Lecture on Brahmachari Sanga
Бхакти Вигьяна Госвами · Bangalore · 2021
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Om ajñāna-timirāndhasya jñānāñjana-ślākayā | cakṣunmīlitaṁ yena tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ śrī-caitanya-mano-'bhīṣṭaṁ sthāpitaṁ yena bhū-tale | svayaṁ rūpaḥ kadā mahyaṁ dadāti sva-padāntikam Veda.
Sri Chaita Mano, Bish tam, stapi tam je na bute, Swahrupa, Damaham,
vande 'haṁ śrī-guroḥ śrī-yuta-pada-kamalaṁ śrī-gurūn vaiṣṇavāṁś ca | śrī-rūpaṁ sāgrajātaṁ saha-gaṇa-raghunāthānvitaṁ taṁ sájīvam Sha Sriupam sagrachatam Saganabunatam bitam sadam,
sādvaitaṁ sāvadhūtaṁ parijana-sahitaṁ kṛṣṇa-caitanya-devaṁ śrī-rādhā-kṛṣṇa-pādān saha-gaṇa-lalitā-śrī-viśākhānvitāṁś ca Krishna Pada Saganamalita
he kṛṣṇa karuṇā-sindho dīna-bandho jagat-pate gopeśa gopikākānta rādhākānta namo 'stu te tapta-kāñcana-gaurāṅgi rādhe vṛndāvaneśvari vṛṣabhānu-sute devi praṇamāmi hari-priye radade Vrishware Vishabanus
vāñchā-kalpatarubhyaḥ ca kṛpā-sindhubhya eva ca patitānāṁ pāvanebhyo vaiṣṇavebhyo namo namaḥ Vatitana Pavane Byo, Vaisnavi Byona Munama.
śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya prabhu-nityānanda śrī-advaita gadādhara śrīvāsādi-gaura-bhakta-vṛnda Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare,
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Krishna Hare, hare ma, ramaare,
nama oṁ viṣṇa-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-taye śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāmin iti nāmine namaste sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe I'm very happy to be here with you serving to Bangalore. That was actually my long cherished desire to come to Bangalore, but I was too busy all the time.
Krishna mercifully arranged pandemic, give me the opportunity to come here.
And I'm very grateful to all the local devotees, Narasimha Chaitanya Prabhu, Svarūpa-hari Prabhu, Vamana and other devotees for facilitating my stay here.
Simplicity and benefits of brahmacharya life
Okay, so I will try to speak a little bit on these topics. Very important topics for every one of us. First topic about Brahmacharya life. It's a very beautiful way of living, not complicated at all.
Of course sometimes we make it complicated because we like to live
a complicated life. But the beauty of this way of life is that it's it's simple. It can become very simple, should be actually very simple. And this simplicity gives a lot of time for very important
spiritual activities like studying Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam's books, chanting rounds. Recently I spoke with some disciple of mine just a couple of days back.
And he complained to me and he told me, my wife, or my wife basically dumped me and were divorced now. I said, it's good now, you can study Prabhupāda's books. Before you get married, separate time take advantage, so
you can be married to Prabhupāda's books, you can marry otherwise. You can choose between the two. So but there are some of course some difficulties.
Everywhere there are some difficulties which are balancing the advantages. The advantages are definitely they're they're obvious.
You know, it's a simple life, it can be very you know you don't have to be too much concerned about you know your living facilities. Actually in Sanskrit women call stri and stri means expand.
So you know, as a brahmacārī you don't have to expand. But you have to expand, you have to expand preaching. You don't have to expand your facilities for living, you don't have to expand your expenses and your income.
You don't have to expand your family, but still you have to expand, you have to expand preaching, you have to invite other people to Krishna consciousness.
Fulfilling emotional needs as a brahmachari
But uh you know the difficulty is of course is also there. The gṛhastha life, family life is a very beautiful arrangement for people to fulfill the emotional needs. Because every one of us essentially is emotional being.
Śrīla Prabhupāda puts it in a beautiful way. He said we are all pleasure-seeking beings, we are all pleasure-seeking living entities. This seeking of pleasure is the innate nature of any soul.
And we are enjoying or we are experiencing pleasures through different emotions which we have. So essentially we are emotional beings. Sometimes human beings are called rational.
And there is some element of rationality is there, but essentially we are not rational, we are emotional.
We may pretend to be rational, but deep down emotions are much stronger, stronger force which drives our action and our you know even way of thinking.
When we experiencing some emotion, it alters our way of thinking, it alters our perception of life, perception of different people. And then we rationalize. Emotions are primary element in our being, in our consciousness.
And then rationalization is coming afterwards: different thoughts, different ideas, different conceptions, but basically we are emotional. And therefore, we are here in this movement. It is a very emotional movement.
Caitanya Mahāprabhu engaged and invokes spiritual emotions. So, gṛhastha life is for this. Gṛhastha life gives you some emotional fulfillment or emotional closeness, feelings of emotional closeness.
And if in brahmacārī life we don't have this somehow or other, then brahmacārī life after some time will become a burden. Brahmacārīs have to it's a prime beauty of brahmacarya is to take care of their emotional needs.
Because there's nobody nearby who will take care of it. So you have to take care of it yourself. In a gṛhastha life, it's a natural arrangement.
The wife is there, the children is there, relatives are there, and you know and uh there is plenty of positive emotions and there is plenty of negative emotions as well. So there is no shortage of emotions in family life.
But uh brahmacārīs they may become, you know, little dry.
Brahmacārī life may become emotionally drained in brahmacarya's heart or whatever. Due to this, you know, due to the lack of natural fulfillment of these emotional needs.
Cultivating deep spiritual friendships
Unless we make sure that this element or this feature is there in our life.
And for that, you need a close friendship with other brahmacārī because friendship is a pressure, friendship is emotion, friendship is exchange of emotions. But friendship has to be really deep.
Because friendship can be shallow. Again in Sanskrit there are two words or more words, sakha, mitra, sukrit So Mitra is basically this shallow kind of relationship, just friendly relationship. But it's very shallow.
There is no depth in this sort of relationship. And such is this word in Sanskrit which denotes a very deep and fulfilling emotional relationship between two friends, between two male devotees.
And Sukhrit means basically that you have to open your heart completely. You have to really convey your difficulties in spiritual life.
And you know, this is what Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī explains in The Nectar of Instruction. of instruction. He says, guhyam ākhyāti pṛcchati, you're confidential with other person.
And you know this close friends, they cannot be plenty. It can only be just a few, but they have to be there in our life.
If there is not this close friendship, then different problems which are there, emotional unfulfillment and everything else, will force us to think about changing this way of life or changing our status, our condition, and we may be forced to do it.
So this is one thing which is extremely important to and any deep relationship basically means relationship is a job. Relationship with women is a full-time job.
Relationship uh you know any relationship need need investment. We need to invest time, we need to invest our energy, we need to invest certain you know certain processes into this.
Without paying this price, investing into the relationship, by uh you know consciously uh meeting with us with other person, you know, opening the heart, trying to listen to this other person, trying to understand, trying to really come close to him.
Relationship will not become the way they should be. They will remain on a very shallow platform and they will not bring any fulfillment to all heart. So this is one thing which can be said about this.
And of course, if we do something together, if we experience some difficulties together, this is a very binding process. If we do some daring things together, that will help us to come closer to other people.
From the very beginning, when I, you know, I once asked Śrīla Rādhānātha Mahārāja about this: why some people remain brahmacārī, why some people cannot remain brahmacārī. And he said that this is the main point, the point of emotional fulfillment. And he said also very interesting thing in this regard. He said that in brahmacārī life besides the close friendship which should be there.
I remember once Gour Gopal Das came to Russia and he was staying in our temple. And he was preaching, you know, he was very active, doing this and that.
And at one point I came to his room, he was sitting there, and I saw him crying. And I asked him why you're crying.
He said, today is Govinda's birthday, another brahmacārī from Chowpatty temple. And I remember him and I am crying about him.
Preaching with genuine heart connection
So this is the, you know, the sort of close relationship which is there. He is far away from Chowpatty, but he remembers about this brahmacārī Govinda Prabhu and he is crying by remembering about him. This is the ideal actually.
But besides that, Radhanath Swami said very interesting thing in this regard, he said that another way to fulfill the emotional needs for brahmacārī is to preach.
But preach on a very personal level as well. You know, sometimes we preach in a kind of impersonal way or sometimes we just fulfill something which we already fulfilled one hundred times. Repeat something which we already repeated many many times before, and we call it preaching.
It's not preaching, it's a parrot repetition. But if we again try to touch people's hearts. Because actually, what is preaching? Preaching is heart-to-heart contact.
It's not just, you know, sometimes Śrīla Prabhupāda called preaching propaganda. He said we're doing our propaganda of our Krishna consciousness, Krishna consciousness or Krishna consciousness movement.
Yeah and you can say it's propaganda in one sense, but propaganda has this connotation that it's it's little kind of little brainwashing sort of thing. But preaching is something different.
Preaching is when you're consciously praying and trying to really say something which would touch the heart of a person, which would really go deep into person's heart or person's And Krishna will give you.
Krishna will give you proper words, proper expressions, everything. It's just a question of praying.
We have in Russia one very successful, perhaps the most successful preacher, outreach person who has literally millions of followers and his social media, there are a few million people listening to his lectures.
And by far the majority of devotees nowadays become devotees because they started listening to his lectures. He's very, you know, very famous.
He's he's preaching some sort of you know indirect things, you know, healthy way of life, Ayurveda, this, that, so many other things. And you know from strictly philosophical point of view, especially from
an orthodox Gaudiya Vaishnava what he says may not be you know the pure Krishna consciousness. Definitely not pure Krishna consciousness. There is a lot of different mixtures there.
But nevertheless, people become devotees, not only just a couple of people, you know, hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people become devotees just by listening to his classes.
And I once asked him, What is your secret? How do you manage to you know to do this? And he said, for many years I was praying to Śrīla Prabhupāda to become an instrument in his hands.
For many, many years I was just praying to him to become an instrument of his compassion. You know, I I don't know what I'm saying, whatever I'm saying. It's the power of of his prayers, basically, to prove it.
And because of this prayers, he became empowered. Because there's no doubt about it.
He definitely, he's a disciple of Lokanath Maharaj, his name is Odari Dhamma. He became empowered by Śrīla Prabhupāda because of his sincere desire. You know, many people criticized him for his unorthodox way of doing it.
Ultimately, in the eyes of Krishna, this is not important.
What is important is this sincerity of the heart which is there and sincerity and eagerness, sincerity of desire, sincerity of desire, his eagerness to bring, to give people some Krishna consciousness, to give people some understanding of what you know what life is all about.
And literally what happens when people start listening to him, they change their life completely. They just the he has the power to change people's hearts. Why?
Because of this prayer, and because of this prayer from Mut, He was able to touch people's heart. You know, He's not just transmitting an information.
You know, preaching can become this transmission of information, intellectual exchange. You're saying something very smart and intelligent, and somebody is listening and saying, hey, he's smart, but I'm smarter. So this is this is what people would react.
But if people see somebody who is really sincere and who really wants to give them something, then they will become very grateful and something will happen, something significant will happen.
And therefore, Raghunath Maharaja said this thing that actually preaching is a very emotionally fulfilling activity.
It's not just a question of studying something, it's a question of touching people's heart, and when you touch people's heart, you feel their emotions, and you also kind of, you know, you get this exchange.
Because as soon as you touch people's hearts and people's hearts also become known to you, open to you. We have another preacher who is also very successful, very very successful outreach person.
And he told another story, very interesting story in this regard. Recently I heard it. He said that once he was invited to a home program by a group of very very rich people.
One rich person who liked his way of speaking and preaching, he invited his friends.
And his friends with family came, and it was a little long back when you know all of a sudden Russian people they became divided, there were some very rich people and some very poor people.
So that was really rich people, big mansion, you know, and a few families are there. And he said that I started speaking and I didn't know how to relate to these people.
Because they are, you know, it's it's a different species of life. When people are very rich, they have different way of thinking, different way of seeing, everything.
And he said I was not so familiar with this, you know, with this sort of people. And he said, I started praying inside. Krishna, please give me the words.
Like Prabhupada, when he came to America, he was also praying in this, "Mārkiṇī Bhāgavata-dharma". Make my words sweet Make my words sweet to them. May I speak something which they will understand?
These people are so so much covered by this ignorance and passion, How the words of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam will reach their hearts? That was Prabhupada's prayer. And that's actually the prayer of any preacher.
You know, the complete surrender to the Supreme Lord and the complete dependence on the Supreme Lord in this matter of making me successful and this humble attempt to serve you and the humble attempt to preach your message.
So this devotee he told me, he said that I started saying something and I was, you know, I was saying something which I spoke before in many occasions, some kind of introductory speech to Krishna consciousness.
And all of a sudden uh I saw that uh all the ladies in this audience started crying. He somehow rather touched their hearts. They started crying, he he said something which touched them.
And he said at this moment of time, you know, a lot of the influx of compassion overflooded my heart. And I spoke and it was very successful program at the end. Again, you know, this is what I'm making the point.
I'm making the point that preaching is should be a very emotionally fulfilling activity.
And this is the saving grace for brahmacārīs because as I said, brahmacārī life can become really dry and uh that's the main reason why people uh change their minds.
Even if in the beginning they wanted to you know dedicate their life to spiritual practice and preaching of Krishna consciousness.
So that's another essential element if we preach but preach in a very deep way, so that our emotions are invoked and the emotions of people whom we preach also invoked. Then it will become very important.
Like in this case, you know, he saw that his words have the emotional impact and he also became very emotional. So that's how this contact works, how this contact of heart to heart works during the preaching.
Of course, some people are naturally more emotional, some people naturally less emotional. It's not that you should imitate and now you should, you know, become a Bollywood preaching star evoking emotions all the time.
But you know I'm making the point that we we should be we should not be mechanical in our preaching because this is a danger.
When you preach all the time that there is a great danger that you become a little mechanical in this regard. I know it myself. You know, preacher sometimes he doesn't read the books.
He only reads the books which he can speak later. He doesn't listen to the lecture, he only listens to points which he can repeat himself. I'm sure you all know this.
You have all your preachers' notebooks with the good points which you can repeat. But that's actually a mechanical approach to preaching.
You know that you can use these techniques so to speak, you can use these points which may be impressive, but ultimately what is impressive? Impressive when you speak from the heart.
Impressive when you speak something which is deeply, which you lived yourself and which you can really, you know, can really give your life for what you're saying. You really, your whole life is there in what you're saying.
So that's another little point to to develop this uh initial idea is that uh the brahmacārī life has to be emotionally fulfilling, otherwise it's difficult. That's one difficulty in brahmacārī life.
Another difficulty in brahmacārī life is of course we live in the temples and sometimes there is a shortage of people. Sometimes there is not enough manpower there, and
you know brahmacārī basically means that he has to do everything and more. He has to he has to do whatever is necessary.
And it may become, at one point it may become, and you know, because we are active and young, sometimes passionate people, we also like to do more.
I was speaking with Murali's Young the other day and I was quoting to him one devotee, oh I don't remember who told me this? But it was, he put it very nicely.
He said that, you know, you can be, you know, when we do so many things and when we are successful in doing so many things we you know internally we think I'm a superhuman.
I have so much energy so much intelligence and this this this this this and look at me, I'm you know I'm I can do everything at once.
So somebody told me that you can be superhuman and twenty you can be superhuman and oh yeah I remember who it was one doctor one devoted doctor he said you can be superhuman up to your forty-five but by fifty you have to become human again.
Managing stress and avoiding emotional burnout
So you know sometimes we we kind of we used to you know play with this high energies and we like it. You know, I'm doing this.
And you know, if if it's a good brahmacārī life, there is a lot of energy involved. There's a lot of enthusiasm, you're doing this, you're doing that, so many other things, but we have to be careful because another danger is this emotional burnout when we become burned.
And the cause, the reason for this emotional burnout, for this experience is the chronic stress. And we sometimes don't notice how the chronic stress creeps in.
You know, we live this busy life, we have so many engagements, we have to do this, we have to do that, you know, we have the full schedule, we're preaching, we're doing
this, and we like it because it's nice to be completely busy there is no you know there is no time for Maya there is no room for Maya in your mind it's it's good but we
have to be very careful and we have to notice how our mind reacts because sometimes because of this busyness, total busyness and stress and too many obligations which we ourselves took it.
Because Brahmacharya means we are more or less self-engaging, right? And being self-engaged and being energetic, we sometimes overburden ourselves with too many engagements.
And initially we don't notice it, but what happens because of too much pressures from different sides, too much obligations, which we took upon our shoulders.
We become stressed, and the result of stress is that we lose this natural happiness in life. The duty of a brahmacharya is to be happy.
If you feel that there is somehow or other this natural happiness vanished from your life, is not there anymore, the natural you know, enthusiasm, natural feeling of happiness, then you're doing something wrong.
And it basically means that there is some ego involved. You know, the main root cause of any stress, any stress is this ego. I'm the doer. Ahankaravi mudhatma. I'm doing this. Look at me. I'm superhuman. I can do this.
I can do that.
So this when this element of ego is imperceptibly contaminating our consciousness and contaminating whatever we are doing in one sense, then the stress sooner or later will come to our life, and this burden of stress, you know the stress uh builds up internally.
And uh when it builds up, builds up, builds up uh after certain time, you're doing the same thing, but you don't feel the same happiness as before. This is the subjective experience which you may notice sometimes.
I'm doing the same thing. Before it was so nice and it was so fulfilling and it was so ecstatic. And now I'm doing the same thing and it doesn't bring any happiness to me.
And at that moment of time, this is the moment of time when the last enters our mind. Because when the mind is not happy, then you know the last is there and he says, I'm here. Look at me. I am ready to make you happy.
So this is a simple way to become happy. You're not happy, just admit. So this is the idea which will come. Some sort of lust will creep in due to the chronic stress.
So one of the duties of brahmacārī, if he wants to lead the fulfilling life of a brahmacārī, especially lifelong brahmacārī, then he has to basically take rest, which we usually don't have.
I mean, I don't mean six hours at night. I mean some some you know some holidays or some sort of time when you are not too busy with all your duties.
When you are just relaxed, maybe with your friends somewhere in the you know in the nature or somewhere, I don't know how to arrange this, but it it has to be every now and then it has to be there.
Otherwise, this channel should be there. Otherwise, you know, for some time, especially when you're young, you may not notice it, it may not be so prominent, but after some time uh it will definitely give you some you
you know? So brahmacārīs, believe me or not, they have to have holidays. You know, maybe I will be kicked out from this temple for saying this.
They have to have some vacations, some some little, you know time when they are uh when they're not so stressed. It's important.
Of course, you know, service, we always serve, we always, you know, chant the holy name, we always do something, but we have to also have some time for ourselves to recharge our emotional batteries.
So that's the negative side. But it's the same topic. First topic, you know, how to become positively emotionally fulfilled.
Questions on spiritual emotions and association
Another side of it is that how to avoid the emotional burnout when negative emotions build up inside and ultimately overwhelm you or overflood your consciousness and deprive you from this way of life. So that's that's the second part of this little presentation.
I guess if there's any questions for this, and then I will speak about the cooperation right because you said this topic I should touch so I spoke about this yeah. What about emotions for devotional service.
We need friends, but that uh never one lecturer is nothing out in that we say that many times we do devotional service mechanically and we forget to experience that mood of salvatorship to the blood.
So in considering like what is like is it also a replacement it is definitely what you are talking about the experience of spiritual emotions. But I was specifically touching upon more
accessible emotions because spiritual emotions may or may not be there especially in the beginning. You know, you may not be immediately ecstatic, you know, I'm serving the Lord, oh my goodness, it's so nice.
It's there, it's there, but it's a high level. So I purposefully I was speaking about also this material side, which is also necessary. Of course, you know, otherwise there is a lot of spiritual emotions as well,
but we from the practical experience we can see that despite of experiencing all these high spiritual emotions, brahmacārī leave brahmacārī life and go to family life. So perhaps there is something lacking in this regard.
Talking about the expectations from brahmacārī-āśrama.
It is resulting in brahmacārīs being more exposed to other things also, that is, their counterparts, every friends, they may be grasp this. But how to sustain the praktyary ashtray?
Because we are mixing it so many people. And therefore, they have to have first of all very close association. See, mixing is not a problem.
Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura in Bhakty-āloka, he says a very interesting thing, he says association only becomes—he speaks about asatsaṅga, jñāna-saṅga.
In this chapter about jñāna-saṅga, he says that association only becomes, you know—and the natural question comes, jñāna-saṅga, we always have jnana sangha.
We always associate with ordinary people, with people who maybe not so spiritual, you know, and being in this community we again associate with too many people.
So Bhaktivinoda says that you know this association becomes contaminating or detrimental to one's spiritual advancement only when you become dependent on the person with whom you're associating.
And dependence can be different. Dependence doesn't have to be economical dependence. Dependence can be emotional dependence.
If you are emotionally dependent on somebody, you know, then for sure you will be heavily influenced by his way of thinking, his way of life, and you will naturally go his way.
But we can associate, we can be friendly, but at the same time not be affected by this association too much because we are not dependent, specifically emotionally dependent on this association. We are, you know, we are giving to them, we are not taking.
You know, the association is usually two-way exchange, but not necessarily, you know. It only becomes two-way exchange or whatever it becomes it influences us when we are dependent on this association.
So, and therefore we have to be dependent, but we have to be dependent from people whom we like to be like them. If we are dependent on the people uh uh who are life, then it's not bad.
It's it's very good. But when we become somehow rather dependent on people who are not so good then it's very dangerous only.
So yes, Mataji, Marikavina prabhu, Hare Krishna, it was uh very nice insights those two points which you shared. Um, first time I'm hearing like this also, but it was really relevant.
And my question was, when we compare these two ways of fulfilling the emotions, one is having a friend, another one is preaching. So I wanted to know what is the proportion which we need to work upon it.
Is it fifty fifty both are equally important? Or it is like, because sometimes we may not be able to have both? So can we have some priority, or it is uh yeah, people are different.
So there is no standard formula which would be applicable to everyone. It depends from case to case.
Some people are more, you know, dependent on this; some people are less; some people naturally become easily close to others. Some people are more introverted, it's difficult for them to become close.
So you know you have to decide for yourself. I don't think there is a standard formula. You may be quite fulfilled just by having fulfilling preaching relationships. That's also fine.
You know, even if you don't have two close friends. But ideally both things should be there, ideally. But you know, we're living not in in the world which is not ideal, so the ideal situation is difficult to expect.
So it's just a question of adjustment or approximation. comes to friendship. Thank you, Mataji, inspired. So when it comes to friendship, uh we have heard the quote, right? Always take the names of Krishna.
So when we see across our world, in which situation
he may be, but he is having great differentness for reading Bhāgavatam, or chanting the holy hymns. And as a prabhu, so I should be a bit from him. So if I associate, but he has interness.
So do I need to have a concern regarding whom I associate with the other thing if
you see somebody with great spiritual eagerness, oh you definitely he's you should associate with such a person because we want to learn and we want to be infected by his eagerness. Yes, definitely. It doesn't matter.
You know, because ultimately for Gaudiya Vaishnavas it's just external designations, they may not be so important.
But at the same time you have to have a discrimination. And you have to see. If you see somebody who is very sincere and eager, yeah, definitely you can take his example in your life, no problem.
So as we understood that spiritual emotions will take some time and we can they're already there from the beginning, but they might not be strong enough to fulfill all our emotional needs. They're there.
There's no doubt about it. Sometimes we feel them, but you know they may not be strong enough. So uh a fulfillment also comes when we s uh when we please a uh spiritual master our seniors.
So uh because of our incapacities, probably we may not be able to reach there and get that spiritual fulfillment. And as you very nicely explained, that we can make sure that we get this
accessible emotional fulfillment and go on in the brahmacharya from life. But it will be uh will it be a good uh thinking that uh uh we start here and eventually we should aim that yes, we should go on and have that spiritual fulfillment.
It should not be on the paradigm and we are. Of course, of course. We are we have to see ourselves in dynamic. It's very important in development, definitely.
We should not, you know, say that I'm like this and I will always be like this. No. No, we should be dynamic. That's actually a beautiful Sanskrit little a Sanskrit wisdom.
The word ātmā means from the from the root dhātu at and the dhātu at means the constant movement satatam satatam gamanam. So ātmā is dynamic, it's a dynamic principle. So we have to be always developing internally.
Otherwise there will be boredom. Thank you for the wonderful insight. Um my question was like the emotions it's been felt from the fixing fulfillment.
So that if I pay into the code and make the so are these not spiritual emotions. Of course. Of course. So therefore I didn't say from the beginning that I'm talking about material emotions or whatever.
It was always a mixture, but what I said, I said about two two ways of two easiest ways in brahmacārī life to get emotions and therefore I purposefully didn't speak about you know chanting the holy name as the way to get emotions.
It is also, but I was speaking about something.
And there is a mixture, definitely when you have spiritual friendship as a friend there is a mixture also of spiritual emotions as well because he's he's your friend because he's also has the same ideals, same values.
So I'm not really separating one from another, I'm speaking about this side of our nature that we're emotional beings and we have to take care of it. I only have twenty more minutes to go, even less.
Fostering cooperation over competitive spirit
So So it's a very interesting topic about cooperation. I I don't want to have just to to give a pep talk or to kind of give you some slogans, but I want to share little insights in this regard.
That cooperation It's actually very difficult to give this life. Because the natural tendency for the human being in this material world is to be competitive. And this competitive spirit, I want to be better.
And Śrīla Prabhupāda very successfully employed this spirit of competition among the devotees.
He started this book distribution competition and we all know how exciting it is somebody's, you know, number one, somebody's number two. And in this world, everyone wants to become number one.
Number one, actually this is there is a joke. There is a little story, but it's it's a joke. Supposedly it's from some ancient tradition.
Then when the Lord created the soul, of course we know that the soul was has never been created, but the story goes like this when the Lord created the soul he also the first thing which he whispered in her ears or his ears is that you're the best. And then he sent this soul here.
So we're all welcoming with this mantra. I'm the best. I am the best. So therefore this competitive spirit is there. And this competitive spirit is actually matsariya. It's matsarati. I am better than than others.
If you see that somebody is better than you, you become envious. And therefore, the cooperation becomes difficult because of this.
And we can see how the society is being destroyed because of this competition spirit everywhere.
Therefore, to cooperate, we need to really work hard to kind of push down this competitive spirit, the spirit of competition, and to exchange the spirit of competition for the spirit of love and cooperation.
And therefore Prabhupāda very aptly said that your love to me will be proven by the way you cooperate with each other for the advancement or the for the fulfilling this mission.
So he he didn't say cooperation, he said specifically cooperation
not just cooperation but cooperation for the mission and it basically means that we have to understand uh uh that uh you have to understand that for the mission we have to cooperate and this is the most um valuable thing which can be there.
That's Prabhupāda's desire for Prabhupāda's sake. This is the highest possible value. Sometimes people uh try to uh say that you know mm that being right in
i I I have seen that sometimes people they're uh stressing their righteousness. Why there is some quarrel. Because I'm right, he is wrong. That may be, but if you're right or not is not so important.
What is important is that you're not cooperating with the other people.
We have this idea that the highest value, psychologically highest value for us is that, you know, I'm right, I know, I know what to do, I know how it is right.
But from Krishna's point of view, this is not the highest value. The highest value is how you relate to other people and how you cooperate with other people for the higher goal to fulfill together.
You know, whether you are right or wrong is a secondary.
You may be right, somebody else may be wrong, but if you overstress this I'm right and he's wrong and you because of this you destroy the unity or destroy this spirit of cooperation, this is not so valuable in the eyes of Krishna and in the eyes of Prabhupāda. And therefore, Prabhupāda he is saying that actually when there is this dissension, I'm right and he's wrong and the other party says no, we are right, he's wrong, it basically means that none of them have Krishna.
Because Śrīla Prabhupāda said very strongly in this purport about Prachetas, this famous Purport, where he says that the Lord was so pleased with Prachetas because they were cooperating with each other, because they were ten of them, but they had one heart. Ten of them only had one heart and one opinion.
Śrīla Prabhupāda said, in Krishna consciousness, there is no question of different opinions. What does it mean? It doesn't mean that everyone thinks the same, but it means that the interest of Krishna is in the center.
And we are not insisting on our opinions, on our righteousness. We are trying to fulfill the common goal.
And for this common goal we are ready to even put aside our righteousness or our own views for the common goal, for the unity's sake. And therefore, this unity is a very difficult thing in this material world.
It will not happen automatically. Automatically, what will happen? The competition will happen automatically. I'm better than you. We are better. Our temple is better. That will happen automatically.
But for to establish cooperation, it's a hard work. You have to come, you have to invest your time, you have to invest your energy, you have to really try to know each other because what happens usually
people they naturally have this competitive spirit. I'm better, he's not so good, and then you know you don't see the other person. You don't, especially when you're equal.
The competition is only possible between the equals. If somebody is too high, there is no competitive spirit with you. You are ready to say, yeah, yeah, you're great. You know.
But if somebody is almost the same as you, but little better, oh this this is very bad. If somebody is way better than you, then you are not envious to him. You say, yes, yes, please teach me how to become like you.
But if somebody is a little better than you. Oh no this is too much. This is such an anathema. How dare he become better than me in this regard? He is doing this better or that thing better.
So and I you know I'm saying because we're all humans, I also sometimes feel this sort of feelings. So to remove this, to get rid of this, you really have to know the other person very closely.
If you know the other person to whom you may feel little enviousness that he is better, he is more successful in this regard, he is doing this better, he's preaching better, this and that.
To remove this element which will actually destroy or darken our relationship, you really have to come little closer and to really understand what is other person.
When you personally know him and you have this close relationship, then the competitive spirit will go away. And that's also, you know, it's actually there was one point I
spent quite some time on GBC and I know GBC and on several occasions, of a number of occasions I was told by the GBC by the old GBC members. I only became GBC member in 96, which was already a different era.
And all GBC members told me you don't know what the GBC It was like immediately after Prabhupada's disappearance. It was impossible to be there. There was such a high spirit of competition between all these big leaders.
You know, and they would when they would come to one room, it would be just so much energy exchange was there. And not necessarily very pleasant energies. You know, because they were powerful leaders.
And when the leaders are powerful, you know, they all have this spirit, I'm better than you, and I will prove to everyone that I'm better, I know better. So how to remove this?
There is only one way to remove this is to get together and to do something together and to know each other better, to speak with each other. And that will naturally replace this competitive spirit and give room for personal exchanges and personal relationship.
And for that you need time. You cannot do it just as a formal thing, you know, we come here once a month or once every three months or whatever, and then we spend some time. No.
You have to have some informal time for some informal exchanges, or some you know heart-to-heart exchanges, something like this, then the cooperation will become very natural.
Otherwise, it will be just a high ideal which will be which we will try to impose upon ourselves, but it will never be fulfilled really. It will be just a formality. So to really you know to really establish some unity which would increase the power of our movement many many folds, you know, hundreds and hundreds of false.
If you put yourself together, your hearts together, not only your minds together, but if you put your hearts together, then you will be able to conquer over this Bangalore within 18 days, like Pandavas.
You know, it's actually the first chapter of Bhagavad-gītā. In the first chapter of Bhagavad-gītā, Duryodhan, he lists first the heroes from the Pandava side and then he lists the heroes on his side.
And then very surprisingly he says, aparyāptaṁ tad asmākam. He says that our force is not is not really eventu från the numbers point of view he had greater forces.
He says aparyāptam tad asmākam uh tad asmākam that uh our strength of ours is not uh sufficient. Aparyāptam, it's very clear. Of course, you can say aparyāptam is immeasurable.
You can also say it is, but not without a reason he uses this word which has two meanings: immeasurable and insufficient. Because he knows that there is inner weakness. Among the Korva chieftains, you know, there
was high competition, and you know, when Bhīṣma was the commander-in-chief, Karna said, I will not even take part in this battle. And somebody else was didn't really like it, and so many other problems were there.
And in Pandava's side, Dhr̥ṣṭadyumna was the commander-in-chief. Dhr̥ṣṭadyumna is not such a great hero. He is not a great hero like Arjuna, like Bhīma.
He was there all the 18 days, commander-in-chief, and everyone was obeying him. What does it say? It says that they have unity. For them, this competition is not important. For Kauravas it's very important.
I'm better than you. How dare you become the commander in chief? I will not, you know, fulfill your orders. I am more powerful than you. How you can give me orders? So on and so forth. So why?
And therefore Duryodhana says, aparyāptam tad asmākam. Our strength is not sufficient. And Prabhupada said, you know, I could conquer over the world if I had unity among my disciples.
So it's not uh it's it's actually the bare necessity uh which we have to establish, but we have to understand that to establish this ideal uh we really have to invest time and energy and not be stingy, you know.
Of course we're all busy, we all have so many other engagements, we all have to preach, but it's a very important duty to establish unity and for that you need to generously give your time, come together, spend time, and the result will be very, very amazing and very wonderful.
You you will be amazed yourself by the results when the real unity will be established. If the real unity will be established, not just casual unity or formal unity but real unity. It's very important.
So don't be like Korava's army with so many heroes but totally divided internally. Be like Pandavas, they're less in number but much more powerful because they have personal relationship with each other.
So that's a little thing which I can say. I only have few more minutes to be, so maybe there's some questions.
Overcoming envy through conscious effort
Any questions? Hare Kṛṣṇa.
What we have seen is that even the brahmacārīs want to come together, only when there is a senior sannyāsī who is addressing the group, they are not so inspired to be here and uh because everyone knows the truth himself so this is I feel seen as an obstacle for coming together one thing.
And secondly, as you told that just coming formally together once in a month also cannot be sufficient. So how we can work more? Yes, we know the reason also, our engagements, etc.
But s everybody because even I see in my personal book reading group which I do online it becomes so difficult to keep together. It requires really conscious effort to get together.
So that's why I said it requires really conscious efforts to get together. You will do it if you value it. If this is the highest value, you will do it.
If you have values which are higher than this, you will do something which you value more. The situation which you describe, if you say it in other words, it's only like this.
Yes, yes, cooperation is nice, but we have something much more valuable than this.
And therefore, we don't have time for this, therefore, we're not going to invest in this, therefore, we're not coming when there is no sannyāsī around. It's just it's just betraying the real way of thinking.
That this is yeah formally for performance say you say it's it's uh it's important.
But in reality it's not important. You have something which uh supersedes the importance of this, overshadows the importance of cooperation. It basically means you didn't understand internally how important it is.
And therefore you have other priorities. That's it. some person that uh if you are injured to somebody have to go closer to him. Sometimes I feel like it like an answer with the cause it stops us to go close.
Of course, of course. Therefore, you have to make efforts.
If you understand that this is somebody who is important, and you understand that your feeling towards him is not correct, it's something which is, it's a contamination which is there.
You just make a conscious effort to do it, to overcome this. And it it will be difficult in the beginning. It will not happen immediately. But the conscious efforts have to be there.
And you know, anytime when we do conscious efforts we are actually getting free from some subconscious anarthas which are contaminating our hearts. There are so many subconscious problems within our heart.
And this is called karma. And when we are doing something which is comfortable to us, we are more or less living with this program which is there.
You know, if we want to overcome this program which is already there, we have to do some conscious efforts.
And any conscious efforts is very fulfilling because it uh, you know every time when we conquer over these programs which have within us we feel that yes we feel little victory is there.
It means I became less a karmic robot, which I was before. Otherwise, we're just karmic robots. We're only doing something which is already comfortable, which is already, you know, which we would do anyway.
So what's what's the value? What's the point? So regarding this envy, Śrīla Prabhupāda mentioned a very nice point that if we are envious in someone, we find it difficult to make that conscious effort.
So I would just like to share something which is helping me in this regard. I heard in one lecture he was told that if we can meditate on these points, things become a little simpler.
First of all, he said that if we are envious of someone, we should think that Krishna has a unique relationship with that devotee also and with me also. Second point, the advancement of that devotee in whichever field because of which I am becoming envious is not an obstacle in my progress in Krishna consciousness.
Thirdly, instead of becoming atheist, like, otherwise, try to see how I can improve my skills and try to learn from him. This is exactly the conscious effort which we have to make.
So if we can improve our appreciation for that devotee by trying to learn something from him by meditating that he also has a unique relationship, I also have a unique relationship. And this, this is not an obstacle. Yes.
So somehow I've been trying to read it on this and it's helping me. And uh sorry so much share. Thank you. Hare Krishna, Bhairav.
So here, so when we compare the devotees, when we do it comparatively, so if one person is doing very well, is doing it very much, and is getting something, so how to overcome this, uh, this alternative?
Yes, but I thought just come closer to this person, try to serve this person, try to you know really understand his heart because you can only become envious if you little bit
demonize this person in a certain way. This process is going on. You always find some faults in him. This is how envy works. You're envious, and then, as I said, the rationalization takes
the intelligence tries to, uh, you know, justify your envy. Oh, he's saying this, and he's doing this, and somebody told you something bad about him, and you thought, oh, I always knew this. And you know.
So because you don't know this person really personally, this devotee, and the personal level.
If you know him better, and then if even if somebody says to you something, or even if you think something bad about him, you know, you always interrupt it. There is some antidote to this poison of envy.
It's just you know him personally and you know you and especially if you did some personal service to him and some reciprocation took place, then it will be very easy. So that's that's the way to contract it.
I have to go now. Thank you very much. Śrīla Prabhupāda kī jaya! Gaura-premanande! So I hope to see you again very soon. Śrī-Śrī-Rādhā-Gopīnātha kī jaya!