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.

the magnanimity of srila prabhupada

Srila Prabhupada was such a devotee; he was an intimate associate of Lord Krishna. How do we understand Srila Prabhupada’s special, special, special position?

Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami said that Lord Chaitanya is the most merciful and is the supreme amongst avatars because of His magnanimity; because He wanted to give Krsna consciousness to everyone and anyone without discrimination through the chanting of the holy names. Of all great personalities, Lord Chaitanya especially selected and empowered Srila Prabhupada to manifest his magnanimity to the highest extent, to travel on every continent in the world, giving Krishna’s name with no consideration of who we are or where we are coming from. Srila Prabhupad saw every living entity potentially as a pure saintly person, just with a little covering of maya over us.

So Srila Prabhupada, without any discrimination, he gave this Hare Krsishna mahamantra. He would sit in a little park in New York City called Tomkins Square Park. This is where Srila Prabhupada started the Hare Krsna movement in Tomkins Square Park. And some of the people in India were saying, "Why is he preaching to these lowest of uncivilised people in the West?"

But those people do not understand what Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami said, that the supreme quality of Lord Chaitanya is His magnanimity and that He makes no discrimination. The Lord would give Krishna consciousness and the holy name to everyone.

So Srila Prabhupada was the manifested representative of that most illustrious quality of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. How dear he is to the Lord, and how fortunate are all of us to have the opportunity to be connected to such a special personality who is revealing the glorious opulences of the Lord in such a merciful and compassionate way.

But Srila Prabhupada explained that this verse; to be more humble than a blade of grass, more tolerant than a tree, to be willing to and ready to offer all respects to everyone and to expect no respect from anyone else - that is the quality that will keep us always under Krsna’s divine protection, that is the quality by which Krsna would be pleased to reciprocate and manifest Himself in His holy name to us.

So we should chant very sincerely and very attentively every day to purify our consciousness, and simultaneously we should sincerely be a humble servant within our life.

lord chaitanya is the most magnanimous

When we chant the holy names of the Lord, we are crying out for Krishna to save us. And how does Krishna save us? Because He is non-different from His name; because He is all pure, when we chant attentively within our heart, the name cleanses all of our illusions and all of our attachments. The holy name awakens the pure state of our original consciousness, and we are liberated form the web of material existence.

So Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, He came to give this name of Krishna without discrimination to everyone and to anyone. In fact, in the Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita it is described by Sri Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami, the author, that Lord Chaitanya is the topmost of all incarnations of God, that He is Krsna Himself from His original form.

But Lord Chaitanya is acting in a superior way, in the sense that He was magnanimous. This magnanimity is the special feature that makes Lord Chaitanya the most merciful of all incarnations. Krishna Das Kaviraj Goswami explains the meaning of Lord Chaitanya’s magnanimous nature: He is giving pure unalloyed selfless love of God, the ultimate happiness of the soul, to anyone and everyone without discrimination. He does not consider who is qualified and who is unqualified, the only qualification to receive the mercy of the Lord is simply the eagerness to accept it; that’s all. Whether you are sinful, whether you were born in kind of adverse conditions, it doesn’t even matter, what you have done or what you haven’t done.

Are we eagerly willing to accept the mercy when it comes? And what is that mercy?

To associate with the Lord and His devotees and to chant His holy names.

the most sincere welfare worker

When our enthusiasm is directed by great souls, our enthusiasm is then purely and truly engaged in God's service. This is the greatest wealth: the mercy of the great sadhus, and under their direction and inspiration we can serve the Lord and thus serve every living being.

By serving Krishna, by watering the root of the tree, the whole tree is nourished. One who loves God is the topmost well-wisher for every living being. He is the most compassionate, most charitable, most sincere welfare worker on the face of the earth. Why? Because he has genuine love for everyone, he has genuine concern for the suffering of all living beings, he is free from all selfishness, he is free form all fanaticism, he is a genuine friend for every being. These are the qualities of one who is genuinely enthusiastic in the service of God.

seek and ye shall find

Seek and you shall find. If you are looking for faults, you will find faults in everyone and everywhere. If you are looking for the good, you will find the good in everyone and everywhere. It is a question of what you want.

Krishna will reveal Himself according to how you approach Him. Shishupal only saw faults in Krishna, whereas Arjuna and Yudhishtir only saw the glory of Krishna. According to how each of these men approached Krishna, they were saved. Krishna is in the heart of everyone.

So to find faults with the devotees is a disease, it is a contagious disease, it is a sickening disease. And to see the good and virtue in devotees is an opulence, it’s a benediction. So we should not be diseased, we should not spread the disease; we should spread love and goodness.

the king of education

The self by nature is part of the Supreme Self, or God. In essence, you are eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss, saccidananada. Happiness is your nature. You suffer when you are not full of bliss, not full of knowledge, or if you are not in realization of your eternity. 

This means that you are in a diseased condition. You are in an unhealthy condition. You have forgotten the essence of your own being; the realization of you. Who are you? The consciousness within. Who is seeing me, right now? Your eyes, or your soul? Are you seeing through an eye, or  are you an eye? Are you your ear, or are you hearing me through your ear? So who are you? You don’t even know! Some mysterious Consciousness is witnessing this world through your body. But you think you are the body. You are flesh, or are you feeling through your flesh, but we don’t even know who that person is who is witnessing, that’s experiencing. There is a science of Physics to understand the flesh, right? There is science of psychiatry to understand the mind. 

Similarly, there is also a science of self-realization to understand the soul, the consciousness. It is a science. Today religion has become so degraded that everyone, simply says “I believe this, you believe that, whatever I believe is all right. Whatever you believe is all right. I think this and I think that”. And it is so unscientific and ridiculous that most of the educated class of people say, “Forget religion. It is so dogmatic and ritualistic."

But if you read the Vedas, religion is approached as a great science, raja vidya raja guhyam pavitram idam utamam - Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, that this is the king of education, the supreme science, because it gives one the direct perception of you, the self, through realization. 

So let us approach self-realization for what it is: it is a science. It must be understood systematically, in a scientific manner with our intelligence. Let us kick out all of this dogmatic, unscientific, un-philosophical belief system that goes in the name of religion. The nature of Consciousness is that it is eternal, it is full of knowledge and full of bliss. It is part of God, therefore all of the godly qualities are your inherent nature. But why are we not enjoying the very facilities that are our right to enjoy? Because we have forgotten, due to ignorance, our true nature.

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.