to Bhakta Peter
Dear Bhakta Peter,
I know that this is an important concern of yours...
Japanese Pure Land Buddhism is a remarkable Krishna-Bhakti related culture. The Devotees are extremely virtuous and one of their virtues is their astounding other-centered and loving service mentality. Part of this is their diligence in hospitality and cleanliness. Millions of Japanese Pure Land Buddhists can live in very cramped conditions and yet they can do it with great kindness, order and cleanliness. Everyone takes personal responsibility for the order and cleanliness of everything. There is no sense of high or low caste etc. Men and women all clean, work, worship etc. There is great respect for everyone and everyone has great humility.
When I was there, all of the PL Buddhist Devotees that I met, from the oldest to the little children were remarkably virtuous and responsible people, with an amazing sense of connectedness to their families, other beings, their community, humanity, nature and Godhead. This 'groundedness' was like something seamless that tied everything together 'holistically' / wholesomely in a kind of catHOLic / universal or ecologically healthy balance between the 'spiritual' or transcendental and the physical. They lacked the kind of GNOSTIC dualism that sharply divided the World into evil 'matter' and impersonal formless 'spirit', or the impersonal Gnostic monism or non-dualism that caused a total rejection of the perceptible material World (and Being) as entirely illusory. Thus they had a fully Incarnational Bhakti Yoga of Divine Love IN THIS WORLD, and they were not 'so heavenly minded that they were no earthly good'.
To contrast I should mention that I had very good friends from a long line of S. Indian Vaishnava Brahmins who lived here in America. They were very wealthy but still very nice ISKCON related Vaishnavas with superior educations and a beautiful mansion home and nice cars and clothes and they made big donations to the temple and were very cultured in the Vedic Arts and Sciences. They had a large family with teenage children. However in my first visit to their home, I was appalled to discover that it was absolutely filthy, except for the Altar and Murtis and areas of the Kitchen.
On the first day, as I was used to cleaning, and I was living in their house, I naturally cleaned the shower and bathroom after I used it and cleaned up after myself wherever I went in the house. When the professional Parents arrived home from work, they were shocked and forbade me to do anymore cleaning! Then I gently suggested that I could help the children to clean after they got home from school. They then said WE CANNOT CLEAN and it is out of the question for our children to clean, because we are all high class brahmins and WE DON'T CLEAN. They said that they were looking for a new housekeeper and cleaning company to do all of their cleaning, house and yard maintenance. Their beautiful place was all overgrown and trashy and I was amazed that their rich neighbors had not forced them out of the closed (gated) community of mansions. Apparently they had somehow alienated their previous crew of 'lower caste' workers.
Tragically such caste consciousness of its NOT MY JOB still dominates the thinking of many Vaishnavas. Among the P L Buddhists of Japan, everyone I met thought IT IS MY JOB. Thus the personal, family, community and all public spaces, even the streets, public bathrooms and trains and stations were all CLEAN! There was NO THEFT or public obscenity or graffiti / vandalism.
That was in 1982. Maybe the entire situation has deteriorated by now. But the cultural differences were profound between the Devotees in Japan and those in India. In Japan the Devotees tended to feel personally responsible for incarnating / creating a sattvic Heaven on Earth. In India, the Devotees were thinking that Heaven cannot be incarnate on Earth, except maybe on the Altar, or maybe that it was someone's else's responsibility to do the cleaning, the field work, to maintain the public spaces etc. A kind of gnosticism seemed to create the feeling that Heaven and Divine Love were not really possible here, so everyone should just try to get-out of this loveless Godless and illusory 'material world'. The Vaishnava doctrine that this World is REAL but temporary, and that Krishna's Abode and Divine Love descends WITH HIM HERE, seemed to be accepted as theoretical, as ideal but not real. Thus there was a spiritual apathy, a distancing and pathological renunciation of this World as a place where Godhead's Love and the Love of Godhead could or would truly incarnate, except on the Altar, in Prasadam or the Guru (maybe).
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