What We Can Learn From The Bulls

"All living bodies subsist on food grains, which are produced from rains. Rains are produced by performance of yajïa [sacrifice], and yajïa is born of prescribed duties." (Bg. 3.14)

"One who performs his duty without association with the modes of material nature, without false ego, with great determination and enthusiasm, and without wavering in success or failure is said to be a worker in the mode of goodness." Bg 18.26

Bhakta Petras, is the teamster at the Gitagrad community New Gaudadesha, in Lithuania. He has made a commitment to simple living and has focused his attention on growing grains by utilizing the bulls. Krishna Earlier in the year, Katha Dasa, the leader of New Gaudadesha, purchased one cow and two bulls, all newly born, and of a breed indigenous to the region. Padma, the cow arrived first. She is cared for by Bhakta Narada. In quick succession, about a month apart, came Balai, and then Kana, who are cared for by Petras.

When the bulls were about four months old Petras began training them to respond to voice commands. Every day he would take them to a ring and sitting in the center instruct them to walk around the perimeter, gently encouraging them with a touch to their flank with a branch.

In October this year ISKCON’s minister of cow protection, Balabhadra Prabhu (ISKCOWP) visited for three days to give Petras and Narada further lessons in caring for and training the animals. Around this time Petras began to yoke the bulls together and train them to work as a team. Most recently they have begun to pull a wagon or sled, with an increasingly heavier load.

Last week I asked Petras what he was learning by working with the bulls. Here is his reply:

1. they do not learn quickly; he must go slow as they learn slowly day-by-day
2. therefore great patience is required. A local man told Petras early on that he would have to be patient, but that man himself did not even know how patient one must be. Srila Prabhupada has said that patience is the most important quality.
3. as you are training them, they are also teaching you.
4. because they are very regulated in their actions, they force you to be regulated in yours.
5. the bull teaches you sattva; he is an animal of a sattva nature, and he will not go to rajas—you cannot make him get passionate. Instead, you yourself must come to sattva if you want to work with him. Moreover, he will bring you to sattva.
6. working with the bull may be compared to working with children or women, in that, if you get angry with them they will refuse to cooperate with you. If you are calm and reasonable they will work with you.
7. rajo-guna (increasing speed) and tamo-guna (negative reinforcement—hitting them) does not work with these animals.
8. Petras recently read from very old records how if a person had been drinking and the bulls smell that they will refuse to work with the man. Indeed, they will even try to gore him. They don’t want to associate with such people.
9. the bulls and man are a team; they work together. Unlike driving a car or tractor, where the driver simply controls the machine. With the bulls one must learn to cooperate and work as a team.
10. there is mutual dependency between the bulls and the teamster; the bulls depend on the man to feed and care for them, and the man depends on the bulls to provide necessary power for accomplishing things.

Petras’ comment gave me many realizations. The first is that Petras himself is not just training the bulls but they are training him. By his effort he is receiving valuable personal training in sattvic qualities, conditioning him to sattva-guna. Such training is difficult to come by in a world that is driven by passion and ignorance. Srila Prabhupada has taught us that we must come to the platform of sattva before we can progress to suddha-sattva, or the transcendental plane. How valuable are the cow and the bull to help us stay fixed in sattva-guna.

I also realized how our dependence on the cow and the bull teaches the entire human society sattva, and keeps them in sattva. Having abandoned the bull we have lost our tether to sattva and are the entire human race is drifting inexorably to rajas and tamo-guna, with the attendant terrible consequences that we are now beginning to reap, economically, socially, politically, etc.

Next I realized that the reason that Petras has had so many wonderful realizations because he made room for, and a commitment to Dharma (the bulls) in his life. He gave the bulls a place in his world. Giving them a place means giving them a duty, and that is the birth of yajna (yajna is born of prescribed duties), as stated in the quote from Bhagavad-gita above. Only interested in what they can take from others, modern man does not realize what the cow and bull have to give to us. Neither does modern man understand sattva-guna or the tremendous benefits that accrue to society as a whole by giving these animals their place in human society. Indeed, that is the case with all living beings in this world since, Om purnam ada purnam idam, this world is perfectly equipped as a complete whole.

Instead they think they can do better by killing the bull and exploiting the cow. You may know that we have a very old bull here, Nandi. The neighbors ask why we bother to keep an old bull. They tell us we should kill him. Such an  impoverished mentality of selfishness does not allow them to recognize the value of the bull, dharma, or reap the benefits of associating with these animals.

Bhakta Petras has found a goldmine—following the instructions of Sri Krishna Himself, as well as that of our acharyas, protecting dharma by giving the bulls engagement. There is no question that he will receive the blessings of that Supreme Cowherd. Later, in his maturity, after decades spent in learning from the bulls, he will have a wonderful future traveling around and instructing others how to heal the damage done to Mother Bhumi by employing the services of Dharma, the bull. There is no other place in today’s world to acquire such benefits.

Srila Prabhupada instructs us: "What is their economic progress? That means busy fool. Fool, they do not know how to satisfy the economic problem. That is recommended in the Bhagavad-gita, You grow food grains. Then all economic questions are solved. But why you are not producing food grains? Why you are producing iron stools and instruments and motor and tire and collecting petrol far away from Arabia? That is... Krishna never says that “You do all this nonsense.” He said, “Grow food grains.”. . . No, that is waste of energy. Because you are eating the bulls, therefore you require a tractor. Otherwise you don’t kill the bulls. This animal will do the business of tractor."

October 19, 1975