Gita 13.08 – Disrespecting ourselves doesn’t make us humble – respecting something bigger than ourselves does

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Humility is not about disrespecting yourself. It is about respecting something bigger than yourself. Humility is often a misunderstood virtue.
And sometimes, when people mistreat us and people abuse us, when people treat us like trash, then we may think that we are being humble by in enduring their exploitative behavior towards others. Their abusive, exploitative behavior towards others. But that is not so.
Whenever abusive behavior occurs, the abuser is responsible, but the abused sometimes facilitates, enables the abuser’s abusive behavior by consenting, by downplaying, by minimizing. And when that happens, then, of course, that does not mean that the abused is responsible, that the abuser is responsible, but still, the abuser has no reason to endure such behavior. So, humility is not about disrespecting oneself.
It is about respecting something bigger than oneself. So, self-respect is not antithetical to humility rather. Humility raises us above self-respect, not below self-respect.
That means, we understand that I am here in life for something bigger than myself. Spiritual wisdom helps us understand that we are a part of the whole and we are meant to love and serve the whole. The Bhagavad Gita reveals that whole to be Krishna.
When we learn to love and serve Krishna, then through that loving service, we grow in our devotion, we grow in our spirituality, we grow in developing our God-given abilities, which start manifesting more, we start developing more when we use them in God s service. And thus, by the practice of humility, we move steadily towards Krishna. So, humility means that instead of being absorbed in consciousness of ourselves, we are absorbed in consciousness of something bigger than ourselves.
What is we are absorbed in the consciousness of Krishna? In how can I best serve him? When we are focused on service to Krishna, then we are able to move onwards towards him with steadiness, with determination. So, now, today people talk a lot about self-respect. And it’s not wrong, because unless, even if we haven’t, even if we try to serve Krishna, it is we who take the decision to serve Krishna.
How can we take the decision if we don’t have a basic respect for our intelligence by which we can take that decision? Even when we decide to trust Krishna, even we have faith in Krishna, even if we say that I am a fool, therefore, I need Krishna’s guidance. But then to take the decision to seek Krishna’s guidance also requires intelligence and not just intelligence, it requires faith in the intelligence and this is the right thing to do. And that all boils down to respect.
So, if you respect God, and we understand that we are parts of God, then naturally we will respect ourselves as his parts. And by such self-respect, we actually move closer to Krishna. So, essentially, we practice bhakti as a means of going closer to Krishna, of connecting with Krishna, absorbing ourselves in Krishna.
And for that purpose, we recognize that we should push aside those forces that disconnect us from Krishna. And if there is no self-respect, there’s self-obsession, where we are thinking about how great I am, I have done this, I done that, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, that kind of self-obsession is definitely unfavorable for bhakti. When we think of ourselves very positively, of very egoistically as very great, but self-obsession in terms of self-pity or self-flagellation or self-hatred is also equally an obstacle on the path of bhakti.
Self-pity means we feel sorry for ourselves thinking, oh, I can’t do this, I don’t have this, I am unable to develop this skill, I don’t have that quality. If again, if such thinking like this is making us feel sorry for ourselves, that’s self-pity. And that is not going to help us in our bhakti.
So, there can be self-hatred, especially when we try to practice spiritual principles. And when we are unable to do so, at that time, we may start feeling that, we may start hating ourselves. I want to follow the standard, I am not able to follow the standard, therefore, I am useless.
That kind of self-hatred is again not at all favorable for bhakti. So, self-hatred will only end up making us feel disappointed, feel negative about ourselves in a way that disempowers us, not just in our daily living, but also in our devotional living. Self-flagellation takes that one step forward where we hate ourselves and we beat ourselves.
So, self-respect is the medium between self-flagellation and self-congratulation. Self-congratulation means just constantly patting ourselves on our back thinking how good I am, and when we have the self-congratulatory attitude or when we have a self-flagellatory attitude, I am so bad. In both cases, we can’t move anywhere constructively.
In the characteristics of knowledge, Krishna gives in the 18th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, sorry, in 13th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, 13.8 to 12, therein he talks about he talks about these qualities through negation. I do not want, I am not craving for respect, I am not craving for showing off so that I will get respect. So, Prabhupada very insightfully defines humility as freedom from the anxiety to have the satisfaction of being honoured by others.
So, being honoured by others is not the problem. And certainly, acting in an honourable way is not a problem. In fact, we are meant to act in an honourable way.
But it is when we are craving for the satisfaction of being honoured by others, then that anxiety coming from that craving consumes our consciousness. That is when things become problematic. So, when we have humility and see humility in the context of bhakti, then we learn not to get carried away by small things, but to steadily move onwards towards big things, steadily catapult ourselves in our journey towards Krishna by getting our consciousness out of ourselves and putting our consciousness in Krishna.
So, should we strive for self-respect? We should strive for service to Krishna. And knowing that we as souls are parts of Krishna, he eternally loves us, he is eternally present in our hearts as our guide and friend. By knowing this, we can get the confidence to steadily keep practicing bhakti.
And if somebody is abusive behaviour, obstructs us in the practice of bhakti, then we shouldn’t tolerate that behaviour. Nothing should be allowed to come between us and Krishna. How to put that aside, whatever is coming in between us and Krishna aside, and how to keep moving towards Krishna, that is something which needs to be thought out at an individual level, according to time, place, circumstance.
But certainly, abusive behaviour from anyone should not be tolerated in the name of humility. And certainly people who abuse us and they tell us that they are helping us to become humble, that is complete perversion of the mood of devotion. In bhakti, we are not meant to divide and demean others and think that we are helping them to develop humility.
If something like that happens to us, we see that as an opportunity for developing humility. But nobody should, everybody should be treating everyone as their masters. And everybody should be treating each other with kindness, with respect, with sensitivity.
And everyone should be helping each other just to stay encouraged and energised in moving towards Krishna. So we, without consenting to all the abusive behaviour, we can move forward steadily from where we are towards where we can become in terms of our self-conception, in terms of our having self-respect, in terms of our devotional contribution, in terms of our capacity to serve