The need for appropriate adaptors when transmitting the current of bhakti

[Morning class at Bhakti House, Jacksonville, USA]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
the books are outside great so now I would like to speak on a general topic today if you don’t mind yesterday evening while returning back I had a nice talk with Jeff Prabhu and I was developing that metaphor which we discussed yesterday so we always talk about how in the process of bhakti there is the importance of staying faithful now Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita talks about multiple levels at which bhakti can be practised from 12.8 to 12.12 he talks about if you can’t do this then do this if you can’t do this then do this so Krishna has we say two different things or two different moods we will see at one point Krishna is saying be sensitive, be gentle so don’t disturb the mind of people and at other places he talks about people who are materialistic as the lowest of human beings they are misled, they are foolish they never surrender to so here the metaphor I will use is that when electricity is being transmitted at that time depending on the device being used, depending on the kind of electricity that is coming we need appropriate adapters the same electricity that may power a device in India may burn the device in America because it is coming in a different way or if the connector is not appropriate then the connector may not be able to process that electricity properly and the device may get damaged so if we consider the current of Bhakti that is coming through the tradition that current we don’t want to interrupt it we don’t want to stop it from coming but the current’s coming also has a purpose the purpose is to, it’s like the purpose of electricity is to power the device similarly the purpose of the Bhakti current is to enliven people spiritually to help people develop love for Krishna now so when we are practising Bhakti and especially when we are sharing Bhakti at that time there is first thing is when we talk about being faithful to the tradition that means what, if the current is coming the current of mercy, the current of wisdom the current of empowerment that is coming from Krishna through the tradition to us and through us then we don’t want to be like resistant elements which block the current from coming we want to be like conducting elements but at the same time if we look at Ishla Prabhupada’s presentation of Bhakti Prabhupada said that I simply repeated whatever my spiritual master told me and that’s true but if we look at the literal way in which Prabhupada did things there are many things which he did very different from his spiritual master right from the externals itself on the altar itself, now we have the Guru Parampara, we have our current Acharya on the left and then we move upwards towards the previous Acharyas on the Gaudiya Mata altar they have the other way they have the previous Acharyas at the top at the left and the youngest Acharyas in the right, the late Muslim Acharyas on the right on the Gaudiya Mata altar, usually this was instituted by Bhakti Swami Swami Thakur only we had Gaura Gadadhar, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Gadadhar Pandit because Gaura is considered to be Krishna Gadadhar is considered to be Radharani Ishla Prabhupada had Gaur Nitai he felt that Nityanand Prabhu’s mercy is very much needed to deliver people who are like Jagai and Madai so in a sense this Gadadhar Pandit is relishing the mellows of devotion with Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Nityanand Prabhu is distributing the holy name Prabhupada stressed that, so right from the altar itself, Prabhupada did make changes so when we say as it is, it is the essential purpose that was served as it is the essential message was kept as it is so that the essential purpose was served so the purpose is we could say, the purpose of the transmission of electricity is to power the device not to send so little power, the power doesn’t go it doesn’t turn on itself and not to send so much power that the device gets damaged so now, depending on the country, we may need different adapters without an appropriate adapter sometimes without when I travel abroad first time when I came, one devotee gave me a full box with adapters for all over the world you need almost a dozen adapters if you are to travel different parts of the world so the point is that the living spiritual teacher who is there it is their role to be the adapter primarily, that means the living spiritual teacher has to be both just like the adapter is connected to the device and is connected to the power source so like that the living spiritual teacher has to be connected to the tradition and has to be connected to the current situation, to the sensitivities of the audiences to the sore spots of the audiences so what surge of current may be too much for some people and what surge of current is necessary for people that is something which varies according to country to country and that’s why there are adapters which are developed differently so there is the principle that the purpose has to be served the device has to be powered that people have to be inspired to come closer to Krishna to feel that they want to devote themselves to Krishna but how exactly they will do it that will vary according to situation to situation so the same current let’s look at three broad situations, when the current is too low when the current is too high and the current is right when the current is too low the device doesn’t turn on so like that sometimes when trying to present Krishna’s message we may feel that actually I want to I don’t want to alienate people I don’t want to give too much of a bhakti surcharge to them discharge them, dump too much bhakti spiritual wisdom on them so we may tone it down so much that actually there is very little spiritual wisdom in what we are giving very little bhakti wisdom for that matter so now on some forums that may be required but if we our standard example that is use of a bridge if you want to build a bridge to connect two mountains together, now the bridge should first of all connect the two mountains but then it’s important what happens after that, it is for people to cross the bridge and come to us, it is not for us to go there and stay over there so that means when we build a bridge we want to be empathic so that we understand where people are coming from but that doesn’t mean necessarily that we accept their understanding we accept where they are coming from basically sometimes we use the word there is a right understanding and a wrong understanding or we could say there are proper conceptions there are misconceptions now the misconceptions don’t appear to be misconceptions to the people over there so nobody intentionally holds on to a wrong belief now of course some people may portray a wrong belief if it serves their purposes, somebody may know say a medical quack doctor is there they don’t know how to treat people but they are earning money through it, that is why people use deception to perpetuate something but they know it so they may speak it but they don’t believe it themselves and many times if some people have misconceptions we begin we may mislead others also with our misconceptions but more often than not we have misled ourselves first it is very rare that a person will consciously believe something which is wrong they may they may use it as a tool to propagate for some selfish purposes but generally a misconception doesn’t appear to be a misconception to people now people have their own experiences, their own reasons why they believe something to be true now we need to understand why they think that way but that doesn’t mean we have to agree with their conclusion when we talk about empathy, we say that empathy means walking in other people’s foot trying to understand how they feel this is not empathy, it means necessarily that we understand why people think the way they do why people feel the way they feel but that does not necessarily mean that we agree with their conclusion so we need to have that sensitivity by which we understand why they think that way so in terms of conceptions, I talk about three things something which is incomprehensible something which is intelligible and something which is irrefutable so incomprehensible, I just can’t make sense why do you think like that? neither your conclusion makes sense nor your thinking makes sense intelligible means yes, I understand why you think like that ok, this is where you are coming from and irresistible means I accept your reasoning, I accept your conclusion also so sometimes I may ok, this is how you are thinking that makes things intelligible so we want our message at least to be intelligible to people and for that their thinking has to be intelligible to us so the word intelligible is related with the word legible when we write something down if I write something in a language which you don’t understand and you write something in a language I don’t understand then there is no communication possible just because we understand the same language that does not necessarily mean that we agree with what each other are saying but for communication to take place the first thing is both of us need to understand the same language, this is the language I am speaking and this is the language I want to speak and then we can communicate so when we want to be intelligible to people or we want people to be intelligible to us that means we have a common language which we speak so if we step going back to the bridge example if we go around to their side and stay over there that means we not only accept their reasoning but we also accept their conclusion then we will end up becoming disconnected from our tradition so similarly if we take into account too much both the modern contemporary way of thinking and the contemporary way of contemporary mode of reasoning and the contemporary conclusion also, then we get so enamoured by that that we become like a resistor so the transformer is not being a transformer it is becoming a resistor we accept their conclusions also so the main idea in today’s world is most people want to live materialistically and the people who come up with their reasonings for that, they feel religion is a very bad force and religion should be abolished and stuff like that so when this happens, actually people are not able to understand what is to be done so people stay on in their misconceptions because the transformer which they are using is transformer is not transforming, it is resisting now on the other hand, if the transformer is indiscriminate, so the one extreme is we accept people’s conclusions and their reasoning then we become resistors but if we don’t care about people’s way of thinking, I don’t care of people’s conclusions then the result is that we are not becoming adapters, we are simply becoming transmitters now it is good to be a transmitter but most often we cannot connect a device to a wire directly we need some adapter so like that for most people connecting directly with the current of bhakti is unbearable it causes too much of a shock so what they need is an adapter so when we are simply transmitters Prabhupada himself he said I kept the message as it is Prabhupada, he actually did many adaptations but he saw that the essential purpose was served he saw that the purpose of powering people’s heart with the desire to serve Krishna that was served so it’s like if I don’t build a bridge itself and I tell people where they are jump from there if there are two mountains there is a big chasm in between, who is going to jump? and they refuse to jump you are cowards, you are lazy you are this, you are rascals they will say you forget it so we need a bridge, we can’t expect people to take a huge leap of faith even stepping on a bridge also requires faith the bridge is going to function the bridge is going to take me across but the amount of faith required to cross a bridge is far lesser than the amount of faith required to jump across a cliff from one side to another so similarly we need a bridge and we need an adapter so the adapter if it is if we are not if we don’t adapt we say that let the current flow as it is actually if you look at the tradition in the tradition itself there has been a lot of adaptation every acharya has adapted according to the time and place circumstance so when we talk about faithfulness to the tradition that also means faithfulness to the flexibility of the tradition faithfulness to the adaptive nature of the tradition in the tradition every acharya has been like an adapter so Bhaktivinod Thakur was the first acharya in our tradition who started a dialogue of bhakti wisdom with western wisdom before that it was not required because the western culture was not that influential so we see that when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared at that time the concept of rasa and natya, drama was drama and songs kavya, natya and kavya were very popular in Bengal so Ramanujacharya or Madhavacharya they did not focus so much on natya or kavya in their works but Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his followers focused a lot on natya and kavya how to dramatically present Krishna bhakti, how to compose poetry in Chaitanya Charitamruta there are verses upon verses about how a devotee should be a kavi, should be expert at poetry and present bhakti wisdom appropriately so we see the Goswamis were expert in presenting bhakti wisdom according to time, place, circumstance and that’s what we need to do so the if we just become transmitters or if we become resistors then we will not serve the purpose so people, if we just become transmitters people get shocked the dose seems too much for them they get, when a person gets shocked what is the result of that? device stops functioning so similarly if people get shocked then they go away from Krishna they go away from Krishna Vishwaprabhupada he says, what is realisation? in the first canto he says that realisation means to present things in a way that is interesting to the audience so interesting to the audience means that we have to present the message in a way that people can understand now if they don’t accept, that is their problem but if they don’t understand that is our problem the two are different things so when Krishna is talking about these two things 3.26 and 7.15 so 3.26 Krishna says don’t disturb the minds of people 7.15 Krishna says that there are miscreants who will never surrender and they are condemned so Krishna is talking about two different categories of people though if we speak in a way that agitates people’s mind and people don’t understand they get agitated and they get enunciated so if they don’t understand that is our problem Krishna says don’t speak in a way that people will get agitated that they will not understand but if they don’t accept then that is their problem so when Krishna is talking about Dushkrtina in 7.15 he is talking about people who are anti-god, anti-spirituality who are totally materialistic they are just not interested at all so at that time Krishna says just keep a distance they are not going to come to so here the difference primarily is in terms of what is the disposition of people so even if we build the most comfortable bridge everybody is not going to come across even if we explain in a sensitive way it’s not that everybody is going to come across so if we just start in order to get more and more people start pandering to popular sentiment and we don’t tell our conclusions that becomes a problem that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to we have to be sensitive so that we don’t alienate people unnecessarily and that means that we have to present things in a way that is intelligible to people in India there are a lot of Christian missionaries who try to convert people so it’s surprising that actually the bible has been converted into more Indian languages, translated into more Indian languages than the Bhagavad Gita because often the Hindus the Brahmins they feel very self-righteous we are the higher caste, these are all lower caste so when I talk about languages of course the Bhagavad Gita has been translated into all major languages but there are many small small tribes and they have their tribal dialects so some of the Brahmins would feel so self-righteous, these are lower class people but they also are a part of the broad Hindu culture and they have some cultural some understanding but the attempt to reach out to them has not been done so now if the bible is translated into their language Indians in general are inclusivist that means okay, Jesus is also one way to God Krishna is also one God they have this idea so when somebody makes the message accessible in their language people naturally connect with it much better so just as there is a verbal language with which people connect there is a conceptual language all of us have a world view and that is the framework with which we interpret things with which we make sense of things so that’s like our conceptual language so when we are speaking we need to make things understandable to people in their conceptual language so often the problem comes when we feel that when we confuse the language and the message the language is not the message and the message is not limited to a particular language so the language and the message are two different things the language is the tool to give the message so by language I mean not the verbal language, I mean the conceptual language so Prabhupada came at a particular time in American history in Indian history and people had a particular language at that time Prabhupada spoke in that language the essential message was that we have to love Krishna we are souls and a soul is meant to have an eternal relationship with Krishna so now that was the essential message now the language Prabhupada used was quite often confrontational but that was what worked because at that time the primary audience of Prabhupada in the western world was people who had already rejected most of mainstream society and because they had rejected mainstream society so for them Prabhupada philosophically explained the rejection why the government is bad why the education is bad why this is bad, why that is bad so Prabhupada explained that now Prabhupada when he was in India he did not emphasise on the same things most of the people who came in India to our temples they became life members and Prabhupada accepted them so they just gave some contribution for the temple and they took Prabhupada’s books and Prabhupada wanted them to gradually come up so we could say that Prabhupada in America in a sense was like a step up of transformers very confrontational Prabhupada in India was not that confrontational he was in terms of philosophical teaching but in terms of practical application he saw what was best for people to get them closer to Krishna so the I’ll conclude with two points here and then we can have some questions if there are any so the first point is that spiritual knowledge has a particular purpose Krishna speaks the Bhagavad Gita for the purpose of inspiring Arjuna to surrender in devotion so that purpose has to be kept in mind so Prabhupada when he says Bhagavad Gita as it is Prabhupada actually is serving Krishna’s purpose at helping people to come to the understanding that Krishna is God that we are his servants and we are meant to surrender to him so sometimes we may get so caught in the process in the specifics that we may forget the purpose I have to do this right I have to do this right yes all these things have to be done right but what is the purpose? The purpose is to get people to connect with Krishna so sometimes certain specifics may need to be adapted so that the purpose is served and the purpose is served then people come closer to Krishna so otherwise they will not if we consider the first world war and the second world war both of them fought more or less between the same countries say the purpose of the war was to win the war against the hostile powers but if you look at the strategy that was used in the first world war mostly it was trench warfare say Germany and France both of them dug trenches and their armies were in the trenches and it was a stalemate neither one could move forward in the second world war trench warfare was not used at all because by the time of the second world war aeroplanes had become an integral part of warfare in the first world war they were not so once the aeroplanes are there then trenches will become tombs you know you go inside the trenches to protect yourself from a bomb drop and you die so trenches which were very successful even for a smaller army to stop a bigger army they were absolutely no use like they would have been the calls for death in the second world war so the purpose of winning the war remains the same but the strategy used for winning the war will have to change so sometimes if we just stick oh you know in the first world war we fought with trenches now also we will fight with trenches well you fight and you die what is the use so the process in terms of specifics of how to get people to connect with Krishna that has to see is this really connecting people with Krishna Rupa Goswami in the Bhakti Samasindhu uses a very practical principle he says somehow or the other fix the mind in Krishna somehow or the other that means that it’s actually a very radical statement somehow or the other that means in the somehow or the other there is a remarkable room for innovation for adaptation for taking into consideration time, place, circumstances so the of course somehow or the other what is the purpose manah krishna niveshet so enakena prakarena we can say that enakena prakarena refers to the flexibility of the process how you do it but manah krishna niveshet fix the mind in Krishna that is the firmness of purpose so there is the flexibility about the specifics of how things are done and there is the firmness the inflexibility the rigidity, the firmness of the purpose that is to fix the mind in Krishna so both are there in this particular statement itself so all of us may in our particular lives we may be in different professions different social situations we all have our different psychophysical natures so with all this now how I can best fix my mind on Krishna is something which I have to decide ultimately not ultimately in the sense of ultimate authority but ultimately in the sense of ultimate implementation we do consult our senior devotees we consult our spiritual guides but it is I who have to fix the mind on Krishna somebody else cannot fix my mind on Krishna it is I who have to fix my mind on Krishna and I have to find out how I can do it the best others can guide me to fix the mind on Krishna but it is I who have to fix my mind on Krishna and that means I have to find out what works best for me so the second point I was going to use is that currents I use the current as electric current but I am going to use current as another thing in the ocean often there are currents which are flowing now there may be one current which is going from the North America towards South America, another current which is coming from Europe to America and current may be going from America to say Greenland some current may be going from America to Canada so in the water there are different currents that are flowing and when the currents are flowing if a person is driving a boat moving a boat, rowing a boat then catching the right current is very important so if they get caught in the wrong current then they will just be swept away and it will require enormous effort even to stay where they are or to speak of moving in the desired direction so it is not just going into the ocean with the desire to move to a particular destination but it is also to know where the current is best suited know where the current is and that current will take us in the right direction so similarly if we consider our own consciousness internally to be like an ocean and the world externally in terms of the world where even bhakti is practised, that to be like an ocean so in our own mind certain currents are there so some things which just work naturally for us some people are intellectual, for them philosophy is just natural, some people are more gregarious, for them talking with people relating with people, that’s natural some people are naturally musical for them music is natural so these are all different currents which naturally flow in our consciousness so now Bhaktivinoda Thakur says that for spiritual advancement what is vital is like-minded association so like-minded association means the current of my consciousness flows in a particular way and I have to find out some other devotees whose mind also the current of consciousness flows in a similar way the way it flows in my consciousness and then both of us can connect this is the way we can think of Krishna, this is the way we can serve Krishna this is what we can do for Krishna naturally we will work with different devotees with whom the current of consciousness is flowing in different ways when I say flowing in different ways means all devotees if they are serious, they want their consciousness to flow towards Krishna but the current of consciousness will flow towards Krishna through different channels for somebody it may be primarily through philosophies for somebody it may be primarily through music for somebody it may be primarily through deity worship for somebody it may be primarily through interacting with people for somebody it may be primarily through counselling people so it’s all different for different people and so we have to find out how my current of consciousness flows best towards Krishna and who are the devotees in whom also the current of consciousness flows towards Krishna similarly and if we get even one devotee association one devotee association like that then bhakti becomes enormously shelter giving see we get Krishna shelter ultimately when we get purified but intermediately also we need shelter and we we can’t we can’t fight against our nature but nor are we meant to fight for our nature I just want to meet people that’s good but in meeting people there are so many non devotees in the world so I just want to meet non devotees and to meet non devotees I just become a non devotee we are not fighting for our nature we are not fighting against our nature we are fighting for Krishna with our nature so that means whatever is my nature that is the natural way the current of consciousness will flow within me so I have to use that and move towards Krishna and if there are others who do the same thing then it becomes much easier to move towards Krishna that’s how see that meeting of mind that happens the two minds can move together towards Krishna joyfully and that is the adaptation that as I said transformer which we need the adapter that we need so that we can find how what is the way by which my mind my consciousness can flow towards Krishna so I will summarise what I spoke I spoke on the topic of the need for in the bhakti current is being transmitted the need for step up and step down transformers adapters so the same device may be powered by one adapter may be ruined by another adapter and may not be turned on only by third adapter because the current has to be appropriately adjusted similarly the same bhakti current is coming through the tradition to people today but depending on where people are at sometimes the current may be so little that they just don’t feel at all spiritual connection sometimes the current may be so much that they get charged out there is a failure because of that and sometimes it may be appropriate so the living spiritual teacher is meant to be like the adapter so we if we so what is being like the adapter mean means that we understand how people think we don’t necessarily agree with their conclusions but we understand their thinking so if we don’t understand their thinking then it is we and they are speaking in two different languages and no communication happens so if we agree with their conclusions then we become disconnected from the tradition so there is incomprehensible intelligible and irrefutable so when we understand the way people think then we can present our bhakti wisdom in a way that they can understand and then it will move from intelligible gradually to irrefutable but otherwise if it is incomprehensible then there is no connection that happens so if we if we don’t try to understand how people think and the message remains unintelligible then we become not like adapters but resistors nothing flows through people just can’t connect on the other hand if we accept their conclusions also then we become no if we accept their conclusions also then we become like resistors and there is nothing flowing from us to them we just get become one of them on the other hand if we don’t try to understand their thinking then we become like simply transmitters and then they get blown away by the current so Prabhupada himself presented bhakti as it is but at the same time he adapted right from the altar the sequence of Acharyas are displayed or who were the primary deities not Gaur Gadadhar but Gaunitai to presenting things in a way that people could take to present in a confrontational mode to those who were in a confrontational mode to present in a more more more integrated mode to those who are already integrated to mainstream life Prabhupada did that in America and India so I used two metaphors one is of building a bridge we can’t expect people to take a leap from one mountain top to another mountain top we have to build a bridge but when you are building the bridge the point is to get them across not that we go across and say we are over there and all this was for the adapter for helping people to come closer to Krishna and I conclude by talking about helping ourselves to go closer to Krishna so that means somehow or the other gives us flexibility of the specifics of how to do it and fix the mind of Krishna that is fixity of what is to be done so faithfulness to the tradition is faithfulness to the fixed purpose of the tradition and faithfulness to the tradition also means faithfulness to the flexibility of the process adapted for fulfilling the purpose of the tradition I talked about how Bhaktivinoda Thakur brought Bhakti wisdom in dialogue with the western world Chaitanya Mahaprabhu brought it in dialogue with the current cultural trends of Natya and Kavya of poetry and Brahma and similarly we need to do that according to our time, place, circumstances and for ourselves so within our consciousness different currents are flowing and if we get caught in the current going opposite direction to which we want to go it becomes very difficult to move so we find out what is the current of our consciousness that moves more smoothly towards Krishna and we situate ourselves in that current primarily and similarly if somebody else is also in that current then we can move that association becomes joyful and together we can move joyfully towards Krishna. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
So any questions or comments? Yeah please. You kind of answered it. Sometimes we see sometimes we meet devotees who have such a sincere desire to connect people with Krishna but they may be desensitised to actually thinking about how is the other person thinking, where are they coming from and we see they really have such a sincere desire and they do so many things but in the process they might actually fry people out and how do we work with such devotees? I mean you kind of said like we should surround ourselves with like-minded people of course and work with those devotees but sometimes we’re put in situations where we actually have to work with devotees that that we actually have to work with devotees that we see they’re really trying but somehow other they’re not connecting with the people and they don’t even see how they’re actually like frying the other people out like you said this current.
I understand. So how do you work with such devotees? So some devotees are sincerely trying to share but they’re desensitised and so they fry out people but they don’t even understand what is going wrong. How do we work with them? Yeah in our life we are often put in a situation where we have to work with difficult people.
So sometimes we may direct, if we find that a particular endeavour is not working and we don’t have the scope to change that then we all have to choose our battles. So we decide okay at this particular time since the outreach is not working maybe I’ll focus more on English let me try to study better let me try to understand myself better. There’s no point in putting all our energy in what is a lost cause because sometimes what happens is if we try to reach out to a large number of people then all those people get fried out and we become more and more discouraged.
So we have to be intelligent in investing our energy. So there are times in the Bible I think there’s a verse there’s a time to sow and a time to reap. There’s a time to rejoice and a time to cry.
There’s a time to fight, a time to heal. So in our life also there are different times. Sometimes when the externals are not favourable for outreach then we may just do whatever is basic required and not put our full heart over there because sometimes the more emotionally invested we are in something the more emotionally wounded we become when that thing doesn’t work out.
So if we see and we are convinced that this is not going to work out then either we start something separately but if we don’t have the opportunity to start something separately then we don’t put in our heart over there at that time. We just fight, we just choose our battles. That is the time to develop ourselves in other areas.
Krishna will provide arrangements in future where we will be able to reach out to people better on our terms or on terms that we feel are understandable. I know many devotees when I travel that these devotees preach so they conduct programmes in their homes but they are actually afraid to take people to the temples because they feel there they will get fried out. So then what they are doing is they are cultivating people themselves and they selectively expose them to the temples and that’s not wrong as long as the intention is to connect people with Krishna and raise them towards Krishna.
That’s perfectly fine. Especially in the formative years we do need that caution, that protection. Just like when the child grows up, the child becomes a teenager or a youth, the child is going to choose one’s own association and the parents can’t control that.
But just because the parents can’t control their children when they are going to grow up that doesn’t mean the parents don’t try to control or train or discipline the children when they are young. You have to do that. So similarly in the early stages protecting devotees from unwarranted influences, that’s not wrong.
But then we have to also equip them with the tools to think. And if we don’t have all that facility right now we just do some other services. And there are some devotees unfortunately what happens is that once they become convinced about a particular way of thinking then it becomes like a self reinforcing bias.
So they preach and nobody comes. And then that simply convinces them that this is Kaliyuga and nobody is going to come. And then somebody else preaches and people come then from their bias they perceive that this person must be watering something down.
That’s why people are coming. So then they it’s very difficult to communicate with such people. So sometimes they just become self righteous in their in their isolation.
You know, I am the pure follower and everybody else is watering down. If that happens then we just have to keep a distance and continue our service. And when we get more opportunity then we do wholehearted service.
So Shri Prabhupada was also like that. When he, we say that his first, the first volume of Lila Amrit is called Lifetime in Preparation. Prabhupada tried to work with his God brothers, but somehow they did not share his zeal for for spreading the mission.
And Prabhupada just did what he could at that time and eventually when he got the scope he did much more. So we just bide our time and choose our battles. It’s interesting because two things occurred it’s not just when we’re talking maybe when we had a situation yesterday started out tense and ended up like You were concerned.
You gave me a note in the middle of service and you were concerned. So we had a situation. I told you when I made carrot ginger soup and somebody had cut up a lot of carrots and I asked for them for Friday morning and he cut them off on Tuesday.
So that meant I needed to use them Wednesday morning. And he was going to make carrot ginger juice. Carrot ginger apple juice.
Fresh juice.