Tune Your Ears To The Sampradaya & Become A Chaste Listener | HG Vaisesika Dasa | 26 Apr 2025

Sound Bhakti

As we make progress in devotional service, it's vital to be aware of who we're tuned into, and to that degree, Prabhupāda was meticulous in instructing us about the process of hearing. And I'll just give a couple of examples, and I will stop in a moment. One was when the devotees first went to India, they came to understand that there was a bigger universe, spiritual universe, outside of ISKCON. Prabhupāda had a few books: Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, The Nectar of Devotion, Teachings of Lord Caitanya, and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam was coming out volume by volume. Prabhupāda brought a bunch of devotees to India because he was eager to get the movement started there. So when they came there, they started to notice things. For instance, wow! there are other devotees in the world. There is Prabhupāda’s own origin from the Gauḍīya Maṭh. And then there were books from the Gauḍīya Maṭh, what to speak of even then there was Gita Press. You could go get anything, if you could read Devanāgarī, that is. Of course, nowadays, there's Rāsi Bihārī Lāl’s; that's a more recent thing that wasn't there in the 70s. Rāsi Bihārī Lāl is the biggest little bookstore in the world. So if you walk up the stairs, you'll notice one floor after another. I hope they have strong beams in there, because that's all they have, is books all the way to the rafters. And you can find books from anybody, because they're indiscriminate. They're not promoting Guru Paramparā and such; they're promoting the sale of books. So anybody could walk in there and pick out any stack of books they wish and go home and read it. It could have mistranslations, it could have misconceptions. It could have anything. As Śivarāma Mahārāja once commented, anybody could go buy books in the cloth market in India. He was referring to Rāsi Bihārī Lāl’s, and if you're listening, Rāsi Bihārī Lāl Prabhu, no offense, I still want to buy tilakas sometimes. So a controversy came up, because devotees did find some books that they could read from the Gauḍīya Maṭh, and the temple president had understood from Prabhupāda that being exclusivistic in one's hearing is not limiting. It's the opposite. Counterintuitively, the more you refine your hearing to the Guru Paramparā specifically, and you're careful to hear from those who are authorized. And one may say, "Authorized, everybody's authorized." Well, you can take that point of view, but that it's not very refined. In fact, that goes to who can come into the circle of devotees who are cultivating a particular mood and speak? And some people would say, "Well, they're followers of Lord Caitanya, it doesn't matter," okay, but it does. Prabhupāda said it himself when Mukunda Mahārāja had wondered what would happen if Prabhupāda left, because early on, Prabhupāda had severe health problems, and he was going to go back to India. And Mukunda Mahārāja, this is in the Līlāmṛta, had brought up to him, "Well, maybe we'll bring over some senior devotee from the Gauḍīya Maṭh to take your place." Prabhupāda was quiet about it until later, and then, in a more parokṣavād, indirect way, he had indicated that that was not a sanguine idea.He mentioned at that time the famous mantra, which was, "If they say one word different, then it will cause confusion." (excerpt from the talk) Verse for discussion: https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/4/20/31/ To connect with His Grace Vaiśeṣika Dāsa, please visit https://www.fanthespark.com/next-steps/ask-vaisesika-dasa/ Add to your wisdom literature collection: https://iskconsv.com/book-store/ https://www.bbtacademic.com/books/ https://thefourquestionsbook.com/ Join us live on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FanTheSpark/ Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sound-bhakti/id1132423868 For the latest videos, subscribe https://www.youtube.com/@FanTheSpark For the latest in SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/fan-the-spark