sad-acharity and ISKCON

[Guest guest]

>> Sorry but I can't understand one thing: if we have innumerable ways of

>> using almost everything in direct devotional service then why we're so

>> much advocating doing the material charity works?

 

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

Thank you, Adipurusa Prabhu et al., for your sagacious remarks on the topic.

One point to consider:

 

If pure devotional service is indeed the highest modus operandi, which can

govern literally all spheres of our activity in the most perfect way -- then

what would be the Krsna conscious way of dealing with other people ***when

they are not aware of our being devotees?***

 

To rephrase it, if someone does not have a clue that I am a Hare Krsna

devotee and I have no chance to preach to that person directly -- say while

traveling in a public bus or standing in queue -- is there a way of dealing

with those people around me that would still be pure devotional service to

Krsna and beneficial for them?

 

If "no" -- it would mean we are narrowing the scope of pure devotional

service down to a mere talk and exclude from it most of our real life

experiences involving some 99.99% people we happen to deal with on a daily

basis. Or maybe we are just trying to be transcendental before becoming

properly human.

 

But if "yes" -- then how else are we to call, define and describe that

behavioral pattern other than "charity" or "sad-acar"? Maybe,

"sad-acharity", if you allow me a bit of a frivolous linguistics...

 

In other words, there is (or should be) a way to deal with people, which:

 

- benefits them even without them being conscious of who they deal with,

 

- does not cost any extra endeavor or money,

 

- incidentally happens to be the way cultured humans are supposed to deal

with one another anyway, that is to selflessly help one another, come to one

another's rescue, and share food and other basic necessities with one

another in time of dire need, and

 

- incidentally happens to be the way an ideal Vaisnava/Vaisnavi is supposed

to behave even when no one knows who he or she is.

 

And what if one day we happen to realize that it is exactly due to the lack

or absence of such behavior on the part of ISKCON devotees, individually of

collectively, that people at large are having such a hard time taking us not

only for exalted saints but even for proper humans and thus cannot care less

about what we propose to proclaim to them about the highest purpose of human

life -- whose fault would that be? Their or our?

 

Begging to remain

 

your servant,

Madana-mohana das