Home Base: Sri Mayapur Candrodaya Mandir, Sri Mayapur, India
Present Camp: Sri Radha-Govinda Mandir, Dhaka, Islamic Rep. of Bangladesh

My Dear ..................,

Please accept my blessings.  All glories to Srila Prabhupada who has
compassion all the fallen souls of this material world and is their greatest
well wisher by giving them pure Krsna Consciousness.

A disciple forwarded this text to me from Hrdayananda Goswami which gave a
good meditation on the mood we should have in relation to the recent
disaster in USA.  I wanted to share it with you for you edification.

Your well wisher always,

Jayapataka Swami
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject:   Fwd: Thought of the week: Spiritual vision to material tragedies
------------------------------------------------------------
>Subject: Thought of the week: Spiritual vision to material tragedies
>Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 14:23:51 -0400
>
>By His Holiness Hridayananda Goswami
>
>I am writing to comment on the recent terrorist attacks in New York and
>Washington, which you must have heard of by now. I am aware that some
>devotees take a casual or dismissive attitude toward these events,
>declaring that "It's just a fight among the karmis."  Or, "People are just
>suffering their karma." etc.
>
>If this is the full extent of our response to these events, I think that we
>are somehow deficient as devotees. My logic is as follows:
>
>Lord Krishna states in the Bhagavad-gita 6.32, that a devotee should
>possess universal empathy. A literal translation of this verse would read:
>"O Arjuna, I consider the supreme yogi to be one who, by comparison to the
>self, sees everywhere the same, whether happiness or distress." This verse,
>among other meanings, recommends a kind of universal empathy. In his own
>translation of this verse, Srila Prabhupada stresses this universal
>empathy: "He is a perfect yogi who, by comparison to his own self, sees the
>true equality of all beings, in both their happiness and their distress, O
>Arjuna!"
>
>In his purport, Srila Prabhupada continues to stress the point of empathy:
>"One who is Krishna conscious is a perfect yogi; he is aware of everyone's
>happiness and distress by dint of his own personal experience.  In other
>words, a devotee of the Lord always looks to the welfare of all living
>entities, and in this way he is factually the friend of everyone."
>
>This is how we can apply such empathy in the case of the terrorist attacks
>on New York and Washington: First, we can imagine what it would have felt
>like for us to have been on one of the four planes that were hijacked and
>destroyed, or in one of the three attacked buildings. There is ample
>information available so that we can be quite specific and explicit in
>imagining the experience. Second, we will probably have to honestly admit
>that we would feel significant discomfort, pain, or anxiety in such a
>situation. If we are capable of deep empathy, if we are able, as Srila
>Prabhupada states, to understand the experiences of others by comparing
>them to our own experiences, and we are "factually the friend of everyone,"
>then we experience true Vaishnava compassion.
>
>In other words, we should not be more detached toward the suffering of
>others than we are toward our own suffering. We should not arrogantly
>dismiss the anguish of others, as if we are beyond anguish. A devotee who
>is truly transcendental to material suffering, and who would not have
>suffered at all in one of those four airplanes, or in one of those three
>buildings, would be a most exalted pure devotee and as such would feel
>great compassion for the fallen conditioned souls. Those who are not
>compassionate, and who dismiss as trivial or unimportant such great
>suffering, are not actually demonstrating advanced detachment in Krishna
>consciousness, but rather they are demonstrating a disturbing lack of
>common empathy, and are in fact embarrassing our movement by their neophyte
>response.
>
>ISKCON devotees oppose animal slaughter. How can we not oppose human
>slaughter? If one says, "it's their karma," then we reply that the same is
>true for cows and other animals who are slaughtered. If one says, "this is
>just a political fight among materialists," I would reply that in the
>Bhagavad-gita, Lord Krishna clearly distinguishes between acts in the
>different modes of nature, and He specifically describes certain acts as
>not only materialistic, but as evil and demonic. It is surely evil and
>demonic to murder thousands of innocent persons. Let us remember that in
>Vedic culture, we are required to treat people according to their innocence
>and guilt in this life. God will take care of their past karma. We are not
>allowed in Vedic culture to abuse people, harm or kill them, and then say,
>"It must have been your karma." Vedic culture is not moral anarchy in the
>name of karma. We should be above mundane morality, not below it.
>
>During the Bangladesh War in the early 1970's, Srila Prabhupada strongly
>condemned the Muslim atrocities against the Hindus, and indeed against
>other Muslims, in Bangladesh. Of course in every country on earth there are
>tragedies, and the devotees will benefit themselves personally, and greatly
>enhance their preaching, if they are able to achieve a real state of deep
>empathy, not in the cause of materialism or the bodily concept of life, but
>as a symptom of a budding self-realization that leads one to feel liberated
>compassion for all suffering beings.
>

====================================================
My Two-penneth: =>:-)))

So as not to get too carried away with "one sided compassion" I humbly suggest that we not close our minds to other perspectives that some of those in the countries of Afghanishtan, Palestine, etc., are also suffering. Infact all are suffering.

It is not possible to say with xertainty who is to blame or who is "wrong", other than condeming such indiscriminate acts of violence entirely as we do.

"An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind."
- Mahatma Gandhi

Whilst I agree with everything that has been said above regarding having compassion, in discussion with some former Islamic persons who now chant hare krishna, are vegetarian etc (devotees), and while presenting very similar ideas, they also pointed out the terrible acts of terror that the USA had brought upon them personally and their former peoples in the past.    .........and what it must have done to these jivas to make them so desperate, so crazed with anger at seeing their homeland destroyed, their families killed, sanctions put upon them, very similar to which we witness recently to take to suicide bombings and such acts of terrorism..........

Both sides are suffering, maybe different suffering, but still suffering.

I feel we need to be a little careful in suggesting that one is right and one is wrong out of personal identification, being attached to one ism or another - American or Moslem, or whatever.

I've examined my intentions, prejudices and alliances on several occasions too, and found an old saying to be true in my case; you can take the boy out of England, but it's difficult to take the "Englishman" out of the boy.

Still the above article is informative, sensitive, and we will try our best to help ALL jivas where we can, irrespective of their material situation, or the limitations of ours.

Trusting this finds you well. =>:-))