How can we cultivate humility in our bhakti?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
How can we cultivate humility and avoid pride in our devotional service? The humility has many different aspects to it.
Srila Prabhupada defines humility in the 13th chapter 8 to 12, that is, humility means to not be anxious to have the satisfaction of being honoured by others. So, humility simply means we do our service to Krishna and we are not very anxious, how many people praise me. If people honour us, we accept that honour, but we don’t expect that honour.
Humility doesn’t mean that we are always saying I am good for nothing, I am fallen, I can’t do anything. That itself is not humility, that can just be simply negative self-centredness. Humility means we understand that actually I am a servant of Krishna, let me serve Krishna.
So, if our thoughts are focused on service, Krishna and service to Krishna, then we can actually avoid pride even if we are doing valuable services, even if we are doing services which are praiseworthy. If we remember that my abilities are coming from Krishna and they are meant for the service of Krishna, then we can avoid pride by remembering that this is a gift from Krishna and I am using this in Krishna’s service. So, what we have is Krishna’s gift to us.
What we become is another gift to Krishna. And if we see our service as an offering to Krishna based on what he has given to us, then we won’t become proud. And in terms of interpersonal relationship with others, one simple way in which we can judge whether we are humble is humility means that we are as interested in the other person as we are in ourselves.
Now, if we meet someone and we are always talking about oh, I did this and I went here and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, then that indicates that we can see the fair indicator of pride. But if you are interested in the other person and okay, we want to know what they are doing, what is going on in their lives and also interested in other person also means we are interested in how we can benefit them, how we can connect them with Krishna. So, we try to understand their situation.
So, somebody might be in the position of authority, pride, and somebody might be in the position of subordinate. But even the person who is in the position of authority, they can be humble if they are genuinely interested in their subordinate and are trying to do, trying to understand how they can best benefit their subordinate. So, humility is not just in terms of simply in the position that who is higher and who is external in the higher position and who is in the lower position.
Somebody may be in a higher position, but they may actually be having humility as simply a means by which I can serve Krishna. So, by remembering that our gifts are coming from Krishna and by interacting with others, being interested in other people, not just being interested in talking about ourselves and what we are doing, that way we can cultivate humility.