How can we advance spiritually while having family and job responsibilities?

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So how can we say as parents, with a child, with professional responsibilities, how can we make steady spiritual advancement? See, spiritual advancement is basically a process of connecting with Krishna. The connection with Krishna is a matter of the heart. It happens through various ways.
One is through our साधन. Second is through our संग. The third is through our सेव.
The fourth is through our स्वाद्यार. स्वाद्यार, study of scriptures. So now, for different people, the strength of the connection may be through different things.
So each person, somebody might have one more stronger than the other. So for example, some people may be very socially oriented. And if there’s a nice community of devotees, they feel very inspired over there.
They feel, oh, I can go there, I can meet people, interact with them. And it’s perfectly fine. Some people may be more of service oriented.
They feel that I go to a temple, but what am I doing there? I should have something tangible as my identity, as my contribution. Could that be in terms of Lakshmi? Anything, anything. Lakshmi in terms of preaching, in terms of deity worship, in terms of having a responsible service in the temple, maybe in management or coordinating a program, festival, whatever it means.
For some people, it may come through their स्वाद्यार. They really feel, I want to study, I want to explain, understand, explain. Usually that will be related to some kind of preaching or teaching role.
But they get a lot of nourishment by understanding things. For some people, it may just say, oh, I have to do my japa in the early morning. Nothing else matters.
Now, the important thing is, we shouldn’t presume that what others feel important must be important for us. So, it may be that some other devotees, if you hear also, it’s called a cross section of devotees classes. Sometimes we have 5 devotees classes, 5 different devotees will emphasize 5 different things.
You should read Prabhupada books every day. Somebody else may say, I have to distribute Prabhupada books. Somebody else may say, oh, in Grastha means you have to have deity worship.
Where are deities in your home? So, everybody will emphasize different things. And it’s not wrong because that is the way Krishna has inspired them. But Krishna is a personal God and they are a person and we are persons.
So, we have to find out what is the best way in our personal, how our personal relationship with Krishna can be developed. So, it’s a… But Prabhupada, can I… Just let me complete this. So, rather than… In all of these, we need to do something.
There is a basic thing which we have to do. Yeah, we have some kind of altar. Some kind of altar we have at our home.
We do our japa. We have some kind of service in the temple. It can be financial contribution or whatever.
We all read some, hear some classes, read some books. You cannot ignore one point completely. No, no.
Ignoring is not to be considered. It is just that focusing. So, we have to focus on that activity which inspires us the most, which connects us the best with Krishna.
We do the others also. But if we try to do something which doesn’t inspire us so much and sometimes we become unnecessarily hard on ourselves. It means, you know, I am not doing this well, I am not doing this well, I am not doing this well.
So, it’s not the desire to improve is good. But at the same time, we have to know that Krishna has a plan for us. And we don’t have to… We just have to go along doing the best we can in Krishna’s service and things will move on.
So, if we are too hard on ourselves, you are not doing this, you are not doing this, you are not doing this, that can unnecessarily discourage us. So, the phalena parichayate means that we have to see the result. So, if say I am not able to chant attentively, it’s a matter of concern.
But if my overall spiritual life is going on well, then that means that I don’t have to be extremely concerned. Overall spiritual life is going on well means two main things. That attachment to Krishna and attachment to devotional things in general and detachment from anti-devotional things.
So, if you are feeling very strongly tempted by something anti-devotional, then that would mean something is our devotional connection is weak. But if it is improving, that means… It’s definitely. You can’t expect an overnight change.
So, it’s gradual. Now, often it may also be that we also go through different phases and say sometimes we may want to focus more on swadhya, sometimes we want to focus more on sadhana, sometimes we focus on association, sangha. That can also vary.
Say for example, if you are in a community when there is a festival Janmashtami, there is lots of seva. At that time if I start saying, the festival is at 12 o’clock at night, and I say I want to wake up at 4 o’clock, so I’ll sleep at 10 o’clock on that day. That doesn’t make any sense.
Krishna has appeared at 12 o’clock, people are coming at that time. So, the point is that even in these four activities, we may change our priorities at different times. So, the important thing is that we do that which inspires us, not in a whimsical sense or not in an arbitrary sense.
So, if I decide for the next one month, I am trying to focus on improving my japa and try the best we can during that time. In another month we may feel, now this focus on japa is becoming too much. Sometimes then we may decide, I want to study the philosophy a little bit.
I may focus more on swadhya, maybe hear classes, maybe read some books more. Another time, maybe we are going to a place where some yatra or somewhere, we have a lot of association. I’ll focus on association.
So, if I go for a yatra or a retreat and there are so many devotees over there, there I sit and start reading books. It’s good to read books, but books we can read elsewhere also. There it’s a positive to associate.
So, it’s more like if you are going on a drive, sometimes the road is crowded. It goes slowly. We are still moving in the right direction.
Sometimes the road is even more faster. So, like that in our life, sometimes our goal is to go towards Krishna. Sometimes our journey may, other factors may crowd our life journey.
Like when you have a small child, naturally the child will take a lot of time. And rather than seeing that as a slowing down of our journey towards Krishna, you can see that actually, yes, specific forms of devotional service may be slowed down. But actually, you are expanding your service.
A child is also a gift from Krishna. And you are serving Krishna through the child also. But specific forms of devotional service may slow down at particular times.
It’s perfectly okay. So, as long as overall we are moving forward, sometimes slower, sometimes faster, that’s fine. And even in our profession, yes, it is not that in our profession we need to be overtly devotional all the time.
When Arjuna was fighting the Kurukshetra war, there is no report anywhere in the Mahabharata that Arjuna was chanting Hare Krishna at that time. His devotion was in his intention primarily that he was fighting the war for Krishna’s sake. Similarly, we also, whatever is our profession, ultimately our intention is to serve Krishna.
And the more we practice bhakti, the more the intention will become prominent. We have an intention to have position, to have fame, to have wealth, all that is fine. But all that is, life is meant for Krishna ultimately.