we adopt that sense of importance and we learn we are taught that your faith must depend upon the the ability to date the text as the text itself says that unless we can find archaeological evidence for that dating your faith has no basis and my question is why today should we base our faith on that point when it has never been based when that has never been the basis of our faith it has been the basis of other people’s faith but not ours so why should we do it today it’s a very striking way of putting it I’ve also read about this how the fundamental conceptions of time in say the Abrahamic religions and the Dharmic religions are different and they lead to we could say something like some sort of historic history centrism in the Abrahamic religions but let me understand this what you said that the question of time is a question of time itself needs to be questioned so certain questions gain importance because of certain presumptions and those presumptions themselves are questioned and the question becomes not that important so we could say if we have something like a pendulum we could say that literal precise historicity is like one extreme unless this is right then the everything is wrong the other extreme we could say is like complete mythology saying that you know this never happened but what is taught through it is important so in between we could say this happened however we fully assert that it happened but when exactly it happened and what is the evidence for the fact that it happened at that time that is not as important as what is taught through it.
Yes very nicely put Prabhu in this regard can I share with you one conversation from Shila Prabhupada I think it illustrates my point very nicely that this is not just some academic intellectual point I’m making which I came up with in the middle of the night this is really I mean an essential part of our tradition and you and I both know how emphatic Shila Prabhupada was about the fact that these are not our Kathas our scriptures are not just mythology in the sense of being fake and fiction fiction story he was very emphatic about this point so using that as the basis now I want to read this one conversation or show you this one conversation with that as the starting point so you can see how striking it is what Prabhupada is saying here okay so this is a morning walk conversation and this is Prabhupada is discussing in regard to publishing with some of his editors so Jaya Dvaitam Maharaj is there and others are there so I’ll just read from the top it’s not very long Yashodanandan Prabhu says Prabhupada there has been discussion amongst many of the members of the press and the Sanskrit editors regarding the actual place of Nrsingha’s pastimes so I told them that on the occasion of our travel to South India we visited this place Ahobilam and the Panditas they have scriptural reference from the Brahmanda Puran and Nrsingha Puran that the place is actually mentioned there and it has been recognized by Ramanujacharya and many of the great Alwar saints and yourself have already told me twice personally that this was the actual place where it happened and on top of the mountain there, there is the pillar iron pillar which is the symbol of the spot where Lord Nrsingha killed Hiranyakashipu so for the benefit of all these devotees they were just requesting your actual confirmation Prabhupada confirmation or no confirmation Nrsingha Dev is our worshipable deity that’s all why are you bothering where he killed Hiranyakashipu you worship him that’s all they just wanted the question came up because they have some pictures photographs from these places and we wanted to know if they were suitable for publishing or not Prabhupada so why you are bothering with that let it be accepted or not accepted worship him Akshayananda not that important Prabhupada, this is the important thing a man is diseased he has gone to the physician so whether it’s the first duty to investigate where from the disease has come or to cure him which is important to cure similarly Nrsingha Dev might have done this or here or there but he is our worshipable deity that’s all why bother with unnecessary things we know Nrsinghas everywhere that is the conclusion Jaya Dvaita we were just afraid that if we published a picture that was not correct then you might become like Nrsingha Dev Jaya Dvaita we were afraid that if we were to publish a picture that is not correct Prabhupada, so when it is disputed why should you publish that picture it is controversial, you should not print the controversy is only among the Prabhupada, whatever it may be as soon as there is little controversy I explained yesterday and then Prabhupada goes on to describe the crow and taal fruit logic that I’m going to skip down a little bit to Prabhupada’s conclusion on this point he says as soon as there is some controversy, avoid it taal fruit and crow you worship Nrsingha Dev Nrsingha Dev is everywhere why Nrsingha Dev should be confined he was here, he is everywhere as he is everywhere, he is here also that’s all, finish the business beautiful so I remember when we had gone to Ahobilam Guru Maharaj had taken us to that place and we were researching Ahobilam I had come across this conversation and it is striking but placed in this context so two things came to my mind while I was reading it just now, you were reading it first is that somebody might even debate the say the geographical accuracy of something like Vrindavan also but some things are central and we won’t so there if we have to quote controversy we may still defend that this is Vrindavan where Krishna’s pastimes happened but those which are not so clearly emphasized say in our scriptures or in our tradition so then to get involved in that controversy is something which is distracting am I understanding this right yeah I think it’s very well stated Prabhu if you see what Prabhupada is doing means it is clear that he is not against the idea that Lord Nrsingadev appeared in Ahobilam means Yashoda Nandan Prabhu says that you mentioned it twice and Prabhupada does not deny it at the same time throughout the conversation I mean Yashoda Nandan Prabhu is giving so much evidence right Alwars, yourself Ramanujacharya but throughout the conversation Prabhupada is insisting on this point not that he is not denying that it happened number one he would never do that like we said he did not consider no Vaishnava Acharya considered these stories to be fiction so he is not denying that they happened he is not denying that this was the place it happened but he is denying the fact that you are giving so much importance to this question of location the historical question why are you giving so much importance when our philosophy is that Nrsingadev is everywhere even on the point of Vrindavan that you just said Prabhu means we are convinced Krishna appeared we are convinced he appeared here because Mahaprabhu revealed it the six Goswamis revealed it but even there notice the difference in how we see that historical location compared to just regular we can say academic history right or western intellectual history when we look at Vrindavan we say this is the location where Krishna performed his pastimes but you cannot see it by examining the dust or examining the ruins that is not what will allow you to see it what allows you to see it is by having with those eyes of love that spiritual vision then you can see the actual Vrindavan which is covered over by the current vision that you have so we hear for example that Radhakund from Vrindavan Mahimamrita, Radhakund’s banks are covered with stone that is gems and coral and rubies and all of that it is an amazing place not made of sandstone right so is this Radhakund yes it is Radhakund but to see it you need to go beyond history right you need to transcend history it’s a trans-historical perspective I should say not ahistorical because we believe it is historical it’s not non-historical it’s trans-historical it starts with a historical location but it goes far beyond it and that’s what Prabhupada is arguing in this conversation he’s saying our perspective is trans-historical so why are you limiting Nrsingadev to the point of Aho Bilaam that pillar as his point of origin and his location I love these terms I have used historical and trans-historical but non-historical is a good addition to it so trans-historical the way you say it is that history is just we could say exit point or a take off point for us to go into a higher reality and that higher reality is what is more important for us when you said that our scriptural description of Radhakund is different from our physical vision so that means the because the reality is much more than the physical so fighting over the physical is not as they say this is not the hill I want to die on so in that sense don’t get into a fight you said that is not important isn’t it very well put this is not the hill I want to die on and that’s what I realized early on in my academic study that this question as I mentioned earlier this question of historical dating historical location it shows up early on and it seems like this is the end of my faith you know we say 5000 years they say 2500 years and it’s just like okay and then you start to wonder when did it become so important to my faith the exact year of the text composition all throughout my childhood this was never a topic of our conversation in any Bhagatam class I attended or discussion except when we were discussing specifically academic history right otherwise it was never a topic of discussion it was never important and when have I made it all important this is not my question this is someone else’s question that I have decided and to make important for me that has been imposed upon me willingly in most cases and I think this is the key thing about faith and reason is that we have to be willing to set the terms of the discourse first this is the biggest mistake that people make when we go into insider outsider debates academic non-academic debates is that faith versus reason faith versus scholarship is that we we don’t set the terms of the debate we don’t we don’t it’s like it’s like you know taking someone else’s exam the questions have been set for you and and someone else is marking the exam and you’re asked to sit and take the exam why should we be in that position if we want to be a dialogue partner between faith and reason then we have to have input in what will be the questions that are set on the exam and who is going to be marking this exam right and then we can take the exam because we know that it is on terms that we are appreciating that we are understanding otherwise it becomes a very very difficult proposition right if we don’t we have to first interrogate the terms of the discourse and that is something that we learn very early on when we go into this academic context is that the most important thing about the debate is not who answers is not what the answers are right that’s not the most important aspect of the debate the most important aspect is what are the questions being asked and if you have input on the questions then the answers are not that difficult frankly speaking I mean they are difficult but the battle is won yeah this is a good example but I think I need a little more unpacking that setting the terms of the debate so are we the two three different things over there one is when we want to have a debate now what are the common authorities that we accept it’s like if I am arguing based on scripture and you don’t accept scripture or if I am arguing based on science and you don’t really give credence to science then what is that is one thing what is it that we agree upon but I think what you are saying with respect to set the terms of the debate is that every study involves some driving questions and and while doing that study many other questions can also come up but we need to focus on our driving questions and for that one of the things which I talk about intelligence Krishna talks about knowledge and intelligence in the 18th chapter in the three modes so one aspect of intelligence I see it is that to understand what is central and to hold on to it and to understand what is peripheral and to let go of it so when you say set the frames of the debate are you talking about this point of central and peripheral so and but how much control do we have because the syllabus is decided by when you more or less the books that we read are decided so how do we control the terms of the debate good so both of your questions are excellent on the first one what I mean by the terms of the debate is what you said earlier about assumptions there are certain assumptions that are presupposed behind any question that is asked and to uncover those assumptions and ask ourselves are these the right assumptions the starting points the axiomatic truths the perspective the world perspective that I want to begin with or is this something that I have adopted without proper consideration and so I’ll give you one example I used to take my students to visit different places of worship as part of their world religions class now when we went to the Hindu temple a young man this was not an ISKCON temple but a very nice young man also a college student gave my students a tour of the temple and at the end he asked for questions and one of the students they asked the question so can you tell me your your main beliefs that make you a Hindu and the boy said oh good question and then he thought and then he struggled and he said well we’re vegetarians oh wait that’s not a belief right so we do puja every day at home oh wait that’s not a belief so he eventually got a few things but afterwards he came up to me and he said professor Gupta what was the right answer to the question you’re a professor please help me for next time and I said you know it’s not a question of the right answer you have to question the question itself here’s the issue protestant Christianity defines its faith based on beliefs if you believe these four five things you are a Christian we have never defined ourselves based on belief alone beliefs are important but practice is just as important even perhaps a little bit more we see the character of the sadhu that’s how we know this is a sadhu then we investigate what is your exact theology Vedanta this that but first we must see the character of the person their lifestyle their behavior so I said immediately you should when the question arises you should say actually besides the belief I want to tell you what is important to me as a Hindu what makes me a Hindu and the practice our lifestyle is just as important so this is an example of what I mean is that embedded in the question was certain assumptions about religion and it’s the ability to uncover those assumptions and question them that is what I mean by setting the frame the terms of the discourse this is your first question now just to apply this to a previous discussion so if somebody asks you know where is the evidence that this happened 5000 years ago when all the evidence is this is 2500 years ago so then then the answer would be that you know that that evidence is not what is central either to my tradition or to my faith so by faith you are using it in a broad sense like we could talk our faith tradition you are using faith in a broader sense and belief in a smaller sense of what we believe whereas faith is like the whole culture culture scripture practice everything combined together is that right when you differentiate faith and belief yeah with so just on one thing I on a practical level I would turn the question on that person I would say why is this evidence so important to you you’re asking for the evidence why is it so important to you and make them search themselves to raise the question why is this evidence so important because unless you can point to the evidence how can you believe it and that’s where I would say that that leap is not true for us that we don’t need to dig in the ground to find the piece of pottery that gives me faith that this is actually the truth that has never been our model of understanding that has not been our epistemology in the in the Vaishya tradition and and for us there are other things that are more important in terms of appreciating the evidence in terms of building our faith so so yeah but but now to your question about about that what faith is so this is a really yeah turn the question around then that really begs the question so you know is your faith not based on facts or is it that it is not based on these particular facts yes the latter the latter the fact that in there is the Vaidusha Pratyaksha Jiva Goswami says this is the basis of Shastric evidence that it is the Pratyaksha the direct experience of those who are Vaidusha those who are self-realized those who are advanced devotees so that is that is a fact right born from the experience of the sage the visionary sage is a form of evidence digging in the ground is another form of evidence searching through texts for manuscripts for finding the date of it at the end that is another form means there are many forms of facts many forms of evidence the question is exactly what you said that it’s it’s it’s which ones are we going to place importance it’s not that our faith is unfactual no it is factual but which facts are we basing it on you have decided that a certain body of facts is the most important and you’re going to judge me based on those that body of evidence why should I use that as the standard the measure that is simply giving you the power to determine my faith right and when that has never been the measure of my faith or the faith of my ancestors my Acharyas so now Vaidusha Pratyaksha that is just faith based on other faith it’s almost like you’re building a building a sandcastle upon sandcastle because my faith in the realities of this is based on my faith in the reality that they have perceived this and therefore and I have faith that their perception is perception is supernatural so in a sense it almost it almost becomes faith in the absence of facts that are verifiable by us there is no faith in the absence of facts that are verifiable and I think this goes to your second second question to me which was what is the nature of faith right and this is of course a very deep and very difficult question that has been volumes of books have been written about it in every religious tradition right so there’s so much to be said but let me say a few words in terms of how I have understood in my own experience and practice in the past few years and I would say that we make a mistake when we think that faith is even possible without in a without in a in a purely blind way subtracted from everything else around it faith is something that is composite right faith is something that has many different pieces to it that come together to create faith right so you have Shastric knowledge Gyan is part of faith right not all kinds of Gyan certain kinds of Gyan are detrimental to faith but without knowledge Sambandha Gyan at least there’s no such thing as faith experience is a part of faith only knowledge from a book is not going to build faith you cannot call that faith that’s called information it’s called learning it’s called wrote but it’s not faith faith has to have some experience paired with that knowledge to include some wonder in it some sense of mystery right so just experience and just knowledge is not enough there has to be some sense of promise some wonder there that what I am studying is more than I can I can wrap my head around that I can perceive and understand right so faith has many pieces to it and sometimes one piece may be a little weak and so we say my faith is not steady but it is a mistake to think that faith is what is left over so some people think if you remove knowledge you remove evidence you remove experience then and you still believe then that is faith no that is cheap fanaticism that is cheap sentimentality which will definitely not last unless the other things are there right so faith is something that is composite it’s all these pieces put together and sometimes the knowledge the evidence the fact side can be a little bit it can get shaky and of course this is I mean my experience in going into academic world sometimes there are times where the fact side start to wobble a little bit and so you have to lean more heavily on the side of experience and say I know Krishna he’s had an impact on my life I’ve perceived him not face to face but I know that he’s present his hand at least I’ve perceived in my life that you have to lean that Krishna I cannot know him fully so I’m willing to accept a little bit of a gap in the intellectual side for now sometimes the intellectual side is very solid I’ve got all the shastric quotes and I understand it and all the facts are there but something of experience is missing you wonder is there really Krishna I mean I understand it theoretically but actually is this you know is this a fact is Krishna there is there heaven and hell and Yamaraj and all of Devas and is this so there’s not enough experience to support that you know so when we say that my faith is shaky we have to understand that it’s not one monolithic thing that it’s falling it’s falling it’s not like that there’s different components and when one component is shaky which is natural we just have to lean more heavily on the others beautifully put wait until the other side is again strengthened just like when I have pain in one leg then I lean more heavily on the other leg allowing that one to recover in due course you know one of the talks on the seminars I do is on centering our faith on Krishna centering ourselves on Krishna so I talk of Krishna is the center and then we can have broadly four there can be many but four now you can have a intellectual pathway to Krishna you can have a cultural pathway to Krishna can have a social pathway to Krishna and you can have an emotional or experiential pathway to Krishna so now some people for them now everybody has all the components but for some people something would be very prominent say for somebody whose primary pathway to Krishna is intellectual then if there is some question for which you just the answer doesn’t make sense or you don’t have an answer that disturbs them a lot but for somebody whose faith is not coming from them why do you worry so much about this question on the other hand somebody for whom say the social pathway is important that means say how nice devotees are or how saintly my spiritual teachers are and then they find somebody’s behavior questionable and it’s like everything comes shattering down for them so in that sense I like this idea of faith as a composite and all these are there and maybe for each individual the percentage of each might be different and we all need to we will have one primary aspect but we also need to develop the other aspects so that we can turn to it when necessary yes and therefore on a practical level we should nourish that side which is not our strength right which is not our initial predilection because you never know when you will need it right now your favorite side you know if if like if your intellectual is the primary path it’s strong it’s good you’re feeling confident but you never know when Krishna is going to pull the rug out from under your intelligence right you’re unstable and so it’s so important to nourish the other sides you know and so in my own personal practice I always try to make sure that that non-intellectual aspect of faith is always nourished it’s always that I see that side of Krishna also that is engaged with rasa that is emotion that is experience that is the character of Vaishnavas that is the aspect of sitting humbly and allowing yourself to accept in a mood of wonder and mystery and appreciation without necessarily relying always on the intelligence to boost up that faith right so we have to be proactive about it we have to nourish that side of our faith you know if we think in these four pathways if we think of them as four legs of a chair of a stool of a table then if one is weak then we have to support that one more so that if in any case one starts to weaken we have strength in the others all the four of them have for any individual one side of their body is stronger than the other right unless you’re Arjun and he is ambidextrous but for most people it’s one side is stronger than the other so therefore physical therapist will tell you you have to do exercises for the other side not for the strong side for the other side to make sure that your body is properly well in principle I appreciate this but say some devotees they get nourishment primarily from studying Bhagavatam then it our lives are so fast paced and does not we don’t have an unlimited amount of time so if we tell them to get into elaborate deity worship because that is the cultural side also then that also takes time so when you say that we need to strengthen the other side what exactly do you mean by that means we make a conscious endeavor to deepen our appreciation for that side so we make ourselves practice it in an extensive way but at least we appreciate that that we make sure that it is incorporated into our lives that we appreciate and try to understand devotees for whom that is their area of nourishment and strength right in this way we are always in touch with the other aspects of bhakti as well this is why the nine processes of bhakti even though one is sufficient but the nine should be appreciated as a whole as a group the five most potent aspects of bhakti one is sufficient and each one of us will have our love in those five our area of strength but the other should be appreciated they should be considered as a group not an exclusion because you don’t know when your relationship with your deities will be your life saver even though your constant affection is for studying bhagatam but you never know when your relationship with your deities even though that is not the focus your deity puja is not the focus of it but it may one day become your life saver right true so you know i think this is very fruitful discussion till now so you said that actually the basis of the historical facts is one thing we were discussing about setting the frames of the debate and then from your perspective did we complete the discussion or you want to add something more on this so there were two places Prabhu where you gave a couple of things and then we went in one direction very fruitfully as you said so i think you asked the question of how do we control the frame of the debate yes and that question we didn’t get to so i just want to say a couple words on that and this is that in order to set the to change the terms of the debate one has to be an insider to the debate you can do it from the outside also with outside so by outside i mean this in any field of knowledge whether it’s religious studies like me or whether it’s it’s you know in any kind of intellectual discussion or even in any kind of social arena there’s certain assumptions under which people operate this is human nature there’s nothing wrong about it but if you want to question those assumptions you can question them from the outside you can stand up and you can protest you can say this is wrong you should not do it just like people Hindus will sometimes come up come to an academic conference and they will sit in the audience and then they will ask very sharp questions to the speaker and say you assume this and you said this but why do you speak like this so you can do that and it serves to you can say you know it’s like it serves to activate the discussion to raise the question to push but if you to set the terms of the debate then the best way to do it is to become an insider where you yourself become trained in that field of knowledge understand the terms of the discourse and then enter it as an expert as a peer and say I’m not satisfied with the terms of discussion here I want to change the questions so if we for example we find more devotees children becoming scholars becoming academics we can change the terms of the discussion in ways that are academically rigorous and accepted by our peers because we are now one of them we are part of them we’re never one of them in the sense that we are always Vaishnavas we’re always devotees I’ll give you the example of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya for me personally that Leela has been a great source of inspiration in my academic seva because notice what Mahaprabhu does he comes there and he takes on a humble stance first and he says yes you please teach me what is Vedanta he listens for seven days continuously and after he has done that okay put in his tapasya then Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya says you have something to say and Mahaprabhu says yeah well actually I have a lot to say your whole discussion of Vedanta is very learned but the terms of your discourse are not one that I accept you’re beginning from the assumption of impersonalism and I don’t accept that so for me it was like in the academic world not seven days but seven years of listening humbly and taking in taking in taking in and after you get your PhD then finally someone will ask you so you have something to say Dr. Gupta and you say actually I have a lot to say on this matter and you start publishing and you start speaking at conferences and it’s been my personal experience that just the presence of a devotee there a scholar who’s also a practitioner changes the nature of the discourse you don’t even have to be speaking just even in the audience it changes the assumptions that it changes what the speakers can assume and what they are willing to just brush under the rug they have to speak in a way that is appreciable to you even in the audience what to speak of you being on the panel itself and being one of the speakers so it has a very powerful impact and we see this in all fields devotees who have entered the field of book publishing devotees who have entered the field of therapy and psychology devotees who have entered the field of of engineering devotees who have entered the field of medicine right each one of them in the course of time they have served to change the very nature of the discourse the very nature of the questions being asked so this is a very very powerful mechanism not just shouting from the outside but speaking from the inside from a position of being a peer and not a bystander but a peer as someone who is respected by them and the more that we as Vaishnavas and especially I mean the younger generation Vaishnava children are willing and that means their parents are willing to let them enter multiple fields and to be Vaishnavas in those fields the more we will change the nature of the discourse in society and not simply be reactive to what’s happening but be actively proactively part of shaping the way society looks being a participant in that process and not just an observer beautifully put yeah actually I appreciate this point that as devotees the parallel between hearing from him and hearing the academia it’s a very good example and you know we just as we wouldn’t want an outsider to tell us what Bhagavad Gita means similarly in the academy also they don’t want outsiders to tell what it means so that makes sense so I think you also wanted to go to a bigger question you said that the dating of the scripture is not as important as the very fact that whether it is a revelation whether it is coming from man or it is actually coming from God that is a very big question how do you handle that yeah so just one little thing before I go there I wanted to say that we are not Chaitanya Mahaprabhu so surviving even seven days what to speak of seven years while listening to Mayavada Bhashya or anything else is a big question it’s a big challenge and especially in the academic world in this dance of faith and reason many many persons have lost their faith in Srila Prabhupada and in Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s approach and so on so we have to be very careful in doing this approach that I’m discussing of becoming the insider because becoming the insider doesn’t mean that we lose our identity as Vaishnavas that is always supreme that is always that is our Swaroop so becoming the insider doesn’t mean that things become covered over so much that we forget that we are Krishna Das in that factor I have to say that the most important thing the most important thing that from my experience to survive those seven days or seven years is having Vaishnava Sangha and the association of devotees and especially important of course the association of all devotees but especially important is having the association of other devotees who are engaged in the same type of seva of pursuit because together when one person is feeling the fangs of doubt another person is there to help support and when they are feeling the fangs of doubt you are there to help support and so before embarking on any kind of seva the first thing we have to ask ourselves is is there a community of devotees with whom I can do it who are pursuing the same type of seva with me if the answer to that question is yes then we should not be afraid to go in we should stick closely to that Sangha and not just that Sangha but more broadly we cannot isolate ourselves to only one type of Sangha but that thing is often absent you know we are going to our local temple we are doing Aarti and Puja and Kirtan but we don’t have anyone else who is pursuing religious studies with us the situation can become frankly very very difficult and this is back to my earliest point about the importance of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies in my own life that wasn’t even so much the academic centre but the house that we were all renting together that place was a sanctuary every morning we would do a morning program together and we would read Chittanachal Tamita as part of our morning program and it was the most amazing experience of reason wedded with faith in the context of other Vaishnavas who were working on the same pursuit and I think that is what helped me sustain my Krishna Consciousness during that crucial period of those 7 days, 7 years that is the most crucial once you are passed and they allow you to speak once the conversation becomes a dialogue then it’s okay it’s still a challenge but it’s not that much of a challenge when you are new when you first entered when you just arrived and you have to listen, listen, listen, listen for 7 years that is when you need that Sadhus. And so I just wanted to mention that one point to complete that Sarvabhauma example is that we cannot, we are not Mahaprabhu so we cannot just dive in like the hero of the story that’s true one of the metaphors I like to use for this is, it’s a war in one sense intellectually it’s a war and in a war the sincerity alone is not enough, you need competence you need colleagues so I might be on the side of virtue but if I have a gun that is not firing and other person has a machine gun I will be slaughtered so if and if I don’t have colleagues who are watching my back I might be attacked from elsewhere also so in a sense for somebody to enter into the academic fields they also need to have a certain level of intellectual ability because logic, analysis reasoning faculty these are also skills and sometimes skeptics or atheists they might be better at that than us their conclusions may be off but their expertise in arguing might be better than us and we can get beveled so both, I mean, yes we need the association but just like in any service we need supportive association but we also need some innate ability, if somebody wants to become a full time service in a kirtan year they need singing ability without that they can do kirtan but they cannot become a kirtan year so similarly I think that intellectual competence is also required at a basic level and then of course this supportive association is so important because I feel although I did not ever enter into the field of academics but I do read widely and one thing is that unless we have a place where we can raise our questions and not be judged as faithless for raising those questions then without that space we will choke internally yes, that is this is why that guhyam akhyati prachati is so important because of that element of judgment that you mentioned that space of faith without judgment that is really really powerful I mean if you find that in your Krishna consciousness that is like magic in any kind of field, in any service I know you did not mean you did not mean to say this but I just want to clarify for the sake of our listeners that in the academic world my experience has been that if we think of it in an us versus them scenario it is not very productive at all and it is not reality yes, there are those who are bhaktas and then there are those who are like Richard Dawkins there is no question about it there are people who are on that side and they get a lot of you know, YouTube notoriety and so on so that aspect is there but frankly our time in the academic world is not spent very wisely dealing with the Richard Dawkins type they have to have a certain flair for public performance in order to deal with him but our work is we the partners that we are talking that you had discussed, you had just mentioned those partners can be found in the Vaishnav community, they can also be found more broadly outside the Vaishnav community in the academic world we find people who are people or persons of great faith who are on a shared sense of mission and a shared sense of devotion is there also you can find people who are more skeptical but less some with less, I mean there is all what I mean to say is that all shades are there of different types of individuals, sometimes we have we think of the academic or the scientific world in a monolithic way, we demonize them, they are all you know we have to just smash them and or other times we consider themselves them to be such, every one of them is just angelic, they are all you know perfect Gyanis who know everything and we have to just mold our own identity based on what they are saying, both of those perspectives are not at all fruitful, we have to recognize that there is shades of different types of individual individuals all throughout the spectrum and some of my most amazing mentors in the academic world who taught me how to balance this faith and reason together, one was a Sri Vaishnav and the other was a Catholic, right and so we of course amongst the Vaishnavas there were also but my point is that we can find that sense of shared mission and development and journey across the spectrum and so I just wanted to make clear that we see it in a us versus them scenario. Yeah, when I talked about the, I agree with you on this point that ultimately we are all on a shared journey the specifics of that where we are coming from and specifics of where we are going may vary but there is a sense of shared journey, when I talked about it’s a battle and competence and weapons, my point was more about the fact that there are certain skills which are required for the service and in that sense if somebody is going in a war field and they don’t even know how to use a sword then they are not going to be very successful there and another way I think is that it’s every serious discussion whether it is between two people or whether it is when we are reading a book that discussion involves you could say almost like a reincarnation of ideas, reincarnation of conceptions okay, this was my understanding just like the soul leaves one body and gets a more evolved form, so our one conception in a sense dies and it comes in a more evolved way so it’s more metaphorical it’s not literal that there is a war but it is, it’s a continuous so we have to have that ability to to deal with the ideas deal with the fact that our ideas will be challenged and when the ideas are challenged that can feel like a battle, but through that challenge the ideas become more crystallized and then they come forward in more evolved forms Nicely put, nicely put Prabhu and I want to reaffirm what you said about our nature, that we really have to act according to our nature and we I mean for myself I recognized at some point that whether I liked it or not I would be doing this kind of thing right, so might do it in Krishna’s service because I can I can and give myself the proper training and the tools and the association to do it well so it’s going to happen one way or the other, like at that point you realize this is, I’m incurable in this regard I will someone may discover any situation I go into, I’m going to manage that situation, right this is my nature it’s not going to I’m incurable in this regard and so then you might as well give yourself the proper training and the skills and the association so that you can do it well, you’re going to do it anyway so you might as well learn how to do it well and for me that was a recognition that okay, I need to get proper training in the academic world, because you put me in the academic world or you don’t, I’m going to do this, this type of intellectual type of analysis and work is just who I am, I cannot help it, so might as well figure learn how to do it well and find a way to do it so it has the maximum impact in Seva so I think that’s how we have to encourage the younger generation is to recognize and instead of saying no, no, no, no, this type of Gyan devotees don’t do or no, no, no, this type of by trying to boss everyone around you’re being, this is arrogance devotees don’t do this instead of doing that we have to say no, no, no, this, you have to do this let me show you how to do it properly here is the Sangha, here is the training and here is the Seva for you to do now of course this is all easier said than done but that’s the ethos I think that we have to enter it with, that’s true I read about I find my primary inspiration or contribution is writing I write more for a general audience than an academic audience but I was reading one book by a writer and he says that sometimes when writing you feel that nothing is coming through and I feel that I can’t write so he says if you start feeling like that then stop writing go on with your life and if after a week a couple of weeks, after a month you feel I can’t live without writing then you will come back and then you won’t be so obsessed with how quickly the result is coming, how good the result is coming so in one sense when you talk about our Swabhav, our nature it is there are many things to it but one aspect is that doing it is more important than enjoying the rewards of doing it so for some people being intellectual is what they are going to be going to study scripture is, they can’t be without it, as you said, then better do it in a way that is constructive otherwise we get half-baked knowledge and that becomes like the worst ever so you end up doing it in an amateurish way and it can become dangerous to you and to everyone around you basically so amateurish in the sense that if you don’t invest to get the necessary training and the skills to do it well then you will do it in the association okay, agreed fully so do we have the time to go into the revelation aspect yes maybe we, 10-15 minutes we could discuss and we’ll see how it goes is that okay? yeah, so going back to that, you mean the point where I was saying that the historical aspect was actually an early question and not the most difficult one but then there were other more difficult questions yes, right so yeah, going back to that point, I think the more challenging question is in terms of how scholars and how we as devotees approach the subject of religion scholars academics, historians they see religion as a human product born from certain historical, social, cultural contexts produced by human beings in human society and religious people all over the world Vaishnavas, Christians, anyone they see religion as being something that is consistent comprehensive and timeless these three things are key, consistent, comprehensive and timeless what I mean to say by these three is that first starting with the last, timeless, that these are truths that are eternal it’s not like, you know, yesterday Krishna wasn’t God until he all emerged as a God in Hindu society, no God is God, right, so Krishna is always the supreme personality of God, to take a simple example, but truths are timeless that they are, our religion, our faith, our tradition provides a comprehensive view of reality right, so we don’t say, Krishna consciousness explains or describes this but when it comes to Japan Krishna consciousness is irrelevant it has nothing to offer or when it comes to Japan or China, we have nothing to say, it’s only relevant for India or it was a perspective that works now but it didn’t work 50 years ago or it is it explains the nature of God but we have nothing to say about the nature of this world, no, religion is comprehensive, it’s a total system for understanding life, existence, experience knowledge, everything, right human beings, animals, plants the moon, the stars, everything is explained it’s timeless, it’s comprehensive and we insist on consistency that what we are that what Krishna says at the beginning of Bhagavad Gita is consistent with what he says at the end of the Gita right, now there are different things he says one he says, you know, you should fight because it’s your honor and all of that and then he says give up all dharmas so we don’t say, oh Krishna is contradicting himself, we can’t take him seriously no, we say these two things fit together, one is your swadharma one is parodharma, so we find ways of explaining it in a consistent fashion so this is not just devotees, this is any person, I should say any theistic person at least is concerned with these three items religious studies on the other hand academia is specifically focused on those truths that are relative, that are contingent, that are changing over time so when, I’ll give you an example, when the devotee studies the Upanishads they are looking for those eternal truths that the sages have spoken for thousands of years and are relevant to us today, in our own lives when the scholar is looking at the Upanishads they are seeing that this Upanishad is a product of North Indian rivalries between kingdoms in the 6th century BC and you find elements of that rivalry clearly visible in the debate that happens in the court of Janaka between Yajnavalkya and the other places Yajnavalkya is from the east and the others are coming from the west and there is certain political trajectory that is happening now that is a question that I can guarantee no Acharya has brought up in their commentary it is not a concern of ours whether there is political rivalries and when they are located in history geographically between different kingdoms I shouldn’t say never, maybe someone has brought it up but that is not our primary concern in fact not only is it not our primary concern but it can feel like a downright threat to our faith because we are now taking that which is eternal and comprehensive and consistent and we are pointing out things that are temporal and limited relative rather and inconsistent or contradictory within it in other words we are taking that which is divine because that which is divine has these three characteristics, eternal, comprehensive and and we are showing what is human within it because human beings are not consistent, they are not timeless and they are not comprehensive we are very limited and very relative and very temporary so they are looking at the same object from different perspectives altogether and this is the fundamental issue that causes religious people to see intellectual scholars with some measure of distaste some measure of fear and some measure of rejection and this is what gets some scholars to see religion as religious people as being rather naive otherworldly so this is the conflict set up between the two and I have some suggestions, some reasons for why it doesn’t necessarily have to be a conflict that in fact they can be quite useful to each other but so far is that okay before I move any further it is clearly articulated I have heard different articulations of this and I have also thought about it one articulation is that when we look at tradition when an insider or a practitioner studies the tradition their default attitude is faith whereas when an academic scholar studies it, the default attitude is questioning, is doubt which is similar to what you are saying but that’s one way I had heard of it another way I had thought of it is that basically when the devotee is studying it the focus is on developing a relationship with Krishna I often talk about the difference between knowing Krishna and knowing about Krishna so whereas the academic scholar’s approach is to know about so it’s like a doctor, say a child is sick and the child goes to a child is taken to a doctor now the doctor knows more about the biological indicators of the child, much much more than the mother how much is the blood count, RBC or platelet count or whatever but it is the mother who knows the child better so there is a knowing about and knowing, that was one difference and then the challenge is what do you do when the mother has to be the doctor so in some ways those who are trying to integrate the faith and the reason it’s like we want to at one level devote ourselves, love ourselves, love and offer ourselves to the object but at the same time we want to analyze and study and you could even scrutinize that object so those are two metaphors which I had and there are several more I could give but I like this articulation that comprehensive, consistent and timeless as compared to the human approach another metaphor that I heard about is that how basically earlier when you were talking about faith, I was thinking of the point of panentheism how God is nature and God is more than that so similarly in my understanding if we look at religion yes religion has a historical dimension to it, it has a social dimension to it, it has a cultural dimension to it you could say it has a psychological dimension to it also however the problem is when we reduce religion to all this and there is nothing more to it so religion is all this and more so for the insider, for the practitioner, the more is most important for the academic scholar, all this is most important, so in that sense it’s not so much an intrinsic conflict as you could say as a conflict of focus or as a divergent focuses yes this last point you made Prabhu I like very much it’s very well put and because the academic perspective becomes its own worst enemy when it becomes reductive in relation to religion, it reduces religion to merely the social merely the psychological, merely the political and it is true that scholars are not interested in or equipped to understand the transcendent aspects of religion and any honest scholar will say not that my method proves that there is no transcendent aspect that is a non scholarly position, that is a position of faith if a scholar says there is no transcendent reality then they are articulating a position of faith they are articulating a religious position, that is a religious atheism is a religious position it has certain convictions about the nature of God the methods of religious studies allow you like any scientific discipline are limited exclusively to what can be perceived by the human senses so you cannot disprove that something beyond the human senses does not exist you cannot disprove that it does exist because when all that you can perceive is only within the realm of the senses you could say that if I just understand this right that if we reject the transcendent then that is also like faith in faithlessness so it’s more of a position of say functional agnosticism it might be there, it might not be there but that’s not that’s not what our focus is that’s not what our scope of study is it’s something like that? yes, an honest scholar exactly, an honest scholar will say that look my ability to study and my interest lies within the human and material dimensions of religion and the fact that there is or is not a God, there is or is not an afterlife those things are for you to decide, oh religious person, this is your area of work so properly speaking scholarship does not make a judgment on issues of transcendent reality however the problem becomes when things that are presumed by the devotee to be transcendent are then explained in using historical or social or political forces, historical political context when that happens then say I believe that God gave a revelation to such and such person asking that this be done and I show you that that change that happened in the tradition was a direct result of political forces and social forces that were prevalent in society at that time in history now did it happen because of God or did it happen because of the forces of history and this can be like a direct threat to the religious person.
I think that Salman Rushdie’s satanic verses is a classic example of that where Mohammed adjusted certain revelations and he said earlier the devil spoke and then he said so I want to reject that but then he said that was more for accommodating he initially wanted to accommodate the people over there and then he found that accommodating doesn’t work so he rejected those ideas it’s a big subject but I think that’s one example we could say of yes so this is true in every tradition that this challenge is there right and so it takes a lot of maturity and a lot of shall I say faith to be willing to risk studying and understanding what those socio-political historical explanations are in relation to one’s tradition in relation to the transcendent aspects of one’s faith because the natural tendency of a religious person is to explain everything in transcendent terms this is Krishna’s and the tendency of the scholar is to explain everything in historically historically contingent terms and so the meeting of the two sides becomes a really great challenge it’s like I was saying it was it’s set up for conflict but it doesn’t have to be that way there can be a way to bring those perspectives together and for that let me give you a little example as someone presents you with a very well beautifully decorated cake to eat right so it’s birthday or something like that you get a cake now there’s two ways of appreciating that gift that you receive one is to ask questions about it really how did you make this what ingredients went into it that those decorations is it what kind of icing is it is it you know buttercream icing is it cream cheese icing or is it fondant and then and where did you get the ingredients and how long did it take to make and the other option is to you cut a slice sing happy birthday cut a slice and just eat it and let the flavor give you the full experience of what that cake anyone who hears this so a devotee is going to say what’s the flavor of the cake that’s when you really know otherwise it’s licking the bottle of honey on the outside right and the scholar is going to say if you’re too so busy licking the plate clean how can you ever understand anything about what you’re eating which is also a fact that if you’re eating enjoying that cake are you actually concerned with questions about ingredients etc no you’ve already made a decision to dive into it you’ve committed to it right so you’re going to be concerned about the flavor so but the point is both perspectives are crucial right if you want to know something as you put it so nicely beforehand you can know it by experiencing it by committing to it and you put the cake in the mouth you have committed to it whatever the ingredients are they are inside you right you’ve made a commitment to that so that’s that’s a very powerful way of experiencing it and the person making the cake analysis can never appreciate fully what the cake is without tasting but on the other hand the person who is eating the cake when something is this close to you you also are blind to certain aspects of that that thing that you’re eating how you cannot see context you cannot see history you cannot see politics you cannot see sociology you cannot see so many of the contingent factors that went into your experience because you are this close to it for that you need some distance to understand those aspects so my point is certain things are understood up close and certain things are best understood from a distance and both of those perspectives are essential if we want a complete understanding of what it is that we want to study what it is that we love and so while our preference may be up close we should recognize the value in seeing something from a distance both sides the academic and the intellectual and the devotional can temper each other’s weaknesses they can support the weaknesses the weakness of the academic side is that they can reduce religion as you were saying earlier and miss the very reason why religion is such a powerful force in the world if you look at it only from historical political sociological perspective you will scratch your head wondering why is it that religion still exists even in this age of science and reason you cannot make heads or tails of why is religion such a powerful force and why it’s such a beautiful force and why it’s so effective to bring about change in people’s lives and in society you will miss all of that if you reduce religion just to the political consortium so for the scholar taking advantage of the religious person’s experience of eating the cake up close is essential in order to not fall into the trap of reducing religion but on the other hand for the devotee for the devotional person it is also essential to avoid the weakness of the religious position which is this that religious positions can become absolutist they can become insular because we believe in an absolute truth which we can never give up that belief in an absolute truth can lead to absolutism it should not but it can the sense that I am better than everyone I have figured everything out right and I everyone else in my path is wrong they are worthy of destruction I do not need any contact with the rest of the world and that type of insular thinking which leads to religious conflicts and war and violence and bigotry that can be tempered it can be softened when we train ourselves to take some distance and to recognize that yes my own religion has changed over time it has absolute truth there is no question but that absolute truth has been applied differently over time in different places in different circumstances that there are yes everyone is acting with bhakti but sometimes also there can be political considerations that go into how religion is run and how it is practiced and how it is moved in the world right that there can be some less lofty effects reasons for religions work in the world and that we don’t have to wait until after the damage has been done to recognize that in hindsight but that we can actively learn to see things from a distance also so both have their strengths and both have their weaknesses the insider and the outsider the academic and the scholar and the devotee and both can take advantage of the other strengths in order to help themselves they will never leave their positions but they can benefit from the other and that dialogue is what is so crucial for us today in the contemporary world where we see both examples of scholarship that is dismissive of religion and gives pain to religious people and we see examples of religious bigotry and hatred that are born from this insular perspective on religion so that dialogue is so crucial for our world today to have that and we should not be afraid of it that dialogue is difficult sometimes it’s quite painful but it is very useful and when done in the proper guidance and proper context and association can be very very beneficial for us it’s beautiful how both can help each other I was thinking of some examples over here but before I go into that so if we look at let’s take Prabhupada’s example Prabhupada went to America and he was spectacularly successful so we can say this is this is Krishna’s arrangement it is Prabhupada’s purity, Krishna’s empowerment by which he was successful so that is the transcendental aspect now we could also look at the socio-cultural aspects of America and there was a counterculture at that time and that counterculture at one sense people were very skeptical about established religion and established systems of knowledge and everything but they were also receptive to eastern spirituality so one example that I used to reconcile this is that that it Prabhupada that Krishna set the stage for Prabhupada through all these situations and but even if there is a beautiful stage it is the dancer has to dance expertly so if we consider it only as transcendental empowerment then that is functioning in this world so we could say that there was so much time Prabhupada was trying in India India there are not so many results so we could say that is Krishna’s plan but I find that once we start I like that point especially I think we can hold on to an absolute truth without needing to hold on to absolutism that yes there is a spiritual explanation for things but that doesn’t mean we cannot look for sociological or cultural or other factors other factors that also matter so India was not receptive at that time so it was not that Prabhupada was empowered when he went to America and he was not empowered when he was in India but even for empowerment to work some circumstances are important so looking at the sociological factors does not decrease the glory of Srila Prabhupada at the same time if we say that sociological factors alone were made the success then that is also a problem in some ways the transcendental and if I may use the word circumstantial the transcendental circumstantial both can work together now the conflict may come where does the domain of the transcendental end and where does the domain of circumstantial begin and we may not even need to do that hair splitting analysis most of the times sometimes you may need to but so this was one thought I had and I had one more point but do you want to speak yeah yeah so so so where one begins and the other ends let me propose that that they’re that they’re they are completely overlapping it in in their in their domains that it’s not separate domains but overlapping domain in other words it was definitely Krishna’s will Krishna’s empowerment his will that Prabhupada succeed in America but is possible that Krishna’s will could be manifest through arranging society creating the proper circumstances in just the right historical sending Prabhupada just the right moment historically to do this work is it not possible in other words that Krishna’s will can be manifest through society through politics through timing through history of course it can right Krishna is controlling everything so who is to say that his will is opposed when we create this false dichotomy right this versus this then we’re forced to choose was it this or was it this and what if these things are the same what if Krishna’s will is sometimes manifest with him descending on the back of Garuda through a parking in the skies and other times it’s manifest in more simple ways through by sending George Harrison to Srila Prabhupada by creating just the right visa situation in the United States I remember Brahmananda Maharaj, Brahmananda Prabhu wrote a very nice article in Journal of Vaishnava Studies describing the specific legal and political situation that made Prabhupada’s arrival in America so perfect right so well timed so that timing is Krishna’s hand now these two things we can see it from transcendent or we can see it from material but they are not different they don’t have to be a dichotomy and look at the advantage of seeing it from both perspectives when we see it that this is Krishna’s will that makes us appreciate Krishna’s power and his ability to do anything and everything for his devotee right that the importance of surrender to Krishna in the way that Srila Prabhupada demonstrated when we see the historical circumstances what does it teach us that we have to be aware of just like Prabhupada was we have to be aware of what is the social, cultural, political environment around us and connect to that if we want to give Krishna consciousness and if we then we look at Prabhupada’s circumstance we can say now what is the situation in my time in the United States okay counterculture is not such a big thing anymore but this is the area where it’s really developing yoga is an amazingly mainstream thing and powerful thing so this is one area where I can connect here’s interest in Bhagavad Gita has skyrocketed since Prabhupada in many ways because of Srila Prabhupada himself so this is the way I can connect right so that awareness then if I say no no no it’s all Krishna’s will I will just go on doing what I’m doing I close my eyes and then that is that is we’re losing something right we are losing something by closing our eyes to the circumstantial to the contextual to the contingent so there is great benefit in seeing the same story from two different perspectives both of them can work together to help our Krishna consciousness beautiful so rather than one both of them as you said overlapping and both work in parallel and we could say both are the working of Krishna only one is Krishna working as you said breaking through the principle of history and the laws of nature and doing something miraculous and other is Krishna working through the working of historical circumstances both ways yes so in a sense he can go against he can he can work through both Krishna both options right so they’re overlapping but for us ultimately the Krishna narrative has to be overarching remember that’s comprehensive consistent so that has to overcome everything so I prefer to see them not as somehow there’s Krishna and then there’s the force of history and the two opposing forces are fighting each other or in my own mind but rather say no Krishna is encompassing everything he is the eternal and he is also the temporal he’s acting he’s as you said so nicely he’s cutting through the force of history and showing I don’t have to work through history I can do magic and Prabhupada’s story was a story of magic Prabhupada in many ways he defeated all expectations that are reasonable socially historically politically his results were completely unreasonable right they were completely illogical in the sense of beyond logic right and no one can expect that kind of result you can do everything Prabhupada did you won’t get that kind of result in just the right circumstance because it’s not Krishna cut through history and decided I want to show my own power here but also Krishna works within history he works within culture and within politics and society and that aspect was also clear in Prabhupada’s story so I very much like these two things you said cutting through and working within Krishna all of the whole story is Krishna only hmm that’s true so this when you talk about this said the devotional approach and the academic approach now there is something in between which is devotional scholarship within the tradition itself so the traditional I could call simply a traditional scholarship as contrasted the academic scholarship so the traditional scholarship also at least in India we had a rich tradition of intellectual debate so I presume there was a certain amount of criticality and a certain amount of intellectual rigor there also so is it that that is that was lost over time or is it that because that was more insular so that has lost relevance now no it’s not lost relevance and it’s not been lost over time sometimes it becomes overshadowed by voices that are more absolutist or fundamentalist in perspective but it is never lost if that is lost in the tradition then the tradition itself dies essentially if we lose the ability to question ourselves and to think critically through what we’re studying now the difference is simply that when we do it when the Acharyas do it they always begin from a position of faith of conviction in the transcendence and the beauty and the perfection of what they are studying this is in Christian theology this is called faith seeking understanding that you start with faith and you seek understanding but the questioning aspect never goes away and I’ll give you one little example one of the pillars of academic scholarship in regards to texts today is critical textual scholarship is called creating critical additions where you compare different manuscripts of the same edition and you look for changes differences between them and you try to decide to the best of your ability which is likely to be the original version every text will have those slight variations most of them are unconsequential in nature but some can become important there is a difference in meaning this is like one of the pinnacles of western textual scholarship the ability to do this but we find that the Acharyas and their commentaries on Bhagavatam they are very frequently pointing out Pathanthara or Partha Veda, different readings and this one and this one and they’ll explain both without actually trying to reach a judgment as to which one is better which one is right or which one is wrong. They’ll say whether you take it like this you take it like this here’s the explanation for the first here’s the explanation for the second both explain something very nice so it is not that the Acharyas the ancient mind was blind to the fact that human beings can introduce variations within a text that’s a human contingent relative reality that impinges upon the transcendent text the eternal text the eternal Shastra they were not blind to the fact that human beings can have a temporary impact on that which is eternal they were aware of it. In fact Madhvacharya pointed out very clearly that many sections of the Mahabharata cannot be trusted because there are so many variations in the text in different editions of it so certain types of readings also were questioned or were a matter of concern to Acharyas not that simply all were accepted so the critical mind is all there and must be there it’s just that we have to allow that side of the tradition to flourish even to nourish it so that we have a place of faith seeking understanding.
Not that we come to it from a place of faithlessness that is for other people to do. No, for us we begin with a place of faith but we never turn the questioning business off otherwise the tradition will gradually die. It will shrivel up.
It will lose its relevance and its robustness and gradually die and become just a shell only of this blind conviction and faith. Yes that’s so true so but it does seem to some extent at least that right now within Hinduism or Vaishnavism we don’t have many forums for we could say insider scholarship in a way that can engage with the contemporary world. We can have insider scholarship which say translates which translates the sacred texts into English and other things but actually to engage with the contemporary world we need to study the tradition deeply.
We also need to study the contemporary world deeply and in some ways maybe this is because I don’t know various factors one is that India itself was under foreign rule and then India the whole idea of religious studies is not developed in India much and we could go into that but this is I don’t think this is just a issue with say ISKCON itself. It’s broadly with Hindu scholarship I don’t see a lot of Hindu teachers seriously engaging with contemporary thought. If I look at Christianity there are so many conservative blogs, liberal blogs and there are so many people who write and of course people write scholarly books also dealing seriously with contemporary issues so what do you feel about this? I mean what you pointed out Prabhu is so so essential.
It’s so important and very well stated that this is something that is lacking in Hinduism broadly in Vaishnavism broadly in ISKCON specifically is both types of scholarship are so important. The internal scholarship where we are doing the study of our Shastras and having internal debates about the meanings of particular verses and so on and so forth and how we should practice but then also those that engage with the broader world with the outside world. So on the one hand we have the Shastric Advisory Council which you and I both serve on in some capacity and this is so crucial for the institution to resolve questions for the tradition to resolve questions through insider scholarship using our Pramanas and not necessarily looking outside.
We may look once in a while but that’s not the foundation of what we do. So this is essential but the other aspect of it is also so crucial that we want scholars we want thoughtful devotees who engage with the contemporary discourse, dialogues, issues of our time and I mean considering the size of the Hindu community considering how accomplished we are in every field it is actually a great embarrassment to see how little we have to say on any of these issues. I mean just think about any seriously done theology of the environment this is one of the biggest questions that faces the world today.
Politically, socially, culturally, in so many ways scientifically and yet yes there are ecological statements out there. You know we love the environment, we believe all human beings are sacred all life is sacred. Those things are there and they’re not bad but someone who has seriously engaged with all the implications of a theology, there are very, very few persons I mean literally you can count them on your fingers.
For a tradition that is over a billion people in terms of size. Think about Hindu, serious Hindu ethics written on issues like bioethics for example. When I have to suggest, when people ask me for readings, my whole reading list all involves Christian authors and Jewish authors and Muslim authors but when it comes to Hindu sources you have an article here in some popular newspaper an article there, maybe a short few words in this way, that way but no one who has worked I shouldn’t say no one, very few who have worked by engaging with the contemporary discourse.
But what I mean to say is not just here’s what I think, take it or leave it not that approach. I mean I’m going to read seriously what my Christian brothers and sisters have said. I’m going to read seriously what the scientists have said on the issue of environment.
I’m going to read seriously on what Muslims have said. I’m going to read seriously on what secular humanists have said and then I’m going to engage in a discussion that is already happening. And I’m going to show how the Vaishnavas how Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s movement has something clear and useful to contribute to that discussion that can help change the nature of the world.
That is the outsider facing scholarship is very few and far between amongst Hindus amongst Vaishnavas amongst ISKCON and so rather than creating taking on a fighting stance with sometimes you know as devotees we can take on a fighting stance. Oh these are these are a threat. These scholars intellectuals, historians, they are a threat.
Instead we should include them in the sense of having our own department our own field where we cultivate it right in the way that we want it in the way that is appropriate for us. Look at the Catholic Church. There are pontifical universities where yes there are scholars who criticize the church and so on both outside and within but instead of just standing on the outside I was saying earlier and shouting and screaming that why do you say this about us better to have your own pontifical university where both the support is coming from people who are in a position of faith and commitment and also the criticism is coming from persons who you can trust as position of faith and and commitment to the tradition right.
That is so important. That is something we want that we want our own institution of learning and our own community of scholars who can provide support when needed but also healthy criticism when needed. And in this way we we reduce some of the us and them dynamic you know that you are the enemy and we have to protect ourselves from all of you scholars.
That is not free. I think one reason for that is you put it very well at lacking one reason is also at least for risk on often our purpose of engagement is conversion. It’s not discussion as you said that we want to enter into a discussion and show how we also have a valuable take on the discussion but often the purpose is you know we have the ultimate answer and our purpose is to convert and where we don’t have much opportunity to convert people to our way of thinking.
Often we think that there’s not much much utility in engaging in that discussion also. So in one sense there is a you could say there is a missionary organization which focuses on proselytization. These are all words with negative connotations but that’s the purpose but then there has to be a separate wing of it.
The purpose is not so much you know for many even for in a proselytizing organization for many people philosophy is simply a tool for conversion it is not as you said faith seeking understanding it is more like analysis for conversion so then I think that kind of scholarship doesn’t get that kind of attitude doesn’t sustain scholarship. So I think gradually our movement is creating space for that kind of scholarship. Just yesterday I had a discussion with Gaurang Prabhu and he was talking about the BRC and the Oxford Centre is there so slowly I think we are creating pockets like that and in some ways it might be natural you know from the first generation we didn’t have the time or the bandwidth to focus on these things as our movement becomes stabilized then these things this kind of broader engagement in society it will take some time for it to happen.
Isn’t it? Yes. It will take for some time for it to happen Prabhu and therefore also it’s very difficult it takes a lot of vision to invest in cultivating this because the results show up not in 5 years not in 10 years not in 20 years they show up in the space of 50 60 70 sometimes 100 years you look at the great centers of learning in India or anywhere in the world they were never ever established and flourished in 5 years 10 years 15 years investment in this kind of learning and education and cultivation of a culture is not when I think you described it very well that when it is instrumentalized it will not have its effect right my scholarship isn’t it’s just an instrument in order to convert X just an instrument in order to put out a press release it is only instrument to do this it’s instrument so that when I go out to give lectures at Bhakti Vixas people will listen to me nicely they’ll respect me that is why a PhD is useful all of this is instrumentalizing education for its use in other goals and for that you will never reap the full benefits the full potential of what education is meant for right education has value that cannot be calculated in in short goal oriented sort of approach it has one needs a very broad long-term vision it’s like planting an almond tree you planted for your grandchildren to harvest the fruits right and I think that that is as you said it’s very natural that it develops in a tradition over time even for who I wanted to say on the missionary world this is a whole separate topic but it is also a we do harm to our missionary work also when we perceive it in the ways that you describe that actually mission and dialogue are not opposite ends of the same spectrum right it’s not conversion versus dialogue when we think of mission as opposed to dialogue then actually it harms our mission itself that it’s not it makes our mission less effective because going back to the very first place that we started this discussion when we teach and mission is teaching that is the heart of mission when we teach we always begin from where the person we are teaching is at and that requires genuine dialogue and understanding I must hear from you in order to know where you’re at that’s the foundation of dialogue and that is the foundation of mission also is dialogue and understanding mission is not opposed to dialogue and it is an immature understanding of mission when we think of it as opposed to dialogue and discussion we think of it in terms of conversion that idea of conversion honestly speaking in that limited sense is something that is foreign to our tradition it’s foreign to our sampradaya we have never thought of mission in those terms mission is bringing a person by mind and by heart to a different place and any movement in that direction is success right it’s not an on and off switch the problem with the word conversion is that it suggests an on off switch converted blooped converted blooped right like it’s a light switch but this is not the case right conversion is that mission is a process it’s a journey of bringing people moving them towards Krishna and the best way to start that journey and to pursue that journey is by beginning from where that person is at and that is what is the definition of dialogue hearing and speaking hearing and speaking beautiful so when we define mission in the in the narrow term of as you said converting people then we are actually like we say scholars might have a reductionistic attitude toward religion we can have a reductionistic attitude toward the whole process of elevating people’s consciousness yeah and that is when I think when we try to go into conversion then the hostility becomes more and then it is this idea of dialogue with the world is itself sometimes at least for me took many years to appreciate that this is what we are also meant to do it is more like we are meant to talk not even talk with the world it is talk to the world so that is often the idea of preaching and then scholarship itself is quite antithetical to that because scholarship involves the give and take of ideas yeah so you know this maybe one or two last points because I don’t want to take too much of your time and I would love to have you again for a future discussion but going back to the point of revolution so in an academic sense there is no way am I right to say that there is no way to actually prove the reality of revolution but then there is no way to disprove the reality of revolution also so revolution is more a matter of faith that develops through what we discussed earlier the various things and those other components one’s personal experience one’s study of scripture one’s association and all those things so it is through those things itself so revelation itself cannot be rationally proven and I think that is where if you want to talk about the faith and reason I often in my classes I give a metaphor that often in Christianity they talk about the leap of faith so I say that if this is one mountain that is another mountain it’s not that this is the mountain of reason this is the mountain of faith rather from the mountain of faith also you can have a bridge of reason but the bridge of reason won’t take you all the way to the mountain of faith so in a sense the bridge of reason takes you to some extent so faith does not contradict reason faith in a sense supersedes reason it goes where reason is going but it goes further than that how do you what are your thoughts about this yeah so Prabhu just one thing on the question of faith I forget the wording exactly that you used maybe you can correct me but about rationality you said the word rationality I would not say that faith is different or beyond rationality because rationality is a very important component of faith I mean if you see a Madhya Madhikari is someone who is able to understand their faith through the scriptures through reason and to convince others about it also right or is it I’m still getting maybe my point was that reasons can definitely needs to be used to explain faith to understand faith but faith itself is more than reason we cannot so for example by reason I can talk about maybe how there is a god who there is a divine being but purely by reason I cannot say that the divine being is a cowherd boy who plays a peacock who plays a flute and wears a peacock feather so so by reason I can understand and explain why the Bhagavatam is is a credible source of revelation and within the Bhagavatam revelation there is there is the description of Krishna that is given so in that sense so it’s not again I like to talk it’s not irrational or non-rational it’s rational and then trans-rational so we definitely need to use reason but reason alone will not be not take us all the way along the journey yes yes and Prabhu therefore I I worry a little bit about the metaphor of the mountains because to me it creates too much of a separation between faith and reason and it in terms of image it assumes that one must leave one to come to the other or leave one to or and so there is there is separation and there is opposition and as I was saying earlier for me there’s a much greater sense of overlap between the various aspects that faith is more than reason because it includes reason within it I don’t think a devotee ever leaves reason behind it’s Gnana Karma Dhyanavritam it is Bhakti is not covered it’s Anavritam it’s not covered by reason it doesn’t mean that at any point Bhakti becomes unreasonable that it is lost altogether and so that conviction that Krishna is the Supreme Personality of God and we are His servants even to that point there’s the element of reason is always there but as you’re saying it is insufficient because reason is just one component of faith and there is so much more to faith than that so maybe we think of it more in terms of Venn diagrams I don’t know there’s different realms and there are those who are if we have the circle of reason and we have the circle of pure conviction or faith we can call it not faith but belief let’s say belief and then we have another circle of experience and we have another circle of you know the Shabda Pramana or whatever so we have these areas right and there are those who are on the extremes who are on the extreme of the circle of reason yeah I’m not going to take faith in anything I’m not going to trust anything only what my mind can figure out or in the realm of experience only what I can experience with my senses that is the only thing that is true over you know certain traditions say certain religious traditions my own experience is supreme what I experience that is true right so for a Vaishnava the extremes of those circles are not a happy place for me we want to be in a place where all of these overlap and that space of overlap that is where Krishna resides right where there is reason where there is trust in the Acharyas where there is a sense of personal experience also all of these are yeah see I agree with you fully this metaphor see any metaphor ultimately is inadequate but when I use the metaphor of say mountain of reason mountain of faith my point was that see for at some stages in our life reason may be the sole basis of our faith and that is good as a starting point but sooner or later we will experience some things which you can’t figure out through reason then we move forward and then reason is one basis of our faith so reason is not the sole basis but one basis and then I remember I read an article of Ravindra Sourav Prabhu where he talks about how you know he had read many arguments about the non-existence of God and then somebody sent him an article about a new theory about God’s non-existence and he said that eventually when I read these arguments I found that my faith resisted all those arguments it was not that I could make a rational case for the existence of God I just knew that God existed so in a sense at that stage it is not that a person has become irrational but that reason is not required for one’s own faith so it is not that a person can still make very good arguments using reason but my point is that there is a certain level of experience which can give a deep conviction that transcends reason so in that sense if I say this is a mountain, one mountain is reason, one mountain is faith so we could say human consciousness encompasses both but it could be centered more on reason it could be centered partially on reason maybe faith is not the best word as a realization conviction, experience, whatever is the word you want to say so just like we say that Madhavendra Puri says that I no longer want to do my Sandhya Vandan because I am simply absorbed in Krishna so Uddhava Gita also says that the Jnani has to give up Jnana to become fully absorbed in Bhakti, to offer himself to Krishna, so now giving up Jnana is not rejecting Jnana it is like giving up dependence on Jnana so there comes a stage, so sole reliance on reason partial reliance on reason and no reliance on reason so no reliance on reason is not irrational it is trans-rational that’s what I was trying to talk about by this metaphor no, that makes it very clear, thank you Prabhu because that was my concern sometimes that can lead to a slippery slope if we are not clear about that people think religious faith means irrationality and science, rationality but rationality is present in both the question is what is the foundation of that rationality and what is its goal rationality is merely a mode of thinking and why should we give up any mode of thinking, the question is what is the foundation of that rationality is it Shabda Praman or is it your own sense experience is the foundation and what is its goal, is your goal to understand the nature of human beings and the world or is your goal to understand Krishna and in each case the rationality has a different role to play, so sometimes people, I mean it is clear you are not saying this but sometimes people will speak of religion as different from rationality as if religion is irrational but I remember going to your point about Rabindranath Suraprabhu how one time I was reading the commentary of Ramanujacharya on Sri Bhasya his commentary on Vedanta Sutra called Sri Bhasya he gave a wonderful argument for the existence of God and I was so happy reading it and then he proceeded to destroy the argument yeah, that’s amazing all to prove that Tarkopratisthana that the Lord is not establishable purely on the basis of logic but what was interesting is that to show that the Lord was not provable by logic by Tarka he was using logic alone he was using logical thinking to prove that logic rationality is a tool and a devotee is happy to use it when it becomes useful in Krishna’s service and happy to leave it behind when it is simply an impediment in Krishna’s service so in that way we are neither rationalist nor irrationalist rationality we accept and we say Yukta Vairagya it’s useful for Krishna’s service, I will use it but my identity the basis of my faith is not exclusively on reason my identity is Krishna Das my faith is much broader than just mere reason but when it is useful I am happy to use it just like that devotee in the Sakshi Gopal story he reasons with Krishna if you can talk, you can walk this is simple logic but that rationality that logic was useful and Krishna was very pleased by it it was very sweet for Krishna good point, nice point you make it’s a logical point even we don’t leave we are talking with Krishna rationality may be useful but it is a tool for the devotee never the goal, never the object Gyanakarmadyanam yeah beautifully put, so when you talk about rationality the foundation by foundation what you mean is that say empirical because I see observe the world around me and I think maybe the world is rational there is a rational order in the world, let me figure it out so in one sense empirical observation is the basis of my rationality or I understand that there is a divine source to the world and that divine source has permeated the world with rationality so in that sense the foundation of my rationality is itself is Krishna and the goal is also Krishna or it is that the foundation is the world and the goal is also the world yes, yes, beautifully put because every rationality has to begin with certain axiomatic truths that cannot be proven through logic before applying reason you have to begin some place reason has to stand on something and what it stands on is axiomatic truths that cannot be proven, just like my Guru Guru Maharaj Hanuman Prasad Swami he gives a very nice example of Euclid’s geometry and if you study Euclid’s geometry there are certain axioms that it begins with that what is a line, now we can understand the line through logic the shortest distance between two points is a line this is logic but you can then push further and say what is a point and a point is defined as something with no length, no width no height and no mass now that is essentially therefore illogical, it is beyond rationality, the point because there is nothing there is nothing that, it is beyond the senses, there is nothing that you can see, smell, touch, hear, taste your mind cannot even conceive of anything, in your mind think of a point but what you have thought of has some length, it has some width, it has some shape, it probably even has a colour to it, but Euclid is defining it as something that is different from all of that, right, it is based on how the Advaitins describe Brahman, Neti Neti Neti Neti, as the starting point, now that is an axiom how do you know that the point is right that there is such a thing as a point, those axioms of Euclid’s geometry, the only way you know they are true is that they feel right right, and feeling means rasa, something in us tells us that feels right to define a point like that, there is no instrument in the world, no rationality that can explain it, but it feels right, and so ultimately as you are saying so nicely that the foundation has a rationality, rationality is a tool, you have to ask yourself what is the foundation of my rationality what is, and that foundation will always be based on feeling it will always be based on rasa, on bhakti, on shraddha, on trust it will be based on something that is trans-rational that is beyond rationality and for us, what feels right are certain axiomatic truths, namely that the world is a personal place, God is a person, we are personal, and everything around us is personal and relatable this is an axiomatic understanding of the way that rasa works, that our world works the scientific perspective may begin with a certain set of axioms that the only things that are worth studying or perceiving or understanding are those things that can be perceived by the five senses right, so everyone begins from some place that is unprovable and is heading towards some place that is unprovable, rationality is a useful tool in between but it doesn’t define either the beginning point or the end excellent, beginning from the unprovable going to the unprovable, yeah I think Goddard’s incompleteness theorem is also something similar that every system of knowledge requires some propositions that cannot be proven by that system of knowledge that exists outside the system I’m paraphrasing it yeah, that’s true so, now this, I’m intrigued by your in that sense of feeling is rasa that’s interesting because even Einstein has famously said that the intuitive mind is superior to the rational mind and more scientific advancements also happen primarily to intuition and this is how it is you can call it intuition, you can call it inspiration but it’s not just reason so in a sense you get the sense that this is right and then gradually through reasoning we come to, yeah maybe this is how it is right so, yeah so for us the we accept that reason works because Krishna has permeated the world with reason and then we use reason to go toward Krishna and it’s you earlier said this point that rationality is one mode of thinking it’s we don’t have to give it up but we don’t have to make it the sole mode of thinking also so for some devotees when Krishna says manmana bhava for some devotees that remembrance of Krishna could be through reason and for some devotees it could be through spontaneous attraction and more of a personal remembrance but it could be a tool for not just understanding the philosophy of Krishna consciousness Krishna tattva but it could also be a tool for focusing the mind on Krishna also yes and to the beginning point of how it’s so important to cultivate those various aspects that we don’t become lopsided otherwise it can become a dangerous situation in our Krishna consciousness in the long term if we’re too lopsided on one side that we have to first of all recognize our nature and our proclivity and nourish that proclivity through as we were saying proper training and proper association so that we do it well if that reason is the side that really then we have to learn how to do it well in proper association, proper guidance, proper direction, training but at the same time once we recognize it we have to actively make sure we don’t become lopsided on the other side it doesn’t become the case that now I cannot sit in the Bhagavatam class with any devotee except for a Sanskrit scholar because otherwise it’s too irrational the whole thing it’s not at the intellectual level that I appreciate then we know that okay something is risky here something is off in our Krishna consciousness if we cannot even appreciate the bhakti of another devotee because that bhakti is expressed using a different language a different set of tools then I am expressing it yeah so we don’t want to become unidimensional we will have say one mode of connection with Krishna as primary but we cannot not appreciate other modes of connection with Krishna also I think that’s one of the pitfalls in scholarship that instead of seeing scholarship or the intellectual way as one way of connecting with Krishna we can start seeing it as the superior way of connecting with Krishna and then that can lead to judgmentality and that can lead to problems it is just one way to serve Krishna and as soon as we start to think it is the best way to serve Krishna then we know our own Krishna consciousness is at risk and so it ultimately comes down to that fundamental principle of Vaishnavism, of humility that ultimately the foundation of everything we do including our scholarship has to be humility that Trinadapi Sunyachena is never ever left behind for a Vaishnava and so if all this question of dialogue with others dialogue with the world being reasonable and questioning at the same time of our faith all these things we talked about this is all founded on humility, on the ability to do that, dialogue requires humility because it requires you to listen to others and being willing to supersede rationality requires humility on the part of the scholar because otherwise you think my mind is so great it is able to understand anything and anything beyond the rational world is not acceptable faith requires humility as its foundation so all of these things we’ve been discussing the only way we have the capacity to do them as a Vaishnava in other ways fine, but as a Vaishnava the only way we have a way to do this is through that foundation of humility it has to be there underlying beautiful, I think this is a this is a very devotional point to conclude our discussion maybe I’ll try to usually at the end of our discussion I try to summarize, but we went over a lot of topics, I’ll try if we can and then if you want to add some concluding words we can do that so we discussed today you could say broadly on the topic of faith and reason in devotion, in bhakti and it started with your experience of you had education, homeschooling but that was protection not isolation and so you developed critical thinking at that time itself and it was not a it was not a big culture shock or intellectual shock when you entered into academia and the we there mentality comes primarily when we don’t interact with people except to say speak down to them so if we we can see our faith as special but at the same time respect other people’s faith also by seeing that there are different ways to approach Krishna and then within the within the faith and reason dialogue in the academic world two main things we discussed was the historicity and the principle of revelation so historicity it is very beautiful that before answering a question we need to question the question that why is this question important and in the Abrahamic traditions because they have linear conception of history so history is going somewhere and that’s why where what happened when what happened and how becomes important but in our tradition history is not going anywhere the soul is going somewhere so the how the historical events promote the soul’s evolution is more important than the specific history or geography of those events itself so it’s not we discussed Prabhupada’s quote about not denying that Ahobila was where Krishna appeared but but not insisting on it so it’s not we are not a historical or non-historical but history is simply like a departure point for us to go into the trans-historical and that so for us if we start giving an exam that we are not prepared for then we will get into trouble so do we want to give that exam also so we have to what is central for us is not the specific history so we discussed two like a pyramid one is to say history itself literal history is itself important and everything that this is how it is whatever the tradition says and the other is that oh it doesn’t matter at all it’s what we start is more important it’s all mythology so we understand it’s history but the more than history is what is critical for us what is the trans-historical that is taught that’s what we focus on and even in the historical like say we say Krishna appeared here in Vrindavan it’s not the literal geography of Radhakund but Radhakund as it is seen in Divya Prateksha Vidusha that is what is important for us so that was the historical question if we want to change the frame of the discussion we discussed about we have to go inside and there is a lot of area for going into the academic world and then like Sarvabhattacharya like Sarvabhattacharya spoke for seven days to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and then Chaitanya Mahaprabhu got to speak so some devotees who have the requisite supportive association to sustain that hearing of things which are of a non-devotional perspective to things and then they also have the intellectual skills, the nature to do that they have the nature and they get the training for that then when they speak then they will be heard and then the mainstream dialogue itself, the mode of the dialogue itself can be changed significantly and we can see that other religions have done that significantly we Hindus have not done Hinduism, Vaishnavism or even our movement has not done that so much and then we discussed about the revelation question that so the religious, the traditions approach is that religion is something which is consistent comprehensive and timeless whereas the academic scholars approach is that it is something historical, philosophical, social cultural or psychological these factors so this conflict comes up so the same like the Upanishads are they revelations or are they discussions because of a political conflict between different regions that happen at a particular place so both of them can go together because we see that Krishna can act by breaking through history descending into history or Krishna can act through the moments of history itself and both can if seen that inclusive way they can increase our faith so the historic, the transcendental, circumstantial we could say both of them are overlapping are two simultaneous or overlapping modes of explaining the same thing and that way it doesn’t have to necessarily challenge one’s faith we discussed various examples for that purpose and then specifically with respect to faith and reason we had a long discussion towards the conclusion that for reason is always a part of the, ok if you want to talk about faith faith is in our tradition faith is not simply based on beliefs, ok this is what I believe that apart from beliefs this is what I practice, this is what I have experienced, this is how I have seen my saintly teachers to be and this is how what I have say learned by studying scripture so there are so many aspects to faith and when one area becomes weak just like when one leg is weak we rely more on the other leg and that’s why while specializing in one according to our nature you also need to have enough time to appreciate the other sources of faith also because they may become the source of our survival at some time and overall then we talked about you know how faith can rely on reason at initial stage then faith can partially rely on reason and faith can ultimately transcend reason but even when it transcend reason it doesn’t reject reason it just doesn’t rely on reason because even in our tradition say you talk about Ramacharya using reason to show how reason cannot prove the existence of God in the Srivastava or also our tradition has critical scholarship where you know this versus this versions so there is the critical attitude with the tradition also and ultimately for us the challenge if the rational rationality is just one way of thinking and it is valuable for both for us to understand Krishna better and for us to explain Krishna better to others and between academic scholarship and say just the devotional way of looking at things there could be traditional scholarship also so that is something which is not been so developed but as our movement is evolving that kind of spaces will be created and for us the same rationality which can help us to fix our mind on Krishna can also obstruct us if we start thinking that this is the only way or this is the superior way or this is the best way and we start looking down upon non-rational devotees so if we have that Vaishnava understanding that ultimately we are here for Seva and my scholarship is one way of serving then we all can contribute in the Lord’s mission in the way that he has gifted us yes bro any points you want to add and conclude that was amazing your ability to summarize everything we spoke of just points to your own brilliance as a devotee and as an intellectual so thank you for that I have nothing to add or to subtract from what you just said I think that’s a good overview and I’m just really really grateful that I had the opportunity to discuss all of these matters with you it’s so nourishing for my own Krishna consciousness to have your association like this today I mean whether this video gets any views on YouTube or not it really to me it’s completely successful just for me to have your association in this way to discuss these wonderful topics I really really appreciated it was a really wonderful morning for me here in the US and I guess evening for you in India you know for me also and I’m sure for many of our viewers it will be a very it is the kind of discussion which is necessary but it doesn’t happen there are certain stereotypes about what academic scholarship means and whether it should be done or not done and what are the challenges and I feel that although I also discussed with different devotee scholars at different times about scholarship and I different devotees come to me when they want to ask whether I should go into academy or not but I feel that a resource where one place we have a systematic discussion I don’t think the resource like that is available so I feel that this will be a very valuable resource for for many devotees in future also and I thank you for your time it was immensely relishable to have this penetrating discussion thank you very much Hare Krishna thank you please accept my obeisances