How to Preach?

Devotee : When we are preaching, we may not straight away say that Krishna is God and everything must be done for Him. So we may beat around the bush, so, if you could give further explanation to what point do we give the information?

Maharaja : You cannot write a hand book about that, we have to be personal. We just have to be sensitive. Preaching doesn't mean we are preaching at people:
"Okay I am going to preach to this person, Hare Krishna Hare Rama"
That's one approach - the burn out approach, the vacuum cleaner approach is not the best approach. It is putting two hands around the neck and saying "Chant, Chant, Chant!"
but there is also a subtler approach. In the subtler approach try and attempt to find the spark. Prabhupada said:
"Find the spark and fan it."
Find the spark of interest, find something in them that attracts them to Krishna, so find a connection and then feed that. That is the approach. It is personal.
You cannot say how much?:
"Okay five minutes give indirect and then do like this"
And also different people have different tactics

Transcribed By Madhumati Devi Dasi
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Sydney October 2010)

 

 

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Our Saving Grace

Ignorance is a kind of thing that is destructive to the self and to others. So, ignorance has to go as it is not going to help us. So we have to fight with ignorance.

Passion, we can channel it towards the service to Krishna.

"Oh! This passion!"
just work out for Krishna - so we run, and run, and run and we get so much busy that we don't have time to chant our rounds but somehow or other we are doing it.

"Oh! We are so busy in the service of Krishna, I have no time for myself."

"But your life is already finished"

"Oh! My God, have we got old I never even noticed it, life is so short! I never even had the time for maya! I wanted so many things but it never happened because I had so much service."

One will say that in old age. So, people in the mode of passion can be nicely engaged in service of Krishna so that is our saving grace.

Srila Prabhupada very expertly designed the Hare Krishna movement, he didn't say that we should have a programme that everyday should be a japa retreat. There are Japa retreats where we chant sixty four rounds ...

It is not so easy to chant sixty four rounds everyday, One day maybe if we get ourselves in that mood. Some of us can do, so we are maybe not the strongest in performing these things.


Prabhupada has arranged that there is plenty of service to do - If we can't chant the Holy Name then we can serve the Holy Name, this is the Sankirtan movement of Lord Caitanya.

There is unlimited engagement and that you simply give Krishna Consciousness to the whole world. Well that's enough for a few life times!

So, we have a lot to do and we can present things in a creative way and that will keep us pre-occupied and that is our saving grace.

Transcribed By Madhumati Devi Dasi
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Sydney October 2010)

 

 

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Hearing

I was just talking to the mrdanga player and how mrdanga playing is the most difficult thing. Why is mrdanga playing so difficult? It's extremely difficult because it's not about different beats or different bauls, or even different mantras - It's not about intricate rythms and so on. That is the secondary part.The primary part is about hearing. It's all about hearing. A good mrdanga player is one who listens, who's totally attentive. He's attentive to the kirtana and he's following very carefully to what he hears. That's extremely difficult. Only possible if one chants attentively. If one is an inattentive chanter, one will be an inattentive mrdanga player. For sure. One will do everything inattentive! One goes through life as in a cloud, and just walking like that in that cloud, one will inadvertently do so many things that one later wonders:
"Why did I do that..?"

Transcribed by Bhakta Frederick
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Sweden 2010)

 

 

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Enthrone Him in the Heart.

Narada Muni is explaining in Bhagavatam that as the heart is being purified, then gradually one can enthrone the Supreme Personality of Godhead within the heart. So it's interesting because the Lord was already there as the Supersoul, and now we're going enthrone Him in the heart.

The enthroning of the Lord in the heart is referring to the istha-deva, or to our worshippable Deity which in our case is Krishna, and not so much the Supersoul. The Supersoul is described as being Lord Vishnu. Ksirodakasayi Vishnu. The Paramatma within the heart, and He is the four-armed form of Lord Vishnu. Helmet and ornaments and so on. All the attributes of Vishnu are there.
It is also said that although the followers of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu are most respectful towards Lord Vishnu and they certainly are accepting Him as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, still they focus on their worship on Lord Krishna and not on Lord Vishnu.
Srila Prabhupada also reminds us of that in the final chapter of the Bhagavad-gita in his purports - he points out that a devotee will certainly offer his obeisances to Lord Vishnu, and then continue His worship of Krishna, -exclusively focus on Krishna. So we are not starting an altar and beginning to kind of place all kinds of Narayana Deities there as well, no. The focus in our sampradaya is exclusively on Krishna.
So interesting that as the heart becomes purified and as we are enthroning the Lord within the heart, we are actually enthroning Lord Krishna in the heart! Then from within the heart it is Krishna who is guiding us.
It is not the Paramatma in It's four-armed form who is guiding us, then it's Krishna directly, within the heart, who is guiding us! ...
We can be very intimately connected with Krishna, and that Krishna within the heart is directly Krishna!
Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Not a picture of Krishna, but Krishna in person. Krishna who is directly relating with us.

Transcribed by Bhakta Frederick
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Radhadesh 2011)

 

 

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How Important are Memories of The Temporary

How important are memories? Some people are controlled by their memories for their whole life. It's like here, I met somebody of 40 years who was just still remembering that he had a bad time in school, and I go:

"Okay, that's bad. That's really bad, I feel for you. I do, I do, but how old are you?!"
"Forty."
"Okay, Forty, Right?
"Yeah."
"And when was school? Are you sure you can still remember?"
It's like ... well, I didn't have that much fun in school either, but at the age 57, it doesn't exactly… I don't feel much connection with school at this stage - I can hardly remember. A few grey memories of my school days, and it was maybe not so much fun. I remember that. I remember, it was not so much fun. Fun was not allowed in school, that I remember. So I didn't like school that much. But it's behind us. So much is behind us.

So memories, why make so much of memories?
"I have such beautiful memories…"
You have such beautiful soap bubbles!
"Beautiful... My beautiful memories, I will never forget." Okay, but it's finished now. It's over. Gone! And they'll never come back. Sorry! So why make so much of it? That's material life. At the end, there's just some memories left. If you're lucky! You may remember that I told about the man with the t-shirt, "Seen it all, heard it all, done it all, but can't remember it all!" I congratulated him!
I met him on an airport and congratulated him and — I said:

"Wow, that's a great t-shirt!"
He said, "You like it?"
I said "Yes!"
He said, "I made it myself."
I said, "Deep! Deep… Very deep!"

Right? It's a fact! So let's see how much we can still remember at the end. So we're speaking about the temporary. Why invest so much in that? It's so obvious that when we begin to invest in Krishna consciousness then it gets very nice, because there's eternal spiritual benefit in whatever we do, and whether the temporary part is okay or not, that is secondary.Like here, whether the program is boring or whether the program is exciting, right? That is secondary. You can say: "Ah, it was a great program! It was just so dynamic and so exciting and so interesting and everything and then the prasadam, it tasted so nice!" But how long will you remember that? What is really important is the eternal benefit even if it was a terrible program!

One of those programs that were like, everything went wrong - "Kirtan was terrible"
"The lecture was *yaaawn*'", and then
"The prasadam... the rice wasn't cooked!"
"Too much salt in the dahl!"
"The subji… It was hard."
"Oh God… And the sweet rice was burnt."
"It was a great program!…" "Yeah, it was a really great program"

Well, at least the eternal side was okay. At least the eternal side was still alright. So that's there, we always have these two elements. The eternal side and the temporary material side. And of the two, the eternal benefit, that's the most important.

Transcribed by Bhakta Frederick
(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Sweden 2010)

 

 

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