A second meeting

I met a young high school girl in Kensington market and while I did not remember her, she reminded me of our meeting a few months ago. Enthusiastically she told me that she had read the Chant and be happy and had read it. She told me she really liked it and had already got some of her friends to read it. Just that morning I was listening to a lecture where it was being explained how people who have already had some association with Srila Prbahupada books are very receptive, and here we had a person who was unknowingly dong sankirtan by asking her friends to read the book. So I handed her a Bhagavad Gita as it is even though she had said she did not have much money. She deeply appreciated the Sanskrit and took the time to understand the picture on Reincarnation. She told me she was not interested in religion even though she believed in God. She was raised Catholic and was very disappointed as people did not practice what they preached. I showed her the Guru Parampara in beginning of the Gita and told her how the message is lost when disciplic succession is broken. I showed her the section in Introduction where Srila Prabhupada explains the difference between Religion and Sanatana Dharma…I briefly explained it to her and she marked it in her copy so she could go home and read it. Vaisesika Prabhu had told us that Bhagavad-Gita is sold on its own merit and it was nice to see how she was reading and loving sections of it.

The English world religion is a little different from sanätana-dharma. Religion conveys the idea of faith, and faith may change. One may have faith in a particular process, and he may change this faith and adopt another, but sanätana-dharma refers to that activity which cannot be changed. For instance, liquidity cannot be taken from water, nor can heat be taken from fire. Similarly, the eternal function of the eternal living entity cannot be taken from the living entity. Sanätana-dharma is eternally integral with the living entity.