By Subal Shyam Das and Jaganmohini Devi Dasi
This year (2017), on Nov. 24th, Friday, disciples, servants and well-wishers of H.H. Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami will be celebrating his 80th vyasa-puja.
On this most auspicious occasion, for the pleasure of all vaishanava community, we recall one of his vital contributions to the BI-scientific mission which was visible since the inception of Bhaktivedanta Institute by the blessings of Srila Prabhupada. Today we would like to emphasize on this aspect, namely, Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj’s unique approach of first class dialogue in dealing with scholarly community. He adopted this even while he was preparing and arranging the first international congress on ‘Life comes from Life’ before Srila Prabhupada’s departure in 1977 at Vrindvan and Srila Prabhupada was indeed very pleased with it.
Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj’s conversations with Srila Prabhupada and his minute observations of Srila Prabhupada’s intelligent approach while dealing with respected scientists and scholars firmly convinced the former to adopt first class dialogue approach while interacting with scholarly community.
For example during his PhD days, Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj had introduced Professor Benford to Srila Prabhupada. It was only after that the conversations began between Prof. Benford and Srila Prabhupada.
Below are excerpts from their conversations as told by Maharaj and published in a book titled ‘Bhaktisvarupa Damodara in Switzerland’.
(<< Prabhupada started to speak to him saying that "you are very known scientist and as a scientist you spend your time and energy in studying"; Prabhupada picked a little grass, and said, "you want to scientifically analyse this grass and what are the molecules, why the colour is like this and you can study all these things and can write volumes of books on this piece of grass, and you think that is scientific knowledge. .....Well scientific knowledge is a different category of knowledge it is very useful because human mind is very inquisitive, ...". This way he was trying to find out what he has in his mind, just to get a little bit idea, what he is aiming at. Then Prabhupada asked next question, "Do you believe in God? Then he said, "No". Then after thinking little bit he said, "not exactly, I am skeptic." Then Prabhupada took that point and said "it is a very significant turning point - skeptic" But prabhupada was very cool and very calm and very compassionate the way he looked at the scientist, he was listening very carefully and then he said, "yes you say you are a skeptic that means you think that there is a God and sometimes you think there is no God" Then Prof. Benford said "yes". Prabhupada continued, "This means that you are doubtful because your intelligence is not able to discriminate between what is right and what is wrong in this case, but you have some doubt." So Prabhupada said "This is a good sign we have to be doubtful" Then conversation went on in a very nice way.>>)
Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj says in the same book:
“Srila Prabhupada has left a lot of nice instructions about ISKCON, BBT and Bhaktivedanta Institute. These are the three important things which Prabhupada focused on during his time. These are all preaching platforms for preaching to the people.
Bhaktivedanta institute is mainly preaching to the important people of society. Prabhupada actually said this will enhance the prestige of ISKCON. He said this was the most important preaching arm of the society.”
Thus solely for the pleasure of Srila Prabhupada, guru-parampara and Lord Gauranga, Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj using his God gifted multifaceted personality, made untiring efforts to establish that the sankirtan movement is a scientific mission through the Bhaktivedanta Institute amongst the scholarly community.
In this regard, His Holiness Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami, a legend and one of the foremost pillars of science-spirituality dialogue of the 21st century, envisioned that the ‘New Science’ that will emerge from a synthesis of science and spirituality will have a unique potential to address plaguing issues pertaining to origin of life, universe, ethics, ecology, education, philosophy, religion, science, societal and others. To this end, for more than two decades he facilitated platforms and initiated first class dialogues, discussions and interviews with the best minds of science and spiritual traditions which included Nobel Laureates in science and peace. He strongly advocated a scientific mindset like openness which is common to both scientific and spiritual cultures and that it can help to identify and acknowledge the commonalties between the domains and nurture a cooperative partnership to address pertinent concerns of human civilization. Thus he very much appreciated the advancement of natural sciences and was inspired that the increasing knowledge in natural sciences has moved it closer to mysticism thereby acknowledging the existence of inexplicable or acintya and increasing the theistic interpretation of empirical observations facilitated through a first class dialogue between science and religion.
He thus asserted that common dialogue is essential, it is an important principle; through which there is willingness to listen to each other so that we can primarily arrive at some common solution to help mankind. He demonstrated that to move towards bridging opposing thoughts or groups or sections of society, first class Dialogue was the only way.
At this juncture it would be good to be familiar with the first class dialogue initiated by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and which was later enunciated by the great seers like Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura especially in his book ‘Jaiva Dharma’ which Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj strongly recommended for preachers considering the pluralistic society we live in and simultaneously to present the inclusiveness aspects of Sri Chaitanya’s philosophy.
In a seminar, Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj identified the three dialogues as follows:
1. First Class Dialogue in which one is interested in understanding others as there is love and respect for others. There is eagerness to arrive at commonalities for the benefit of mankind.
2. Second Class Dialogue where both are interested in being heard but there is no respect and so there is no common purpose of dialogue. Nothing concrete is achieved in the process.
3. Third Class Dialogue in which one is interested to put other down as there is no interest in hearing other. It facilitates antagonizing between groups/individuals engaged in dialogue.
On a practical note, based on his conversations with Srila Prabhupada and scholarly community, Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj emphasized very strongly on special training programs for preachers who interact with top class scholars or sections of society and that the training must include lessons on dialogue and this can give quality preachers.
Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj during his life time accordingly engaged in first class dialogue with many top brains in the field of science and spirituality.
As an example, inspired by Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj’s work and interest, Prof. Alan G. MacDiarmid who was a renowned Nobel Laureate in Chemistry confessed during his interaction that he was willing to discuss the subject matter of synthesis with Maharaj in the midst of his tight schedule as he believed that through such interactions, one can learn a lot and it expands the intellect.
While interacting with Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj, Prof. Werner Arber, Nobel Laureate in Medicine and physiology confessed that how impressed he was to hear about 8.4 million species. He said scientifically they yet could not come up with the figure. He admitted, “Certainly these philosophical aspects of life are worthy to be considered, but appear to be inaccessible by today’s science.”
Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj in his open conversations with Sir Roger Penrose expressed about Vedantic view point on consciousness based on non-physical ontology of life. Sir Roger Penrose welcomed it in positive note and admitted, “Our present scientific knowledge cannot describe consciousness.” He admitted that he is not aware about the varied degree of consciousness that exists across different living organisms because consciousness cannot be understood in terms of present day science.
As we studied Sripad Maharaj’s works/publications, we identified that he had dialogue with nearly 60 scholars of topmost calibre from scientific, academic and peace community through various platforms with minimal assistance of manpower and funds. This indeed was not an ordinary feat to be achieved in a short span without the help of present technology that aids in faster communication.
His contributions thus demonstrates that after Srila Prabhupada’s departure, as an obedient disciple and empowered authority-servant for BI by Srila Prabhupada, Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj kept up with this approach of adopting first class dialogue steadily during his three decades of pioneering effort to build a strong foundation and framework for the Bhaktivedanta Institute. On the whole, this also confirms that it was with full faith that Srila Prabhupada empowered Srila Sripad Maharaj as founder director and leader or primary shiksha guru for Bhaktivedanta institute mission. This was corroborated recently by H.G. Bhurijan das, a very senior disciple of Srila Prabhupada. While glorifying Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj he stated that for ISKCON, Srila Prabhupada was the authority but for Srila Prabhupada, Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj was the authority for scientific preaching and this he had arrived after reading the conversations between them.
On this auspicious occasion, we humbly request all Vaishnavas, especially senior disciples of Srila Prabhupada to bless all the servants of Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaj who are working hard for the BI mission for the pleasure of Srila Prabhupada and entire Vaishnava community.
All glories to H.H. Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
All glories to Sri Guru and Sri Gauranga
Hare Krishna!
(Subal Shyam das and Jaganmohini devi dasi are disciples of H.H. Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami. Subal Shyam das has a blend of academics and corporate experience of three decades and has a Ph.D in Management. His good wife Jaganmohini devi dasi, formerly from teaching profession, has an academic blend of Mathematics, Computer Science and Philosophy and has a Ph.D in Philosophy. Both are serving the BI mission under the directions of their spiritual master.)
Comments