How can we focus on our spiritual advancement without becoming selfish?

Anwser Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
God’s spiritual advancement. We become uncaring about our family members. We become irresponsible.
So, how do we see this? See, the word selfish has a very strong negative connotation to it. But, but we all have our needs. To want to address our needs is not selfishness.
That means that, say, in a family, we want our family members also to take food. But we also need to eat. It’s taking care of our needs.
We can put other people’s needs first, but then if we are not eating at all, we are going to become weak and then we are going to fall sick and others will have to care for us. So, to take care of our needs is not selfishness. And if we are practicing spiritual life, we also have, we need to pay attention to our spiritual side.
So, that is not considered selfishness. Now, the problem comes when we have a very, we have a very compartmentalized understanding of spiritual life, spiritual growth. That means we think that only if I am chanting, only if I am going for programs, only if I am going to temple, that is spiritual.
Everything else is material. So, when we have this very rigidly compartmentalized understanding of spirituality, then we are actually, Krishna is everywhere. But we are seeing Krishna only in some places.
We are not able to see Him in other places. And that is a sign of a Kanishta Adhikari. It’s a very low level devotee.
One who can see Krishna only in the temple. Now, of course, there are some atheists who say that Krishna is everywhere. Why do you need to go to the temple? Such people, they are not able to see Krishna even in the temple.
So, we have to begin by seeing Krishna in the temple. It’s like, those who say that God is everywhere, no, that way if you see, water vapour is everywhere. When I am thirsty, water is everywhere in the form of water vapour.
When I am thirsty, can I just hang out my tongue and I’ll get water? Can’t do that. Water has to be, I have to go somewhere where water is available. So, definitely, we need to have time for direct spiritual activities.
We need to go to temple. We need to have direct devotional activities. But along with that, the characteristic of Madhyam Adhikari is, Madhyam Adhikari is a middle level devotee.
Madhyam Adhikari understands that my relationship with God doesn’t depend only what I do directly in relationship with God. My relationship with God also depends on how I relate with others. How I relate with other devotees.
How I relate with other people who are innocent. They may not be devotees, but they are innocent. And how I relate with people also who are anti-devotional.
So, basically, here we see, we have a holistic vision of bhakti. Holistic vision of understanding how our relationship with God develops. It is not just how we directly relate with God, but also how we relate with others.
So, in our family, we have certain responsibilities there. And if we neglect those responsibilities thinking, I want to make spiritual advancement, then we may chant more, we may do our own devotional activities more. But actually, we are still operating under a very restricted conception of spirituality.
Only if I am doing this, I am being spiritual. I am doing that, that is not spiritual. But we do it like that.
And our family responsibilities, they can be spiritualized. If we see our family members as parts of Krishna, it is by Krishna’s arrangement that we are in a particular family, and we do our part in that mood of service to Krishna, then through that also we are making spiritual advancement. So, we have our needs for which we do need to give time.
For our bhakti activities. But along with that, if we neglect our family responsibilities, then that is not, it is not so much detachment, it is more of a responsibility. So, there has to be a, over a period of time we ourselves learn how to balance.
Sometimes we may do our devotional activities a little more, and then it happens that our family activities get neglected. But then there are times when in the family there are more urgent situations, and we pay more attention, more time over there. And sometimes our spiritual activities go down.
So, we have to learn a balance. But what we should not have is the idea that only directly devotional activities are devotional. Even our other activities, they can also be spiritualized.
And to the extent we see that our whole life is spiritualizable, to that extent actually we are rising to a higher level of bhakti. Does it answer the question? The second question? Yes, we’ll come back to you.