BY: ROCANA DASA
Aug 30, CANADA (SUN) — Studying Srila Prabhupada's conversations with ISKCON leaders.
Today's editorial reflects upon the Morning Walk conversation with Srila Prabhupada from July 12, 1975 in Philadelphia. You may wish to read the transcript or listen to the MP3 for this conversation.
This Morning Walk took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is the birthplace of the United States Constitution. The dialogue begins when Srila Prabhupada reads a quote from a memorial to William Penn wherein Penn is addressing the Indians:
"I have great love and regard toward you and I desire to win and gain your love and friendship by a kind, just and peaceable life. And the people I send are of the same mind. And I shall in all things behave." And what about the shooting? (laughter)..."
Srila Prabhupada immediately gets to the essential point of this poetic quote. Behind all the flowery words, the Europeans were actually involved in annihilating the Indians, so the words didn't really mean anything.
Jayatirtha then encouraged Srila Prabhupada to comment on the Declaration of Independence, noting that it indicates the signer's belief in God. Srila Prabhupada ignored that comment and directly made the point that everyone's thinking they're a member of a very rich nation, and they're very fortunate. But he asks, where are all these famous people now? They've left their body, and nobody knows what kind of life they're leading now. You build up a nation, but the laws of nature mean that you have to die, then you're gone, vanished. Nobody knows where you've gone, and nobody really cares.
The big devotees who regularly attended these Morning Walks often prepared in advance for the questions and comments they hoped to pose to Srila Prabhupada. Kirtanananda took an opportunity to bring up the subject of gurukula and an important aspect of separation of boys and girls. Considering all the current controversy over the gurukula situation, especially surrounding Kirtanananda and Bhavananda, I found this to be an interesting interlude. At the time Srila Prabhupada didn't show any interest in pursuing the subject. There were obviously things he preferred to discuss, perhaps on account of the fact that there were two Ph.D's in the audience, namely Ravindra Swarupa and Swarupa Damodara prabhus. Svarupa Damodara introduced the subject of inductive reasoning, particularly in relationship to science and scientists.
When one begins to methodically read or listen to Srila Prabhupada's morning walks, you soon discover that he is particularly interested in criticizing science. It's a favoured topic of many such conversations. Here he takes aim at the essence of scientific method, the inductive reasoning process about which Svarupa Damodara raised a question.
On the surface, it seems that scientists have made a lot of progress using this method, and they have supposedly contributed to so many good things in society. The devotees often took the side of the scientists in these conversations with Srila Prabhupada, and tried to represent arguments in favor of science, which of course we often heard while preaching.
Srila Prabhupada immediately dismisses or answers by going to the philosophical essence, as in the case of Svarupa Damodara's question. He states that according to inductive reasoning everyone has to die, but they don’t want to accept the fact they're going to die. So even thought the most observable reality in this material world that you can apply inductive reasoning to is that you're bound to die, not even the scientists want to accept it, let alone everyone else.
From here, Srila Prabhupada goes back and forth with Svarupa Damodara on the idea of inductive knowledge. Srila Prabhupada says that if you have an authority like Krsna, who is God, this is by far the easiest, simplest way to acquire knowledge. On the subject of death, Krsna says that "I come as death and take away everything." Krsna says he's the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and you don't have to experiment on that. In Bhagavad-gita, Krsna explains that other authorities like Vyasadeva and Narada have also said, so there is no doubt that it is the truth. We're getting the message from the most authoritative personalities. You simply have to receive information through parampara, then no inductive reasoning is required.
The only problem with this is our inability to accept authority, and to accept it in the right mood, the mood of humble submission, wherein we don't add or speculate, we just pass it forward. Of course, this is far easier said than done. When Srila Prabhupada gave us these instructions we all thought, 'oh that's simple'. In fact, even today we often hear devotees say 'I'm just repeating what Srila Prabhupada said', when in reality they're not accurately repeating. We tend to engage in all sorts of speculation, and many are quoting authorities other than Srila Prabhupada. You have to be very pure to completely surrender to the concept of deductive reasoning, completely accepting something because you've heard it from a pure, absolute authority. As I present in my argument that Srila Prabhupada is a Sampradaya Acarya, everything he did or said one has to consider perfect, even though sometimes he says controversial or heavy things.
One of the standard arguments used by ISKCON leaders is that we should not be critical. They want us to believe that criticism is a bad thing. But in reality, we're constantly critical. The mind is always accepting and rejecting. Srila Prabhupada was incredibly critical, as evidenced by this and nearly all other morning walk conversations. But following the ISKCON trend, we don't hear devotees today being anywhere near as straightforward and critical towards scientists and politicians as Srila Prabhupada was, calling them fools and rascals and blaming them for leading the entire civilization down into the ditch.
So many devotee are attempting to repeat what Lord Krsna said by learning slokas and quoting Sanskrit, even though they really don't know Sanskrit. Posting as great scholars, they are not focusing on the importance of simply repeating what Srila Prabhupada has personally said. This is especially true in regards to how we should be preaching Krsna Consciousness in this day and age. We should be studying Srila Prabhupada's rebuttals, learning how he defeats all the various arguments presented by the devotees during these morning walks. Srila Prabhupada defeated their arguments in the mood of teaching the devotees how to defeat the scientists and so-called scholars and philosophers. His arguments are always so essential, in the sense that they go right to the heart of the matter. He sticks there, on the main point, whether it's meat eating with the Christians, Darwinism, or the concept of inevitable death.
Srila Prabhupada makes the point that inductive reasoning is always wrong. It is always wrong in the end because it's speculative, and the person that's speculating isn't perfect. That very fact makes it inevitably wrong.
Ravindara Swarupa then made the point that John Stewart Mill and Bertrand Russell have become skeptics and said there's no knowledge at all. Srila Prabhupada immediately answered that there is no knowledge because they have failed, not because there actually is no knowledge. They’ve simply failed to be able to present true knowledge.
Srila Prabhupada raises the point that we're in the Brahma Sampradaya, and Lord Brahma is the most perfect person in the universe, yet he obtained his knowledge from Krsna. He didn't use his incredible intelligent to speculate.
Of course Srila Prabhupada mentions one of his favorite subject, Darwinism, stating that it's a false theory, but that's what people want to hear. They want to accept these imperfect theories because they're cheaters, and they're prone to be cheated. He reminded that we should be careful not to take any knowledge from cheaters.
The conversation continues with Srila Prabhupada saying its our duty to take all our knowledge from the spiritual master within the parampara system. He quotes Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu: Yare dekha, tare kaha 'krsna'-upadesa, which speaks to the whole guru controversy still going on today. "You become guru under My order." "But I do not know anything nicely, how can I become guru?" "No, you have no botheration. You simply take Krsna's word and say, and you become guru."
So Krsna Consciousness is just that. The whole question of being a guru is whether you are pure enough to not speculate, to not add anything, but to simple accept Krsna's word -- and in our case, Srila Prabhupada's word -- as perfect. We must repeat it, not always verbatim, but in such a way that the meaning and message is purely given and nothing has been changed.
Nowadays within the institution there are many stipulations about who is qualified and who can get approval to become a diksa guru. Interestingly enough, the GBC don't study the lectures or preaching of these candidates to see whether or not they are presenting Krsna Consciousness in just the way that Srila Prabhupada wanted it presented. There's a huge assumption that they're doing that, but they're not. Instead they look at how loyal the candidate is to the institution, whether they 'name names and complain', etc.
What we thought back in the early days was going to be the easiest thing - just chanting Hare Krsna and repeating what Krsna and the Sampradaya Acaryas have stated -- turns out to be the very hardest thing. As Srila Prabhupada says, we should not go through all the botheration involved in inductive reasoning, but should just hear from authorities, and repeat what is absolutely perfect.
Srila Prabhupada then offers a subtle warning to the scholars and philosophers amongst the devotees on the walk. He explains that Dr. Radhakrishnan ended up so mentally incapacitated he couldn't recognize anybody. Having relied on inductive reasoning, "He became a victim of the western people. Because the Oxford University was paying him very nicely, he became a servant of the western thought."
It's very evident that many of the senior men who attended morning walks with Srila Prabhupada did not comprehend what he said in this regard. Several of these devotees went on to spend a tremendous amount of time and Srila Prabhupada's money to become qualified as members of these university faculties. They have been glorified amongst the members of the society for doing so, and have been giving elevated status in ISKCON as a result. But what Srila Prabhupada is saying in this conversation is that you shouldn't do that and you're bound to be victimized by Western thought if you're employed by these people. We've seen little of philosophical substance come from these scholars, other than a few obscure books and papers that can best be understood by scholars in their field. We don't see a movement or a great spiritual transformation as a result of these individuals getting big degrees and joining university faculties. The fact of the matter is that if one were to repeat exactly what the Srimad Bhagavatam and the Sampradaya Acaryas have to say, especially as it pertains to science, they would never choose to teach in a university because they would be ostracized as being different, controversial and critical.
Srila Prabhupada consistently stuck to the Vedic version of astronomy and regardless of how often the devotees tried to get him to say something that would be more palatable to westerners, he never budged. The type of preaching that Srila Prabhupada encourages us to engage in, and the way he preached himself, is forthright, tell-it-as-it-is, regardless of whether the audience will be turned off based on inductive reasoning.
Srila Prabhupada's preaching came directly from our Sampradaya Acaryas, and it takes a great deal of faith and boldness to be able to preach in that way. Frankly, I don't see that happening much any more. Two notable exceptions are Drutakarma dasa (Michael Cremo) and Sadaputa dasa (Richard L. Thompson), both brilliant academics who present science in Krsna Conscious terms. Drutakarma dasa has gotten little financial support from the institution or the dwindling BI budget, but his preaching against Darwinism deserves our every support. Meanwhile, many of our scholarly Godbrothers in ISKCON are not writing papers, publishing books, or engaging in public preaching against the scientists and politicians, as Srila Prabhupada preached, even though they have been given excellent rebuttal material by devotees like Drutakarma and Sadaputa prabhus.
In general, the society's preaching mood has become a moderate, neo-siddhantic version of the pure devotee's great example. We should all adjust our philosophical arguments to come back to the center, where the message is absolute and the potency is second to none.
