With what attitude should we go for inter-faith programs – how do they help our mission?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
We go for interfaith programs with what is the attitude we should go with and how does it serve our mission. Yeah, it is important for us to not live in self-congratulatory isolation. You know, I am so good, everybody is so fallen.
I am patting myself on the back. I am so good, I am so good. So, sometimes we live like that.
Everybody, they are in maya. We are devotees. But actually, Bhaktivinoda Thakur in his famous statement, Chaitanya Shri Shravarti says that if I go to a place of worship where God is being worshipped in a form different from what I understand, he says, I will stand there in a respectful mood.
And I will meditate how compassionate is my Lord that he has assumed this form for attracting these people. Although I can’t understand this particular form, I can’t understand the specifics of the worship, but I appreciate it. And I appreciate my Lord is so compassionate and how these people are sincerely worshipping this manifestation of the Lord.
And by seeing my Lord’s compassion, my devotion to the Lord in the form that I know is increasing. So, we can get inspiration from others’ devotion to increase our devotion. Now, broadly speaking, sometimes we interact with people primarily for conversion, proselytization.
We talk with people, we interact with them to make them into devotees. That is one way of interacting. But actually Prabhupada also had different ways of interacting.
When Prabhupada started the Bhaktivedanta Institute, that was not just for scientists. It was scientists, scholars and basically intellectual leaders of society. And he was very clear, the objective of the Bhaktivedanta Institute is to increase the prestige of his school.
Now, prestige is not in an egoistic sense, but prestige in the sense of respectability. That we are also scientists, that we also have a scientific wing, we also give scientific presentations. So, people don’t think of us as those people who just dance on the streets or those people who wear weird robes.
No, they see us as respectable. So, when we are doing scientific outreach, when we are having conferences with scientists, it is unlikely that scientists will ever begin chanting and become sadhakas. A few may, but even if those scientists appreciate that, you know, they are good people.
These are intelligent people. I don’t agree with them, but they are intelligent people. So, then that will have a significant effect on society.
And same way with interfaith. Now, when we do interfaith, we meet with faith leaders of other communities. And they have significant impact on how other people, how their broader society views us.
You know, we could say that there are four broad modes of interaction. There is insider-insider, like this program. There are devotees speaking to devotees.
There are insider-outsider. Yesterday evening, we had a program for dignitaries, doctors and others. The new people, we introduced them to Krishnamurti.
So, Buddhist institution is also insider-outsider. And sometimes, from outsider-insider. We may learn to, okay, I want to construct a temple.
How do I do that? We may need to learn from them. But, there is also outsider-outsider communication. That means, people in general are going to talk.
Okay, if some Christians want to know, what are these Hare Krishnas? They may go and ask their pastor. And the pastor says, oh, they are agents of the devil. Then, these people will not even consider us at all.
Oh, they are nice people. No, I met them. They also worship a personal god.
They are more atheists. Oh, okay. Then they will be more open.
So, we as a movement have focused primarily on the insider-outsider mode of communication. We try to speak to outsiders to make them into insiders. But, the perception of society at large will not be determined only by how they interact with us.
There is also outsider-outsider communication. So, the thought leaders or the social leaders for the outsiders, if they have a favorable perception of us, then the broader culture will be receptive to us. Will be not hostile to us.
So, this interfaith, we have to understand the definition of success will be different. If you say, okay, I have been going to this program every month for whatever, for so many years, nobody has become a devotee. That is not the definition of success over there.
There, we will see that it is a subtle level where people’s perceptions about us are becoming healthier. And sometimes in emergencies, when we have issues, people may help us. When the brainwashing case was going on, and ISKCON was being accused that you are brainwashing young people, at that time, Leelamrut has described how we won the case.
That’s true, but how exactly did it happen? Especially, it happened once in 1976, but in 1980s also the cases kept coming. So, it was Anant Tamapra who is our communications director in America, and he was telling that, actually, he worked very hard for this, for changing the outsider-outsider perception. And he said that, actually, at that time, the Christians helped us.
That many Christian pastors and Christian teachers, they said, Hare Krishna is their authentic tradition from India. They are not a cult. And it was their testimony that enabled us to, that shifted the balance in our favor.
Because we may say we are so good, we are an ancient tradition. But people will say, you are just advertising yourself. When we want to buy a product, we don’t just see what the company is saying about the product.
If I want to buy an iPhone X, ok, what Apple says is fine, but I also want to see what independent reviewers say about it. Isn’t it? So, people will not just decide who we are based on what we speak. What we speak and how we speak is important.
But what others say about us is also important. So, we need to make sure that the outsider-outsider dialogue or outsider communication is at least favorable. And these kind of interactions are for that purpose.
And when we are in the outsider-outsider communication, then we cannot speak like an insider. Or we cannot be, we are an insider, but there is a proper way to speak over this. Broadly speaking, we can say that we can share our message or we can share Krishna’s message in three ways.
I call this as prescription, prescriptive, normative and descriptive. Prescriptive means you should do this. We cannot go to a Christian and tell them chant Hare Krishna.
We cannot do prescription over there. Normative means this is the truth, this is the norm. Krishna is God and Jesus is the son of God.
Christians are not going to accept that. They may, it may take some time for them. So, normative means this is the truth.
Descriptive means this is what I do and this is why I do this. This is what we believe, this is what we practice and this is why we do it. So, the prescriptive and normative modes of presentation, they come off as very dogmatic and very imposing.
So, at these presentations, at these forums, we need to have a more descriptive mode of presentation. Okay, this is what I do. We chant Hare Krishna because this is, the mantra is considered by our tradition to be a very powerful way, most powerful way of raising our consciousness.
And when there is descriptive mode of presentation, then people don’t feel threatened. Then, okay, I never thought of it this way, this makes sense to me. So, we can actually reshape the public’s perception of our movement by not, by creating, by sharing in a descriptive way with the leaders of society, what we are doing.
If you try to be prescriptive or normative with them, they will just reject us. So, you people are fanatic. So, to come back to the starting point, I said self-congratulatory isolation I talked about, that, you know, when we try to stand out, you know, they are all mundane, we are transcendental.
When we try to stand out, we get left out. Because people say, you people are so narrow-minded, you people are so sectarian. But when we try to belong, then we stand out.
Why? Because if we go to an interfaith meeting and then we share our practice with our philosophy, actually our sadhana is very strong. Now, our sadhana, very few organizations have the kind of serious sadhana that we do. Our siddhanta philosophy is also very deep.
So, if we present at the interfaith meetings, just by being who we are, just by presenting what we do, what we believe, people can see that we are special people. So, by belonging, we will stand out. By trying to stand out, we will be left out.
So, rather than trying to be isolated, thinking that we are pure, we see that everybody is trying to rise towards Krishna, rise towards absolute truth as they perceive it. And we can also join those people, not to accept what they are believing, but to help them and through them others get a better understanding of what we are doing. And thus to create less obstacles for our outreach.