hi christian everyone welcome to the principles of temple administration so today we're going to discuss the involvement of people or devotees specifically we're going to focus on the importance of engaging devotees and something known as the racy matrix shiloh prabhupada made a few very powerful statements and one letter to mukunda on 13th of may 1967 very early on shiloh prabhupada said that the devotees of the temple must keep themselves engaged otherwise they cannot make progress in krishna in another letter shiloh prophet says that krishna wants that everyone should utilize his talent as far as possible
arjuna was a great fighter and krsna encouraged him to fight he never said that he should sit down and i shall go do it for you although he was certainly able to the principle should be that we utilize our talents for the service of the lord and that is real sannyas so this was in a letter to high agreement overview of this section key benefits of this principle the results of the application a rare opportunity intelligent involvement what is a racy matrix adverse effects of the non-application of the racy matrix and the benefits of the
racy matrix application so the objectives by the end of this course you should be able to identify key advantages of the involvement of devotees in your templar center engaging devotees using the racy matrix understanding the advantages of following the racy matrix and understanding the effects of not following the racy matrix involvement of devotees basically the devotees are the essence of any temple or center and their full involvement enables their own advancement in krishna consciousness as well as the growth of the temple or center on all levels i mean in one sense you could say it's
a bit of a no-brainer as they say that we have to involve the devotees and involving them means involving them and looking after them in the right way the key benefits of involving the devotees means that they'll be motivated committed and involved within the templar center there'll be innovation and creativity in furthering the temple's goals or objectives devotees being accountable for their own performance and devotees eager to participate in and contribute to continual improvement so like this devote these are some of the benefits and the result of the application of focusing on and involving and
uh engaging devotees is devotees will understand the importance of their contribution so the voters will actually feel like oh i know where i'm giving i'm giving some making some contribution contributing in a positive way devotees will be able to recon recognize the constraints to their performance so they'll know where they're being held back or where they're holding themselves back and their performance they'll accept ownership of problems and take responsibility for solving them devotees will actively seek opportunities to enhance their competence and devotees will freely share knowledge and experience so there are many results of the
application ultimately we're going to have empowered devotees we're going to have the advancement of devotees in krishna consciousness and we're going to increase their loyalty to iskcon shula prabhupada made a statement about working for the mission he said that our principle should be therefore that we should work for the mission with great enthusiasm with certainty for its success and patiently follow the regulative principles and associate ourselves with pure devotees and work being completely in krishna consciousness that will make us happy and successful that's in a letter to brahmananda another one from shilla prabhupada about the
importance of devotee engagement please continue your very good service and do not feel any feeling of uselessness it's true that krishna has given some opportunity to serve him by nice writing some good business ability some nice cooking and so on but these various services are all accepted equally by krishna on the transcendental plane one service is as good as another so there's no question of higher or lower srila prabhupada had such transcendental vision he can understand this this principle and it's epitomized in the example of hanuman and the squirrel so while lord rama was building
the bridge to lanka and he had the help of the whole monkey army of course they were floating these rocks then hanuman was bringing these huge mountainous boulders and placing them in the sea in order to build the bridge and then he noticed at one point this tiny little squirrel who was just throwing in a few pebbles and hanuman kind of told him to get out of the way you know you're you're interrupting i had this big service and you're just really not doing much at all but lord rama who understood the the value of
all service he told hannah my no actually i accept his service equally on par with your service so the point that we have to understand from this is that service is on the absolute platform so one performs service according to one's skills and one's abilities and it should be accepted like that and in this way we have to have the proper mentality when we're engaging different devotees and people in our temple and centers so intelligent involvement so the leader has to try to keep some some data of everyone who comes to the templar center it's
important that we have some information about who the people are that are coming in this way if we have the right data and information we can try to engage them in the best possible way so it's good if we know what are their skill base what's the educational qualifications that they have what is it that actually inspires them in devotional service and do they have any feedback of how we can actually improve our service to them or the service that they've been asked to do and then based on these these considerations and according to the
center's needs then we can definitely involve more people in the service of the lord the templer center administration has to create innovative engagement for varieties of people who are showing interest in rendering any services shilla prabha once made the statement that actually i'm creating so many projects for all of you to be engaged in because you can't just simply sit down and chant hare krishna my personal experience is that when first coming to the temple i was engaged in service and i felt such a part of the mission i actually felt like i had something
to do i had some contribution and it was so nice to feel like i was part of this so it's part of the mission so it's really important that we try to engage and come up with as many activities as possible to engage people according to their talents and capabilities a really wonderful and powerful quote from shiloh prophet who explains that this is the leader's responsibility he says our leaders shall be careful not to kill the spirit of enthusiastic service which is individual and spontaneous and voluntary he said that they should try always to generate
some atmosphere a fresh challenge to the devotees so that they will agree enthusiastically to rise and meet that challenge that is the art of management to draw out spontaneous loving spirit of sacrificing some energy for krishna this is such a powerful quote i encourage you as a leader or as a manager to to take this quote put it on on a piece of paper and put it in front of your desk put it on your phone wherever you can regularly look at it because it's really important this is what we have to do we have
to create an environment where people are inspired to surrender and sacrifice their time and energy in the service of krishna so what is the role of the center leader so the center leader has primarily three functions that he has to try to do he or she has to try to do in order to inspire first he has to emphasize the glories of various services basically what does that mean it doesn't create tension between different services saying this one's better than that's better you're better this one's better you emphasize the glories of all the different services
later we'll discuss systems of pros approach and processes and we understand how if all the parts of the of the system aren't working together then you don't get the result so we have to have the cooks we have to have the cleaners we have to have the book distributors we have to have the pujaris we have to have everyone involved so a leader has to emphasize these varieties of services and glorify them the leader also has to create a sense of gratefulness within the participant so the devotee of the person who's doing the service we
want to encourage them and help them to understand they should really feel grateful for this service not in begrudging not be grudged about the fact i have to do this or i have to do that but actually they should come thinking i am so fortunate that i've got the opportunity to do some service for krishna i remember once when i first was coming to the temple one devotee told me as i was cleaning the floor of the temple room and i remember i was actually quite frustrated because after breakfast there were no volunteers to do
it and i volunteered to do it so i was doing it on my own i didn't really know what i was doing and it was a little frustrating and then one of the um lady pujari she kind of stuck her head in the temple room and she saw me and she said oh prabhu you're doing such nice service and i was thinking well yeah and she said you know when you clean krishna's floor you're actually cleaning your heart and i was thinking oh that's amazing and she just encouraged and inspired me so much in doing
this cleaning that it made me feel grateful so just as that mataji did for me we have to appreciate the and the contribution of every participant so as well as the participant feeling grateful understanding that the service that i have is valuable there has to be a mood of appreciation so these are the roles of the leader to emphasize the importance of each service to create a sense of gratefulness within the participant and also to appreciate the contribution of each participant so how do we constructively and systematically engage persons in service so there is something
known as the racy matrix so there's a little video here that we're going to play about the racy matrix so if you watch this i think that's going to more or less explain things in quite detail okay so hopefully that makes sense it's pretty clear now we have another video we'd like for you to watch and this is something that we've put together to show some of the adverse effects of the non-application of the racy matrix so i think you're going to probably recognize a few things in this it should make a little sense to
you so what did you think about that did you see some things in that video that made a little sense okay so now we're going to show similar video but by applying the racy matrix and then you'll get to see what the benefits are of the application of the racy matrix have a look okay so we sincerely hope that you found this this presentation useful and that you'll be able to make some applications for involving and engaging devotees and community members in your temple or center it's unlimited the different ways and knowledge and information about
this topic of engagement of people so we would encourage you to look more of that up if you have the time and at the same time we would like to thank you for taking your very valuable time to try to cultivate more knowledge so that you can better improve your service to iskcon to shilla prabhupada into your local temple or center we thank you very very much hari krishna
