Reading Powerfully in a Way that Expands
By Sitapati Das
There are hundreds of devotees now using this practice to cause themselves and others to read Prabhupada’s books, in an expanding network that develops a conversation around these books and builds a network of trusted relationships.
We need this conversation and this network both for our own well-being and to accomplish Srila Prabhupada’s mission on this planet.
“The Great Reset” is a massive global transformation with a lot of moving parts. It is our opportunity to “intercept the pass”. This is when the asuras fumble the ball, and we pick it up for an end run into the Golden Age predicted in the Brahma-vaivarta Purana.
A Prabhupada disciple said: "Krishna could give the entire world to the devotees tomorrow, but we wouldn't know what to do with it".
Srila Prabhupada himself is reported to have said: “Krishna can give us the entire world in 18 days if we are surrendered enough”.
We have to grow up real fast, because He is about to hand us the world. This practice is part of our preparation - training ourselves and each other, and operating as a team, rather than an uncoordinated collection of individuals.
The Practice
This is a very powerful daily reading practice in community, with three elements:
1. Daily discipline. This is a vow. It must be done, and it generates power because it is an immovable object that generates an irresistible force.
2. Collaboration. Get out of your head and into life with others. This is not about you, it is about empowering another person to read. Your reading is a side-effect of this. Your reading alone has a limited effect. You getting other people to read in a way that empowers them to get other people to read has no limits.
3. Reading. This gets done. The effect of reading Srila Prabhupada’s books is profound. It changes the course of your life and the course of history.
In doing this practice you will read, and you will develop an expanding network of trusted relationships (people who you know you can rely on because they do what they say will do, every day), and an expanding conversation around Prabhupada’s books and implementing them in the world.
How to do it
Basic 1:1 Reading
Start with this and cause yourself and your partner to be 100% reliable for it.
1. You and one other person create a vow to read every day.
2. You create a group in Signal (or some other app).
3. Each day, you listen to your reading partner’s recordings. Add a react emoji (if the app supports it), to let your partner know you have listened to their recordings.
4. Post the verse number that you are about to read. This avoids the situation where you and your partner do your recording at the same time.
5. Then you record one verse - the Sanskrit, word-for-word, translation and purport.
6. Then you record 60s - 120s (max) of your realization about what you just read. Keep to the time limit. This must stay workable to allow it to expand.
7. Your partner does the same.
This has you systematically read Prabhupada’s book every single day, and powerfully cause another to do the same.
“Anywhere Bhagavad-gītā is chanted, that place becomes a tīrtha [a holy place].” - Srila Prabhupada, quoted in the Srila Prabhupada-lilamrita.
Below is a screenshot of a 1:1 reading of Bhagavad-gita As It Is.
This pattern can be duplicated by each of you, and by the new people that you introduce to this practice, enabling it to expand. This creates a network of people reading Srila Prabhupada’s books.
This is a micro-habit - it is easy to do, and easy not to do. Your reading for two hours a day by yourself accomplishes something, but the effect is trivial when compared with the effect of you doing one hour or even ten minutes of this with other people who do this with other people who do this with other people, who do this …. Etc.
Your reading is now not an individual concern, but a community concern. While taking responsibility for empowering yourself, you are empowering others. This is an extremely powerful dynamic.
Group Reading
This style is best suited to prose books - like Sri Prahlada’s Leadership Lessons from Bhagavad-gita - books that do not have verses, but are continuous text.
With four people:
1. Create a group in Signal or another app.
2. Establish the agreements for the group. Some groups have an agreement to complete their reading for the day by a certain time of the day, others do not. What happens when someone misses a day? Some groups require them to post a video of them doing 10 pushups for every day that they miss (the total number increases with each miss). Some groups have them post twice the next day (some do not because this impacts the time of the other participants). When will someone be removed from the group? (We have removed people for failure to reliably keep their agreement with the group). Setting these agreements out in the beginning will make the group workable. Don’t get caught up on this step. Start reading immediately, and have conversations to create any missing agreements as you identify them. We started the first group with no agreement other than “read every day”, and added others as we identified the need.
3. Each day, listen to the recordings of the others in the group. Leave a react emoji on each recording to let them know that you listened to it.
4. Then record yourself reading for 60s from the place the last person left off.
5. Then record another 60s max voice message with your realisation. It is important to keep to the time limit. With four people, this is an 8m per day practice. Recording longer messages makes it unworkable and impacts the reproduction of the practice.
Below is an example of a group reading “The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Talent of Turning Trials into Triumph”.
Supporting Practices
Ensuring you get it done
I use a habit tracker app (HabitShare and Streaks) to track my completion of these reading agreements every day. I make sure this is all green before I go to sleep. This ensures that I do not miss a day. As a bonus, when you see that you read for 173 days in a row, you don’t want it to go back to “1”, so it leverages the psychological economics of “sunk cost”.
Below is a screenshot of HabitShare. Ensuring you get it done on time For reading agreements that must be completed by a specific time of the day, I have an alarm set for one hour before the due time:
Getting a device that supports this practice
I purchased a second-hand Android phone for $80 that I use for reading.
My main phone is used to record, and my other phone is used to access prabhupadabooks.com and read from ebooks.
You can download most ebooks for free from libgen.is, or you can buy them from Amazon and use the Kindle app.