Understanding tradition and its conformers, deformers reformers – and presenters

[Bhagavatam class at ISKCON, Kolkata, India]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Today morning we are discussing the Shraddha Bhagavatam in the past time of Ambarish Maharaj and Durvasa Muni. So grateful to be here amongst all of you. I love to speak of their lordships.
And I will speak today on the topic of how there is a letter of the law and then the spirit of the law. How there is the essential principle and then there is the context. So Shraddha Bhagavatam illustrates how devotion means expresses the intention, loving intentions of Krishna is what is vitally important.
And time and time again the normal social and conventional hierarchies are inverted by the presence or absence of devotion. For example, consider the last few cantos, the 9th canto going on. The 6th canto, there is a story of Pratharasu and Indra.
So Pratharasu is a demon, Indra is a devata. In the Vedas, the devatas are glorified and the demons are demonized. The very word adjective demonize comes from the word demon.
But the Bhagavatam shows how Pratharasu is far greater devotee than Indra. The 7th canto, another traditional hierarchy is reversed. There is the hierarchy of a father and a son.
A father is considered natural authority over the son. But the father is considered to be lower than the son. When the son happens to be a devotee, the father is not a devotee.
That is which story? Pralad Narasimha. Yes, Pralad and Hiranyakashipu. And Lord Narasimha comes and delivers the 8th canto.
Similarly, there are many incidents which illustrate this principle that actually social hierarchies are not what matters. It is the spiritual hierarchy or we could say the overall spiritual intention or devotion that is what matters. So here also, in this particular section, what will be described is how although Ambarish Maharaj is a grahastha and a kshatriya, whereas Rohasamuni is a brahmana and a sanyasi, Ambarish Maharaj is higher.
Why? Because Ambarish Maharaj has understood the essence of being devoted and of working in a mode of devotion. So atithi, how to serve guests is considered to be a very important part of most traditional cultures. In the last about one and a half years, I spent almost 8-9 months in America and America has a large number of immigrants who also become devotees.
So whether it is the Native American, the American culture, the Caucasian culture, the Chinese culture, the Mexican culture or the Russian culture, everybody has this understanding that if guests come to your place, you need to receive them well. Now exactly how, what proper reception means will vary from culture to culture. So in Indian culture, the idea is that, in Indian culture you could say, whatever is the meaning of the Vedic culture, the idea is that when a guest comes to our house, it is an opportunity for service and ultimately God is present in the hearts of everyone and especially if the guest is godly, then it is all the more so an opportunity to serve.
Now brahmanas are considered as bhubhev, in Jagannath Ashtakam it is said, bhubhev patale, stuti prathir bhavam pratipadam. So if you consider there are four varanas and brahmanas are closest to transcendence, they are considered closest to God. So especially if a brahmana comes to your house, there is a particular culture by which they are meant to be received and one aspect of culture is that you serve food to the guest first and then take food.
Ambarish Maharaj, however, because he was fasting and fasting had to be fast at a particular point, a particular time, he did not actually break the fast also. But still the result was that his guest was infuriated and now he is saying I am going to curse you for this, I am going to punish you for this. So, yes, in the tradition there could be the letter of the law that, okay you should feed the guest before the host takes the food.
But what is the purpose? The purpose is actually to have a consciousness of service, to have a consciousness of selflessness, of sacrifice, of contribution and in this case for his service Ambarish Maharaj needed to break the fast first. So he did that. So actually to the extent the letter of the law or the letter of scripture is seen in the light of the purpose of the scripture, to that extent sticking to that letter helps.
Otherwise, sticking to the letter of the scripture can work against the purpose of scripture also. Broadly speaking, when it comes to tradition and following tradition, tradition sometimes we think of as something that has happened in the past and that we are going to do. But the past was also not one homogeneous unit.
In the past 18th century is different from 15th century, 15th century is different from 10th century. So tradition actually is a process of continuous adaptation. There is no such thing as a tradition which exists continuously.
So what do you mean by continuous adaptation? That if the language of people changes, the language in which the tradition will be spoken will change. So Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s biographies are written primarily in Bengal because he appeared in Bengal. The Vedic texts are in Sanskrit.
So tradition is one, you could say, one body of wisdom but it will be required to continuously be represented according to time, place, circumstance. So in tradition, there is, as Prabhupada said, principle and the details. Or we could say there is the core, the substance, and then there is the periphery.
The periphery is what interacts with the world. And the periphery needs to keep changing because the world with which it is interacting is changing. And if it does not change, then it becomes irrelevant.
So we could say there is the core of the scripture and there is the periphery of the scripture. There is a message of scripture and there is a presentation of scripture. Presentation means how does the purpose of scripture serve for the people who are here.
People who are in this particular setting how can the purpose of scripture, which is to raise their consciousness towards spirituality, towards spiritual reality of Krishna, how can that be served? So that is in reference to the presentation. So we could say that if we consider a four square diagram, there is the substance of scripture and there is the presentation of scripture. So we can have four categories of people.
People who keep the substance and the presentation both the same. People who keep the substance same change the presentation. People who change the substance but keep the presentation the same.
And people who change both the substance and the presentation. So, pūjāyāma āsav dharmagyaṁ deśakāla-vibhāga-veda. It is said in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, in the ninth chapter, the first canto that when Bhishma Pitāmahā was on his arrow bed, at that time when the great sages came to be with him at the time of his departure, he couldn’t offer obeisances to them but he just moved his head slightly in obeisance and he understood the principle was served because physically he could not apply the principle.
So, pūjāyāma āsav, he offered his respects to them, deśakāla-vibhāga-veda, called timeless circumstance because he was dharmagya. Dharmagya refers to he knew the essence of dharma, he knew the purpose of dharma and that he applied accordingly. So we could say that, I mentioned these four categories of people, we could call them as reformers, deformers, conformers and presenters.
So, let’s look at these four categories of people and I will explain this category in terms of an application. I was in Princeton and I was giving a talk over there and it’s interesting, the same question came up in Princeton and it came up in Harvard, it came up in Stanford also, wherever I was speaking. The question was, you are teaching the Bhagavad Gita but the Bhagavad Gita is a book that calls for violence.
So, in the West there is an enormous amount of paranoia about religious violence and there is reason for that because so much violence is being done in the name of religion. And then I had anticipated this also to some extent there is a prominent scholar of Hinduism, she’s written the whole book and then she’s written this article in the New York Times. She talks about how the Bhagavad Gita is not at all a pleasant book.
It repeatedly gold is the peace-loving Arjuna to all. Now, and you know the commentator she quotes the most to justify this is Prabhupada. Now, what has happened is Prabhupada had a particular context he was interested in.
So, Prabhupada says the Kurukshetra is not metaphorical. Kurukshetra is literal. This proves that Krishna actually told Arjuna to fight a war and Krishna is a blood-loving God.
So, now Prabhupada, the point he was making was there are some people who try to say that the whole Kurukshetra is mythological or metaphorical, not mythological, metaphorical. And this way they try to deny the historicity of the Mahabharata. So, Prabhupada wanted to focus on the historicity of the Mahabharata.
But how often does Prabhupada say that because Krishna fought a war we all have to take up weapons and fight a war. That’s nowhere in his teachings. So, it’s ironic that this interpretation has been justified using Prabhupada as a prominent supporter because Prabhupada’s Bhagavad Gita is widely distributed.
And it is seen as a book which many people read when they want to read the Bhagavad Gita. So, we look at this. There is the content and there is the context or there is the substance and there is the presentation.
The presentation is determined by the context. Context is where a particular message is to be applied. And if we are not sensitive to the context, then we may end up misrepresenting the content.
The same content which had actually served the purpose of elevating people’s consciousness can actually alienate people if it’s in a different context. So, let’s look at the Bhagavad Gita’s core message. Its core message is that we should devote ourselves to Krishna.
That in this world we have many different identities and we have many different roles associated with those identities. Arjuna at the start of the Bhagavad Gita faces a Dharma Sankat. Dharma Sankat means it’s an ethical crisis.
Moral crisis is when there are two options, one moral and another immoral. Ethical crisis is when there are two options, both of which are ethical. But which is the higher ethics has to be decided.
So, his Dharma Sankat was he had his Kula Dharma and he had his Kshatriya Dharma. His Kula Dharma was that as a Yadu dynasty, of the Kuru dynasty, he was meant to prevent destruction of the dynasty. As a Kshatriya, his Kshatriya Dharma was that he was meant to punish the Atatayinas, the aggressors.
So, in this case when his aggressors are members of his own dynasty, what does he do? So, that’s why his defining question at the start of the Bhagavad Gita is not whether he should fight or not. His question is, I am asking you, what is Dharma? What is it that I am meant to do? What is the right course of action for it? And Krishna’s essential message is, he says, give up all Dharma. Now, does give up all Dharma mean become adharmic? No.
Prabhupada says that the hippies, they had also practiced Sarva Dharma Amritya. But I taught them, Maam Ekam Sharanam Vritya. So, Sarva Dharma Amritya is meant for a purpose, Maam Ekam Sharanam Vritya, that is, surrender to.
And, you see, Arjuna, afterwards, he fought the Aurkshetra war. So, in his context, for him, Krishna when he tells Sarva Dharma Amritya, that does not mean give up all Dharma literally. It says, give up those Dharmas or that Dharma which stops you from surrendering and do that Dharma by which you can do Maam Ekam Sharanam Vritya.
So, in that case, in his context, the Kula Dharma, trying to protect those who were adharmic, would come in the way of his surrender to Krishna. So, he subordinated his Kula Dharma and he performed his Kshatriya Dharma. So, when he fought the war, he did not fight the war primarily as a Kshatriya.
He fought the war as a devotee doing Kshatriya Dharma. That is why Arjuna’s conclusion in 18.73 is not that I will fight the war. His conclusion is, 18.73 says, I will do your will.
So, in this case, your will happens to be that I should fight the war. So, I will fight the war. So, there is the content and there is the context.
The content is that we should harmonize with God’s will. We should do that which will enable us to move closer to God. So, the Bhagavad Gita, in its core content, is neither a book of violence nor a book of silence.
It is a book of transcendence. Not violence, not silence, but transcendence. That we should harmonize with the divine.
And in its context, it is required that we fight the war. So, if we consider these two things, content and context. So, those who keep the content and the context the same, they are called as conformers.
Conformers mean they think that everything should stay the same as it is. So, now conformism seems to be like a good way of preserving the tradition. Yes, but it will preserve the tradition in a museum, not in reality.
Because the world keeps changing. If Prabhupada had gone, Bhaktivinoda Thakur wrote most of his books in Bengali. A couple of books, a few books he wrote in English.
Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur wrote a few books in English. Prabhupada wrote almost all his books in English. He did, Gita Ardhan was translated into Bengali.
If Prabhupada had gone to America and said, he had been a conformer, keep the content same, keep the context also, keep the presentation also same. He had gone to America and given classes in Bengali. How many people would have come to notice? Maybe a few Bengalis would have become followers.
That is all. So, the context changes and the presentation has to be changed. So, those who think that the context, they do not consider the context and they think the presentation has to stay the same, they actually defeat the purpose of the tradition.
Just from the time when Prabhupada was here and now we are 40-50 years, the world has changed in these 40-50 years, possibly more than what has changed in the past 400-500 years. The pace of change, not just in terms of technological innovation, but also in terms of social conceptions, it has changed enormously. And if we keep sticking to simply the way things were done in the tradition, then we will miss out and lose a lot of people because people are just put off.
And as I said, I have been to America, Australia, New Zealand. So, there, the whole ethos is of all the genders should be given equal representation. So, they feel that if, in fact, if there is an establishment only of males, 95% of the people will think, not that these are celibates, they will think these are homosexuals.
So, that is the default perception over there. And people start thinking that, so whenever we do a program, especially for Western audiences, there has to be, among the people who are preaching also, a healthy blend of males and females. So, if a male gives a talk, the female should do the killings, or at least the female should make the announcements.
So, there has to be a visible role for everyone. Like I was in a temple also, where I had question answers. So, they had two mics, one for men and one for women.
And after every question asked by a Prabhu, one question is asked by a Mataji. If there is no question asked by a woman, then again a man can ask a question. Now, this is of course, this is done in the Sunday programs, because Sunday programs, and that is the only temple, among the few temples, where a good number of Western people come to the programs.
There are small things, it is not as if the movement will ask that many questions. But what they see is, that if we are going to be suppressed over here, we are not going to come over here. Why should we come over here? So, now, so one of the most, one of the sannyasis that I was talking with him, so he says that I am an equal opportunity employer.
What he meant is that everybody has an opportunity to do service, because that is what is required. Otherwise, people just get, people do not even get the opportunity to understand what is Bhakti. Because they just see, okay, this is like this.
They are seeing things through a particular filter. Now, we may say that if they are seeing through their filter, that is their problem. Yes, but the whole mood of a Vaishnava is to try to solve other people’s problems.
Isn’t it? They are meant to be par-dukha-dukhi. So, if we do not understand the context from which people are coming, then we alienate them and sometimes, our mind is, the ego is so perverse, that the ego may make us think that, just see, people are not coming. That means they are demonic.
That means this is Kali Yuga. Well, yes, it is Kali Yuga, but we are not meant to demonize people. We are meant to spiritualize people.
And we are meant to give people the facility to spiritualize themselves. So, actually, Prabhupada, when he went and stayed among the hippies, sannyasis have quite strict rules of conduct. But Prabhupada stayed and cooked for the hippies, washed their plates.
And when people take drugs, I was at a place where, this is one center, where a lot of, even now, there are some states in America, where LSD and other drugs have been legalized. So, there, a lot of people come and stay there just so that they can have free access to drugs. And we have centers over there.
So, the first thing often we see, when we go to these areas where people with drugs hang out, it sticks. Because people are so lost in their head that they are not even aware of physical reality. See, in the mode of goodness, we are aware of material reality and spiritual reality.
In the mode of passion, we are aware of material reality. In the mode of ignorance, we are not even aware of material reality. We are just in our head, imagining this, imagining that, imagining that.
So, people in passion actually keep material reality very well organized, very clean, very tidy, because that is what they are aware of. So, externally speaking, the western world is much cleaner, much better organized than India. See, India is a curious mix of goodness and ignorance.
So, we claim to be intellectually in goodness, but practically we end up in ignorance. Externally, goodness and ignorance can appear very similar. A person can be sitting peacefully in a class.
A person in passion will think, when will this class end? I want to go, I want to do this, I want to do that, I want to do that. A person in goodness will sit and they want to hear, let me learn more and more. A person in ignorance will also want to sit, let this class go on, I will keep sleeping.
So, in ignorance, people, when they come from a particular context, at that time, we have to be sensitive. About 15 years ago, I repeatedly for 2-3 years, I was repeatedly sick and for many months, I would get fever and other symptoms, but nobody was able to diagnose what was wrong. So, at that time, I had to do a blood test and normally, when the blood test is done, you have to put an injection into a, usually a vein.
So, I had so many holes in all my veins because so many blood samples had been taken at that time. So, at that time, the nurse was going to take the blood sample, looking at both the eyes, couldn’t find a place where to put the needle. And that nurse was almost around 10-12 minutes was looking for a place where I can put the needle.
Now, that nurse would have said, if you have got so many holes in your hand, that’s your problem. My problem is simply to give the injection and take the blood sample. But no, that nurse also wanted to do it in such a way that it causes minimum pain.
So, similarly, the context sometimes, like my sickness had made my skin more sensitive. Like that, some people’s context makes people more sensitive to certain things. And we don’t want to advocate any principle of social, any principles of social organization that are contrary to devotional principles.
But social organization is mundane. Our purpose is spiritual elevation. And on time, place, circumstances, certain ways things are presented, that helps people come closer to that person.
And that’s perfectly, not only fine, it’s essential. So, Srila Prabhupada talked about certain traditional social roles for different people in society. So, he talked about women and how they should stick to traditional social roles.
But in practice, Prabhupada is the acharya. For acharya, there is achar and there is pracharya. So, normally, the two go together.
But when the two are different, then we have to see why it is different. Prabhupada in his books talks about how women should be protected. But what does protection mean? Protection also means that facilitation.
Protection doesn’t mean restriction. When Prabhupada and his disciples were brought up in the western world, were brought up in a culture where they were told, they were grown up to be more or less do all the things that men did, then Prabhupada encouraged them to use that in Krishna’s service. So, Prabhupada did not restrict people.
He facilitated people to go towards Krishna. In 1968, when they came back from India to America, at that time, the devotees had an atlas over there. And in the rooms, Prabhupada told all the disciples, all of you, take one one country, pick it up and go preach over there, deliver that country.
All the disciples were stunned. And then, one of the Mataji, she asked, Prabhupada, what about us girls? He said, we are not boys or girls. We are souls.
You also pick up one country. So, now, what is Prabhupada’s mood was that encourage everyone to Krishna’s service. So, I talked about, there are people who keep the content as well as the presentation exactly the same.
They are conformists. And they can appeal to a limited group of people who are still trying to relive the past. See, bhakti is not about recreating the past.
Bhakti is about re-establishing the path to go beyond time. We want to go beyond time, go beyond past, present and future. Then we could say this is one sector.
The other sector could be those who, these are reformers. Reformers think, they want to keep the core as well as the presentation the same. Let us go to the other extreme.
Those who want to change both the core and the presentation. So, they say that actually things are wrong in the traditions. So, therefore, we can take something from the tradition, but something in the tradition also will be rejected.
So, in this context, we could say people who say that the Bhagavad Gita is a book of spiritual wisdom, but it has been given in a context that is dangerous. It is a metaphorical context. So, but it is a dangerous metaphor.
So, this particular commentator says that actually, I have the greatest respect for Vyasdeva, but I humbly submit that Vyasdeva has committed a serious mistake by using the metaphor of a battlefield for today’s history of the Bhagavad Gita, because this metaphor will be justified by, will be used by people to justify religious violence. And so, what he is doing over there, he is, so he takes some principles from the Gita, but he says actually this whole thing is metaphorical. So, now, if you see, consider the content of the Gita is that we should surrender to God.
But there are many commentators who study the Bhagavad Gita, but they do not stick to the content at all. They say non-violence is the content, or Karma Yoga is the content, or social activism is the content, and they deny the context. So, to change the content as well as the context, or this is the presentation.
Those are people who are called as reformers. Reformers means they want to form everything again, not just the presentation, but also the content. Now, reformers, reform may be required in society, but reform is not required in scripture.
Scripture is given by God, and we do not change the content of scripture. Scripture is omniform. Just like God is omnipotent, scripture is omniform.
Omniform means it has many, many forms. So, we have to find that form in the scripture which is applicable for people to do. So, scripture is like a big pharmaceutical company where all kinds of medicines are manufactured.
So, it is not that a particular medicine is bad. A particular medicine may be bad for a particular person, but that does not mean the medicine is bad. There may be other people for whom that medicine may work very well.
So, that is why the living teachers of scripture have the responsibility of understanding the context, understanding the content, and presenting the appropriate content for the appropriate context. That is why we need living doctors. One of the biggest problems nowadays in the western world is that people use Google as a substitute for doctors.
So, actually the medical system in America is such that they call it healthcare is healthcare. Healthcare, of course. I was at one time, I was taking dates at the airport, I was taking prasadam, I was taking dates.
So, actually there were particular kind of dates in which the seeds had been removed. But in that there was one date, a seed was there. So, I was eating it, eating it, and then that seed came, and as I chewed that seed, my tooth broke out.
The tooth just came out of the mouth. I just fell out, I just started bleeding. So, then when I went to the doctor, my doctor said that actually to replace, it was the root canal which was required, he said to replace that will require $2,000.
A $2,000 is how much? 1.2 lakhs. So, it is more than the ticket from India to America in fact. So, then I had some health insurance, but that health insurance was not there.
And later I came to know that if you get health insurance from India, in America it doesn’t help. Because the Indian insurance company says, you pay first, and afterwards you come to India, you will use the insurance. So, that is of no use.
So, anyway. So, the point is that small things cost a lot of money. So, what people do is, they will not go to a doctor only.
You just find out on Google, what is the treatment for what. Now, on Google, there may be good information also. But how do lay people know what is good information, what is bad information? So, a lot of medical health complications come up, because people use Google and substitute for a doctor.
So, if we do not know, then we may not be able to discern. Yes, we can use, it is good to be generally aware. Nowadays, there are many people who cheat.
But we have to be aware and Google can inform us. But there are so many medicines and so many diseases. So, which medicine applies for which disease in what context, that is something which an expert is required to teach, required to tell.
Similarly, scripture is omniform. Scripture, you could say, like the original Google. There is everything for everyone.
Whatever level people are at, there is something in scripture for them. If you want to eat meat, there is scripture will tell you how to eat meat also. If you want to enjoy sensuality, there is Kama Sutra, which you can tell you how to do that also.
If you want to go towards Krishna, it is there for that also. Scripture, the tradition from scripture is omniform. But what is applicable for whom, that a living teacher of scripture will have to teach.
So, the reformers think that the scripture itself has to be changed. Then we could have the deformers. The deformers are people who keep the application or the presentation the same, but change the content.
So, for example, when India was fighting for independence against the British, at that time there were several commentators in the Gita who said that actually just as Krishna fought against Adharma, we should fight against Adharma. And this British Raj is like the Kauravas. And at that time, the Indian National Congress is like the Pandavas.
And we should fight against them and destroy them. And in that way, we will reestablish Adharma. So, now the Bhagavad Gita is not a book for political activism.
It is not taking political sides over it. There are some people who say that, oh, Bhagavad Gita 8 tells, fight war against the infidels. There is one commentator who said India’s biggest mistake when it became independent was that it did not follow the Bhagavad Gita.
It is true. Yes, we could say that it is true. But his application is if India had followed the Bhagavad Gita, you know, within three days of independence, India would have attacked Pakistan and conquered Pakistan.
That is the way to establish Dharma. Krishna came to establish Dharma and India would have also established Dharma. Now, if somebody wants to do that, that is what their opinion, but that is not what the Bhagavad Gita is teaching.
So, there are people who take the application as it was done at a particular time in history and literally enacted while neglecting the purpose. So, when that happens, that leads to a lot of, the deformers are very dangerous because most people look at externals and when they look at externals, they think, okay, this was what was done in the past, this is what you are doing. That means you represent the tradition.
But with what purpose was it being done? That purpose, if it is forgotten, then it leads to a lot of problems. So, if you consider society in today’s world, there is, there was a caste system in India, which is a distortion of the Varanasian system, which Krishna talks about in the Bhagavad Gita. And there are, Sri Prabhupada talks about how social organization will be the end of the Varanasian.
So, there is a prominent critic of Srila Prabhupada, who says, who is trying to give ISKCON a bad name by saying that ISKCON is trying to recreate the caste system. Now, in the western world, and even in India, there is nothing that can give an organization as bad a name as trying to recreate the caste system. The caste system has led to horrendous abuses.
And somebody says, oh, this is what is to be replicated. No, that is not what is to be replicated. The principle of the society be organized according to people’s individual propensities, so that everybody can move towards God.
That is the principle. So, if we keep the application the same, but forget the context, then it becomes a big problem. Then, the last are the presenters.
The presenters are, in a sense, the transformers. As I said, tradition is a process of ongoing transformation. Transformation of presentation and continuation of the essential purpose.
So, Srila Prabhupada, when he went to America, he kept the essential message given by his spiritual master the same. But at the same time, he adapted according to the circumstance. He gave Brahmandiksha to women.
He had people from all over the world getting Brahmandiksha by which they could do deity worship. He gave sannyas and he authorized people to become spiritual masters. Prabhupada, in many ways, was very radical.
Because he did what was required for making sure that people came to Krishna. So, the idea is that transformation is not a distortion. A transformation means that the same purpose is to be served, but how is this purpose going to be served in this situation? And when that is understood… So, following tradition is not like we… our brain becomes like a super Google which remembers everything in scripture everywhere and then we come to a situation, okay, Google search, what to do? Okay, this situation, I should do this.
It is not like that. The following tradition means internalizing the essential purpose of the tradition. The essential purpose is to elevate people’s consciousness.
And how that elevation of consciousness can be done in this particular situation? To that, each teacher has to take that individual responsibility. And not just teacher for others, teacher for ourselves. To the extent we understand the purpose of the tradition, okay, my consciousness is to be elevated.
And how can I elevate my consciousness? So, we have to see what is favorable for elevating my consciousness, what is favorable for elevating other people’s consciousness. And what is unfavorable for elevating my consciousness, what is unfavorable for elevating other people’s consciousness. And choose the former and keep a distance from the latter.
And this requires continuous adaptation. The Prabhupada himself was very flexible. We say we should follow Prabhupada.
But which Prabhupada should we follow? The Prabhupada in America and the Prabhupada in India adopted very different strategies. Prabhupada in America, when he preached, where in the western world preaching men would basically move to the temple and become devotees in terms of living in the temple. But when Prabhupada came to India, practically no one was interested in moving into the temple.
When Prabhupada was in India in 1960s, 1965 when he was preaching, people were not interested. It was not that in 1970s when he came back, suddenly people became interested in following serious spiritual life. See, in the west, the mood was of rejection.
At that time, 1960s to 1970s was the mood of the counterculture, time of the counterculture. So, the hippies themselves wanted to reject. Reject family, reject society, reject education, reject the government.
And Prabhupada presented Christian consciousness which is gel with them. So, his mood of philosophically critiquing material life was the way. So, the hippies wanted to reject things and Prabhupada gave them philosophical foundation for rejecting things.
When the hippies were settled, they were rebels without a cause and rebels without a cause. Just rebel, rebel, rebel, everything they were rebelling against. But then, Prabhupada gave them reason to pause.
Stop rebelling now, now follow this. And they followed it more ardently. When Prabhupada came to India, nobody was interested in rejecting society, rejecting government, rejecting education.
So, the mood in India was of cultural nationalism. Andrew, what happened to that? So, Indians felt that, oh, thousands of years, over thousands of years we have been ruled by foreigners. And Britishers, for Indians, the rule by Muslims was not as humiliating as rule by Britishers.
Because Britishers is a small country and they actually created an inferiority complex within Indians. The Muslim rule did not create an inferiority complex within Indians. So, for Indians, when they saw that Britishers and Americans, they are becoming devotees, they are following this, they are jubilant.
So, our culture is being followed by the foreigners. And most people who helped Srila Prabhupada, they helped because of their cultural nationalism sentiments. If you see among our movement’s leaders, how many of the first generation leaders are Indians who were introduced in India to this country? Very few, very, very few.
Why? Because Indians at that time were just not ready for spirituality, serious spirituality. But Prabhupada, he used their mood of cultural nationalism and he introduced resistance of life membership. Now, you consider life membership means there is no commitment at all.
No chanting sixteen rounds, no following for regulative principles. We could say Indians were following for regulative principles, not always everyone. But Prabhupada said, even then.
So, we could have, like, if we consider this is Krishna, we can have concentric circles of different radii. So, moving into the temple and being a full-time devotee was like one very close concentric circle, very close to center. But becoming a life member was a very distinct concentric circle.
Prabhupada was so broad and he included both. He accommodated both and he facilitated both. So, Indians, I was at a person’s house and he had, people had their nameplates.
So, in the nameplate, this person had written in your head, this degree, this degree, that degree, that degree. He said, ISKCON life member. So, now, you say, why would somebody write in the nameplate ISKCON life member? But Prabhupada actually, at that time, presented Krishna Consciousness in such a way that he made being an ISKCON life member seem to be a very prestigious thing.
And people were proud, oh, this organization is making western people also into devotees and I am a member of this organization. So, Prabhupada was an expert. So, here we have a very close circle where Prabhupada is getting dedicated followers and Prabhupada is getting dedicated patrons.
Life members means they would give some donation and they would take Prabhupada’s books and they would get the facility. So, from here, Prabhupada was not just happy letting them stay there. Prabhupada wanted to create facilities where they could come higher.
He gave them the books where there were houses and they would come and stay in the temples. They could get a spiritual atmosphere by which they could grow. But Prabhupada engaged both.
Now, most of our movement is in between the two. In some places, we do make life members and some places we do make people who move to the temple. But our movement is mostly a congregation-based movement where devotees have their own professions, their families, their personal lives and along with that, Krishna is an important part of their life.
So, neither the monastic model where people had moved in the temple nor the patron model where people were just giving like support financially, neither of those are applicable for people today. Most devotees are congregation members. So, accordingly, bhakti has to be present appropriately.
So, Srila Prabhupada himself by his example has shown how according to context to present things. So, Prabhupada in India, he tried initially. He said, okay, you have five children, give one child for the sharing of Krishna bhakti.
But people were not ready to do that. Prabhupada did not harp on that, no, do this, do this, do this. He said, okay, what can you do? You do that and you move towards Krishna bhakti.
So, basically, Prabhupada was daksha. One of the qualities of a devotee is expert. So, expert means understand where people are at and see how you can get them to come closer to Krishna.
So, a devotee has to have the mood, not that this is the path to Krishna and I have to somehow push people on this path. And if people do not follow this path, then they are demons. It is not like that.
People are here and from there, what could be the path to Krishna? What could be the path to Krishna? When we understand this, when we try to see where people are at and get them towards Krishna, that is how they can sustainably move towards Krishna. I will conclude with one last point that Krishna is not just a God who is present in the spiritual world. Krishna pervades all of existence.
That He, from whom all of existence has come and by Him all of existence is pervaded. By your work, worship Him and in this way you can attain perfection. Krishna also says in the Bhagavad Gita that everything attractive manifests the spark of His splendor.
10.41 he says that everything attractive is a spark of His splendor. This means that whatever is a person’s deepest experience, that is their experience of Krishna. Whatever is a person’s deepest experience, that is their experience of Krishna.
If a person is a painter, he is absorbed in painting, he can spend hours in painting. Somebody else will say, what are you spending so much time on? If somebody is a writer, they can spend hours in writing. William Burns was a famous poet and author.
He wrote a letter to one of his friends and he said, I spent my morning very productively today. I worked on one of my new poems. After breakfast, I added a comma in the poem.
Before lunch, I deleted the comma. And he considered that very productive use of his morning. He said, why do you put a comma? But for several hours he was thinking, what is the effect on the music, the rhythm, the recitation, if the comma is there or not there.
So now, what do you experience by putting a comma or not putting a comma? Actually, they are experiencing Krishna. They don’t know that they are experiencing Krishna. They may not know.
But the joy that one gets in doing anything in a deep absorbed way, where is that joy coming from? Every joy in this world comes from Krishna. So people’s deepest experience is their experience of Krishna. And if we tell people, reject that experience and come to Krishna, they will not be interested.
But if we can connect their deepest experience with the experience of Krishna, then they will be very open to come towards Krishna. So, you see, Prabhupada, in one sense, when he went to the mess, he said, I am not at all about Christians. I have not come to tell anything new to you.
What you have forgotten, I have come to tell you that. But Prabhupada did not tell his followers, oh, you are Christians, why didn’t you follow Christianity? They had rejected that. Prabhupada took that mood of rejection and gave them philosophy of mysticism.
So, their mood was, oh, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad. So, Prabhupada did not try to tell them, this is good, this is good, this is good. He said, okay, that is bad.
But what is really good then? So, he took that mood of rejection and he showed them the way to Krishna. India is great. So, okay, India is great, but what makes India great? What is it about India that makes it great? It is the spiritual wisdom of India.
So, whatever is people’s deepest experience, we could say this is simply mundane. We could say that rejection, rejecting everything is in the mode of ignorance, or thinking that one’s own country is very big in the mode of passion. But, okay, that is where people are at.
From there, how can we bring them to Krishna? That is the expertise of a devotee. That wherever people are at, from there, understand, their deepest experience is their experience of Krishna, and get them to be connected with Krishna from there. So, I was at a devotee’s house in America, and they were telling me that they have a son, just an eight-year-old boy, but he is into robotics.
He has won some national awards in making robots also. So, he said that day and night he is searching on Google how to make robots, how to do this, how to do that. Maybe not eight, he is around ten or twelve, twelve I would say.
So, then they said that, I was talking, brilliant boy, but then his parents were telling me that we tell him to come to the temple, we tell him to study the Bhagavad Gita, to recite verses, but he has no interest in any of this. He is only interested in robotics. What to do? Then I talked with him, and he said, how do you get your ideas to make robots? So, I said, no, I just scour, what do your friends make? He said, you know, nowadays, Amazon, and they deliver goods, but they do not use human beings so much.
They actually have robots. They have everything. I spoke at Amazon in Seattle.
So, there, one of the middle level managers, most of the things which you purchase from Amazon, I do not know how it is in India, in America it is, they have everything stocked in particular places. And they have robots, which go to the, whenever an order comes, the robot gets the programmed order, the robot goes, picks it up, and puts it, packs it, and puts it in the truck. So, the robot does not understand anything, but everything is organized in a way they can do it.
So, this is how, that field of robots doing mechanical work, that is the field where we work a lot. And that is where we get ideas, this is what I was telling him. So, then I said, okay, would you like to do some new kind of robot, which nobody else will do? He said, yeah, what is it? I said, you could make a robot of Krishna and Arjuna speaking and discussing the Bhagavad Gita.
He said, no, not interested. But then, he just went and started talking to his parents and after five minutes he came back. I said, no, I think this is a good idea.
I thought initially, no, because people will think it is religious. But he said, actually it will be unique. Nobody else will do that.
So, then he said, I will think about it. And then, I talked with his parents, they said that, now he has read the full Bhagavad Gita. So, he has also learned the recitation because he has to get the robot to recite the verses.
So, whatever is people’s deepest experience, instead of rejecting that experience, we try to spiritualize that experience. And when we do that, from where people are at, we get them towards Krishna. If we tell people, this is the path to Krishna, but they are far away from the path, they will not go towards Krishna only.
The expertise of a preacher is not just to show the path, to tell people to go on the path to Krishna, but to show people that from where they are, what is the path to Krishna. So, unfortunately for Durvasa Muni, the idea that all rules and regulations are meant to be practiced for moving towards Krishna, that was forgotten. And Ambarish Maharaj is actually more devoted to Krishna and more steady on the path to Krishna, whereas Durvasa Muni was a literalist, saying that, this is what should be done.
If you have not done it, I am going to punish you. But in the end, sticking to the letter without understanding the purpose backfired on him. And he had to come and humble himself before Ambarish Maharaj, who may have violated the letter of scripture, but who fulfilled the purpose of scripture.
So, I will summarize. I spoke today on the topic of the letter of scripture and the purpose of scripture. I started by talking about how Bhagavatam inverts the conventional social hierarchies.
A demon becomes greater than a God, or a son becomes greater than a father, or a Kshatriya becomes greater than a Brahmana, when those lower in the order have devotion. And then I talked about these four categories of people. In tradition, there is the context and the content.
Tradition is not a frozen path which is replicated year after year after year. Tradition is some eternal principles, but it is a process of continuous adaptation, because the tradition has to be presented to people according to timely circumstance. So, with respect to context and content, we discussed that there can be four categories of people.
Those who keep the context and the content same are the conformers. And I give this example, exemplified with the Bhagavad Gita, that those who say that, oh, that Bhagavad Gita is a book that recommends war, and therefore we should fight a war. That fighting a war is not the intent of the Bhagavad Gita at all.
The intent of the Bhagavad Gita is not a book of violence or silence, it is a book of transcendence. So, Prabhupada emphasized the context is true, but he did not ask us to replicate that context. He presented according to timely circumstance.
So, those who keep the context and the content the same, they preserve the tradition, but in a museum, not in real life. Then there are the other extreme, those who change the context and the content. They are the reformers.
So, they say, for example, that actually the Bhagavad Gita’s context itself is metaphorical. It is a bad metaphor to be used. So, they distort the tradition.
The equally damaging are the people who keep the context the same, but change the content. Those who neglect devotion to Krishna and say that Bhagavad Gita is a book for political violence and political activism. And we discussed, lastly, people who understand the content and understand the context and present accordingly.
The scripture is like an omniform book of instructions, like a medical manual, like a pharmaceutical company. And we need the expert who can understand the situation, understand the treatment and harmonize the two. So, we discussed about how in today’s world, there is this whole ethos about gender discrimination, avoiding gender discrimination, and the Buddhist present Krishna consciousness accordingly.
And Prabhupada also did that. And then we talked about Prabhupada’s expert presentation according to context. In the West, where the whole culture, where all the culture was hostile to bhakti and alien, bhakti was alien, he facilitated bhakti by getting people to move in the temples.
In India, where the mood of rejection, he facilitated that. In India, the mood was of cultural nationalism, and Prabhupada engaged that. Today, our movement exists between these two as a congregational movement.
People are not inmates of the movement, but also not patrons alone. They are dedicated and congregational followers. So, appropriately, the movement has to present itself, has to serve and help people come closer to Krishna accordingly.
And I conclude by talking about how everybody’s deepest experience is their experience of Krishna. And rather than telling them to reject that experience, we help them connect that experience with Krishna. Rather than telling people, this is the path to Krishna, we see where people are at and show them the path to Krishna from there.
Thank you very much. Shri Prabhupada ki, Karnataka Shri Madhavatam ki. Are there any questions or comments? Yes.
You can repeat. You can speak, I’ll repeat the question. Thank you so much.
As you were explaining, you were presenting the Krishna consciousness system in the worldly world. Now, as we see currently in the media and all, so there is more acceptability given to authors like Amit Siddharth, Srinivas Nayak. So, they present this Indian tradition of spiritual truth, something like God, God, God, Krishna.
So, they present it as like a normal human being having extraordinary qualities. Now, I say, if you try to meditate through the media, you have to write articles, and then how do you present it so that they are able to accept it also without any hesitation also, and they are also not diluting the Krishna consciousness. So, there are certain authors who write about Indian tradition and they get much more reach and acceptance than what when we as devotees write.
So, how can we present in the way that we can reach to a broader audience without compromising, without diluting the essential message. There is an ongoing challenge for every teacher of Krishna Bhakti, and I wouldn’t say that there are any fixed answers for this. The broad principle would be that we have to understand who is our target audience and present accordingly.
That means, you could say that there are three broad ways of presenting spiritual wisdom in material life. I call it as rejection, complementation, and improvement. One is that reject, oh material life is temporary, it is filled with misery, reject it, and that is spiritual life.
Second is complementation. Material life is good, but it is not enough. If you want satisfaction, you want your life to have some meaning, then you have to have spiritual life.
Third is that your spiritual life will improve your material life. That in the past, it was, oh God will provide you this, oh father, Dawa in heaven, hallo, give us our daily bread. That God will provide you your material necessities.
Now, the prominent image of God that emerges say from the mainstream churches of America is not God as a cosmic provider, but God as a cosmic therapist. Therapist, because my people in the west, they don’t have big worries about physical needs, they are provided for. But, emotionally people are very distressed.
So, there is an article which came I think in Atlantic or one of the magazines, Why hasn’t God died till now? So, what that meant is that since the last century, late 18th century, early 19th century itself, 1880s, 1890s, that time, many thinkers have been predicting the death of God. They said as science starts providing all the things that religion has traditionally provided, people will realize that God is just a myth and God will die. Fred also attacked God.
But, God has not died. God can never die. He is eternal.
But, religion has not died. People’s attraction towards God has not died because there is a need which is being fulfilled, which science and technology are not able to fulfill or medicine not able to fulfill. People’s need for emotional support, need for meaning, need for service, need to deal with their mind.
So, basically, this presenting mindfulness is big in the West because mindfulness has been presented as something to improve your material life. So, Iskcon’s presentation traditionally of spiritual life has been in the first category. Mental life is temporary, give it up and practice spiritual life.
And because we are now becoming a congregation movement, so slowly we are moving towards the second level, complementary. So, mental life is good, but spiritual life is also important. In fact, it is more important, but it is also important.
So, most teachers who become popular, they present spirituality and scriptural knowledge in the third level, how it can improve your material life. Now, the word material is sometimes too big to be helpful because in material, it is like, for Americans, they equate India, they equate something that happens in the villages of Bihar with Mumbai or metropolitan cities like Bangalore. Oh, you people, you burn people alive.
Burn people alive? I have lived for 20, how many years in India? I have never seen anyone be burnt alive. But so what happens is just like the Indians do like this. Well, Indians are billions of people.
So, like that material, its material is a very, very big category. So, in material, there can be pro-demotional, there can be anti-demotional, there can be non-demotional. So, therefore, if we talk in terms of how spiritual wisdom can help us develop more and more of goodness qualities, patience, tolerance, sensitivity.
People are not interested in humility, but people are interested in teamwork. So, you just have to present it. This will help you become humble.
I do not know, I am not interested in becoming humble. This will help you become a better team player. Oh, yeah, I want to become a better team player.
So, basically, this all has to be a presentation. See what is the need of people and show how spiritual wisdom can serve that need. If we do that, then people are interested.
So, we need to have a kind of funnel effect, where we have devotees present in the third category also. How your spiritual life can improve your material life. That is what will have mass outreach.
Because the number of people who are interested in spiritual life by giving up material life are extremely few. The number of people who are interested in spiritual life as an addition something more to the material life. You say material life is so busy, I do not have time for anything else.
But if you tell them this will improve your material life, then they are ready to give time also. And then they can become more spiritual gradually. So, from the third to the second to the first.
The first may not be necessary for most people, but to the second level. So, then that is what we have to find out resourcefully, how to do that without diluting our core message. So, it is something which the institution itself, see ISKCON is a very big institution, because the Prabhupada made it like joint nuclear family.
What do you mean by joint nuclear family? Each center is like a nuclear family. And all of them are together joint. So, for any decision to be taken at a collective level is almost impossible.
But at each individual level, at each leader can, okay, this is what I should do. This is what is required for this context. And they do it.
And if it works, it attracts people to Krishna. And others may also follow it. So, I would say that we do according to our situation, whatever is best required to help people appreciate spirituality and come closer to Krishna.
So, there are different devotees and different opinions about the topic of Indian culture at ISKCON. Sometimes letter of scripture might be strongly serving the spirit of scripture also. So, some people say that using, some people say that we are Indianizing everything or that Indian devotees are culturally conditioned.
So, what is the understanding of, say, the role of the letter of scripture? Well, this is a volatile topic. I have stayed in India. I have practiced most of my bhakti in India for almost 20, 15, 17 years.
And then I have interacted with devotees in the West also. So, I would say that rather than saying that whether the culture that is, that Srila Prabhupada introduced, whether that is Indian or whether it is spiritual, whether it is Bengali or whether it is transcendental, rather than getting into that debate, we can focus on what helps people to come closer to Krishna. If we start saying, oh, this is transcendental, people ask, okay, where is the shastric pramana that is transcendental? And if you look for a shastric pramana, is Krishna wearing a particular dress? Does Krishna eat a particular kind of food only and not other kinds of food? Once we try to say that it is transcendental and people ask, what is shastric pramana? And we say, oh, how dare you question? We start demonizing and saying, no, this is not.
Or Prabhupada has given us and then we respect that. At the same time, so rather than evaluating whether it is transcendental or not, we respect it, it is sacred, Prabhupada has given it to us and it was practiced in India for how much, now we do not know historically. But the point is whether it is helpful for people to come closer to Krishna.
And if it is good, if it is not, if it is becoming an obstacle for people to come closer to Krishna, then what is our purpose? Is our purpose to replicate Krishna culture or is it to make Krishna bhakti? Prabhupada said, do you want Krishna consciousness? Do you want Krishna culture? If Krishna culture is the way to Krishna consciousness, wonderful. But people who are on the field know what is required on the field. One of the most revealing experiences for me was in America, many devotees have pets.
Many devotees also have pets. In India, why do you have a pet? One more material attachment and that too an animal. But it is, it is actually the cultural context is very different.
There was one devotee, Mataji, I heard about, I did not meet her, but other devotees told me that she had a pet dog and when that pet dog was dying, she sat next to the pet dog and chanted 108 rounds for that pet dog. And all, that was the only time in her life she chanted 108 rounds. And she was actually there and that Prabhupada dhoom was going on and then Prabhupada was chanting Chintamani Pratharasatmasu, reciting the Brahma Samhita, at that time the dog left his body.
So, my first thought was, why do all that for a dog? But then when I understood the context, I came to know that, now she had, she had been brought up in an abusive family. Her father had been an abuser, her mother had been an alcoholic and she had grown up alone and she had been through three bad marriages. One before she became a devotee, two after she became a devotee.
And her spiritual master had had a fall down. The person who had introduced her to Krishna Consciousness had also fallen down, quite badly. So, she said that, I cannot trust any human being.
She had so many bad experiences. She said, I know the purpose of my life is to love Krishna, but I need some reciprocation with someone right now. And that reciprocation was provided by a dog.
So, now I am not recommending having dogs. I am simply saying that, why people do certain things, rather than simply dismissing it as multiple attachment, to understand where they are coming from. So, there is no need to demonize what people need to do for keeping themselves stable, by which they can move towards Krishna.
And what is required, needs to be done. So, I would say that, are certain aspects of scripture, certain letter of scripture also strongly connected with the spirit of scripture? Could be. But is that what is necessary for everyone to follow, to come to Krishna? Let the people over there decide.
Now, there is no point in, we being in the western world, for example, it is almost, it is just so difficult to conceive, that there is a whole family breakdown. The most kids, they are brought up by single mothers. The men unite with the women and the women.
And there is a lot of resentment against the absent male authority figure. The father was never there for the child. It is almost, one out of every four, or one out of every three kids in America, is brought up in a single parent family.
And a single parent means, one out of ten single parent means, it is a single mother. Not a single father, they are very rare. So then, for these kids, the only authority they trust is the female authority.
Because their mother has been there for them. And if they come to the temples, and they say, there are only male authorities there, no female authorities. They get psyched out.
Just can’t trust anyone. So, there is one temple where the husband and wife are managing the temple together. But the husband was the temple president for many years.
And he had a lot of problem managing the people. And his wife became the president, and she said that, you are able to manage so many. Why? Because the devotees, western devotees, are all responding to their own idea of male authority figure.
But female authority figure, they were able to accept much more easily. So now, we may say, in traditional Indian culture, public authority figures were males. Women also had authority, because primarily in their homes.
But, okay, that’s fine. But is that what helps people to move towards Krishna? Our purpose is to help people come closer to Krishna. From wherever they are.
Now, it’s, there are both, we could say, actually, the words of liberals and conservatives are used. But they are not really very good words. Because even the most liberal devotee in ISKCON is conservative by normal standards.
Because just to follow four regular principles, chants, japa regularly, it’s ultra-conservative from the conventional standpoint. So, I wouldn’t, we don’t want to use labels, because the labels come with certain baggages. But the point is, that Indian culture has its enormous value.
And there is no need to simply reduce it to Bengali culture, or reduce it to mundane Indian culture. It has tremendous value. It has supported, supported the spiritual wisdom of India.
The spirituality of India has been supported by the Indian social order for a long, long time. Although, say, the caste system is demonized. But still, if you see, the caste system, it has not, if it had been that bad, it would not have continued at all.
The lower caste were also living. I was in South America, and there was this dictator, there was this Spanish who came there, and there was the Aztec civilization. It was there for 2000 years.
In 1529, he came there, and by 1531, the whole Aztec civilization was over. Two years. In two years, at that time they didn’t have nuclear weapons.
In two years, civilization, more than 2000 years, was reduced to shambles. That never happened. Now, one point of the resilience of Indian culture was because it was not centralized.
See, Indian culture traditionally was more like a starfish than a spider. A spider has one body from which webs come out. And if the core body is killed, the spider dies.
But a starfish is such that you cut any limb, that starfish reproduces. Although starfish seems to have a center, actually there is no center. Just cut it, it replicates.
How many times you cut it, it will replicate that many times. So, starfish is more of a, it’s a decentralized being. Of course, there is a soul, and we understand that another soul comes over there when the body is cut.
But Indian culture, it was resilient because it was decentralized. The invaders came and they destroyed, they plundered the cities. But the wealth of India was manifested in the cities, it wasn’t produced in the villages.
The village systems were self-sufficient and prosperous, and through that the wealth came. So, the cities were sacked, the invaders came, plundered and went back. Within a few decades, India was prosperous again.
So, the prosperity was because of the resilience, was because of the decentralization. And with respect to Krishna Bhakti itself, the Krishna Bhakti in Bengal is different from the Krishna Bhakti in Gujarat, is different from the Krishna Bhakti in Maharashtra, is different from Krishna Bhakti in Andhra, is different from the Krishna Bhakti in UP. It’s Krishna Bhakti, everybody is devoted to Krishna.
But there are cultural variations. So, Prabhupada himself did not want decentralization, excessive centralization. At one time, the devotees wanted to centralize everything and they had, they said all temples give their funds to a central authority, and the central authority will based on projects, give the funds to different people, different elements, they’ll decide.
And when they made a committee like, the GBC made a committee like that, and Prabhupada was so upset. Just before he wrote to the GBC, he wrote to all the temple presidents. He told them, I’m suspending the GBC.
Don’t follow the GBC anymore till further intimation. Correspond with me directly. And he told the GBC, the centralization business will destroy, destroy our movement.
He says, the leadership of the movement, you see, everybody, there’s a famous letter of Narayana Prabhupada, everybody has a spirit to serve. And the purpose of the leadership is to inspire that spirit, to encourage people to serve Krishna. That’s all.
So, this whole point that, so, there are western devotees who criticize Indian culture, Indians are culturally conditioned. And there are Indian devotees who criticize western devotees saying that, oh, you are just compromising, you are, you are diluting and you are doing this and that. The traditional culture was decentralized.
Devotees in India and devotees in the west have served Krishna for 20, 30, 40, 50 years now. They have internalized Prabhupada’s message. And they know what is required for getting people closer to Krishna.
So, rather than getting into these cultural wars, that this is right or that is wrong, we do what is required for our Krishna Bhakti and we do what is required for others to come to Krishna Bhakti. It’s best that devotees, devotees folk, don’t get caught in this. We don’t, as I said, we don’t judge whether something is transcendental or not.
What we look at is whether this is favorable for cultivating transcendence in people right now. It’s, I’ll conclude with, I gave a whole Bhagavatam class in Radha Goswami Temple just three days ago on this topic. I’ll conclude with that metaphor.
See that, suppose, there’s a very good airport in Mumbai and my parents stay in Nasik. So, right now, they have made an airport in Nasik. Now, if they want an airport for takeoff.
Now, if suppose, there’s some hill station like Simla, they want to make an airport. Now, the purpose of the airport is to facilitate takeoff. If in Simla, they try to create the same exact airport that is there in Kolkata, the Simla territory itself may not be similar.
The purpose is not to recreate the takeoff point. The purpose is to replicate the takeoff. So, whatever social, cultural structure we have, that is meant to facilitate the takeoff.
Sometimes, if you say, no, you know, we want to create just a flat ground, miles and miles, several miles or whatever, several hundreds and hundreds of acres, like we have in Kolkata and Simla. Well, you’ll have to bring down a whole mountain and you will have to make a flat territory. It will take years and years for that and that may not be possible also.
But you could decide, you know, this is enough area that they have a takeoff point from here. So, let people in Simla decide how best to construct a takeoff point over there. Let people in Kolkata decide how best to create a takeoff point over here.
The point is replicate the takeoff. So, similarly, let people, we need to let our movement be like a starfish, where let people at each place cognize what is required for people to go, for the audience to go towards Krishna and facilitate that. Let them do that.
And then, of course, the central message of Prabhupada that has to be followed. But Prabhupada said, ultimately, we are meant to inspire people to love Krishna, to become devoted to Krishna, chant Hare Krishna. So, if imposing the cultural practices makes people stay away from chanting Hare Krishna, then we may be following the words of Prabhupada, but defeating the purpose of Prabhupada.
So, thank you very much.