When love for Krishna is so far away for most of us, should we even talk about it in our classes?

Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, Krishna Prem is a very very long way off. Should we talk about it to people? Well, there is descriptive spirituality and there is prescriptive spirituality.
Prescriptive, this is how it should be done. Descriptive is this is how it is being done. So, many devotees study scripture and present spirituality in a prescriptive way.
This is what scripture has said, this is what you should do and this is what you will get. But there is significant importance to descriptive spirituality also. That means, describing how devotees are practicing right now and what challenges they are facing and how we are going to deal with those challenges.
So, if we rather than focusing on love for Krishna, I find it much more relatable myself as well as for others to focus on absorption in Krishna. Now, love and absorption can come through love. Of course, naturally that’s the highest but absorption can also come through purpose.
Absorption can also come through inspiration. Absorption can also come through passion. Passion used in devotion.
So, and absorption also gives us significant amount of satisfaction. At least when we are absorbed we are purified. So, and we can experience absorption in various things in our life.
Even in our profession we can experience absorption. In our hobbies we can experience absorption. But if we practice bhakti we will ourselves notice a difference in the quality of absorption in bhakti as compared to other things.
The absorption coming through bhakti is much deeper and it is much more elevating. So, we understand and appreciate this then we can focus on that and move forward using that. It’s a little indiscreet for us to try to make a general statement of what other should speak on, what other should not speak on.
But for us it’s important to be real. To be real means that how are we experiencing bhakti? How are those around us experiencing bhakti? So, at a very practical or pragmatic level pragmatic is practical but based on wisdom. Wisdom that is not just theoretical but wisdom that is livable.
So, based on pragmatic understanding what I try to convey is that is the quality of my life better because of my practicing bhakti? I think anybody who has seriously practiced bhakti for some time they will say yes. You cannot deny that. Our life has become more purposeful more meaningful.
We are able to do some good for ourselves some good for others not just in a transcendental sense but even a practical sense if people’s lust, anger, greed and envy go down then they can be happier even in this world. So, we certainly don’t want to reduce Krishna consciousness to solely the benefits you get in this world but there is no need to deny that also. So, basically we present things according to the needs of people.
if we can at least that is the primary conviction that drives me on and I can see that I can connect with others when I talk about in that term that by practicing Krishna consciousness I am adding value to my life and I am going to add value to people’s lives and certainly its coming to the level of love of God and attaining Krishna it may take long time but I can raise my consciousness and I can help others raise their consciousness by my practice of bhakti and that is at least for me enough inspiration to continue the practice of bhakti so we don’t have to deny what has been talked in scripture but we don’t have to highlight it too much as something that will come upon immediately even sense gratification also I have almost you could say stopped using that word in my classes sensual pleasure I might use and I don’t talk too much about that because I feel it requires significant amount of time to be able to go beyond it so just continue practicing bhakti even if that is still there move on so focusing on the point that you can add value to your life and add value to others life that is a very honest as well as appealing way of presenting Krishna consciousness