19990603 Addressing Devotees

Lecture Code: 19990603

Addressing Devotees Lecture By

His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja

vande 'ham sri-guroh sri-yuta-pada-kamalam sri-gurun vaisnavams ca

  sri-rupam sagrajatam saha-gana-raghunathanvitam tam sa-jivam

sadvaitam savadhutam parijana-sahitam krsna-caitanya-devam

sri-radha-krsna-padan saha-gana-lalita-sri-visakhanvitams ca

His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami: But there was a practical… that was going to be their dharma. That was their social duty. Not that the… the brāhmins had other duties. The brāhmins, their duty was to be religious, To be knowing the God, to believe in God. To be equal with everyone. To have other… to be tolerant. To be humble, they had other. vaiśyas was to be expert in business. To also serve the vaiśyas…the brāhmins and…vaiṣṇavas. To be charitable, to give in charity. To be detached. Each have their role in society. So they were trained. Especially the physical part. That was especially the Kshatriyas. Others also…keep fit there. 

But now like in the West you know, this is just one example. In the sports thing, it’s become like…so much. Even our devotees in London, they’re going in harināma. And these hooligans from the soccer teams, the football…they call football there the soccer we call in America. The football teams have their hooligans. Their fans, the hooligans  where they going they’re completely drunk…intoxicated. They go out in gangs of fifty and then they go and beat up people. There’s one group, they go and carve the name of the team in the chest of the person with a knife and they give a card, this is… you’ve been visited by the fans of this club. Now you’re an honorary fan. Welcome to the club (laughing). Carved in their chest, all that bleeding. So, there was a championship in London and the devotees were going on harināma. And all of a sudden, these football hooligans came and they attack the devotees. So the devotees had no way to defend themselves. You know they could bring the kartalas (laughing). It was a life and death…completely you know mad people. So somehow one devotee started chanting Narasiṁha-deva so loud that they backed off and then they left. And after that for two weeks the devotees didn’t go on harināma until the tournament was over. It was too hellish. But there was practical things…you may need to defend the devotees from these kind of crazy people. But this is what…sports… even now they’re talking about banning, in many countries banning football. Because it’s so… I don’t know if in America this thing goes on but like in other countries, soccer; people become so mad that they kill the other team, they kill the other fans. They fight with each other, they throw bottles. Its just…it has nothing to do with the reality. It's completely nuts. So all this type of organised sport, its just another trick of kali. To get people all excited over something that has no reality. What difference does it make whether the Broncos defeat the forty…this one or that one? (laughing). It doesn’t have any bearing on anything. But the kali, maya created this whole illusion that this is something really important. It gets people screaming their heads off and killing other people you know because their team lost. 

In Calcutta, our Ratha-yātrā is sometimes held off. They said there’s a big football tournament going on. You have to wait until four o'clock to start the Ratha, because when the football gets let out sometime if the local team loses, they become so angry that they take razor blades and go and slash people. So it’s very dangerous. If we don’t…we get hundreds of thousands of people on Ratha-yātrā and then all the crazy people coming out from the football. It’s too much, we can’t handle it. So you wait until the football thing clears and then you start your Ratha. So it’s completely unsafe. 

So that’s like, you can see the tree by its fruit. This is the ultimate product. People just spend their money. They get drunk. They finally get violent. So something we have to explain before people get attached to all this. Because this process, its marketed in such a way. You see people there, there’s a lot of energy there. You’ve got fifty thousand people. Ronco! Here you’ve got Bulldog Bulldog! (laughing). They can just forget about their problems and the income tax. They can go into this illusionary world where they’re just like…forget about other things. They talk about escapism. Their whole life is escaping. Escaping in the tavern, escaping in the sports arena, escaping…they’re escaping all of it. The devotees are the only ones that they’re always facing reality. We don’t want to be out of touch with reality. We want to be in touch with the eternal reality always. We don’t want to escape into this type of illusionary thing which is going to distract us from the real purpose of life. The devotees are the only ones who aren’t escaping from…in the sense…in the sense of getting out of touch with reality. They’re the ones who are staying in touch with reality. Because of that ultimately of course they escape from the illusionary world. Which is based on forgetting reality. 

I think it's very difficult for parents in America in that sense because there’s so much illusion and it's marketed so efficiently by the…by the…how do you inform all the children, you know beforehand, watch out for this, watch out. I don’t see any other alternative. And you have to give them some alternatives. Kṛṣṇa conscious alternatives.

In Māyāpur, at least to some extent the Gurukul students they say they appreciate…but they have so many programmes that they have. They have their yajnas, they have martial arts, they have…they play harmonium, they play mridangam, they have…they have.. even some time for the kirtan. At one point they let them play chess. I don’t know how...they said that Krsna used to play chess or something. Whether that’s bona fide. I guess at least, they said that for the uninitiated ones, at least it engages them in something better than. I don't know whether, how good or not that is. But maybe, lesser of evils.  At different activities. At least because there are so many different activities that the children they seem to appreciate. They say a little more…they can appreciate how different things are valuable. 

So being a parent is a very big responsibility. They are the first Gurus. Parents, Kings, Gurus, teachers, all in a very responsible position. To give the understanding of Kṛṣṇa Consciousness to their wards. 

Hare Kṛṣṇa. 

Transcribed By: Jemisha Patel

Transcribed On: July 2020

Proof Reading By: Amrita Padma Devi Dasi

On 04/10/2020

Proof Read again By: Ramakanai Mathuresh Dasa

on 04/12/2020