Should we correct others when we don’t have the authority to do so and others aren’t receptive?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
and then accordingly make a decision.
If we see someone doing something wrong but we don’t have the authority to correct them, should we still correct them? Especially if they don’t accept that correction. Answer? Our purpose is to move towards Krishna and to help others move towards Krishna. And if we have the knowledge or the experience by which we can help others to avoid making unnecessary mistakes then naturally we will feel inspired to help them.
At the same time we can’t help anyone unless they want to be helped. So those who are in a position of authority often have the responsibility of maintaining some standards and they may need to correct someone even if that person is not willing to accept correction. And they have the authority by which they can implement that correction if it is necessary or at least take some corrective action against those who are not ready to accept the correction.
At the same time that doesn’t mean that if we don’t have authority we cannot offer correction. Sometimes some authority is given through some institutional position and sometimes authority comes through individual disposition. Some devotees may naturally be so advanced, so compassionate, so caring that others gain the trust that this person is my well-wisher.
This person can guide me. And when the other person is receptive naturally we can and we should give some suggestions for improvement whenever it is required. But while giving this we have to test the pulse or we can say more appropriately test the water.
Sometimes when we want to swim we first put our finger in the water and see how cold it is. And if it is not very cold then we enter into the water. So like that when we are offering some suggestions to people we test the water, we give some small suggestions initially and we observe if we get a cold response, if the water is cold then we just take our leg out of the water.
Similarly we don’t need to go any further because that is only going to cause alienation. So we have to know that we are here primarily to ourselves serve Krishna and one way we can serve Krishna is by helping others but another way we can serve Krishna is also by keeping our nose out of future, not our business. So that means that if someone is not ready to take help even better we can offer them our prayers from a distance and focus on doing the services that we can do.
The intention alone is not enough to be appreciated by people. Sometimes it may well be that people have to learn the hard way through experience. So through experience when they learn they may go through more trouble but at least there won’t be any offensiveness towards devotees.
Because when we try to impose something on someone that simply makes us feel annoyed when they are not accepting and it makes them feel irritated when they feel we are imposing. So in some situations it may well be that accepting our finiteness in influencing others and seeing that others don’t want to be influenced we can simply offer our good wishes to them through our prayers.