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E-mails to a Brahmachary What is the cause of the Living entities entanglement and strife in this world? Is it ignorance or his voluntary unwillingness to serve Supreme Lord Sri Krsna? Is it possible Sector 8-B Sector for the soul being spiritual in Nature to have material desires? A murderer kills sleeping beggars on the street and says that it was by the divine inspiration of Providence? Can Community Hall Community he in one sense be right? Does Christianity have anything in common with Sanatana Dharma These issues are being dealt with in the following debate. To find out more. Read on……… operative Housing Society Housing operative CBD Belapur Navi Mumbai Navi Belapur CBD - What follows is a philosophical discussion between Akincana Krsna Dasa (Akd) and Bhushan Kotnis a student practicing the Krsna Consciousness philosophy in the U.S.A. Kotnis challenges the Gita philosophy presented in the website http://cbdvashiiskcon.blogspot.com . Kalpatararu Co Kalpatararu Please don't confuse between the Names Baladeva Vidya Bhushan (Gaudiya Vaishnava Acarya) and the student Bhushan Kotnis. They are two different personalities altogether. Akd's replies are colored. When two colors appear in the same mail they are his quotes from previous mails quoted by Bhushan Kotnis. Hare Krsna. **********Akd writes to Bhushan************* Hope this mail finds you in the best of health and K.C. Long time no communication S o I thought I will send you this link. - http://cbdvashiiskcon.blogspot.com . It is of the program I am taking on the B.G systematically verse by verse. 1 Hare Krsna and all the best. Akincana Krsna Dasa *********** Akd's replies to Bhushan Kotnis' mail in Red*********** Dear Akincana Krishna Prabhu, Thank you for your email, I am pleased to hear about the program you are conducting at Vashi. In NYC we also have a Gita Sutras class divided into three levels conducted by Rasanath Prabhu and his team. I would like to share something about how they share the Gita for Americans. It all started when Rasanath Prabhu was in Cornell doing his MBA. He was givin g Gita classes and one time he gave Bhagavad Gita As it Is to a female student. Some days later she returned the Gita with a bitter mail because she couldn’t digest the some of the purports by Srila Prabhupada on women. So he started thinking how to cultur ally translate the message in this post modern era especially in USA. In the Gita Sutras they have formed an innovative approach. They use examples from western philosophers Freud, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche etc also lot of stuff from NY Times, experiences in Business Schools, corporate world, documentaries, and movies. Hare Krsna. Thank Krsna that in India I don't have to read these philosophies to preach. Most of the Indians appreciate the talk if we directly speak from the Gita and the Mahabharata. They in fact find it very interesting. This is one of the advantages for a preacher in India. He has the luxury to dive deep into the Vedic literatures directly and can also get a huge audience to come and listen to you. The western world was shaped by t hese western thinkers and they communicate to the students how the thoughts in Bhagavad Gita were also echoed by these personalities. Rasanath Prabhu also writes articles for the Huffington Post, I found them interesting I checked the website. Nice design and content. Fit for the western audience. In fact it hardly looks like a Hare Krsna or any other typical religious website. Real hard work. Also one of the significant aspects in his classes his dissecting the human psyche, what are our motivations, why do we do things the way we do. This is something everybody can relate to. The last Bhagavatham class we discussed about how we have this "hero" nature and need for validation ingrained in all of us. 2 Here we analyze the psyche of Arjuna from the Bhagavad Gita directly from the Acaryas commentaries. The different reasons Arjuna gives for not fighting etc. It makes just excellent preaching material. However the most important part of his classes is vulnerability. I.e making everything personal. This is very important. Bhakti Caru Maharaj gives the formula to preach. About 60% love, 15% Prasad , 10% kirtan, 5% philosophy, and 10% everything else in ISKCON which is responsible to make a devotee. People are hardly philosophical these days. I mean does it take philosophy to engage in drug alcohol and other forms of addictions. Still majority people engage in it unrestrictedly. So it is the experience they are looking for. And a pleasurable one. Sharing how has Bhakti affected me? Sharing openly the defects in myself and how I am struggling against them. This takes a lot of courage and it’s very powerful. He openly shares his anarthas, his fall downs , his struggles and his victories and thus creates a very open a non judgemental atmosphere where everyone else ca n be open. This is very powerful. Wow. That really takes courage. Like His Holiness Radhanath swami has done in his book, the journey home. Narada also tells Vyasa about his fall down from a demigod Gandarva named Upabarana to become a sudra in his past l ife. So this is a bonafide method to preach given in the Srimad Bhagavatham originally initiated by Sage Narada. …….I read your article on chapters 3 and 4 on activity. I have some comments about the article. From the article it seems that if you do devotional service properly ( i.e with activity) then one will get good material results. Just like the IIT student who topped. You also mentioned some qualifications ( University degree etc) required for being a Brahmachary and thus kind of portrayed that Brahmachary /Spirituality is not some escapism. In one sense I think spirituality is escapism in the sense that we want to escape from material anxieties, suffering etc. And materialists also want to escape from miseries, but they look externally and find sim ply band aids rather than getting to the root and destroying it once and for all. The spiritualist thinks of the permanent solution while materialists are less intelligent and think of stop gap measures. So in that particular devotee from his replay abo ut chanting it seems he took chanting as an external solution so that chanting was just some external adjustment for him. And probably he took that due to the mood of passion and things in mode of passion never give good results. The principle of chanting is correct, but he misapplied it. But we also see devotees who applied that principle properly and one of the best examples of this is HG Aindra Prabhu. 3 A preacher can argue from both sides. It depends on from which reference point he is discussing. For eg. Arjuna wanted to quit fighting. And there is no denying the historical fact that Krsna engaged him in fighting. He wanted to escape, isn't it? Yes but Krsna also gave him the solution to escape the problems of fighting a war which he so badly wanted to avoid. He told him the process of Bhakti yoga. So this is escapism. Isn't it. I read an article of Sacinandana Swami (His articles are very profound http://bhakticollective.com/2010/01/09/focus-on-the-essential-and-escape-the-tyranny- of-the-one-thousand-urgent-things/ ) in which he dissected the reason for our business and attachment to activity. We are busy with 10,000 little things just to keep the fear of death away. Restlessness and activity which clouds the intelligence is in the mode of passion and such activity is useless. In fact to sit in one place and be completely aware/mindful and do nothing is not possible for those in the mode of passion. I quote from one of his (HH SNS) articles. The French mathematician Blasé Pascal once wrote: “All man´s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.” Lord Krsna in the B.G and Prahlad Maharaja in the Bhagavatham and S.P refute Blasé Pascal. B.G 3.5 - Everyone is forced to act helplessly according to the qualities he has acquired from the modes of material nature; therefore no one can refrain from doing something, not even for a moment. SP Quote: We saw a signboard in a yoga society in Los Angeles that said “You become silent, and you’ll become God.” And here Krsna says that you cannot become silent even for a moment. Lec BG 3.1–5 Los Angeles 68 5. Prahlad’s prayers to Nrshimhadev – (Mauna vrata or silence is meant for neophytes. S.B 7.9.46) When a child speaks a lot of rubbish. Parents tell them to shut and sit quietly. When he is sober. He is expected to speak and behave the right way. It’s no t that we should accept or renounce activities, because such thoughts stem from ignorance, the right approach is to have an elevated consciousness while performing an activity. Important is an elevated consciousness and not if I do an activity or I don’t or if I top or I don’t top. Activity/results of an activity may or may not be a correct index of person’s consciousness. 4 As I quoted Gita earlier. Activity can never be stopped at any time. Please let me know your thoughts, I always like my conceptions to be challenged and in this way I can learn more. Hope you gained from the conversation.