20160608 Addressing Devotees

20160608 Addressing Bhakti Vriksha Leaders in Houston

JPS: the servant leaders of the bhakti Vriksha group, the assistant leaders and the future leaders and the enthusiastic devotees. As we know that Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda were preaching in Nabadwip and they went around and spread the harinam. They met various challenges like the Chand Kazi prohibited from them from chating but he did a huge civil disobedience and Lord Caitanya came with like 200,000 devotees who were carrying torches and crying out in the night and then they had a discussion between the chand kazi and Lord Caitanya.

So Chand Kazi said, “Nilambar Chakraborty called me cacha and you are coming to your uncle’s house in an angry mood.”

The Lord Caitanya said, “Well, you are keeping your nephew here on the street. You are not bringing him up to your house.”

“Oh no, come in, come in.”

So on the Verandah they had a meeting and they discussed their different things, the kurans and the vedas, and after some time the chand kazi revealed that he had a dream, that a half man, half lion came to him and told him, “If you ever stop my son kirtan again I will kill you and he scratched me again on the chest and when I woke up, look at it, it is still there.”

Lord Caitanya touched his hand, “don’t worry! And by touching him he melted in love of Krishna and he declared that I and none of my descendants would stop your kirtan again. Rather we authorize you to chant this holy names and he said just to prove it I give you my official insignia which you can carry with you in your sankirtan, authorized, none can stop.”

So like that Lord Caitanya met different challenges, too many to repeat all. Then he took sanyas at the age of 24 and went to Jagannath Puri and then he told Lord Nityananda that we started the work in Bengal but it’s not finished. So you should go back and finish it, and you don’t have to come here every year. But Lord Nityananda said that I need some manpower. Take whoever you need and flood Bengal with the harinam. So Lord Nityananda went back to Bengal with around 50 or more devotees and they were very ecstatic devotees and they were so absorbed in Krishna consciousness,  that the normal one month path took them around three months because they would act out the pastimes of Lord Krishna and they would wonder off the road and they go about 10 kilometers off, or 20 and they wouldn’t know where they were. So they said, “where is the road to Bengal?”

“Back there”

And they went across the road. They  didn’t see that they were very ecstatic at that time and they went 20 kilometers the other way, said, “where are we? Where is the road to Bengal?”

“It’s there. You have passed it.”

So like this they were going back and forth, back and forth and when they got to Panihati they stayed there for about three months and had continuous day and night kirtan so that 10,000 people were participating in the kirtan. 

People would say, “What’s happening over there?”

And the people leaving would say, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna”, and then would go, and this kirtan was so beautiful that they ended up staying three days, 72 hours and then they remembered, “Oh! I have a wife, a family, I got to go home, I haven’t eaten in three days.”

So like that they established the Namhatta. We went to Surabhi kunj in Nabadwip and then all over the Bengal he established the Namhatta. So in the centennial of Srila Prabhuapada, he appeared in 1896. In 1996 we did the centennial and at that time we had a lotus flower of goals. So one of our goals was to expand our congregation. At that time I was appointed as the, I don’t remember what the name was, the pedal coordinator for the expansion of the congregation. 

So we had heard that in Caitanya’ books, at first when the Chand Kazi threatened him but hadn’t banned the kirtan and hadn’t broken the kartans, hadn’t broken the drums, and Lord Caitanya said, just on your verandah, on your doorsteps, five or ten of you gather together and chant Hare Krishna. 

In this way small groups were formed. So we came up then with the bhakti vriksha module that for the urban devotees it’s better to have smaller groups because in their houses, in their flats they couldn’t have much more than 15 to 20 people. Also using the BTE teaching methods it was found be  more effective to have group discussions, skits, dramas, songs and various other techniques rather than one person giving a class and everyone listening. That’s alright you have a very senior experienced person giving class but that may not be the case with all the congregation. So even if there is a senior person giving class people may have difficulty to give their concentration. They may start to think, “I have work tomorrow, when is prasadam? I wonder if they will have my favourite preparation” and the mind may go off but if they go around and they discuss it’s more likely that the people would put their mind there and they will think more pro-actively. 

So at that time some of the GBC’s said, “Well, give me a whole structure of how it works and then we will accept.” So I had a challenge to give a structure. So although I had already done the namhatta, but anyway we did some research and came up with a structure for the bhaktivriksha, and we found that generally it could be done in six parts –The ice breaker, chanting- which would be kirtan or japa or both and some reading of some part of Gita or sastrsas and then a discussion in three parts – discovery, understanding and realization and then you could end with a little kirtan again but that’s not considered a separate part and then we have a strategy which could a discussion in  the group of how to expand the group or could be about some upcoming festivals there in the temple and have our group will participate whether we will distribute prasadam or greet the people or whatever and then some arati or something and a little light prasadam. Make it a Prasad that is easy enough that for all the members when their turn falls it’s easy for them to participate, and if it is a special day like someone’s birthday or something then they can do extra. 

So in this way we found that people like the Bhakti Vriksha and that many were participating much more. The namhatta’s are also very nice but many of the householder who was hosting the namhatta had to work hard and the person come and give a lecture, people listen, there was a question and answer and then some Prasad. So how much the others participated if there is a question may be their participation is more but in a small group the discussion is much more interactive. We found that in some groups the group servant leader mainly talked and he didn’t facilitate others to talk. So then the other people got bored and they left, and he said, “Why the people are leaving my Bhakti Vriksha, why, why?”, but when we saw what they were doing it was very obvious. They were hugging the show so to speak, they were talking too much, it didn’t involve everybody. You see the Bhakti Vrikshas are different systems, you want to think, you want to see how everybody, every man, every woman, every youth, how they can participate and go around and see, “Oh! Mataji what do have to see about this?”, You may think, “Oh! I am still thinking, ok don’t put them too much on the spot”, you think like that. 

You want to give everybody a chance to speak and you know some parts of India they are very attached to eating fish and that’s one of the big obstacles to get them to advance further because they don’t want to give up their diet, and you can’t really, you don’t want to put too much pressure, at the same time you want to understand at least what they are doing. So this one lady she had attended many classes. She had heard upteen times how one should follow the four regulative principles, how one should be a vegetarian but kind of swam over her head. She thought, “Well, in my culture we eat fish, so this is not for me, he is talking to someone else but in the bhakti vriksha set up the servant leader shows the picture that if you eat this you become that in your next life. It has a picture of becoming a bear if you sleep too much, hibernation, becoming a cat or a tiger if you eat fish. So in the discussion and the realization, they ask you what do you think, and at that time she had to face it, it was right on what do I think? Well if I am eating fish I have to become a tiger or a cat next birth, from today I stop, I renounce fish. (Applause). So bhakti vriksha has this aspect that we want to hear the people’s realizations. 

Even if they say that I realize now that it would be better to be a vegetarian but it is difficult with my family, with my parents,  this, that whatever, at least in the group you knows where everybody stands. Like in the year there is the kartik month which one is recommended to practice a little extra. That month one is a vegetarian offering lamps to the deities, all these can get one hundred times or more the benefit. So may be a person cannot change all of a sudden, but if you can do some ekadashis, convince them to do kartik month, or a similar month is vaisak or… it’s like in Karik month it’s offering lamps and mag month it is bathing in the river like Ganga and Vaisak it is chanting. So if you get people to chant, if they are not chanting any rounds get them to chant two or four, if they are chanting eight rounds get them to chant twelve or sixteen, everything they do you want to reward, you want to praise, very nice, very nice. Oh they are doing eight rounds that’s five million a year. 

Out of the eight billion people in the world how many chant japa, very small amount. So people are ashamed because, “I only chant eight rounds”, and they think, “Oh you are in maya, you are only chanting eight rounds.” We are not like fire …25.50-25.53… it’s like the Christians say, “You go to hell, you will burn.”, we are not like that. 

Even one of the devotees of Lord Caitanya, he went to another kazi, not the same Chand Kazi, a different Kazi. So then he said, “You are very handsome, you are rich, powerful, you are religious”, so he started to praise all the qualities. 

“Can I just tell you one thing?”, he said, “alright! Ok”, “Sir, just forget all these, chant Hare Krishna.” (applause), and then he said, “Well, I will chant Hare Krishna tomorrow”, and then devotees started dancing, “You already started. Hare Krishna came out of your mouth, don’t stop now.”, so that was the way they were preaching  and in the third verse of the sikshastakam it tells us how we should be humble more than a blade of a grass. 

Prabhupada explained that sometimes you step on a blade of a grass, it bends over, later on it comes back. So more tolerant than a tree. People go under the tree in the rain, neem tree is cut off the branch and then used it brush their teeths. The trees are tolerant, they take everyone’s abuse, so Lord Caitanya said, “you offer all respect to others without expecting any respect for yourself, in this way you can always chant the Hare Krishna mahamantra.”

So like that we want to appreciate people. Every little bit they do which is  favourable for their spiritual life, you encourage them and in this way, when I tell people, “Oh! you are chanting two rounds, that’s 1.25 million in a year names of Krishna, what’s the result?, “Oh I will chant more.”” ,What if I tell, “You chant two, you are in maya.”, they may stop chanting all together. So even two rounds, Lord Caitanya said if you chant once, the Hare Krishna, then they are devotee. 

When wife say, “My husband is not very Krishna conscious”, I said, “Well, how many rounds is he chanting?”, 

“only four.” (applause)

We know that there are some husbands that are completely against or some wives that are completely against, but if they chant two or four rounds, the wife should think how to encourage the husband. If he doing do how he should be doing four. Don’t think that, “OH! he doesn’t”, everyone comes by their own realization, their own inspiration. So some people may be having previous births of Krishna conscious, so they come faster, and some may be coming a little slower but we should encourage them and in this way they come, gradually they will come. I met one wife,  I told like this. 

Her husband was favourable, he said, “You do, I am busy with my work, this and that.”, but now after six years he chants sixteen rounds and recently he took shelter. So we want any ISKCON guru, anyone connected with Prabhupada, they should take shelter, that would be auspicious for us, we want to see that they get back to Krishna.

I have been realizing how our grihasthas are great potential force to spread the Krishna consciousness. Of course some are directly working in the temple but everybody can do something in the Bhakti Vriksha and sometimes Bhakti Vriksha also helps the temple. So in fact sometimes temple say we can’t imagine what we would do without Bhakti Vriksha. In our festivals, our programs, the members take some active service in the temple to make that festival a success. 

We know that the grihasthas have their children, their work, their various responsibilities because even our six goswamis, Gopala Bhatta goswami said that the grishastha ashram is the responsible ashram. It’s responsible for their wives, wives for their husbands so many things. In one bhaktivriksha group in Delhi they introduced, they said this wife she is a regular attendee and sometimes his husband comes he is scientist, he is as scientist. Everyone said scientist. So I asked him, “What do you research?”, He said, “I research pain.”

“pain! That’s interesting and what have you realized?”

“I realized that everybody is in pain (applause), either physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain, psychological pain”, and all the grihastha men raised their hands.

I said, “Yes, there you find financial pain, how to maintain the family, how to raise money”, so then I said, “Then who pays for your research?”

He said, “A pharmaceutical company- it’s a multi- billion dollar business, people want pain killers.”

So anyway gradually he also started chanting. So the pharmaceutical companies may not like us because we are taking away their business. By chanting Hare Krishna you don’t feel pain. (applause)

Talking about pain and pain killers, there are actually real problems in the material world, birth, death, old age and disease and in the song by Bhakti Vinod Thakur of Jiv Jago, he in the two final verses Lord Caitanya said, “enechi ausudi maya nasibaro lagi, harinam maha mantra loa tumi magi.”, and Bhakti Vinod Thakur replies, “Bhakti Vinod Prabhu carane pariya, sei hari nama mantra loilo magiya.”

Thinking about Bhakti Vinod Thakur, I realize he was saying, “I fell at the lotus feet, I begged for the Hari nam, I got it, I got it, I got it.” (Haribol)

So we want people to get the holy name and feel that kind of elation, “That I got it, I got, that I got the supreme medicine.”

Say you have the medicine for curing HIV, Hepathitis V, all the incurable diseases in one pill. Our pharmaceutical when they got the cure for the Hepathitis C, they charged $ 45,0000 for one month, and it takes 3 months to cure it ….40.23… so who can afford, it’s like a major thing but this pill you are giving out for free. If you could sell it, you could sell it for millions, I mean there is no price tag too high you could put on it because it cures death, it cures old age, it cures all diseases, it cures rebirth, you are giving it out freely, that is this maha aushadi that Lord Caitanya is giving us. So maybe I as a sanyasi, people seeing me get frightened, Prabhupada said, “Hard sell, soft sell.”, so I am the hard sell, but you as the grihasthas you do the soft sell, you can invite people to your house, get them Prasad, look around, “OH they got a nice house like me and they have wife, children, I think I can do this.”, in this way they become devotees and when they see me, “He wants me to renounce everything, I can’t do that”,  so it is hard sell, soft sell. So anyway that gives you a little introduction to Bhakti Vriksha.

So some questions you had.

Question: When we invite new members when we pick up subjects which are a little bit confidential, like if you call Siva demigod they get immediately effected and they stop coming, how to manage, as soon as you say other gods as demigods they get more effected and wounded and they say, “I don’t want to come.”, that is one thing, second thing same way, when we call Advaitis and other things not correct, they feel they are affected because of strong attachment and they don’t want to come. 

JPS: Any way there are two questions. The devas, in the Indian groups are called as devas because that’s the name in sankrit. Demigods, the people they don’t understand that, that word is not used much. So they think that demigods is a derogatory word. Actually demigods means that they are sub Gods, So I just usually say devas and I don’t find anybody takes offence to devas and if I am speaking to a Christian or western group if we say devas I say they are like angels in the Bible because I got book once that described all the varieties, thousands of varieties of angels and it said that some of the angels are incharge of the universal management, incharge of fire, water, wind like vayudev, agnidev, varundev and some are directly associates with God in the spiritual world. And they have the baby angels which is what they called Cherubs, we called them the four kumaras. 

So I tried to bring out the similarities and not get hung up on some terminology. So in English the devas is not an English word but all the Indians know deva. Demigod is the translation of devas in English, just as the Puranas say Vaisnava nam yatha sambhu. So sambhu is the greatest of all the devotees. So if they are worshipping in their house, they would just say put on the side the devas or on the lower step, offer your first worship to Visnu or Narayana and then offer prasadam puja to the devas and in fact I discussed with some of the pujaris in Kolkata who worshipped Durga, they have big puja, Durga Puja but they have a saligram sila, they worship Narayna first, and then they offer the  Prasad to Durga but people don’t know that, but that’s the system given in the Vedas. So it’s just how you present it. If you present in the right way we don’t say that you don’t worship, worship them as devotees because that’s what they are and that’s what they like. 

Mayavadis is a whole another thing. Some people are completely short circuited and they think that impersonalism is the only one. I was preaching to one man, he was in Guwahati, he helped us a lot but he would go in his closet, meditate, he had this impersonal idea. So one day I showed him here in the 14th chapter, in the last verse it says, “brahmao pratsitaham- that I am the basis of the impersonal Brahmin.” 

“Oh no, Oh no, how is that? My whole life I have been understanding that impersonal brahman is the basis of everything, I can’t talk to you anymore, I got to think about it.”, Next day I saw him, he was very happy, I said, “Ki khabor, what’s your news?” 

“Oh, I talked to the head of the sankskrit of the Guwahati university, he said that this means that he is the basis of the four headed brahma which particularly in the purport meant that it not meant this. The whole proceeding verses you are talking about impersonal brahma.”

So I asked Prabhupada, “What should I do?” 

He said that, “If you find that someone is a through and through a mayavadi then no use to preach to them, I mean they are not going to accept it. Let them attend the classes, let them seva, by doing seva they would gradually get purified and don’t let them speak to others because they will spread the mayavada.”

After two or three years that gentleman, he said, “now I am beginning to understand what you are saying about the personality of  Godeahead.” So it depends how much they are contaminated by the Mayavada but if you give seva they like to do seva and gradually they get purified. He came up with a book, “The Jyotir Way”, I told him, “You keep that yourself.” (laughter)

Question : Sometimes in the Bhakti Vriksha program if we have 10 enthusiastic devotees coming to the bhakti vriksha program for learning there is always one person in the group who will ask some really absurd question and take away the discussion to like… they are not interested in learning, they just want to ask questions, critize and go home. They effect the learning of other people. So should we silently delete their names from our group and stop inviting them? What’s your suggestion? (laughter)

JPS: It seems others have experienced similar things by the number of laughs.  You know people in general they have a certain ego. So if you call them out publicly they may get really affected. So generally if we find someone like that you talk to them in private. You can present it in variety of ways, one way, “Oh you are very philosophical. Some of the questions you have may not be understood by the others. Come and ask me personally.”,  you know that’s like a nice way of saying it or you could be more direct, or you actually preach to the person and show them how the question should not be challenging, they should be there to learn something, but more you could make it positive, like yousay “if you would ask questions that would help to dissipate doubts of others and that would be very appreciative but if you have very complex questions that other people don’t even think about then you may raise in their minds more doubts. So you better you talk to me, I will arrange for you to talk to a even more senior devotee than me because you are great, great, great.”, or if they are really disturbing you could call them aside and say, “I think that you belong in another group and some group say that they have more senior devotees and not that you screw the group up (laughter) but you consult, you say, “I have this guy that has weird questions, can you take him your group?(laughter). A senior devotee that can handle.” (question)

If you get more than one it is too much. (laughter) If you have a whole group like that you competing, “who can ask the most crazy questions? That’s why there needs to be some meetings between the four groups in one sector or between three groups in three sectors in one circle and for some maybe it’s your first time as a group leader and some maybe it’s your first time as a group leader, and some may have been a group leader already three times. So that’s not unreasonable that you help them out and others but they take the trouble and figure out how to deal with them. At least he is coming. So that means that he wants to learn but maybe he is covered up. 

Question: When we host a maharaj program in our house, there are different devotees in different classes. So how can we categorize these participants and devotees of the bhakti vriksha to be called into this maharaj program because in the past when we had invitations sent out to everybody and few who have been coming to the bhaktivrikshas have stopped coming and we had to talk and ensure that they can attend our programs, to address their programs.  Can is there any category who we can invite to the maharaj program or some kind of temple-wise program if we host in one the bhakti-vriksh homes.

JPS: It’s hard to generalize on maharajas. I know some maharajas who are bit heavy, they may say, “you call yourself disciples, you watch TV, and he blasts everybody.”, I mean in Mayapur hardly anybody has TV. 

So assuming that the maharaj are not that happy, if you think that, you can warn the maharajas, you can talk to them and see whether you want to just speak to the senior devotees or we have new people and they are sensitive to various things, and see how they are if they are willing to handle them with kids gloves carefully, and whether you see that there is some swami that is repeatedly heavy, then you may not invite the very new people there. I don’t think that any swamis if you tell them that there will be mixed crowd then they will adjust their preaching. 

You know the most hard thing for me is when they ask me to give a Sunda Feast Lecture, and I don’t know who I am talking to I mean, that people walked in the first time and there are people there who have been there for 20 years, so where do you aim. So like here everybody is a Bhakti Vriksha leader or a potential leader or a very active devotee, so I shot a little high. (laughter), but if you had told me that, “here all are Bhakti Vriksha members and new people then I have to think what to say than. So what’s very endearing to me is that how you are caring about devotees under your care. You are thinking what will be good for their spiritual advancement, that’s a kind of care that a bhaktivriksha servant leader should have to see how I can raise the devotees up and if you see that I have new people and they are not ready yet to hear heavy preaching. Some maharajas are known to preach very happy and some are more tactful. 

So I am offering a couple of options. One is you talk to the maharaj and inform him what the audience would be, and if you see that he will preach the way he preaches no matter what you say then you may decide not to invite the brand new people, as the acting President.

Question: How to adjust the class between old bhakti viksha devotees and the new ones, since we are not so many in numbers to split the group. How to address both the classes in the same group, how to do that?

JPS: This brings up an important point that in Bhakti Vriksha we want to see all the devotees grow. So in the standard bhakti vriksha system when a group comes to be about 15 or 20 devotees, then we branch out and divide and multiply and now some of the… some people are even creating more groups at a time depending how many are ready to take responsibility for a group. So in that way also if in a group say that not are selected as group leaders but they are senior devotees. So we have the program, each one teach one, that you assign the senior devotees, each one to oversee a new devotee or two. So it’s not too much but they give some personal attention and if you always be the same group the problem will be that some devotees will be very old, some will be very young in terms with their spiritual growth.

So that’s why we like to multiply and make multiple groups and all the group leaders meet and all the sector leaders meet together and they are addressed by some senior members and they can go deep into the thing I think but in an actual group where we have mainly new people and some older devotees. If you have only new people then also it is very difficult because their minds are here and there and they ask all kinds of questions that are off the point because they really the things that are being said or if  we have some older devotees or some new devotees, so the older devotees can simultaneously keep the discussion more focused. So what we do also is say the senior devotees of Bhakti Vriksha, they also attend say Bhakti Sastri and Bhakti Vaibhav classes where they get into the philosophy and Bhakti Vriksha is more like an opportunity for them to do outreach that they help new people, help to bring new people and as they grow themselves they can become group leaders. 

So we have like in Russia, every year they increase 200-300 groups. I was sick, so I couldn’t go one year, they had 350, so I said, “you have 550?”, “No, No, No, we have 750.” (applause)

And so in that way we know that it is not comfortable for me to meet the same people but we are not doing it for comfort. We are doing this to expand the devotees and we want to give people a chance to perfect themselves. So that’s why we want to multiply, we want to give people a chance to grow up, so then they become group leaders, sector leaders, greater circle leaders that means mahachakra  and some people have over 108 groups. So there is also this aspect of having people grow where they take more and more responsibility but it is still one or two days a week. So they have time for their family, their children and so on. 

One time a week in some Bhakti Vriksha meeting, and if there are senior managers then one additional day a week when they meet with the other managers but that depends on you.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Advaita Chandra spends more time, and it’s upto you and your husband and wife. How much time you can spend and will spend but two days a week is enough, two nights. 

So I thank you very much.

One thing, one lady came up to me in Middle East. She said, “Gurudev, I am very sorry, I am very sorry. I didn’t make many devotees this year. I didn’t meet my goal.”

I said, “How many did you make?”

She said, “only 75?”

“What was your goal?”

“108, so please forgive me gurudev”

So I wish every devotee is like that, “I am very sorry that I only made 76 devotees.”

If we can make one devotee we are happy. Bhakti siddhantha Thakur said that if one devotee can go back to Krishna, his whole preaching mission is a success.

Hari Bol.