When someone’s conditioning troubles us but they expect us to continue tolerating what should we do?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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practically speaking if somebody has some conditioning which others tolerate and then that person starts thinking that rather than thinking that I need to make any change that person simply expects others to keep tolerating and they keep perpetuating the conditioning then should we may take a stand and tell them that no you are responsible and you have to change things but then that person can’t accept it so yeah it’s possible see there are firstly there is a principle that we want to encourage everyone in bhakti and for some people some conditions may be very difficult to give up so we don’t want to discourage that person from practicing bhakti but at the same time in the name of encouraging someone to practice bhakti we cannot let ourselves be discouraged in the practice of bhakti so for example say if you are sitting and chanting in a group some people have a habit of chanting very loud and they say that if I chant softly I can’t concentrate on it but then they are chanting so loudly that I can’t concentrate and if other devotees you know that is the way they chant what do I do? I go a little far away and I chant at that place so it requires some intelligence, some expertise to find out how that person can be encouraged in bhakti and at the same time I don’t let that person’s conditioning discourage me in my bhakti so for doing that it becomes more difficult especially if we are all working together in a team and we are going to regularly interact with each other so in that case sometimes communicating clearly not in a judgmental way but in an objective more educational kind of way we tell them you know in this situation take the example of some other senior devotee whom that person respects also and you know in this situation how would this devotee have interacted how would he have acted in this particular way and then if you do it this way basically there is a there is the behavior and there is a consequence of the behavior and there is a value judgment that is made on the behavior if you tell somebody you are so insensitive I am not insensitive but then if you tell them specifically this situation, this was the reaction this was the action that you did and this was the consequence then that person also gets something tangible to work on if there is a blanket judgment you are insensitive, you are irresponsible you are lazy you are overbearing what happens is that person naturally becomes defensive and then what happens is the focus shifts from the issue to the label how can you say that I am overbearing no I am not overbearing but rather than if we have to communicate we communicate very objectively now in this situation this was what the action was and if you could have done it this way it would have been so much better so sometimes rather than seeing that person as as the cause of the problem that means the problem is here, I am here and this person is the cause of the problem rather we see that this is the conditioning and this conditioning is the cause of problem for me but this conditioning is the cause of problem for this person also so rather than seeing that person as the perfect leader of the problem we see that person as a partner in dealing with the problem so then we help them rather than judging that person we help them see that this conditioning is there and I am here to help you overcome the conditioning so if that kind of communication is possible then what happens is this is the specific thing which I did wrong and I will try to do it correctly in future sometimes I know one devotee who tends to be overbearing and when he was told that I never thought this way I just thought that this service has to be done and this seemed the obvious way to do it for me and in the past I have done similar things so many times and they worked out well so that’s why I just didn’t pay much attention to the other person but if that is the case so he told he told the other devotee he told one particular devotee in the future in a meeting whenever you find that I have been overbearing just signal to me and he said you take that so I when I go to the west several western devotees they find that I speak very fast and they can’t understand what I am saying so after that one devotee told me that many different devotees told me this problem that we don’t understand what you are saying but then he said how can we tell you then I told one of the devotees you just tell me so now a days in the west when I go and give classes I tell in advance, I tend to get excited when I speak when when I start going fast please tell me so when I do that people don’t hesitate, they just raise their hand now notice also what is happening you are speaking fast, they don’t have to say that just raise their hand, that is enough for me so often people have conditionings but either they are not aware of their conditionings or they are not they don’t know exactly how to deal with them so if they see us as judging them for their conditionings they will become defensive but if we present them as we are partners in helping them to deal with their conditionings then sometimes they may be also open and then that way rather than they and we being adversarial we become together and their conditionings that is the adversary which we are overcoming and we also need to have that sympathetic attitude, for us that particular conditioning may not be there but there may be some other conditioning which we have which we find very difficult to deal with so just like this is difficult for me to overcome, that is difficult for this person to overcome so let me be sympathetic and then with that understanding attitude often it becomes that very conditioning which is actually taking us away from that person that can help us to come closer to that person and as we work, help in combating thank you