19920317 Nāmahaṭṭa Seminar - Day 4

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The following is a lecture on “Nāmahaṭṭa Seminar - Day 4” given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on March 17, 1992 – in Śrī Māyāpur, India.

We haven’t had enough devotees. There’s only 16 devotees living inside the temple. So we have started up in the last four months. And now we have five regular namahat programs where people are meeting Bhagavad Gītā Bhāgavatam classes weekly. I actually became a devotee because of the namahat program. Monthly meetings, monthly programs some people have opened. There’s one of our life members, he actually installed deities in his house and has an altar in his house that’s larger than some of the American temples. And they have monthly programs. People are starting to chant 16 rounds, taking full shelter of RLA Prabhupāda and wearing neck beads, chanting japa. A lot of the devotees are offering their food. They’re turning vegetarian. And it’s very encouraging to see people from in all walks of life, business people, young people, college students. It’s very encouraging.

And so because the program is just in its inception, we’re hoping that it will bloom and blossom. So I am hoping by the mercy of all the devotees and Śrīla Prabhupāda and Jaya Pataka Maharaj, we can blossom this program in the next few months for book tables. Prasadam distribution. Prasadam distribution is one of our largest ways of cultivating life memberships. One of Jayaputaka Maharaj’s disciples, Rūpa Manohar Prabhu, comes into the restaurant once a day out of the restaurant and fills up five or six containers with prashadam, goes out in his van and distributes hot meals to people. He has no idea sometimes who these people are, but if he sees Gupta’s musical instruments or signs that are Indian stores, he just goes, not knowing who these people are with hot prashadam.

Introduces himself, tells him he’s from the Hare Kṛṣṇa Mandir, goes back a month later, brings another plate of hot prashadam or a BBT calendar, some little gift, invites him to Janmastami festivals. And now, with his thanks, we have over 5,000 Indian people within the life membership program. And he’s tireless in his efforts of preaching. So the prashada distribution, sometimes devotees will come in. Actually, I think more outside people eat the pushadam than people actually come into the restaurant to buy it. So much is distributed. There’s an Indian bazaar downtown that’s three blocks of just Indian stores. And on Saturdays in the summertime, we distribute thousands of packages of Halaba du Kīrtana Harinam in downtown Toronto. We do twice a week regular harinam, and the people love it. It’s a very cosmopolitan city. But yet people are very encouraged by the harinam and prashada distribution.

They often miss the devotees when we don’t come. And the Sunday feast programs, usually we have. 500 People, 2 to 500 usually to the Sunday feast programs. For larger programs, gor for neem, holi, janmastermi, rādhāstami, we get between 500 to 700. So it’s not as large as some areas but it’s been very successful and it’s a very family environment. It’s very loving. It’s one thing that’s been cultivated by the temple president. Bhakti marasvamy is the whole mood is how can we serve our guests? As soon as someone walks into the front door, they’re given prashadam immediately, mahā prashadam, flowers, garlands, burfi, raskulas. And a prashadam is always Left available downstairs 24 hours a day. So people cook. Prashada is always made available. And that’s one thing that’s been so successful for the Indian community. There’s also dramas that occur maybe every three weeks.

There’s a drama for the Sunday feast community and also for gorfurning special holidays. We have over 100 youth children raising from say four years of age to 20. And they split up into three different categories. The last play and drama that we did, there were 30 children that participated in it. It was very successful. They charmed the entire audience with the birth of Lord Kṛṣṇa. And they’re doing one for gorpurnim also the age of kawhi. The youth group is now one of a very strong part in the congregational preaching of Toronto because as being so actually just nicely arranged by Kṛṣṇa. We had all these children running around all over the temple doing Sunday feasts, running around the hall screaming, going downstairs, sitting on the outside steps, not knowing what to do. So we arranged them into age categories.

4 To 10, 11 to 14, 15 to 20. And now this summer one of their goals is to travel to the rathayachos. They raise funds, they go out and do Harnam arts satsang programs during the week. A bunch of the girls will go out with me. And they have done book distribution, they have distributed comics, they preach to their friends. They distribute comics and btg magazines on subways on their way to school. They put them into their school library, their elementary and high school libraries. And it’s just a pastime. They just carry a few extra within their books. And this program, the youth program started one year ago and so far the attendance has doubled just by their own enthusiasm. So that’s been very successful from about 15 now to 30 steadily regular youth coming out. And they’re also chanting.

I have four girls that chant 16 rounds a day. Most of them chant one or two. Their parents are aspiring for initiation, if not already initiated. And they’re very Kṛṣṇa Kamanchas. Surprising in this day and age, especially in the city of Toronto, to have so many solid youth that are very Kṛṣṇa conscious and they’re regularly offering gifts to the deities. So it’s very nice. Another way that the preaching has been done is by a national television show we do in Italy. They were talking about the broadcasting. This isn’t anywhere as magnanimous or successful is the Italian preaching. But we have. We reach over on a national level. I can’t even vaguely remember the number of people that are reached. It’s over in the Toronto area anyhow.

I can speak for it’s over 200,000 people weekly that watch the television show in a city where there’s 3 million people. It’s a cable show and we show Kermis. I don’t know if you have seen Kerma’s cooking videos. We show 20 minutes of Kerma’s cooking videos followed by a little philosophical discourse. It’s been very successful. We always get telephone calls after the television show and the only thing is we ran out of funding. Many people would come after the TV show and visit the temple, buy Kerma’s cookbook, visit the dining room, come on Sunday feasts. But we ran out. It costed $10,000 a month to run the show and because of the funding we had to take it down to one once a week.

Only it’s still successful, people are still watching it, but because it’s pale Yuga, they forget which is the it’s shown on the first Saturday at 1 o’ clock every month. And people often forget which is the first Saturday of the month when the television show is going to be on or they even forget it’s on entirely. So it’s a bit of an obstacle. But still we’re broadcasting and out of 40 television shows we have very steadily, successfully been on the top. When they have done the ratings, we have had in the top five ratings consecutively. So it’s been successful. It’s called on the Way to Kṛṣṇa. They start out with the Govinda prayers. So people are at least getting purified by television in that way. We have a restaurant, a dining room in the city right downtown also it’s very beautiful.

One of the main ways of networking and associating with the entire city, which has over 3 million people in it, is supporting more new age group activities. Vegetarian association has regular dinners and we have over 100 people coming monthly for dinners. There’s one house there, it’s called the Rādhākṛṣṇa House, that’s the name of their yoga program and they hold Indian cultural events. And that’s one way we have been able to do more networking in that with the entire city of Toronto. Another way that we’re associating with the sort of quote unquote new age market, which is more into transcendental meditation, soul searching a whole other ways, except for Kṛṣṇa consciousness, trying to bring them through Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We have gotten RLA Prabhupāda’s books into some of the new age bookstores and that’s starting slowly but surely. Book distribution.

It’s not such a book distribution oriented temple as far as going out on the street. Street book distribution, Sankirtan. There are a few devotees myself and some baptism Brahmacharis that go out. And mostly it’s done book distribution through book tables, bookstores and trying to distribute boxes to the life members as they were doing in Bombay for the Christmas marathon. We also have a three to four times a week regularly we visit high schools and to the world. In Canada there is a world religions class, it’s grade 11 religion and we go in as Hindus and then we present Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And it’s very enlivening because we speak to over 100 students four times a week. So it’s about 400 weekly that we’re preaching to. And they always get challava prashadam and then we always have a kīrtana bhakti.

Maraswamy is very expert at getting everybody standing up and teaching them how to do the swaroni step. When we go to universities, there’s three universities in Toronto and one hour away in Hamilton and there’s over six to 700 people there. And when you’re standing at the bottom of the lecture hall and all you see are all these hands up, swaying back and forth and everyone’s doing the swami step. It’s very ecstatic. They all have some prasadam and once or twice we have people come up and grab the tambourines out of our hands and start dancing in kīrtana very ecstatically. And they just. The one thing they say is they just love it. They absolutely love it. We also follow up regularly by the guestbook and have maintain relationships through writing letters to the young people that come.

If they ask for information or kīrtana tapes, we’re always providing it for them and keeping in touch. So it’s very successful. The mood is very sweet. These are just a few of the things that we do in Toronto, So just more like a full smorgasbord of events as opposed to anything being so majorly dominant in the congregational preaching. So thank you very much for your attention, and hopefully by your mercy and blessings, we can continually progress and cultivate the preaching in Toronto. Thank you very much.

Hold it. You can’t run away that fast. Maybe question, what were the age groups that you said you divided the kids up?

The youngest group is 4 to 10, 11 to 15, and 16 to 20. The middle age group is a little tough to break up by age because sometimes we say, well, how old are you? And they say, well, I am 13, but I want to be with my friends. They’re very mature and they have already been chanting some of them, 16 rounds at the age of 11. And they’re just more advanced. So they come to the older group. The middle age group does dramas, plays continuously. They’re working on dramas in theaters. And in the older group, which we call the tty, Toronto’s Transcendental Youth, we have a philosophical debate weekly, which more people. It’s really enlivening all of the teenagers. We start with the kīrtana.

And we have now, because we have such a large Indian community, all of the kids, I am the only one that’s western. And all of the youth, we have some Bangladesh devotees from Śrī Lanka, and they’re expert merdanga players, harmonium players, singers, chanters. Sometimes we have very ecstatic kīrtana going lasting 10 or 15 minutes in a program that’s only half an hour long. Usually we go over to the prasadam part of the feast and then we have a little. I will bring up one point of. Is humility important in Kṛṣṇa consciousness? Or will people walk all over you if you’re humble? Can rock and roll be used in Kṛṣṇa’s service? Or is it Māyā to use rock and roll for Kṛṣṇa’s service? Is Kṛṣṇa God, or is Lord Shiva the supreme personality of Godhead?

And we break them up into groups, we split the room, and then they have to debate with each other. And sometimes the people, some of the girls are very expert debaters. They’re engaged in the debating club in their high schools. And even though they know that Kṛṣṇa is the supreme personality of Godhead, even by their debating you may believe that Lord Shiva is the supreme personality of Godhead. But just by the way, I guess they have Nimāi Pandit’s mercy to debate and counteract their debate and debate again. And it’s in actually in Gor Purnim they’re doing a debate in front of the whole congregation and they get very fired up. They’re very restless anyhow. So it’s a way to get them all, get their energy focused and they’re learning how to preach to each other.

Just before I left for India they were saying that because we have actually taken the kids and given them some time and attention and just reached out and tried to be their friends, they wrote me letters and letters to the temple and they said, you have changed our life. This whole program, it was like bringing tears to their eyes because they were saying this has changed our life so much. And we don’t know what we do without, you know, without the tty. Even during the Sunday feast program they have pushadim together. They talk to each other during the week. They’re their only positive association. They beg their parents so they can come. I have some, the only difficulty. Some of the parents are afraid the children are going to move into the temple.

So that’s the only obstacle we have which is a pretty positive obstacle because the children are getting so excited into it. It’s the younger children, 4 to 8. They do coloring and watch puppet shows on videos. They’re very sweet. A lot of chanting in the younger group, like I said, does dramas. If you have youth in your temple, running around and not knowing what to do with them because I know in North America there’s really no youth group and just speaking, associating slightly with Bhakti Raghava Maharaj. There’s really, I think for some Indian youth programs, Bhati Vedānta Manor and the Toronto program.

Forgive me if I am missing any, but if you have one person who loves kids and likes to get some sweet nectar once a week, dancing with them during kīrtana and associating with them and reaching out to them and just being their friend will totally enliven your heart and enliven their future in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. It doesn’t even take much work except a little bit of love and you will be amazed at the results. Pardon me, How many teenagers do we have in our group? About 35 right now. They’re all Indian Prabhu’s and like I said, they’re aspiring. Some of them already know who Their spiritual master is a lot of them are very attached to Shivajaya, Pitaka, Maharaj, Gopal Kṛṣṇa Maharaj, some other gurus. They’re worshiping the spiritual master. They’re offering prashada. They’re all vegetarian mostly.

And if they do anything that is a little off the philosophy. One little girl I know, she came to me, she was feeling very guilty because she still wanted to enjoy the material energy. She still wanted to smoke cigarettes and have boyfriends. And she was apologizing, but she said, I just told her, still chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. You will get a higher taste. And they actually, the nice thing is that they have someone at the temple that they can’t tell their parents, I smoke, I want boyfriends. But they can come to someone at the temple and reveal their mind to them. We have the loving exchanges of Aper Prashad and accepting gifts and revealing our minds and listening and confidence. So that has been the most part.

And these people have actually, this one girl, I saw her just before when I was downtown getting things together for India. I ran into her in the mall and she gave me a huge hug. And I had only met her once. She said she actually quit smoking and she started up chanting. So there’s about 30 teenagers and they’re coming regularly. The attendance has doubled. When we first started, it was 15. So I think it’s because more families are coming to the temple because of Rūpa Manohar’s Prabhu’s transcendental prasadam distribution. More families are coming and they’re bringing their children also. And the Indian community is actually seeing that we’re taking time and energy into their children and we’re getting right into the center of their heart.

So they’re coming, they’re bringing their children weekly and they’re giving donations for the youth program so they can travel. One of the goals this year is they want the children to travel to the eastern North American Rathiatras. Boston, Baltimore, Gītānagary, Toronto, Montreal. Last year went to Montreal and they’re pretty enlivened and they will have a summer camp program. So. So we sang out.

Thank you very much. Love you guys. Happening in Toronto, in the field of congregational preaching, I am very fortunate, by the Lord’s mercy, that I could be the first president of the Toronto. But someone who sometimes plants a seed, others have actually grown it. And Bhakti Margaret now has really developed the program wonderfully and many other previous presidents. I just planted a seed. After that, I was pulled out the province it’s very enlightening to see how they’re developing the programs. I don’t know you know about debates. I remember I was in a debate team when I was in educational years and there’s like a whole system of having debates. And it seems an interesting way of engaging the more intelligent youth is get them to debate Kṛṣṇa Conscious topics and become very expert.

So naturally when you’re going to debate on a particular topic, you have to study that topic and prepare yourself. And this way it’s a whole new way of engaging the youth by having organized debates on Kṛṣṇa conscious topics. Maybe even an idea for the centennial of Śrīla Prabhupāda is to debate on Prabhupāda’s glories. Is there anyone else who wanted to speak? We have some programs in the Middle east where the devotees there are working in Middle east. Mainly expatriates from different parts of India and Asia. They regularly gather together in some. Some public place which is approved or some private house and some private program chanting and having a full on class. Some places have several classes in a day or a weekend.

Some places it’s approved by the government, some places it’s being done really discreetly so you can’t really go into all the details. But we’re hoping that in the future all these different programs will be fully recognized by the government. We are not allowed, we don’t preach to the Muslims as such. If somebody comes to the program, that’s alright. Otherwise many of the expatriates, the Hindus and Buddhists and others, but there are a few people, local people do attend the program. Occasionally they just say you have to be very discreet and not appear that we are proselytizing. Otherwise that could bring repercussions. But if they just come voluntarily, nobody can say anything. So we’re hoping that just by having the presence of Kṛṣṇa consciousness in these countries that will purify the atmosphere and eventually bring about revolutionary changes in their consciousness. For the time being.

It’s liberating many different souls. There was in Kṛṣṇa Chandra’s. In Kṛṣṇa Chandra’s report in uk he brought up the point that you need to find a key person. It seems to be one of the key formulas for expanding a Namhat program is if there’s one family or one person or one family that’s really responsible and into it that they can form the nucleus and from there they’re willing to have people come in their house and hold the program. Then from that you can expand it and it can grow and grow you initially need the one person who is willing to sacrifice his living room or a family willing to sacrifice their living room one day a week at least. And if you have that, then you can go on and expand the program and have a full on program. So.

I’d like to request Narmananda dads from Lima, Peru, tell us what type of congregational programs you might have.

First I have to say I am not in charge of this program. So devotee who’s in charge is not here. But Maharaj asked me to come over. I think I am meeting here on the other side. So Lima is a very old temple in South America and the basic program is on book distribution. So due to the book distribution for so many years, so many people know about the movement and people come to a new. Now we have a new preaching center in the downtown area and many people come every day for the lectures and we have like special courses. So they come and they take these courses. In this way they become familiar with Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And then we have a computer and we put all the names into the computer. I cannot say anything new like this. Mātājī, very inspiring.

Just a classical system, you know. We have tables now and we have buses. We don’t buses universities we can’t go very much because full of terrorists, very difficult. It’s the base of the terrorist university. So it’s not good. It’s not so easy to go and preach there because now we have a very nice new Vedic temple. So they might put a bomb there.

Kṛṣṇa for a.

Kṛṣṇa forbid. So in this way we are not going into the area where the terrorists are preaching like that. It’s a country where there is a lot of terrorism and terrorism is advancing more and more to the city. So therefore we have to be very careful how we preach because it’s very dangerous. So that’s why we would like to go to universities, because there are many young, you know, there’s no future in Peru if you are coming because economy is very bad and there’s terrorism. So it’s a very good place to preach and we’re making new devotees and many friends of Kṛṣṇa. But we cannot go to the university, which is a very good thing, which Mātājī said. So basically we have our tables and we go to the buses, which is a classic South American system.

We go on the buses, we sell books and people come to this preaching center and we get them listed into this computer and then we do programs at their houses. Every day we have a program in a different house like this, different places and in this way, by Kṛṣṇa’s mercy, the Lima project is growing more and more. And I don’t know what special thing I can tell. Here we have Kṛṣṇa Bahan. He’s a Peruvian devotee and he was in charge for many years. For many years in Lima. He started the program. Please, you come over here. You saved me. Personally, I am in charge of San Kitnan and book distribution. So. And maybe he can also give. I can translate. I can translate. So this boy now is here in Namahata, Bengal, right? And he can give us more ideas about Namahata.

In Lima, in Peru also, we have different temples in Arequipa, in Cusco. Cusco, as you know, is an international tourist center. And then we have many foreigners come to the Govindas restaurant. Probably many of your baktas, you know, we preach to them. So.

They.

In Cusco, they come and they listen to the program. They come to the programs and then they go back to their countries. Well, he’s also saying that, you know, last year we made a drama here in Prabhupāda’s Samadhi. He represented how we distribute books in the buses. He was also distributing for many years. Books in the buses. Yes, we would do harinam on the parts. And. Well, just it’s by Kṛṣṇa’s mercy, so many people come to the temple. It’s not so difficult to preach in Lima, you know, there’s like Māyā is on our side because there’s nothing going on in the material world. You see, it’s a. It’s a very difficult situation if you are karmic. So in this way, Kṛṣṇa is giving a lot of mercy. People are coming and. People are very interested in Prabhupāda’s books.

And they come to the temple and then we go to their homes and we do many programs. Every day we have a Namahatha program. A program in a temple, a program in one house. People are always asking us to go to their homes. Now also we had some very nice programs in the newspapers. One of the. Also the most important magazine in Lima, like the Lima Times, you know, like this Newsweek magazine. The son of the owner, he’s a devotee and he got married. So now it’s a big media. A lot of propaganda going on in this news, in this magazine about. Somebody wants me a question.

You said the economy was wet, so.

People are turning to wet. Why is that? Why is that? Well, you asked the president.

No, why they come to Kṛṣṇa?

Why they come? Well, because there is no future in this country. There’s A lot of terrorism advancing more and more. And people just know us from so many years. We distribute books, we do harinam like this. In the past also we have been preaching in the universities when it was not so dangerous and just people come. Many, many people come to this preaching center and then we develop them into the Namahatha programs like this. We have so many friends of Kṛṣṇa and so many devotees. So there is no special news. It’s just things are going on very nicely. These are inspiration.

I heard from the president that there was five areas in the city where there was a group and one leader was go Monday to one, Tuesday the next, Wednesday the next, like that. You go on a regular turn. And then on Sundays they would come to the main center, whichever was closest.

Yes, that is true. We have like every day I just said we have a na Mahata. One Na Mahata in one area, then another one like this. And on Sundays it’s big, you know, everyone comes for a Sunday feast. We have a lot of programs like theater and they like it very much. And we have nice kirtans. It’s a simple classical program. But like Kṛṣṇa’s mercy is saying classical.

But many temples don’t have this system that around the temple there will be Brahm huts in the same city. That’s classical for you. But other places, this is very revolutionary. In the same city they have three temples and five n huts.

Yes.

It’s not normal. You just become used to it. Right? Most temples, most cities don’t have that much. You’re from. From. Any other questions? Has a regular Indian architectural temple with Sitaram, Lakshman Hanuman deities, Rādhā Kṛṣṇa deities and Bornatai deities. Was opened by the ambassador of India to Nehru and the local mayor. So that temple itself has become a major place of pilgrimage where so many people come out there in order to see that temple. Having a big temple like that makes it easier to cultivate a congregation. Even if they. They only come occasionally to the big temple. And they regularly go to the smaller preaching centers or the nav huts. When they go to the big temple, it’s such a big experience that really fortifies their faith. Deedee worship is very important for beginning devotees.

So when you have a big temple and a big hall and the regular devotee community is harming devotees.

150.

150 Devotees without children. Apart from children, how many in the group?

60.

So that’s including kids. About 200 devotees in the actual community then apart from that, because how many people come for the 70ft. Thank you very much for Dharma. You see how the book distribution.

Leader.

Doesn’t know what’s going on in the congregation. Actually, in Russia, they Russia and in England, they showed how book distribution expanded by the congregational people. So now, just in conclusion, I have two copies here. If anyone wants to look at another copy. These will be available if you want a copy from your DBC members. Iskcon, DBC Monitor Survey and Congregational Preaching. So we did a survey. We asked very many questions. In fact, maybe I asked too many questions. I was too ambitious. There’s a big strain on the presidents to fill out so many questions. But those who did the austerity gave us some indication of different things. We found that congregational preaching was mainly managed by temple presidents. In 52% of the cases, another 40%, the president had a temple devotee in charge of it.

As far as some kind of other leader who would be overseeing congregational programs, there was only 8%. Here in Māyāpur, a few different places, we have special devotees that are simply dedicated to congregational supervision. We heard also in Poland they have such devotions. But generally it’s the president or one of his assistants. Then we want to know how often does the congregation visit the temples?

And.

They found that the vast majority just occasionally visited the people that they considered their greater congregation. 83% Occasionally visit a temple. 10% Quarterly, 4% monthly, and 3% weekly. There’s only a very small percentage are actually visiting every week. This showed this and another statistic I found very clear evidence of the need for establishing non lati groups to be able to really cover the whole area that a temple is situated in. Under another heading called cultivation. We asked the temples that who do you preach to? What? And one of the questions, one of the alternatives was only the visitors to the temple. 45% Of the temples responded, but only to the preach only the people that visit their temple in terms of actually cultivating them. Another 23% said those in the local area around the temple in the same city.

So that meant that almost half don’t even cultivate all the people in the city. And the other, almost 25% only cultivate the people in their city. So that only the remaining percentages actually cultivate the people outside their immediate city by any kind of program. So these two, the people only occasionally visit the temple in 83% of the cases. In that 50% of the cases, we only preach to people who visit our temple. That means that most of the congregation doesn’t get regularly preached to unless we organize some separate kind of outreach programs. We’re not going to be that effective in purifying the greater percentage of our members. A large percentage of the responses were from Europe. My first, as I mentioned that I got about 65 responses.

So that was the average with 60% Indian, non Indian and 40% Indian of the total percentage of responses that I got. So it’s a pretty much Western group that this is representing. I purposely kept the Māyāpur Namhat out of this percentage because it would like tip the whole balance. Because this is covering about 5,000 congregational members or about 10,000 in Māyāpur. Namahada is 15,000 alone. So then it was like this much would make this unrepresentative for the rest of the world. I ask about methods used for congregational preaching. Newsletters, house kīrtana, children programs, classes, membership. And you can see here. Wish we had an overhead projector. It would be much easier that this big, these little small columns are the other things. And this big tall one is membership downstairs. Every day they’re having a.

They had membership seminar and they said we had to do fundraising and friend raising. So here the membership part, which is the fundraising part. 7,500 Members are cultivated through membership directly. But classes, children’s programs, housekeep, newsletter is very minuscule amounts. So you want to make the members friends. So you have to increase all these other areas also. And then they will really appreciate the community. So there’s a lot of room for improvement there. I ask about cultivation through correspondence. How many times do you write in your members? Generally 50% would get a letter more than quarterly. And about 25% they don’t write. The temples don’t really write to their members regularly at all. So this doesn’t seem to be a regular in the majority of temples. There about 50% of the temples, they are occasionally writing to their members. These are fair show.

I want to know how much for the GBC and devotees to know their spiritual status. Here’s a graph. You might even move closer. You can all see the graph.

There’s not that many.

Matthew this side. I can just show you.

I am.

Right up here to the edge. No problem. Can you see? So here says your involvements in the heading. So this big. This is a spring spiritual standards. On the top here it says initiated but inactive. That’s a nice way of saying kind of looped. We found that 6% of the devotees in the congregation. There was some people who had been devotees and left, but they came back. So they were basically. I thought that was very important. Where Getting devotees, not leaving altogether, but keeping in touch Prabhupāda disciples is a very little amount, only less than 1% anywhere. We’re an endangered species. Brahmanas rushes going down here. Brahmanas hari nam. 16 Rounds but not initiated. So there is quite a significant amount. About 800 people were chanting 16 rounds and following four principles, but were not initiated.

Out of the 6,000 that reported some spiritual practices, eight rounds was a similar amount. Four rounds, of course, was much more. Almost 25% were chanting four rounds. And irregularly chanting was over 37%. So it did show that there was quite a significant amount of people practicing Kṛṣṇa consciousness out there. Of the 5,000 people that this particular. I asked for numbers so that I got different numbers. It’s short. About 3,000 people were regularly chanting rounds. And that was only a fraction of the total temples. So it’s a good potential to have many people chanting outside. I asked about the different activities that they could perform or were performing. And this bottom row here is doing service in the temple. Many 1400 said they were doing temple 1400 members were doing service from temple. 1200 Were donors, regular donors, occasional donors were much more.

Here about almost 2000. Book distribution, about 300. Campus preaching, almost 200. House preaching was about 500. Actually organizing Nauhata groups, another 500. Fundraising about 200. And various other kinds of services was about 600. So you can multiply this.

It.

(Side B of the Cassette)

It. How important was the congregation to a temple? And I got two circles here. One is importance in finance and one is importance in public relations. So this square here says mainstay. That means very important. So that’s about 13% major health financially was here. This is like another 18%. And healthful was the vast majority. Over 65% minimum was about 25. So that 75% of the temples reported that it was the mainstay, major help or helpful. Of course, Naveen Kṛṣṇa and Śrīdhar Maharaj, they want to see that importance in finance. The congregation should be a mainstay for all of the temples. This portion here should become almost 100% or at least the major health. So already you can see there’s a significant appreciation of the congregation. Even at this stage of the beginning of our development.

As far as public relations, there was a little less positive, but still about 65% thought it was either helpful, major help or mainstay. The mainstay and major health seemed almost the same, but the helpful reduced. So this became about minimum health and public relations was about 35%. And then the rest you can figure out. That was interesting how many devotees joined. So from the congregation were preaching. So we got a report that about 400 devotees joined and. Devotees as well as regular volunteer workers were coming regularly and doing some service to the temple. So we got 80 full time devotees from the 20% temples that reported. And regular temple volunteers was 180 devotees who had left and come back to the congregation of the program was almost 40. The total of these two then was 120.

So the whole projection for the society means that thousands of people actually doing voluntary service. Now I asked how many books were distributed to the congregation and it turned out that approximately 6,000 book points, 18,786 pieces of literature were reported. Now if you project that by five times, I don’t know how accurate that will be. But just for little understanding, that would mean 30,000 book points or 93,000 pieces of literature from the congregation. I don’t know how accurate this is because we heard how the One Temple in UK alone distributed something like 40,000 book points in the marathon. So I don’t think, you know, a few Namhatta don’t report what changes. But in general we can see that there’s a very good scope to have congregational members distribute books. Even though this report may not be fully indicative of the real potential.

We heard that Moscow has that Russia has 20 Namhatta. One of the big reasons they won the marathon was because Namhatta distributing so many books. I asked about the interest of zonal secretaries and generally found that there was a very and also precedents. So it seems that generally GBC showed a little more interest in the president for some reason. But in general they’re all pretty much interested. Excellent interest was 33% of the GPCs and 25% of the presidents. Very good interest was 50% of the GPCs and 47% of the president. A fair interest was 27% of the presidents and 15% of the GBCs. Only one person had a negative response. Maybe not a good response. Anyway, I think that presidents are more concerned with the finance.

So when they see that also the congregation will help their temples be more self sufficient maybe they will become more favorable. But in general we got here like 80% of the people responded were very favorable, excellent or very good interest in congregational preaching. So it shows us a very high interest. About Māyāpur. We found out that there’s about 15,000 active members. And that there was. Of the Sankirtan groups that they have, 22% were small groups with less than 10. 28% Were medium groups with 11 till 19 members. 28% Were large girls with all over 21 members. And Mahalarj group which is over 40 to 60 members was 23. There was no reported Brihat group of over 60 members. Most of the groups meet twice a week.

Half of the groups, half of the groups meet weekly, other half meet twice a week and 50 and a small percentage meat every day. I asked what things that devotees felt were needed and. Generally I got a good response that. They wanted to have some Seminar in Bor Pūrṇimā like this. They wanted to have a newsletter and. As far as video and other things there wasn’t a lot of interest. There was a small interest in that. Maybe that one picked up later. I asked what they wanted to promote and generally everybody wanted to promote everything. They seemed pretty positive about the whole program. The shah distribution, everything was over 80%. Hundred percent was house preaching. One hundred percent wanted to have house preaching. In general congregational programs 83, 85% interest. They have to promote those things. Either they’re promoting or they intend to promote.

So I am going to be sending out to those temples that didn’t respond slightly simplified form of the same survey. This survey is once in five years we’re going to do every year we’re going to take a more simplified annual survey so we can send out to all the temples so they can understand what’s the progress and the iskcon. How do they match up with different other temples? We’re trying to organize some newsletter probably jointly with Śrīdhar Maharaj because he’s. He’s explained how to bring people up in his membership pyramid. You need to involve them and he feels that the involvement is the congregational pyramid. Similarly, for a congregational program to bring people up, you need to have a good association and you need to also have some service for them. So one of the primary services can be membership oriented programs.

And of course, so they’re very much related, pretty much connected. So we will probably come out with a joint newsletter in the future. At least we’re considering that. Are there any questions?

It’s about engaging people in temple service. Sometimes when people come to the temple, either at different levels, you have never met them before, you’re just getting to know them and they’re very sincere about Christian consciousness, or they have been pulling regularly and they have a good grasp about what to go. I am just wondering how you gauge. How do you engage them in service? Sometimes I feel like I don’t want to. I’d rather engage them in reading or things that they like to do as opposed to making them feel like we’re trying to take advantage of them and use their work or their help because they don’t have a full understanding of Bhakti Yoga and how we can engage them properly without basing them feel quote unquote, like they have been.

Well make them feel like they have been appreciated and they want to keep coming back to do service.

That’s the point of engaging them, to make them get a taste for devotional service. So that way, you see, obviously cannot over engage someone. Things they don’t want to do and they get bored or they can get fried out. That won’t be very useful. If they come and nobody takes any care of them and they don’t do anything, then they will also get bored and they probably think of other things. So we need a combination. Not everyone can study for unlimited periods of time. They have a certain limit of how much they can read or study. And doing some devotional service with devotees definitely gives a person a taste, a change. So you need both of the things. Some people are not so philosophical and give them more service. Some persons are more intellectual and give them more intellectual engagement. Any other question?

Book distribution are seeds. A person reads a book and he’s convinced of the philosophy, then how do you engage that person? So books are the basis. Books come first. After a person reads the Books and he wants to practice, then you have to engage people in the practice of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Some persons fit into our temple as such, they can come and live in a temple and it’s suitable for them. Vast majority of people, especially those who are householders, who have families and jobs and various occupations or others who are maybe not ready yet to take that type of austerity of living in a regimented temple ashram, how do you engage them? They believe in the philosophy, they are favorable, they accept it. So you need to involve them in different ways so that they can advance.

So this is the fruit of your book distribution. But the books also need to be explained. They need to be practically applied. That’s where the congregational program really is, the cultivation. Say that books are planting the seed. The congregational is growing that, taking care of that plant and helping it to grow until it bears fruit. So if you only have one and not the other, it’s like in the Gulf War or any war. We heard so much philosophy about fighting wars we never heard before because most of us were born after or during the second World War. So we got a lot of opportunity here about war philosophy. And they kept saying, you can’t win a war by just dropping missiles.

So although the allied forces, the Saudis and Americans, they threw literally tons and tons, I don’t know, billions of dollars worth of missiles on Iraq, but ultimately to free Kuwait, they had to go in with the land forces and they had to move in with the tank and they had to actually get into some hand to hand combat when they’re trying to soften up the enemy. I don’t know if it’s a good example, maybe it’s not such a good example. But if you say that books are almost like dropping a missile. You give someone a book, he takes it home and reads it and then it creates a kind of explosion in his consciousness. Oh, there’s a whole different purpose of life and what does it all mean?

But unless there’s a personal contact, unless you actually someone kind of shows how this is practically applied, it gives the person some association. It’s very hard to bring people to the full position of surrendering or practically applying it in their life. Some people have been able to just by reading the books because they’re so clearly explained. But in majority of the cases they require little personal association. So what we are looking at is a combination where every successful temple or preaching program would have a combination of book distributors and then follow up congregational preachers, people who take the preachers who Take the congregation who’s convinced by the books and then further trains them in personally living the philosophy of the books. Because ours is a practical philosophy. We want people to live it. It’s a way of life.

It’s not just an ideology, but it’s a way of life. So to live a way of life, you need some association, you need some cultivation. So many things. So we see it as hand in hand that the congregation will preach and you go meet the people. In one sense that’s like the foot soldiers. In a sense, the books are almost like dropping the bombs. I don’t know if it’s an accurate example, but maybe just for the no material example is very good. Wars are destroying people. We’re trying to destroy people’s sinful life from that point of view. But we want to save their soul. We don’t want to be destroyed or bombs tend to destroy everything. So we’re just trying to maybe medicine or some other examples more appropriate. Sorry if the example is too good.

I am just trying to show that both programs have to be side by side. If you just have books and no congregational program, you’re going to miss. The vast majority of the people that get the books are not going to join in the temple. And if you don’t have a program of helping them further in their spiritual life, then your effective book distribution, your book distribution won’t be as effective as it could be. You understand? That’s a separate seminar. One way is to get more people distributing books. In other ways they should be more efficient. So through the congregation you can get. If many people distribute a few books, that’s the same as a few people distributing many books. One time were having an interesting debate with Śrīla Prabhupāda, Surup Damodar and myself.

Prabhupāda was playing with us and he said, well, Surup Damodar is preaching to the class. These are the professors and PhDs and you’re preaching to the mass. So reaching to the class it’s like, isn’t that better or something. And then Sudhamar make his point. I said, well nowadays the professors, many of them are not so open minded. They’re actually more dogmatic in their own way because they have some rigid theories that they believe in and not really giving an open perspective. Then he would counter with his point. And I said, well, nowadays people are seeing that in spite of so many technological advances, still people are not peaceful or happy. And therefore in some ways the mass of people are looking for alternatives other than what Your elite scientists are presenting. And then he gave another Ebona.

I forget what.

Finally I said, well, it may be that in the future that some of the common people will just come up with a scientist. We don’t believe you anymore because what you’re presenting is not very scientific. And then Prabhupāda smiled and said, well, that’s pretty good. But anyway, the point is that apart from the fun of debating, you can always prove different points. We need everything. We need intellectuals, we need common people. Some common people have more common sense than some intellectuals. But anyway, we had different programs for different people because our movement is meant to help everybody. And obviously if you get the intellectuals, it makes it a lot easier to convince the common people. But if we can get the intellectuals, still we have our program for the mass of devoted people. So the things go on simultaneously one and different.

Yes, we saw that the congregation, they like very much some cultural activities. So sometimes we are not sure whether we should do things like they are.

Not really initiative, Bach, Beethoven, Shakespeare or Parnatyam Kṛṣṇa dance drama.

They are not really initiated, but almost. But they would like to have like they’re entering into a new house or.

Some ceremony that’s pretty religious. Inaugurating a new house with kīrtana.

We have seen that people like it and Namhatta grows also people like to get involved in such a thing.

That’s all. Prabhupāda said to use culture to elevate the people. The more we can elevate people’s consciousness to the spiritual culture. There are certain guidelines, but in general, definitely this is one of the major ways of unifying congregational members, especially those with an Indian background. Naturally, their religious rituals and ceremonies are very much based in the Vedas. So for that directly they look to the temple to provide this type of service for the non Indian origin people. Then the tendency may be first to want to be philosophically convinced. But they also enjoy more cultural programs. Bard Natyam, different kinds of dance, music, drama. These are very well appreciated. We found all over the world all our big Rath Yātrā festivals and cultural programs. People from all over the world very interested in experiencing the more Indian culture presentations.

And Indian culture originally is based on spiritual culture. So it’s ideally suited for presenting Kṛṣṇa Leela, Ram Leela and so on. They may not be so interested in having a pūjā when they open their house because they don’t have that tradition. But after time, yes, they also want that when they’re more convinced about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, they will want to purify everything they do, but they’re interested in the culture, in terms of artistic presentations. Anything else? Thank you very much. Until next year.