How should we deal with anti-devotional activities happening in our environment?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so if we are living in a culture where anti-devotional things are happening say people are eating meat or whatever other things are happening so what should we do in such a situation should we just see them negatively or how should we act see there are two different things over here one is our own consciousness and one is our relationship with others so we need to protect our consciousness and whatever is required for that we can do that but its quite another thing to impose our standards on others or to judge others as bad just because they are not following our standards now actually in today’s world its mostly post-modern its a very individualistic culture so if we want to do our thing if we want to be vegetarian people are ok with that they leave us alone to do what we want to do as long as we leave them alone to do what they want to do so now if they are infringing on us they are forcing us to do the things which they want us to do we can just be firm and say no there is sometimes in a particular environment there is peer pressure oh come on do this otherwise how will you belong to a group you have to do this you have to do that now actually peer pressure is primarily fear pressure like the fear of being left out the fear of being isolated but we need to know that actually when we live according to certain principles it may leave us out from certain people but we will be able to connect with other people also so in that sense we will not be left alone and people also as i said that peer pressure is not all that much if we just resist a little bit initially they will just accept it this is the way you are its fine if they feel that we will bend if they feel that we are going to bend then they will push us more to bend but if we stay firm in our principles you do what you want i will do what i want so thats with respect to if there is any activity involving something that is going to hurt our consciousness something that is especially going to make us do something which is anti-devotional we have to be firm in that while but while we are dealing with others if somebody else is eating meat we shouldn’t be judging them as per our standards this is not my standards this is scriptural standards this is given by god thats fine but they don’t know that they don’t accept us so quite often say if there is a road there is a road here and there is a ditch here now i can see there is a ditch here and i can see there is a road there but suppose somebody else is not able to see that they are seeing both as simply roads don’t go there go here no don’t go there now if they are not seeing that for whatever reason then what happens is that often we offer we pass out moral judgments without offering philosophical education so people are not seeing the way i am seeing so rather than telling them this is bad give it up see you take the specs how does it feel? its bad so basically what we need to do is rather than judging people for what they are doing we try to share with them the spiritual values the spiritual wisdom of the scriptures to the extent that they are ready to take and if they are ready to take it they will themselves accept so as long as they are seeing the different vision they will not agree with whatever we are saying so therefore if we become too too judgmental while dealing with others we will simply alienate others so if we if we have to work with someone if we have to deal with someone on a regular basis then we just have to learn to tolerate that now should we see that as degraded there is a we have to see what vision is favorable for our bhakti if we are seeing others as degraded in the sense that they are so fallen i am so great that is not really favorable for our bhakti we can see it as that ok you know krishna is so kind that if he had not come in my life i would also have been like that so we instead of looking down at them in contempt we look up at krishna in gratitude and then we will think how can i share the same thing in whatever way appropriate so if we are contentful of others we will just come off as so judgmental we will alienate lot of people i was in this texas bible belt state where aggressive christians are there so i saw a car with a bumper sticker on it oh god please save me from your creatures no god actually god is going to save us through his creatures but if the creatures come off as holier than thou judgmental hell and damnation creatures then what happens is save me from them so we have to we shouldn’t be like that at any time what we do is we try to share the vision that we have engineered and if they get that vision then their decisions will also change but if they don’t get that vision then we just pass off our moral judgments then we will alienate people so we live today in a multicultural world and we have to accept that different people will have different values and we want to share our values with them but rather than feeling superior because we are living in some values better than them we have to feel more fortunate when i feel superior then what is happening i am looking down i am feeling fortunate somebody greater than me has given something to me so our goal should always be to be Krishna conscious when Prabhupada came to America if Prabhupada had this holier than thou attitude Prabhupada would never have been able to to connect with the hippies actually western culture itself from the Vedic perspective is considered degraded but the hippies were considered degraded even by western people so they were considered degraded by the degraded and Prabhupada connected with them it was not by being judgmental it was by being compassionate it was by being kind it was by having a service attitude so when we develop that kind of attitude where we want to share Krishna with others but we also understand that we cannot come off as higher than them we protect our consciousness do what is required we try to share the vision with them to the extent they accept that is fine we can pray for them and we just move on we don’t pass off with the air of moral superiority we function as normal human beings deal with them nicely courteously and over a period of time even if they don’t start practicing the principles of bhakti it’s appreciated I appreciate this person I like her I don’t agree with what they do or what they say that itself is a big step for them because they are appreciating a devotee that will make them recipients of bhakti sooner or later so our interaction while interacting with others first we protect our consciousness second is we try to help them rise from where they are sometimes they may take a giant step forward sometimes they may take a microscopic step forward whatever it is we conduct ourselves in a way that they take some steps forward does it answer the question?