the spirit of real cooperation

Due to egoism, everyone thinks, "I can judge others. I am right. You are wrong. If you stand between me and my aspirations for profit, adoration, and distinction, then you become my enemy." Where there is disunity amongst devotees, there cannot be proper sankirtan, we cannot chant together in the proper spirit to please Krsna, we cannot serve together.

When Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur saw his own devotees fighting amongst themselves, he was willing to sacrifice everything and anything he had to bring about unity. He knew that unity alone would empower this movement to please Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu and thus fulfill The Lord's mission.

For Srila Prabhupada also, this was a great worry. "Show your love for me by how you cooperate." This cooperation is not an ordinary material formula. You cannot cooperate unless you are really trying to follow the essence of Srila Prabhupada and Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu's teachings. Without wearing this shloka - trinad api sunicena, taror api sahishnuna, amanina manadena, kirtaniya sada hari - around our necks, strung by the holy name, there can be no real cooperation.

If someone goes to a hospital and sees that the doctors and nurses are not even on speaking terms with one another, will they want to lay down their lives in the hands of those doctors and nurses? Similarly, people are frustrated. If they come and see that Krishna Consciousness works with harmony and peace, there is love and cooperation amongst devotees, people will think, yes, I trust them, this is what I want, I will hear what they say.

But if they see that we have our own petty little conflicts, then they will think, what is the difference? What is the difference between this and everything I am reading about in the newspapers?

So we have a great responsibility to cooperate with one another, and the only way we can cooperate in this age of Kali is to take Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s golden rule to heart:

trnad api sunicena

taror api sahisnuna

amanina manadena

kirtaniyah sada harih

To be more humble than a blade of grass; to be more tolerant than a tree; to offer all respect to others and to expect none in return and in this way chant the name of the Lord always. If we strive to live by this, the most important of all the instructions, we can live together peacefully. In that peaceful coexistence we can do great, great things for this world.

everyone has their place in society

[the following is an answer to the question of a college student]

I have started to feel that all of these people, who hold the greatest accomplishments in this field of materialism, they are miserable, their lives are empty. Many of them are destroying all of whole society due to the exploitative methods that they are accepting in their pursuit. If I would have had someone to teach me, I would have probably been a very, very successful, God conscious businessman. But I could not find anybody who could answer the philosophical questions that I had in life, especially in the college I was going to.

So, I decided to travel around the world and study the various religions of the world, the different philosophies of the world and the different values that people live by. After some years I found myself traveling as a sadhu in India, and then I met my spiritual master. My spiritual master taught me the essence of what is in all of the great religions of the world: how to love God in whatever we do. He told me, “Yes you can go back and be a businessman, that’s very good, but there is also a need for people who dedicate their lives exclusively to educate others in this subject matter. That is also a need of this world.”

Some people say to me, "What if everyone would become a sadhu like you, then what would happen to the world?" Right? That’s probably what you are thinking. this is a business school, so what if I asked, “What if everyone would become a businessman?” The world couldn't function that way. There have to be doctors, too! There have to be lawyers. And if there were no farmers to grow food, everyone would die. There have to be politicians. Sometimes we wish there didn’t have to be politicians. [laugh] There have to be politicians organizing the affairs of the state. There have to be warriors defending the state. There have to be businessmen, marketers, bankers. 

So similarly, for the spiritual progress of society, there has to be a class of men who dedicate their entire life's energy to educate others in this spiritual science. It doesn’t mean that everyone must be like that. But there is a need for these class of men. So my guru maharaj convinced me, that although 90% of our congregation are businessmen, housewives, farmers, doctors, lawyers, musicians, architects, and engineers, there has to be a small percentage of people who are simply dedicating their lives to hearing the problems of all of these people and giving them spiritual counseling and giving spiritual direction to society. 

So my taking this dress was not to run from the problems of this world, but according to need of the world. There is a need of people to take to this life also, this occupation also; to face the problems of this world, to fight the crisis of the world and strive to improve the quality of the world.

a lifetime mission

Our thinking should be as the servant of the servant. Whether you are a counselor, or a guru, or a GBC, or a president, or if you are just a new bhakta or bhaktin, whomever you may be, it is the responsibility of every single one of us to help each other that we never, ever leave the lotus feet of Srila Prabhupada and Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. 

Krishna Consciousness is a lifetime process. To go back home, back to Godhead, you have to practice strictly and sincerely, until the day you die and go back to Godhead. This is not a movement that is just like a college, where you are in this movement for four years and you graduate, and then you go back into the material world.

This is a lifetime mission.