Preaching

[krishnadasa]

I went through one of threads here discussing the spiritual effect of Obama becoming the US president. Apparently the thread closed obviously for simple reason of diverting from the main topic. However, when I read the entire thread, I could make out two different schools of thoughts that are existing and are right in thier own places. For example, if we takeup the preaching, as proposed by Srila Prabhupada to show to the world what KC is and how one can be benifitted from chanting simple Hare Krishna mantra. This sounds perfectly alright for the people who actually know nothing about Krishna or spiritual significance of chanting any mantra associated with him, that is for the people outside India especially white race, who are intelligent enough to grasp but are engrossed enough in materialism to obstruct. And preaching on the roads, distribution of books and doing all thats spiritual would heal these folks of thier material deseases. And in that line, Sarva_gatha is perfectly right about encouraging preaching.

 

Now if I take the next school of thought which is in contrast to preaching, that is one followed in India especially (primarily), I can see reasons, why it is being practiced. And also why it can create a havoc in a family. For example if we take a typical Hindu family in India, say a family of five, when all of them grow up to a stage, where they can understand the siginifcance of this world, they would have acquired an ISHTA DEVA according to thier material nature and all five of the people could have indeed acquired liking or inclination towards worshipping indeed FIVE different ISHTA DEVAs. Now given a situation, wherein one starts preaching the other about one's own ishtadeva, then one might end up creating a family filled with chaos. And to avioid this, to keep peacefull atmosphere in a family, our anscetors have taught people to respect each and every demigod and also in that way respect someone else thoughts or loving towards a particular diety. Though there have been conflicts in the past, primarily between Shaivaits and Vaishnawas, however the time has resolved these conflicts and people have learnt to live happily together respecting each others way of lives.