10 IMPORTANT TIPS TO PREACH ABOUT KRISHNA PROPERLY!
“……………Devi Dasi” asked like this:
“Rajan pr thank u for being my first guru. By your grace I have took diksha and now I am Brahman dikshat. My guru have asked me to start preaching. For that I need your blessings. I need to know how can I act n talk humbly n not offend people n preaching. New people about Krishna.”
REPLY:
It is a great honour given by you to me by treating me as your first guru. Let Krishna makes me eligible for that.
Your guru should have identified some skills in you to preach. So, he must have directed you for the same.
As said by your guru, start preaching gradually, not aggressively even in the beginning.
Increase the preaching gradually.
In my case, I preferred preaching online because I felt that I have some skills to do that properly. So, I took this as my service to Krishna and His devotees.
But, it needed technical involvements also that reduced my direct association with the vaishnavas. However, we have to go with the direction given by Krishna or His representative.
Let me give some tips to be a good preacher:
(1) A preacher should learn every day about Krishna, Great Vaishnavas, some details about other paths, tips to tackle the problems/ difficulties faced by the devotees in their devotional processes. He may give some customized advice, but he should not violate the preaching of his predecessor vaishnavas/ acharyas/ scriptures. Once we go for preaching, we will be bombarded with questions as you see in our site/ page. So, continuous learning is expected from a preacher. Wrong preaching leads to the fall down of many devotees. You need not become an expert in scriptures immediately (that is not possible), but, your learning should be a continuous process. That’s all.
(2) Instead of giving wrong directions, you should direct the devotee to the senior devotees if you do not know replies to any of their queries.
(3) If you have not yet started learning the scriptures/ writings of acharya properly, you may just stop with the distribution of the books of the acharya of the organization you belong to.
(4) A preacher SHOULD NEVER DEVELOP PERSONAL AFFINITY WITH THE DEVOTEES. HE/ SHE SHOULD TREAT THE DEVOTEES LIKE MOTHER/ SISTER/ BROTHER/CHILDREN OF KRISHNA.
(5) Even if any devotee tries you to take you to the wrong path, a preacher should guide him/ her to refrain from inducing him for the way of life prohibited for the devotees. After guiding, he/ she should reduce the interaction with that devotee. Such disturbances will arise when a preacher promotes himself more instead of the preaching. So, when we promote ourselves more, the concentration of the devotees get diverted from the message to the person delivering the message. So, safely, a preacher should promote his guru or prominent acharya in his lineage and he should act just like an insignificant servant of Krishna.
(6) A devotee should not torture the people to hear his/ her words. He/ she should just try to approach a person once. If he she hears it with respect, speak to him/ her for just a few minutes and request hm/ her to visit the temple/ center once by distributing the leaflets if available. A preacher should not take hours with a single devotee unless he/ she asks many questions with real interest. If a person seems to waste your time with unproductive queries with a bad motive, we should leave him asking him/ her to visit the temple/ center.
(7) A preacher should have sense control. He/ she has to deal with the opposite sex also. So, he/ she should have strict sense control. If he/ she is weak in sense control, many will be affected and his/ her own spiritual status itself will be affected. Sense control means, not just lust control, but, control of anger, desires also. Some devotees may show their anger. It should not frustrate you, or, you should not show anger back You should bless him/ her with a smile and come back. A preacher should not argue with others.
(8) A preacher should not visit the house/place of the devotees unnecessarily. He/ she should not visit the home when a devotee of opposite sex is alone at home. He should visit the house for preaching only after getting appointment
(9) A preacher should know how to preach differently to the children, teen agers, middle ages and old ages. He should not preach the same level of contents to all ages. The same advice need not fit everyone because the family, academic and career background/ pressures of every person is unique. So, a preacher should not insist the rules on all the people aggressively without knowing his/ her background. Same way, a preacher should not pressurize the devotees for taking diksha from a guru of his/ her choice. The devotees should be allowed to take diksha whenever he/ she finds suitable according to his/ her situation.
(10) A preacher should not cut unwanted jokes that may hurt some one. He should not speak deeply about politicians, mundane popular people, etc. Because it is not the business of the preacher and it may create unwanted problems/ arguments. He/ she should also not discuss the personal (eg: sexual issues) of the devotees of opposite sex. Instead he/ she should direct her/ him to the same gender senior preachers. Most importantly, as said by Krishna in Bhagavad Gita, a preacher should NEVER discourage a devotee who is following some other way of devotion/ demigods. It will make him her frustrated and force him/ her to quit the devotional way life entirely.
These are all just a few precautions a preacher should keep in mind and follow whenever he she starts preaching. Because, if a preacher commits violations, it will cause disrepute to his/ her diksha and/ or siksha guru.
If you find any violations by me in the above ten tips, please indicate me in messages. If they are valid, I will take corrective steps. Because, one, particularly those who guides others should review about himself periodically to make himself ‘offense-free’.
HOPE THESE DETAILS WILL BE HELPFUL TO YOU.