How can we be friendly with equals without becoming casual?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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So When we are with equals And it is said that we should become friendly With our equals But what does friendship mean? Sometimes we become very casual with our friends The Essence of friendship is what Rupa Goswami talks about the six exchanges So Giving gifts, receiving gifts And speaking our heart Hearing them speak their heart And honoring prasad Offering them food, taking prasad from them This is the essence of friendship Among these three I would say the most important Is the second So Now when we Open our hearts to them or they open Their hearts to us First of all we should not be We cannot make friendship A legislated activity No Actually we have to see where our hearts There are some people with which We just click This makes sense to me The way this person is saying It just clicks for me We find even one friend like that Even if that friend is somewhere far away Some other place Invest some time, invest some energy in developing that relationship So when you talk about Friendship First is we find somewhere where it clicks And invest time in developing that relationship But along with that We are living in a particular group of people And there also we may have Some people with whom we need to have good relationship So then we can Find out while dealing with them That where Are our Shared interests There are If we consider Two people We are both like two circles Or two sets When we form a friendship The friendship has to be founded In some point of intersection Between the two sets And from that intersection Our area of interest May also expand I may not have I have a friend who Loves to study Gaudiya Vaishna literature Literature written with Songs of Narottam Das Thakur Songs of Kavi Karnapur Now I may not have much interest in that But when I became a friend Our interest might have been That devotee is a Bhagavata scholar, I also like to study the Bhagavata So that Bhagavata was our Intersection point But through that intersection point When we are talking about Bhagavata This point is illustrated from this song also I don’t know, tell me about the song So then our interest develops So we have to find first Some shared interest And from that shared interest We expand So that we become interested in what they are doing And they may also become interested in other things Which we are interested in So now The center of the relationship Has to be the shared interest And from there it can move on And it may be That with some people there are just not many Shared interests We are all different people And I said that What can be legislated Is functional relationships It is not heart to heart relationships Functional relationships Both of you are working together in this project So have a functional relationship And functional relationships are also important So in general In the devotee community We should not have harsh relationships with anyone There may be always when we are working together There is some friction here and there But then we can ruffle the feathers afterwards And try to have a cordial relationship with everyone So When we start feeling that we are We are taking others lightly Taking others lightly Is not just a matter of You know you call someone Without using the word Prabhu That can be one way But that is a very external thing When we take people lightly That essentially means that We Take their words lightly And we give We take the words we give to them lightly So for example if I tell them I will do this It is not always possible for us to do what we do But then it is our responsibility to inform I said I will do it But actually I was not able to do it This is the reason and I will either do it Or I will ask somebody else to do it or you please adjust Tell them in time So basically in every relationship There are some amount of some commitments which come up So if we take those Commitments seriously Then the form other things in that Relationship that will not matter so much There will be different Different devotees with whom we have different Flavors of relationships Some devotees with whom the relationship May be such that there may be a greater Level of intimacy And then a high degree of formality Will interfere with that relationship So we shouldn’t Think that just because somebody is very Informal that means they don’t value their relationship Or just because somebody is very formal that means they value their relationship You know The value of the relationship is Based on how much We value the words given and taken In those relationships If we are taking care of that then other things Will fall in place in due course Does it answer your question?