Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #15 – The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Preachers Part I
Dhanurdhara Swami April 7th, 2025
A group of devotees gathered to hone their skills in communicating krishna-bhakti, and I was asked to give a talk based on what makes a preacher effective. I thought about it deeply. This is what I came up with:
1. Personal Realization
Most importantly, a preacher must have personal realization in order to effectively communicate Krishna consciousness. Śrīla Prabhupāda defines personal realization:
“Personal realization does not mean that one should, out of vanity, attempt to show one’s own learning by trying to surpass the previous ācārya. He must have full confidence in the previous ācārya, and at the same time he must realize the subject so nicely that he can present the matter for the particular circumstances in a suitable manner. The original purpose of the text must be maintained. No obscure meaning should be screwed out of it, yet it should be presented in an interesting manner for the understanding of the audience. This is called realization.” Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.4.1, purport
But how does one get personal realization? It is obtained by a depth of understanding of the philosophy of krishna-bhakti as taught in one’s spiritual lineage and the sincere practice of what one has understood.
Without such personal realization, preachers will do one of two things. They will either keep the subject in the language in which they received it, even if their audience has a different frame of reference for interpreting that language. Or they will reformat the message for the understanding of the audience and lose its original meaning. An expert preacher, however, must be able format the message for a particular circumstance, as Śrīla Prabhupāda said, without losing its original intent. There is no doubt one of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s most important assets in successfully sharing krishna-bhakti around the world was his personal realization.
Eleven days after Śrīla Prabhupāda left the world, the traditional ceremony to commemorate the passing of a great soul was held at the Krishna Balarama Temple. Customarily, the most senior Vaiṣṇava present is chosen to preside over the function. In this case, a sannyāsī godbrother from an aristocratic brāhmaṇa family, who had gone to the West before Śrīla Prabhupāda, was chosen. Although he was highly lauded for bringing back two Germans whom he had converted to krishna-bhakti, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s accomplishment in preaching in the West far exceeded his own and this seemed to disturb him. That became apparent when he gave the invocation and appeared to minimize Śrīla Prabhupāda in his talk. “I could have done what Śrīla Prabhupāda had done, but I didn’t have the mentality to preach to the hippies.” Although it appeared to be an insult, at the time I somehow was able to reinterpret what he said as a compliment. I considered “What is ‘the mentality to preach to the hippies?’ It’s the deepest level of personal realization that enabled Śrīla Prabhupāda to communicate Krishna consciousness, a very high subject couched in a foreign culture, to those, possessing very little frame of reference to comprehend it.”
Although I think deep personal realization is essential for preaching krishna-bhakti carefully, we must also be careful not to make an absolute correlation between one’s ability to communicate Krishna consciousness and one’s level of spiritual advancement. There are devotees fixed in Krishna consciousness who simply lack the personal nature, communication skills, or emotional intelligence to effectively speak as a preacher to all people. One’s generational, gender, ethnic, or social experience may also be a factor in relating to certain groups. While Śrīla Prabhupāda could transcend that, not all preachers can. However, they may be able to effectively communicate to those groups that are more suited to their characteristics and experience. Still, a level of personal realization is still essential.
Because I consider personal realization as the most essential quality of a preacher, I have spent a whole post on this one quality. Next week I will discuss my experience of the six other habits of highly effective preachers—empowering, nonsectarian, proactive, giving Vrindavan, transmitting culture, and preparing the next generation.
- Monday Morning Greetings
- Comments(0)