It may seem like hubris for a few young people to take on the problem of the future. It may well be. It may also be necessary. If anyone is to take on a problem of such magnitude—if such a problem can be taken on at all—it would seem that the young are the ones who have to do it, or at least try. It may take a little hubris to get the job done. It may take a little even to start. If that is so, may Krishna grant us that much, and no more. In the service of the Vaishnavas, we can use even hubris.
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda once said that he had completed 50% of his work—the other 50% was the establishment of varṇāśrama. Without getting into the details of what varṇāśrama might entail as a specific social system, we should take a step back and consider that it is a social system. Why is that important? Prabhupāda often said that religion without philosophy is sentiment, while philosophy without religion is mental speculation. Religion has to be enacted, has to be lived, as well as thought or believed. And how do we live? We live by culture. Whether we like it or not, we live out some culture or other. If it isn’t one we’ve put a lot of thought into, it’s probably one we were raised with, packaged along with whatever neuroses, attachments, and patterns of behavior—good or bad—we inherited from parents and the surrounding society. There is value in living an examined life, because in this day and age the unexamined one probably comes with baggage that isn’t particularly conducive to Krishna consciousness, virtue, or even mental health.
Prabhupāda understood that his followers didn’t just need a flashy new idea to think. They needed a way to live. By his example and instructions, he showed a path. But old habits die hard, and the inheritance of Adam tends to be more tenacious than a few years in the ashram can cure. If the ashramites knew how to live in the ashram, they certainly knew less certainly how to transition to society proper—marriage, jobs, taxes, families, schools. These things were bumpy, to put it mildly, for the first generation. They did their best. We’re grateful.
Cultures are not taught in lectures or books. They’re taught in ways far less direct. Just like children learn syntax without studying grammar, their early vocabulary without a dictionary, they also learn behavior from seeing the world around them, from associating one thing with another, reading a smile or frown before words in type. Culture is taught prior even to words. The adjustments that we make later in life are hard, slow, often ineffective. There was no way the first generation was going to develop a Vaishnava or Vedic utopia. Such a thing might take centuries, if it’s even possible. Fifty years later, we still haven’t figured out what it would look like—even the figuring is going to take a while. Let me just assert, with some confidence, with perhaps hubris, that it must look like something. If we can envision it, maybe we can build it. Or at least try.
Welcome to Vaishnava Dawn.
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