Quotes – Preaching

We should take deep shelter of the Holy Name and imbibe the qualities of Vaiṣnava behaviour in our life – sadācāra. Not that we will just do pracāra (preaching) – go and shout with a loud voice to the ignorant people that they are suffering, and tell them to take kṛṣṇa-nāma. We ourselves must take kṛṣna-nāma and we must exhibit the qualities of a devotee. We should try to show the real behaviour of a devotee. And if we fail, we should pray to Kṛṣṇa to purify us. We should pray to our guru to purify our failings so we may come to the standard of pure devotion and pure love of Kṛṣṇa.

I always remember that in in kṛṣṇa-līlā, Vṛndā Devī is in charge of messengers. In kṛṣṇa-līlā, there’s a necessity of messengers, and she has many messengers that range from gopīs, to gopas, to animals such as parrots and pigeons – they’re all in the category of messengers. And as preachers here in this world, what are we? We’re messengers. So, it is our necessity to also have the blessings of Vṛndā Devī, Tulasī Devī, in order to become pure messengers of the message of love of God.

Philosophy is a battlefield! Philosophy is not like cooking – cooking doesn’t fight with anything. Cooking simply produces something which is more or less palatable to all. But philosophy fights. The nature of philosophy is to establish a truth above another truth. One level of truth is surpassed by a superior level of truth, or a so-called ‘truth’ is exposed to be a point of ignorance. Philosophy is not just sweet-talk. Real philosophy fights with opposing conceptions. Our Śrīla Prabhupāda used to say, “Real preaching means fighting.” Real preaching doesn’t means patronising – it means fighting against ignorance, against misconception.

Some people are so fixated on my beard! They’re throwing this quote and that quote from Prabhupāda around, and I agree – if you are living in Prabhupāda’s movement (Iskcon), you should be clean-shaven. That’s the standard. The only reason I keep a beard is that I don’t wanna be associated with these people and what they’ve done to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s movement. In my experience and preaching, there’s a lot of people out there who have a bad impression of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement. So I wanna distance myself from that, and this works.

But my question for all these godbrothers fixated on my beard is this – “I’ve been doing all these Let’s Talk videos for months now, I’ve brought up a lot of points, and you won’t answer any of them – all you do is whine about my beard. So now, if I shave it off, will you finally answer my points?” Probably not.

Honestly though, I’ll probably shave it off soon – it’s so uncomfortable…

This is the world we live in today, my friends. Transgressions have become the norm! People want to throw everything away and lower the standard just to get people to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. If you don’t have a philosophical mind then you will think, “Yes, we should do that!” Then why follow the four regulative principles? Serve a little wine at the Sunday feast and get everyone to chant! If there are filters on the cigarettes, then what is the harm in sucking in a little smoke? Once you start to lower the principles, where do you stop? You will find out that there is no stopping…

When you step out of this gate, you are representing something. You represent your guru, you represent the mission, so dress respectably! Stop dressing like a hippy! If we dressed like a slob in Prabhupāda’s time, we would have been booted out of the temple! You could never stand in front of Śrīla Prabhupāda dressed like that and not expect some chastisement. “Dress and then address!” No respectable person will take you seriously when you dress like this! You will only attract the lowest class of people.

If Śrīla Prabhupāda came here (to our āśrama in South India), he would be happy about so many things – nice Deities, nice gardens, nice cows, nice devotees – so many things. But the one thing he would not be happy about is that there is no regular prasādam distribution going on. He would ask, “How much prasādam are you distributing? How many people are you feeding.” This is very important. So we need to do this as soon as possible. Then I will feel that we have Prabhupāda’s full blessings.

We were quick to criticize the hell out of Gauḍīya Maṭha and Prabhupāda’s god-brothers. But as the saying goes, “When you point a finger, three fingers point back”. We have become at least thirty times worse than Gauḍīya Maṭha ever was. We criticize them for lack of preaching and pride ourselves as the ‘global preachers”, but in the end what are we actually preaching in the name of Prabhupāda, Kṛṣṇa and Mahāprabhu?? Nonsense is the answer. And we think that this nonsense preaching will endure the test of time for the next 10,000 years. What fools we have become! We are proud of our many followers, our zones, our riches, our properties and big, big temples. Truth be told, we are asses among the real Vaiṣṇavas and an embarrassment to Śrīla Prabhupāda.

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ou know what one of the biggest ‘scams’ in preaching is? “Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and your life will be sublime!” Your life will go upside down and backwards! You’ll be finished! We told that to one couple we met from England the other day – they’ve been chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa for about 5 years. We told them “Your life will go upside down and backwards!” And they said, “Yup! That’s exactly what happened to us. We sold the house, cashed out, came to India, this, that…” The search for Kṛṣṇa…actually that is the most sublime thing. But if we say like that in the beginning, people will say, “Oh I don’t want to become a devotee!” No one will want to do that. So it is sublime, but it is not understandable how sublime that is. Externally it looks very, very chaotic.

It is accepted by our line of ācāryas that the most powerful form of saṅkīrtana is twofold – the kīrtana of khol and karatālas, and secondly, book distribution and bhāgavata-kathā. You’re speaking it, your selling it and you’re singing it. These two things are inseparable. That is the saṅkīrtana of Mahāprabhu and that is the method to win divine grace and to be accepted by the Supreme Lord as an eternal servitor…

One day, some of my sannyāsī godbrothers visited and they asked me, “If you were given the chance to express what you think would be a good step for improving Iskcon, what would you suggest?”

So the first thing I said just ended the conversation. I said, “The first thing is I would tell everyone to stop preaching.”

And one of them said, “But preaching is the essence!”

I said, “No, no, no – practice is the essence! Everybody just become Kṛṣṇa conscious for a few years and really get something in your heart, get something in your community, and then go out and share that with the world”

But no chance! Because then there would be no income…no collection.

Every preacher is expected to ruffle feathers and draw critics if indeed he is preaching. Preaching means fighting for the truth, not love bombing. But as far as possible the preacher himself should not offend.

There are ‘professional saṅkīrtana devotees’ who go out and they use a 501c3 non-profit status, get permits and go to various places and venues and collect. They keep the money for themselves and give a portion of it to the temple in order to maintain the permits. This is what I call in my language, “a professional saṅkīrtana devotee.” Such things never existed in Prabhupāda’s time. You went out on the name of saṅkīrtana to sell books, collect money, or chant the holy name – none of it was yours! Whatever you sold, whatever you collected, whatever you did or whatever you achieved out there, was all offered to Prabhupāda and to the temple.

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dditionally to manpower, to start an āśrama and expand the preaching field, finances are required. The good old USA is not a cheap place to live and restrictions on what a person or persons can and cannot do are increasing day by day. Indeed unfortunate.

Another thing is this – I have seen land, money and devotees come together in USA and other places and projects were started, but because these projects did not have a strong central spiritual leadership and there were as many conceptions as there were devotees (meaning nobody could agree on important spiritual truths) the projects failed.

So land, money and devotees are required, but if everyone doesn’t have faith in the leader, or the leader isn’t spiritually qualified (usually the case), then failure is imminent. Getting land, money, like-minded devotees and a qualified leader together at the same place at the same time, in my experience, takes nothing short of a miracle.

There is general misconception amongst devotees in the west, that the ability to distribute Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books is proof of advanced Kṛṣṇa consciousness, or special mercy of the Lord. I have distributed books since 1998 (in Iskcon till 2008 and out of Iskcon since 2008) and my personal realisation is that you may be able to distribute (sell) many books while being extremely proud and harsh with people, with no proper understanding and conception of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and being drastically attached to fame, name and glory. There were, and are, many devotees who could sell books without even following the basic regulative principles.
Together with books, we have to give out Kṛṣṇa consciousness, which is practically demonstrated through our thinking, speaking and acting.
 If we are not Kṛṣṇa conscious, if we are not humble, if we don’t have proper understanding of Vaiṣṇava siddhānta, if we remain attached to worldly things, hen we are not really pleasing Śrīla Prabhupāda essentially – because we are not becoming Kṛṣṇa conscious, regardless of how many books we did, or do distribute in our life.

M ost people are just satisfied with, “Hey, the books are going out! The books are going out!” And they’re building big temples. And that’s our hankering. We hanker, ‘Okay, let’s do big!!’ But let’s first get down to the essence of purity also, and then we can do big.

W e must remember to practice what we preach and not just become salesmen. We are not trying to convert people into becoming salesmen – we are trying to turn them towards Kṛṣṇa. And personal example is everything! We have to SHOW them how to be Kṛṣṇa conscious, and not just TELL them!

I n Śrīla Prabhupāda’s time, we went and preached in colleges and universities, even though most of us had no university training at all. Actually, that’s not important – whether you have a degree or not. The most important thing is that you listen to the guru carefully and repeat what he says. The potency is in the instruction. Actually, these universities are full of ignorant people. When Bhaktisiddhānta came to Mysore, he visited the Sanskrit University and wrote in the guestbook that it was a pity there was no department for the soul, the ātmā. So in all these universities – where are they teaching about the ātmā? So if we can preach in universities about Vedic knowledge, history, culture, all these things, some people might wake up to real knowledge.

G oing out for preaching means we must meet many materialistic people, people who are polluted by all types of worldly things. We cannot go for preaching unless we ourselves have the resolve, the fixed determination (niṣṭhā) that we are not interested in these things. If you find that while preaching to someone, you are yourself becoming interested in their mundane standard of life and living, then you should retreat for some time, remain in the āśrama and don’t associate with those types of people and those things. It is not worth the loss of your self in the attempt to deliver someone else.

I began distributing Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books and Back to Godhead magazine in 1970. Devotees danced, chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa and distributed literature and prasādam all day and sometimes even at night. At one point over 1 million Back to Godhead magazines were being distributed every month in the streets of major cities around the world and Śrīla Prabhupāda was very happy about that. He had waged war against māyā and distribution of books and Back to Godhead magazine were transcendental bombs. But we must remember to practice what we preach and not just become salesmen. We are not trying to convert people into being salesmen… we are trying to turn them toward Kṛṣṇa. And personal example is everything! We have to show them how to be Kṛṣṇa conscious and not just tell them.

W hen we go to preach – yes, the people are in ignorance, but if you go there feeling so much better than everybody else, then you cannot be a useful instrument in Mahāprabhu’s movement. You have to go and approach them with some grace, some humility, some dignity.

P reaching means fighting with māyā, not love-bombing and tree-hugging, although we should make the truth palatable to hear, but not water it down. The main problem is that leaders in the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement are misleading the devotees by not speaking out against deviations. The result is that there are so many deviations in the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement that it is almost impossible to keep track of them.