By Bhakta Rob
Have been advertising in Clevedon and Bristol over the past couple of days, with a surprisingly warm response. In particular I had to face up to my own prejudices yesterday when a postering trip around Bedminster introduced me to all kinds of open hearted and interested people. I’ve always had a bee in my bonnet about Bedminster, which to be fair, is a bit dilapidated, but I hadn’t bothered to delve beneath the superficial to be able to see that there’s a lot of life and character around here. I have to reverse my opinion of the last couple of years and say that I see no reason that something can’t work here - people just have to know we’re here and that we’re happy to meet them. I think that’s true anywhere on planet Earth.
Minaketana Prabhu had a group of six here yesterday afternoon for his programme, including one guy who’d walked miles from the other side of the city in the rain. Six might not be a front page headline success story to some people, but with the resources and facilities we’ve got, it’s plenty enough to make for a nice get together, and it’s probably the most I’d expect to get at nearly all of the groups we’re trying to organise. Actually the difference between five and ten isn’t very much. The difference between zero and one, on the other hand, is massive. Each of us who care for the sankirtana movement need to re-evaluate our definition of success if we’re going to be motivated to do the groundwork necessary to get to where we want to be. There’s no problem with the public - people like us for who we are. We don’t need to come in disguise. The problem is we expect too much too quickly, of ourselves, and of those who show interest. We need to get off the results trip and just concentrate on making friends with people out there. Slowly but surely, the seeds will bear fruit. Why can’t someone new just come and chant, take prasadam, and still be permitted the philosophical space to make their own minds up? Isn’t that the process? It’s only because we’re so desperate to “produce results” that we end up forcing ourselves down people’s throats, and have all too often chased people away. That wasn’t Prabhupada’s way of doing things. We focus on his later mood and instruction to already long-serving devotees, but we ignore his perfect example of how to introduce Krishna consciousness in the early years of his time in the west. Prabhupada so expertly dealt with others of all kinds of philosophical persuasions, and was always the perfect gentleman, disagreeing with them in discussion, but in such a way as they would not be offended.
It’s not our philosophy people find difficult or unattractive. It’s the threat that we may at some point require them to surrender absolutely to it before they’ve made sufficient enquiries of their own to satisfy themselves that that’s something they want to do of their own free will - free will that is Krishna’s unswerving covenant to them. If we want to attract people to a spiritual path, surely SPACE is the reassurance they need to feel confident to come forward? Are we so unsure of ourselves, so unconvinced of our own process that we’re not willing to give that to them? Let people chant Hare Krishna, dance and take prasadam, whoever they are, whatever they believe. The philosophy can come later, if they want it. And if they don’t, then why can’t we be big enough to still accomodate them, without being threatened by their differing degree of commitment? That doesn’t mean we don’t still stand up for what we believe in. It just means we do so with the humility necessary to actually make our message attractive to others, just as Prabhupada did. Humility doesn’t mean meekness or weakness. It means acknowledging the other person in any dialogue as also a part and parcel of the supreme Lord Krishna. Without making that acknowledgement, do we have any right to speak at all?
We can see the example of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s behaviour in His discussion with Prakasananda Sarasvati at Varanasi. Although Prakasananda Sarasvati was adamantly opposed to personalistic theism, and was therefore the greatest enemy of Sri Krishna, Krishna Himself as Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu spoke with him with such humility and deference as to melt his heart. Prakasananda Sarasvati and all of his followers became disciples of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. The Lord also displayed this same attitude in His dealings with Kesava Kashmiri, the learned pandit. When Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s students began to laugh after He defeated the pandit in debate, he told them to stop, and spoke with great humility to the pandit.... who the next day became His disciple. Sarvabhauma Bhattacarya is another example, and even Vallabha Acarya, who still could not accept the authority of the Lord in spite of being defeated by Him, nevertheless remained in a friendly relationship with Him, a friendly relationship still honoured 500 years later in Sumati Morarji’s sponsorship of Prabhupada’s boat voyage from India to the USA in 1965. Sumati Morarji happened to be in the sampradaya of.... Vallabha Acarya. Good job Lord Caitanya didn’t totally fry that guy out all those years ago, right?
We have to differentiate Prabhupada’s mesmerisingly thunderous mood on the Vyasasana from his personal dealings with individuals, particularly those who were not yet committed devotees. It’s not logical to take Prabhupada’s Vyasasana “persona” as our siksa-example for our way of dealing with fresh-faced members of the public. We may fancy ourselves as fire-and-brimstone chastisers of the fallen, but Mahaprabhu has come to melt the hearts of everyone and drown them in the ocean of love of Godhead, not considering who is fit or who is unfit. Shall we help Him, or shall we stand in His way?
“You should call them rascals,” Prabhupada once advised his disciples about dealings with devout atheists. Unfortunately we take this to mean we should blast everyone off the face of the earth with our supreme dogma. Of course, when someone is a committed opponent of theism, then we should be like lions in defeating them, but don’t practice the sport on innocent bystanders. Pick on someone your own size. Unless we are advanced enough to differentiate between the innocent (those who just have not yet had the opportunity to learn about Krishna) from the envious (those who have firmly committed themselves to disregarding or hating Him) we risk taking too many people down in our unthinkingness. In military parlance, I believe it’s called “collateral damage”.
“I can talk like that, because I am an old man,” Prabhupada once advised a young disciple, who’d observed him in an argument with an official. “But you should not behave in that way.” This is it in a nutshell. We’re NOT Prabhupada. We DON’T speak with the same authority as Prabhupada. How have we made it our regular business to classify as our enemy anyone who simply hasn’t yet been given ample opportunity to get to grips with our philosophy? Why can’t we just give people TIME? Someone may still hold on to impersonalist tendencies in the beginning. Lord knows, I do, and I’ve been a full-time practicioner for five years. Someone may not want to take to japa meditation just now. But if they still join in with the kirtan, why begin persecuting or denigrating them? The process is that if people can just continue to chant, dance, take prasadam, and not be disturbed into leaving the association of devotees, then eventually they will become devotees themselves - maybe this lifetime, maybe next, but so what? If we do not have full faith in this process, and aren’t willing to allow it to take it’s natural course with people, then we are guilty of nama artha-vada, and can’t really deserve to call ourselves representatives of the sankirtan movement of the Lord.
The devotee is supposed to be MORE merciful than the Lord, not less! If Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu can speak nicely, even with professed mayavadi scholars, can’t we, following in his footsteps, manage to demonstrate our conviction in explaining our philosophy, without neglecting to communicate our humility? Not that I’m a shining of example of this point. See above...
