19970608 Question & Answer Session

The following is a question and answer session given by His Holiness Jayapataka Swami Maharaj on Jun 8^th 1997 in Melbourne, Australia.

His Holiness Jayapataka Swami: Now we will ask for a few questions, anyone has any immediate questions? Yes sir

Devotee: I was just wondering, is it alright (inaudible 1:09) chanting on your clicker (inaudible 1:13)

His Holiness Jayapataka Swami: You can chant all 24 hours a day “kirtaniya sada hari.” Chanting, so we chant while we’re cooking, we chant while maybe taking a shower or, all the time. Besides chanting rounds. Usually when we do city driving, we don’t (inaudible 1:37) (devotee laughs). But when people are doing long distance driving, on open highway, where there’s not too much distraction then some spiritual master’s (inaudible 1:49). There’s some devotees who are truck drivers, and they are sitting in their trucks and driving in the open highway. So that’s where they chant.  So usually the very kind of interactive driving, where you really have to give your attention maximum to the road, and cannot concentrate then we want (inaudible 2:12) for it, for the japa, for the bigger kind of driving in the road. If you’re driving a (inaudible 2:23) or something, sitting and moving around. Yes sir

Devotee: if you’ve done bad karma and all that. I’ve lost my two kids really young. Is it often bad karma and suffering from that? One was 14 and one was 19.

His Holiness Jayapataka Swami: we have, we are all under the laws of karma and those karma’s they come from this life and they come from previous life’s. even after 100 births before the karma’s are coming on us. So, such things like, untimely death of children, disease, legal problems. All kinds of disastrous situations, these are due to bad karma (devotee: of mine?). to the extent that it affects you, and it’s your bad karma, and it’s also their untimely death, it’s their bad karma. For you to have a child and then lose the child, obviously that’s the suffering. Nobody wants to lose their children who are near and dear. These kinds of things are happening in the material world all the time. That’s why, most recently I was in Chowpatty in Assam in India and two parents saw me, and both of them had been encouraging their children, simply, they were material persons, education and everything. They didn’t stress about spiritual life. And they both lost their daughters and the age of 19. And they were really very suffering. And then they came to the temple to pray to Krishna to get some kind of guidance and peace. And they met each other and now they, of course the loss is not just easily replaced, their consciousness. But at least now they can understand that their children are not dead, the children have gone onto another life. But somehow due to the karma’s, yes, they lost their children. We can change our karma by devotional activities.  By material activities the karma’s are not able to be changed, what we are doing is that we are accumulating new karma’s. If you do good work you get good karma, If you do bad work you get bad karma. It keeps on accumulating and it’s a constant chain reaction going on. But by even a little devotional activity, one can start to change one’s karma. And one can get a deeper peace of happiness. So, that’s why our programme, we want to see people free from this suffering of karma. We want them to be able to have a deeper spiritual experience. So, like the families that stay together and not have to undergo so many difficulties. But sometimes it may be that, for example Markedly Rishi, he went down to this rishi, Makunda. Markendeya, the son of (inaudible 6:03). Makunda and Markendeya. So Markendeya, he could not have any children, so he prayed to Shiva to give a child. And Shiva said I can’t change your karma, your karma is very bad, you can’t have a child. But he said “no, but we want a child”. Then Shiva said “ok, but the child will live til the age of 9.” So, he said “ok, give us the child.” So, they got a child and then, it was a beautiful boy, but was very religious and, he also worshipped Shiva. And he would worship Krishna, and he was very faithful to the parents. And then when the age of 9 came, the parents, they got very frustrated, because they knew that now he was going to die and he’s such a nice boy. And then he asked his parents, he could see they were very depressed. And said, “why are you so sad?” and they said “because, so this was the thing, you’re only supposed to live for 9 years.” And then he went and he tied himself to the Shiva Linga. “you want to go?” And he’s praying to Shiva. And at that time Yamaraj comes to take him because his life was up , would be over, supposed to be over. But he won’t let go of the Shiva Linga. So finally, Shiva appears and he gets a blessing that “you’re so powerful, so if you bless me then I won’t die now.” and then Shiva and Yamaraj have arguments, and finally Shiva blesses him to live for 7 days of Brahma. (His Holiness Jayapataka and devotees laugh). That’s how Markendeya Rishi is mentioned in the 12^th Canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam. He lives for 7 creations. He also survived even when there was the final dissolution of the universe. So normally nobody can get across this birth and death. Whenever the schedule, you have to go. But by blessing of higher authority, sometimes we can get some special new thing. There’s a story that also, one person, it was his time to die, and he said, “just give me 1 hour”. In 1 hour, he just read Srimad Bhagavatam, so because of reading Bhagavatam, he got two hours. So he ready two hours (devotees laugh). And because of that he got 1 day, so the whole day he read (devotees laugh). Because of that he got a week, and the whole week he read, and from that he got 1 month. So the whole month he read nothing but the Srimad Bhagavatam. Because that built up so much blessings, he got 1 year. In the whole year he read the Srimad Bhagavatam. And after that, he said ok (devotee laughs and says Haribo!). he was freed from that. So most people, they don’t understand these higher laws that are there. Therefore, we’re just tossed around by the material energy, we don’t have any hope. So we’re ready, our heart reaches out to you, it’s very sad that you lost your dear ones like that. And naturally we don’t want to see anyone suffer, we don’t want to see anybody unhappy. But this material world is filled with it. But we do hope that you take advantage of this association and build up now your spiritual wisdom and spiritual strength. You can also, by becoming spiritually awakened, you can help the departed souls of your dear children. Just as someone can help the departed soul of their parent. Because normally in Vedic culture, the son or daughter is called Putra, Putri. Because it’s their duty once the parent dies that they should do Shraddha or do the ceremony to send blessings to the parents. Before, nobody would hear about children dying before the parents. It was, but now it is quite common in Kali Yuga in this present age. But that ceremony can be performed for the departed soul to help them wherever they are. And by practising Krishna Consciousness, you can get freedom from so many karmas that are otherwise not possible to extinguish. Yes?

Devotee: is it true that in the time of Lord Ram, no parent would see their children dying?

HH Jayapataka Swami: Time of Lord Ram, no parent would see their children dying. In the time of Lord Krishna, only one Brahman saw his children die. He came to the king, to the government, and said that “this government is unqualified because my children died.” Therefore, right now can you go the Australian government and say “my children have died and I want you to take action.” They will probably think “what’s wrong with person” – they’re not responsible. But that was how close the government or the rulers were in harmony with nature that things would happen out of sequence. And because they claimed like that Krishna went with Arjuna and got back the dead sons of the Brahman and returned them to him. So nobody died in the presence of Krishna. The one’s who did they were returned back. At the time of Yati Maharaj, he got the whole kingdom to chant “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare” (devotees also joined in the chanting). According to the Padma Purana, we can get, everyone was chanting Hare Krishna, everyone was worshipping Krishna, nobody grew old. Nobody grew old, so nobody got disease and nobody was dying. And so what happened was that children, they grew up, so the parents, the children and the grandchildren, three generations were there and nobody was dying, they were all healthy and looking (devotees laugh) like here’s the grandfather, the grandson and you know, son and grandson, you know, so nobody could hardly tell the difference (devotees laugh) all healthy and looking, you know. So, it is said that at that time, even Lord Indra he got angry that nobody is going to heaven, nobody is going to hell, everybody is, nobody is dying, the whole cycle is getting messed up (inaudible 12:50) getting everybody chanting, nobody is getting old (devotees laugh). So they made a plot against them, the other planets were getting envious that this planet nobody was dying. That shows that its possible by, you could have everybody chant, we can even put the funeral parlours out of business (HH Jayapataka Swami and devotees laugh). That requires a very total chanting (devotees laugh), we don’t expect that literally no.  But even though we know we have to die, at least untimely death can be largely avoided. So it’s very dangerous now with all the traffic and so many disease. Any last question? (aside) (inaudible 13:34) Overtake or do we leave at the same time or? Ant last questions?

(Devotee) I found it very interesting that you eluded to the issue or a number of substantial issues including (inaudible 13:45) problems in Australia. So I got to tell you that in a political research context where we have a lot of long-term environmental problems where we are on the verge of (inaudible 14:13) the planet which is going to be in-havocable unless we really push our leaders to do something about the problem of over consumption of finite mineral sources, natural sources. About the problem of overpopulation worldwide. About the problem of negativity, (inaudible 14:27), a sense of pessimism and hopelessness. Unless we do something about really pushing our leaders to acting on solving those problems then how can we find hope through things like meditation, simply like meditation. Isn’t that like just a distraction? Shouldn’t we be concentrating a lot more on being active, socially active, a lot more morally and ethically conscious?

HH Jayapataka Swami: Of course our Krishna Conscious meditation is active meditation. Our thought of meditation is that everything you do should be done for a higher purpose. Just like we have our, what’s it called, cross wave, where we distribute how many plates of subsidised meals to the youth, how many a day? 308, so 308 times how many days a week? 5, so that’s 250. So that’s 300 times 750. 75,000 plates of subsidised food in a year. And how many years has this been going on? 20 years? So 1.5million people have been given subsidised meals from one centre in Melbourne run by the Hare Krishna’s. and its been done by, these devotees here, Sita Ram Laxsham Das and a number of other devotees here they do the service. And that’s all through meditation. We’re not saying that we’ll meditate and go off into a solidary place. We are saying that what you do you do it for a higher purpose since the activity of the self becomes a type of meditation. We want to train people how to purify their way of acting so that they can feel spiritual energy while all they are doing. It’s like, it’s just like there are different types of martial arts, so some of these arts are using the energy of their opponent. We’re showing how the normal activities we do, if those things are spiritualised you can use that as a form of recharging, getting your own spiritual energy. Giving you a positive source from within and you can be, the whole purpose if you want to help other people. We don’t mind trying to influence the leaders, sometimes you don’t know how much the leaders can do in terms of making you feel positive. We do help, we are trying to make the youth positive through different college and school programmes, through different outreach programmes. So we are limited, we have limited resources, we like to do so many things. So we are expressing that to all of you because we are hoping that everyone here also becomes inspired by the ideas here and we can work together and do a lot more. Someone with a vision like yourself. As you know the overconsumption in this world, unless people change their lifestyle, they’re not going to change their consumption. Unless people have a different source of happiness, their consumption, then how is it going to change? The government is totally helpless, it’s a hypocrisy they can’t tell their citizens to stop consuming, very effectively, as they will lose the votes. Look what happened very recently in the French elections where they tried to do austerity measures, and they just voted the government out. (devotees laugh). Nobody wants to be austere. Whoever says (inaudible 17:54) austerity measure, less work hours per week, more consumption, ok (devotees laugh). But when it comes to, you know, the ecological concern, then everybody has to be, yes we are all worried about it. So what we’re proposing is that we require to go right to the grass root to the consciousness of people so let them feel a happiness to a more spiritualised way of life. Just like someone here has donated wheat flour. So you don’t have to, in the Krishna Conscious movement, so we don’t buy processed food. How much of the consumption do people. People are doing this, so pre-packed and pre-processed foods and things like that, mainly packaging and in a lot of refinement which is totally unnecessary for good health. We show people how you can cook a vegetarian meal without all the contamination of the meat industry where they are feeding the antibiotics and so many potent things to animals  and wasting the production of the Earth because to produce 1 protein of meat takes something like 50 times the amount of grain it takes to 1 kilo of vegetable protein. Protein is protein, we need the protein, there are plenty of sources of iron for the vegetarians like spinach and gourd and molasses and other things. You don’t need to eat meat. So we’re showing it very practically and a more simple way of life where people can have good health and they can have peaceful mind and we want that to be spread from person to person in a very natural way because like  (inaudible 19:42) spiritual marking might say. So in this way let it reach to everyone. We don’t want that people should leave their families and leave their present way of life but to gradually upgrade it and spiritualise it and come to a higher level of happiness. And this will be very very beneficial to the ecological balances that we are facing today and we hope that this will be very positive for the youth in Australia and this can address a lot of the other social issues. And if we get enough people who can see things from this way then we are sure that elector will definitely be able to influence their leaders because that’s what the leaders want, the votes.