What is the need to reword Prabhupada’s message? Aren’t his words enough?

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So, are Prabhupada’s words enough? Is there any need to rephrase or put in our own words to say the absolute truth? At the same time, many people get attracted by say a more universal sounding rewording of the absolute truth, the message.
So, if Prabhupada’s words are certainly enough and Prabhupada’s words themselves include for us the responsibility to put things in our own words and Prabhupada himself, there is a famous quote Satsvarupa Maharaj had a series of books called Every Day Write Something and Prabhupada, that is a series of seven books small quantity published by his disciples the point is Prabhupada said every day write something what is your realisation? What you have realised, you write it in fact if you consider the first canto, Prabhupada defines realisation or rather explains what is realisation and that is a good frame to start if here is the speaker and here is the tradition coming from the past and the start of the tradition is the sacred text, the scripture so now around the person is the obvious so Prabhupada says realisation two aspects to it, what is realisation that is what we are discussing here is to phrase things in a way that is interesting for the audience that is to be interesting for the audience and at the same time no unscrupulous meaning should be should be extracted from it so I am paraphrasing, so it should be faithful to the tradition but it has to be interesting to the audience both are there and how does it become interesting when the person is resourceful so faithful means resourceful means the message is given in a way that is interesting to the audience if either of them is not there so if you consider spiritual message transmission in this case if if it’s faithful but not resourceful if it’s only faithful not resourceful then essentially if you consider pendulum, this will become irrelevant the audience says how does this matter to me Krishna is the supreme personality of God, so what how does it matter to me why should I care for it, on the other hand if you are only resourceful without being faithful then that will become irreverent it will become non transcendent not just disrespectful but there will not be any spiritual substance in it, a nice word developed from our part, it can all sound very good but it is as they say near poverty so what we need is a balance of both we want to be faithful and we want to be resourceful so in certain contexts the resourcefulness that is required may be more in other contexts the resourcefulness that is required may be lesser if you consider some examples say if you consider the example of certain words let’s consider some words that Prabhupada used quite often, one was kite Prabhupada says the kite of a gentleman is spreading rapidly all over now if anybody asks us have you joined a kite? he is spreading a kite can we use that word? no, because the meanings of words change kite actually has a very neutral connotation, earlier the meaning was neutral, it is just a group of people that was the past meaning but the present meaning is decidedly negative where culture is associated with people who indoctrinate and brainwash and people who mislead and manipulate and exploit and destroy so around the late 1960s early 1970s, several so-called cult leaders and they used to cluster communities and one person he had all his followers that the world is going to end and all those who have faith in me will be dead and what is the act of faith? everyone has to commit mass suicide so 700 people on his farm they all committed mass suicide that was extreme but there were several cases like that so now the word cult has got a connotation of being untouchable so we don’t use that word because it will trigger a particular thought in people’s mind which is not what we are about so words change so now why do we need to phrase in our own words so rephrasing why is it needed for multiple reasons first is words meanings change so if you use the same word it can have a very different connotation there are a few other words also for example propaganda it is traditionally has a very negative connotation propaganda means that means little but making a big noise but Ramapala used that now it doesn’t have that much of a negative connotation but even the word preaching has a little bit of a negative connotation we still use it in inside circles so the meanings change second is normally the same word may have different meanings there is also the fact that now actually other religions Hare Krishna so for example there is that problematic quote about rape in the past rape didn’t have this strong negative connotation it can mean abduction when Ralph Griffith was one of the first translators of Ramayana he translated Ramayana in poetic form and a few years ago after 75 years of publication of the author so in his chapter where Sita was abducted called it the rape of Sita now when it came out how did Sita got touched they were violated by God he used the word rape in a different sense it is just abduction rape could also mean even now there is a book about how the Japanese destroyed a city in China so there the physical rape may also have happened but it is primarily the tentative structure so the meanings of the word is changing and that is fine and if we continue using the words that were used in the past it can have strong negative connotations not only the negative connotations but also learn this language in 1920s and even by 1960 the English of the 1920s has become somewhat obsolete and now even in 2020 so the Catholic Church has a whole committee of people who re-translate the Bible every 25 years that means they don’t literally re-translate, they re-word it because meanings of words change so that is the first thing then rephrasing there is a tension between authenticity and authority so authority may come by re-quoting the words of scripture or the words of the Acharya as it is and there are certain circles where authority is valid but this is authority is valid especially where the social culture is hierarchical but where the culture is much more egalitarian what people look for is authenticity do you really believe the stuff that you are saying do you really believe it are you just a puppet for some mandalore who is speaking to you or are you a real person speaking these things so if somebody is using obscene vocabulary somebody is simply repeating words which they have heard somewhere, then they don’t seem very authentic in fact this is one of the main differences in our movement also between outreach to Indians and outreach to people in the west because for Indians if you quote a lot of verses, you are very smart you have learnt the message but for western people, if you quote too many verses what’s up, they don’t understand they don’t really have any reference to Sanskrit and on top of it, can’t you think for yourself are you all the time just quoting other people so the same thing that brings credibility on one side, it actually takes credibility I mean you can certainly quote terms like yoga man, karma man, shakti man but in today’s world authenticity is much more important and one way authenticity comes, it’s not the only way it is when we are speaking in our own words sometimes a child reads our speech sometimes nowadays it is common for people in political agendas to use children as their pawns so somebody is pro-environment somebody is anti-environment not environment, pro-environmentalism somebody is anti-environmentalist both sides will get some child to speak now when you hear a child speak they are not a child in words they are used to it so it’s just a show, so authenticity and then one more thing is creativity God has not given us our creative ability just so that it can be throttled in the name of fidelity now if we are going to say Prabhupada’s words are enough then where do we stop that? we say that why only verbal creativity is to be checked why not musical creativity we can say from henceforth no one takes up Prabhupada’s words that is enough we can say why not karmic creativity all the food items in Prabhupada’s food only those food items, nothing else why not artistic creativity that the deity should be dressed and decorated only in the ways that Prabhupada did or only in the ways that Prabhupada did so where do we stop this? the purpose of our ability is ultimately to go further and creativity means that every individual is looking to use their creativity now that is creativity in expression not in destination the creativity is in how we express things it is not in the destination when we start creativity we say that our destination is to merge in the Brahma Jyoti you are not really following what Sri Prabhupada is saying so creativity is there there is abundant room for creativity and finally the last point would be that everybody is meant to be an individual instrument but an individual instrument that means that no matter how great the Kriya Jyotis are being it is that they are not going to share Krishna Bhakti in this generation every generation requires its own representatives its own person Srikanth Chakraborty, Jeeva Swamy all Kriya Jyotis and they are arranged by Krishna to operate in that generation their works are good for us but individual instruments cannot be in each generation so the previous Acharyas cannot do outreach in our generation of course there are the sins required but it is we who have to be individual so that is why it is important that we recognize not just the room for individual articulation but the necessity for individual articulation and the last point I would like to make is see there is a timelessness if this is the timeline the message of scripture in one sense is timeless timeless but at the same time this timeless message was given at a particular time say the scriptures were maybe 3000 B.C. now all the message is timeless it doesn’t come down to us come down to us to move on it comes down to us so if you look at the 12th part 1960s now while there are certain universal concerns that people have but in each generation people also have specific concerns and unless we address there are timely concerns at each generation so unless those timely concerns are addressed people will question this problem so for example maybe 100 years ago somebody said we will have some kind of stress management what stress? why do you need to manage it? what are those mainstream vocabularies? today stress is a big thing so whenever outreach happens these are the ultimate needs that means everybody needs but then there are the immediate or the we can call it the felt needs what people feel as their needs and to the extent these two are distinct people will find the message irrelevant so we need so we could say realization realization means if we find the intersection between the ultimate need and the immediate need and that is what makes the message irrelevant so for example Prabhupada phrased the effect of Krishna Consciousness as stay high forever the idea was that people wanted to go high as an extraordinary experience and Prabhupada said yes we can have the experience and we can have it forever and one day he asked Prabhupada we want the bliss of our own life and Prabhupada replied like a ocean of LSD there is no more scriptural reference for this not only that from traditional scriptural this might even be considered blasphemous the pure bliss of Vaikuntha comparing the harmless nature of LSD how can you do that so how can you compare that so the point is Prabhupada was explaining that happiness in terms of what was intelligible for his audience that was Prabhupada’s expertise so without that expertise for a person who thinks happiness means LSD it has to be explained in those terms so that’s the example of needing to phrase and Prabhupada himself phrasing things in contemporary terms