In youth, how much should we be preparing for our career and how much focusing on devotional growth?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
representations so so when we are in youth and our whole life is ahead of us we have to prepare our career, we have to prepare for our future life so how much should we be preparing for that and how much should we be thinking that fully I just want to practice spiritual life how do we balance we all have to know that we are our only resource we have Krishna, we have devotees, we have our spiritual master, but ultimately it is we who have to live our life it is we who have to deal with our mind it is we who will have to deal with our senses if we try to suppress them and if we try to indulge in them both ways it is we who have to live with it so we have to find out how best we can live with it so there is when our movement began initially we had more or less the model of rejection that is the world out there is complete maya and to become a devotee means to move into the temple and stay in the temple then you are a devotee and if somebody just moved out of the temple it was thought that they fell into maya but now we understand that Krishna Bhakti can be practiced in various ways, so now rather than that rejection we have the understanding of that Krishna Bhakti is also practiced through penetration, we penetrate into the world and there we make our mark, we make our contributions and that way also we can serve Krishna so how much we disconnect ourselves from the world and how much we connect with the world that is something which each of us has to decide for ourselves as far as the balance is concerned the this is something which we can decide by experience just like say with respect to food now how much food is too much and how much is too little if I tell someone don’t eat this much or eat this much they are a different person so by their own experience this much is the food what I need and somebody says I need this much food now some people they eat very little and still they gain a lot of weight some people they eat a lot and still they never gain weight some people they treat their tongue like a conveyor belt you know there is lot of things going but still they are healthy and active and they may need to eat the point is not how much you eat the point is what you do after you eat so what is the exact amount to be eaten by a person that has to be decided by the person individually so similarly how much material life to pursue how much spiritual life to pursue that is something which we have to decide individually and more important than so so if sometimes we veer off too much towards the material side then you understand I am not able to do this also this is going too much I don’t want to go so much in this direction and sometimes we may go too much towards spiritual life and we realize that hey I can’t this is not sustainable I need to come back and a plane when it is moving it rarely moves in a straight line the plane is going from LA to New York 90% of the time it is off course but because of the continuous reorientation the pilot does it reaches the destination similarly we may go off course and we come back again so we have to find out how best based on our own intelligence and our experience how we can balance and another level is another point is that in terms of practical analysis we need to separate the material and the spiritual I need some time to go to the temple I need some time to study I need some time to chant so in terms of that we can separate the material and the spiritual but it is not that constantly we have to keep separating the material and the spiritual ultimately what is spiritual is the intention to serve so if I have if I am pursuing my material life with the intention that thereby I will be able to serve Krishna better, I will have a stabler social situation social financial stabler financial situation and then I will be able to serve Krishna better that intention makes it spiritual so suppose in a class somebody makes a joke and then I start thinking am I laughing for Krishna’s pleasure or my pleasure that will be unnecessary it is in the purview of Krishna bhakti it is a spiritual talk so you can laugh, there is no need to materialize the spiritual it is connected with Krishna so that way we don’t have to dishearten ourselves in our in our building of our career by thinking this is simply material actually it is for the service of Krishna so it is spiritual it can be spiritualized, it is not intrinsically spiritual when Arjuna was practicing archery at that time he had no he didn’t know that in the future there is going to be a great war in which my archery skills will be used by Krishna but he practiced archery to a high level of perfection because that was his dharma, that was the way that was his vocation that was his calling so we have to be careful that in the name of our calling we don’t get so called that we get called away from Krishna but if we are doing our particular profession we do it wholeheartedly seeing that this is ultimately for the service of Krishna also so I will say these three points we have to individually decide what is the balance second is that we can always make course correction if we go of one or the other direction third point is that we don’t have to rigidly separate material and spiritual ultimately if we give time for basic spiritual activities then even material can be spiritualized by the intention to serve does this answer your question?