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KC Nectar - Aug 06

But those Karmis … Ugh
From the book Vaisnava Compassion
By HH Satsvarupa das Goswami

Submitted by Manoj

Srila Prabhupada taught us to be compassionate and wanted us to preach, but there's a problem: when we are confronted by the things the nondevotees do, such as eating meat, drinking, smoking, or their outright sexuality, we don't feel compassion but disgust. Rather than feeling our heart soften with the desire to give them mercy and knowledge, we feel hard and condemning.

Many of the things nondevotees do to enjoy themselves are disgusting, but if disgust hinders the awakening of compassion in our hearts, it is a sign of neophyte consciousness. We cannot measure when we graduate from the neophyte condition by how many years we have been practicing Krsna consciousness but by our freedom from material attachment and our increasing attraction to Krsna. Psychologists would say that when we intensely dislike something about someone, we are projecting qualities we have in ourselves. That is usually the cause of our disgust. Disgust is the flip side of attraction. To the degree that we are struggling with our own attraction to sense gratification, our dislike for the people who engage in that sense gratification will not allow us to feel compassion for them; our hearts will feel hard rather than soft.

We can examine what a great soul experiences when confronted with the grosser behaviors of the nondevotees by examining Srila Prabhupada's life. Prabhupada wasn't frightened or disgusted by what he saw. It is amazing to think of him going through so much austerity to come to America and confront the unrelenting degradation of the people here. Yet his heart didn't harden. Rather, what he saw only increased his desire to preach.

Although we stereotypically think of a Vaisnava's behavior as soft and yielding, §rIla Prabhupada was also hard, in a sense. He always criticized the ignorance of the nondevotees that led them to commit such atrocities as animal slaughter, abortion, and to live out all the implications of the drug culture. We can hear him denouncing these things constantly in his talks. But disgust did not come with that denunciation, nor did we ever get he sense that Prabhupada didn't want to be with us. He told us that Gaurakisora dasa Babaji was humble but disgusted. He felt it wasn't within his power to help the nondevotees, so he didn't preach. His own Guru Maharaja, he said, was a fighter, and Prabhupada was following his spiritual master. He was a fighter too, and therefore he had accepted the great challenge of coming to the West to distribute Krsna consciousness. He saw the difficulty immediately upon his arrival in Boston, as is recorded in his "Markine Bhagavata-dharma".

My dear Lord Krsna, You are so kind upon this useless soul, but I do not know why You have brought me here. Now You can do whatever You like with me. But I guess You have some business here, other-wise why would You bring me to this terrible place?

Most of the population here is covered by the material modes of ignorance and passion. Absorbed in material life they think themselves very happy and satisfied and therefore they have no taste for the transcendental message of Vasudeva. I do not know how they will be able to understand it.

But I know that Your causeless mercy can make everything possible, because You are the most expert mystic.

How will they understand the mellows of devotional service? 0 Lord, I am simply praying for Your mercy so that I will be able to convince them about Your message.

All living entities have come under the control of the illusory energy by Your will, and therefore, if You like, by Your will they can also be released from the clutches of illusion.

I wish that You may deliver them. Therefore if You so desire their deliverance, then only will they be able to understand Your message....

How will I make them understand this message of Krsna consciousness? I am very unfortunate, unqualified, and the most fallen. Therefore I am seeking Your benediction so that I can convince them, for I am powerless to do so on my own.

Somehow or other, 0 Lord, You have brought me here to speak about You. Now, my Lord, it is up to You to make me a success or failure, as You like.

0 spiritual master of all the worlds! I can simply repeat Your message. So if You like You can make my power of speaking suitable for their understanding.
Only by Your causeless mercy will my words become pure. I am sure that when this transcendental message penetrates their hearts, they will certainly feel gladdened and thus become liberated from all unhappy conditions of life.

0 Lord, I am just like a puppet in Your hands. So if You have brought me here to dance, then make me dance, make me dance, 0 Lord, make me dance as You like.

I have no devotion, nor do I have any knowledge, but I have strong faith in the holy name of Krsna. I have been designated as Bhaktivedanta, and now, if You like, You can fulfill the real purport of Bhaktivedanta.

Signed-the most unfortunate, insignificant beggar, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Onboard the ship Jaladuta, Commonwealth Pier,

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Dated 18th September 1965


Despite what Prabhupada saw on his first walk through the streets of Boston and later through the streets of New York, he felt his compassion awakening and prayed to Krsna to help him make the path of bhakti understandable to the American people. His first year in America was especially difficult with no financial or moral support and very little interest in his teachings, but instead of returning to Vmdavana hopeless, he was patient, determined, and imbued with a sense of kindness toward these spirit souls who had so fallen from their constitutional position. He did not see the degradation as much as he saw the truth of the souls' natural relationship with Krsna.

But that didn't mean it was easy. We who have been raised in the West can appreciate Srila Prabhupada's austerities-what it must have been like for a pure Vaisnava to leave Vrndavana to live in New York City during the 1960s, to see the young men bearded, long-haired, and dirty, the scantily dressed young women, the stores selling meat, the intense mood of sense gratification of the place. He didn't become cynical or hard, and he didn't hate people for their ignorance. He remained always open to anyone who would take to Krsna consciousness, even if they came before him naked, as happened on his visit to Morning Star Ranch. One of the men who became a devotee after Prabhupada's visit to Morning Star said, "He didn't see our bodies but our souls. He was a great soul."

For Prabhupada's followers, his tolerance and mercy toward our fallen ways is one of the ways we measure how great he was. At the mahotsava held just after Prabhupada's disappearance in 1977, one of Prabhupada's Godbrothers said that he too had gone to the West, but it was not his nature to deal with low-class people. His implication was that Prabhupada had such a nature. But we know that Prabhupada was the highest Vaisnava experiencing great compassion for the fallen.

Prabhupada's compassion was not ruled by emotion but by intelligence. He didn't just feel sorry for the conditioned souls but thought carefully how to uplift them. Then he worked to do so. If he saw that something he was doing was not effective, he changed his tactics. He never lost sight of his goal to bring the people he met (or met through his followers) to spiritual awakening. He was flexible in his approach, concentrating on education but using other means to attract people to receive it. Although he often decried mundane welfare work, he encouraged the devotees to use food distribution to attract both good publicity and the public. However, it should not be food distribution but prasadam distribution.

He was also personally tolerant. If he had not possessed the qualities of tolerance and compassion, he would have had to return to India. He was a strict Vaisnava and did not compromise in his speech, yet he accepted any inconvenience in order to preach. Until he moved into his own place at 26 Second Avenue, he had to share the refrigerator with his meat-eating hosts. Often, his hosts smoked cigarettes, took drugs, or did other things that would have been intolerable to a Vaisnava of lesser strength. He simply accepted whatever conditions Krsna provided, realizing that in the beginning, he was a beggar in these Western countries. Although he could have returned to Vrndavana and been offered the respect due an elderly sadhu, he tolerated everything just so he could preach.

While writing this book, a devotee wrote me a letter which included the following question: "Because devotees are trying to practice spiritual life in an environment which is alien to their purposes, it seems we are becoming more and more insular, both to protect ourselves and to avoid having to associate with those who cannot understand our purpose. How can we feel compassion if we have this consciousness?"

We can take our cue from Srila Prabhupada. First, we can feel the fortune of our own position, feel grateful that we have prasadam at every meal, that we have the holy name, and that we have the opportunity to hear the Absolute Truth spoken every day. Second, we can try to understand Prabhupada's kindness and tolerance, and we can let those qualities inspire us to want to share our wealth with others. We may not always be feeling compassionate toward others, but at the very least, we can, inspired by Prabhupada's example, serve his compassionate cause.

ISKCON is an insular world. We have our own language, our own stock phrases, our own outlooks, and our own circle of friends. That's natural and necessary in the development of our Vaisnava subculture within the culture of sense gratification. We are different from others because our goal is different. Our insular world is necessary for our survival. But we should never become so insular that we do not reach out to anyone who is suffering.

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