An example of Prabhupada using contemporary language is in a term that we use all the time. We almost say it with every breath we take. It appears about 2000 times in the VedaBase and it's not actually in the scriptures. That is the term, Vedic culture. I don't mean to say that there is no such thing as Vedic culture. I'm simply saying that the literal expression, Vedic culture, is not found within the authoritative books of Vedic culture. So to talk about a culture, like Australian culture or American culture—those are both jokes—or Tasmanian culture, Nigerian culture, Mexican culture, or whatever—Bohemian culture.  It means a set of behaviors, dress, architecture, language, marriage rituals, dance, music, cooking, hairstyles—such as the Hare Krishna “Reverse Mohawk,” etc.—so  Prabhupada used this term, Vedic culture, which is not actually found, literally, in shastra. (From lecture “Contemporary Preaching”, Gainesville, September 27, 2008)

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Now, here are a few points that I would like to make.  I realize that Prabhupada said that as a detail, and not as a general principle, we could wear a uniform. Now there are several points to make about uniforms. So we're going to have a little uniform katha. First of all,there's no strong evidence in our books such as Caitanya Caritamrita or Caitanya Bhagavat, that Lord Caitanya Himself had a uniform, a Hare Krishna uniform, or that His followers had Hare Krishna uniforms. There's no real evidence that there even was such a thing as a devotee uniform back then. For example, Lord Caitanya took His devotees out on Harinama Sankirtana, Nagar Sankirtana in Navadvipa, and there is simply no evidence in our books that they were dressed differently than everyone else in the city. So devotees have the very strong idea that if we don't go out on Harinama dressed in a very exotic uniform that somehow we are betraying Lord Caitanya, but there's actually no evidence that Lord Caitanya even used a uniform other than just sannyasa dress. We know, for example, that Lord Caitanya cut off His hair; he didn't have a sikha because he took sannyasa from an impersonal sampradaya. Why? Because that was the accredited, sannyasa ‘degree.’ He wanted an accredited sannyasa degree for preaching.

Another thing is, even if we accept the need for a uniform, the question is what is the appropriate uniform? For example, in Australia you have police, right? I mean, I realize it's an enlightened society and probably there's no real need for things like police or anything, but probably you have police. I know in America that we have police, and sometime they have all kinds of pastimes, like getting their pictures taken brutalizing minorities, which seems to be one of the great pastimes of police in this country. But anyway, police wear a certain uniform, and if you look at the uniform that police wear, that uniform is designed to inspire a particular consciousness. The uniform has a particular color, it's tailored in a certain way, it's cut in a certain way, and so when you see a policeman, you don't merely know, that's a policeman, it goes beyond that—you also know there is a sense of authority because of the way the person is dressed. The same is true for football uniforms. They're not merely uniforms but they are designed to create a certain consciousness. And it's the same for, say, doctor’s uniforms. At least in America, they're white. That must be international, right? Doctors wear white. Why? Because white is sort of like a symbol of purity or cleanliness and so on. So doctors and nurses don't merely wear a uniform, they wear specific uniforms that are designed to create a certain consciousness. So now my question is, does our uniform... first of all, there's the issue of uniforms, for which there's no authority in our scriptures. But let's say, for example, as a modern tactic, as a modern strategy, we decide that we do want to wear uniforms. Prabhupada sometimes said we should wear uniforms, although he sometimes said we don't have to wear uniforms—but, assuming that we should only hear what Prabhupada says on one side, because that's a very popular thing to do—let's say that even if we wear uniforms, then what uniform should we wear? In Australia, for example, or America, if you wear, basically, Indian dress, what does that tell people?

Now, one point, a dhoti is not a form of Vaisnava dress. In India, if you wear a dhoti, it doesn’t mean that you’re a Vaisnava, nor does it mean that you are a Gaudiya Vaisnava. It may mean that you are an illiterate villager or it may mean you're a sadhu. It can have different meanings. In fact, one of the ways to refer to someone as old fashioned, is to call them a 'dhoti walla'. That's a term now in India. But anyway, in India, if you wear a sari, it does not mean that you're a Vaisnavi. It just means you're an Indian lady, a Hindu lady. We have actually created something that didn't exist before, and that is the idea that a dhoti, an Indian dhoti, which is also used in Afghanistan by Taliban members—that shows our ability to reach out to international communities—but we have actually created the idea that the dhoti and the sari are actually devotional, Vaisnava dress. This is something that did not exist previously anywhere in the world, including India. Now, since we have created this new idea that these are devotional uniforms, there's a very simple question to ask. Do these uniforms, when we go out in public, effectively communicate what we want to communicate?

It certainly communicates, perhaps, that we're members of the Hare Krishna movement, but does it inspire people to accept us as their spiritual leaders? Well, the numbers don't seem to prove that. Not only that, but if you consider what is generally accepted as culturally neutral, in the sense that it sort of places you in the centre of a culture and doesn't commit you to this side or that side, it just sort of puts you in the centre of the culture so that you can communicate with all kinds of people. So, in terms of what is central in Western culture, and increasingly in international culture, people who are Christian priests or Jewish Rabbis or even Buddhists, generally wear some kind of dress that indicates that they are clergy or belong to a particular religion but it's somewhat understated. For example, a Christian priest wears pants, which is kind of shocking for a male priest, and a shirt but will often have a little collar. The Christian priests—Protestants and Catholics—if you look at the dress they use when they’re doing their sacred service in their church, it's much more exotic. Men wear robes and sometimes they wear high hats, which are unusual, and they may have all kinds of ornaments on them, but when they go out on the streets they dress in a way which is much more normal. So the idea is that they have an exotic uniform that they use in their church, same thing for Rabbis; they have a much a more normal uniform that they wear when they go out in public, so that people can relate to them more easily.

Sometimes you see people wearing Buddhist robes, but almost all the time, in America, when you see Buddhists wearing robes, they're actually not Americans. They come from Tibet or somewhere else, so it's like, "Oh my God, a Tibetan is dressed like a Tibetan." Anyway, people can deal with that. The idea is that... for example, Jewish Rabbis also have these exotic robes, sometimes they wear orthodox dress, but not in public. For example, devotees wear neck beads or they have a brahman thread. That's a kind of modest and respectable way of indicating that you belong to a certain religion or that you are a clergy.

Prabhupada approved that devotees go out on sankirtana wearing normal dress. He even approved of the brahmacaris slightly letting their hair grow. That didn't catch on, and for some brahmacaris it may make them a little romantic, they'll start to think that they're handsome. But still… Prabhupada said that his fear was that we would again become hippies, but, otherwise, Prabhupada himself was a householder dressed normally.

So I find it interesting that we have made it much more difficult for the public to approach devotees than Lord Caitanya did. Lord Caitanya actually took out His Harinama party and He was dressed like everybody else, so the only thing different about the devotees was that they were chanting Hare Krishna. So the only question was, "Why are you chanting Hare Krishna?"  In my humble opinion, speaking as a senior cult leader—just kidding—speaking based on my own experience, is that we very powerfully give the impression that if you want to seriously practice Bhakti Yoga, or if you just want to practice Bhakti Yoga, you first have to become ethically Indian. Now there's nothing wrong with India, it's just that we're not in India at the present time. If we were in India, we would do things in a way which made sense to Indians, obviously, or if we were in any other country.

Indians themselves… If you go to a prestigious or just any serious university in India and count how many male students you see wearing dhotis… India is increasingly becoming an important country in the new global economy, and has adopted sort of a new military strategy. Until very recently, India's basic military strategy was to be able to contain Pakistan, and defend themselves against China. But now, they want to project their military capabilities by purchasing things like long-range military aircraft and certain types of long-range naval equipment, which will enable them to protect Indian interests, internationally. To protect their economic interests, like the supply of oil that is necessary to keep the country going and so on. So it's almost like ships passing in the night. We're trying to become Indians, you know, sort of circa 1960's or something, and India, meanwhile, is going the other way. Of course, it's lonely at the top.

Prabhupada always said that the beauty of Lord Caitanya's movement was that Lord Caitanya removed all kinds of artificial impediments and obstacles and burdens which kept people from taking up spiritual life. He gave the example of the Shankara sampradaya, where, as Prabhupada said, the first condition is that you take up the renounced order of life and, only then, talk about spiritual improvement. So ISKCON, for various very easily analyzable, socio-historical-psychological reasons, has developed, an ahistorical conviction. In other words, a conviction that has no real basis in history; that Indian ethnic preferences around the time that Prabhupada came to the West, reflects eternal Vedic culture, and only certain kinds of cuisine, dress (are appropriate for practicing spiritual life). Of course, certain things come from Lord Caitanya, like mrdanga and karatals obviously, which we use. Other things just happened to be sort of like Indian cultural preferences at the time that Prabhupada grew up and at the time Prabhupada came to America.

Somehow (ISKCON has developed the idea that) these things are sort of a master ethnicity, a reflection of the spiritual world, and with this idea goes a type of unstated assumption, which is philosophically wrong in my humble opinion, but which is actually a pillar of our self-understanding.  Yet, there is no philosophical or scriptural basis for it.  In effect we are practicing a sort of 'Vaikuntha sadhana' in the sense that we are dressing as people dress in the spiritual world, we are using the same musical instruments that people use in the spiritual world, cooking the same preparations people cook in the spiritual world, using the same architecture which you will find in the spiritual world, and therefore we are in effect practicing Vaikuntha-sadhana. We are in every way sort of adopting an absolute ethnicity. And like I said, I don't think there is any philosophical or scriptural basis for this, it's just... Now, I don't mean to throw everything out and I'm not trying to turning everything upside down or the right side up in ISKCON, but I do believe that if we want to attract intelligent people—Or, the attractive alternative, we could always become a blue-collar movement—If we actually want to attract intelligent people and recreate a Vaisnava brahmana class, which was Prabhupada's real vision, we have to make a rational presentation of Krishna consciousness. We have to present Krishna consciousness in a way that is actually scientific. As we know, if you have a health problem and there is a health science which can deal with it, but there are no doctors available to you, the mere existence of a health science is not going to help you. It's not good enough to have a spiritual science in the world.  There also have to be spiritual scientists.

Rupa Goswami makes a very powerful distinction in Chapter Six of the Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu, between basic principles and details. He says that there are certain basic principles of Bhakti Yoga and there are certain details, and the basic principles are things like: accept a bonafide guru, learn from the guru how to practice Bhakti Yoga, read the Bhagavatam, worship Tulasi, associate with devotees—it's on that level. He doesn't get down to the level of things like recipes for cooking, architectural preferences, dress style, or anything like that. In fact he doesn't even get near that. Even when he gives examples of detailed principles, they are not even that detailed. So if we confuse certain external aspects with basic principles, if we merge those two, in effect, we are ruining the spiritual science. We are ruining the science by being so attached to all of the external things.  It's almost like… let's say you are a doctor and one day you are walking down the street and you see someone who has just had a heart attack or has fainted or something and, as a doctor, you think, "I can't really treat you until I get you into a white hospital gown, and I have to have you signed in and everything. So, because you’re not in that white hospital gown, I can't really treat you right now." It's madness.

(From lecture "Contemporary Preaching", Gainesville, September 27, 2008)