When serving Krishna through our profession, should we try to become the best in that profession?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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whatever we are doing we just have to do our best we can aim to do our best and go to the top but we don’t have to attach to that our goal is not to be the best in the world our goal is to offer our best to Krishna if in offering our best to Krishna we become the best in the world that’s great we don’t want when I say using our ambition in Krishna’s service the ambition should not become more important than Krishna whatever we want to do we want to do it for Krishna so it’s important for us to have our priorities that is this is the three ways of looking at it one is that this is my bhakti practice this is my material life again I am using the first definition of material life this is my job, this is my career so now one aspect is that I just pull myself out of my job do the barest minimum possible and focus all my time on bhakti that may be ok if one is in the second or third category as long as it gets along in life but there also what may happen later is I feel I feel I am missing something in my life I am practicing bhakti but I feel deprived no I could be doing more over there then means we are here practicing Krishna bhakti but our mind is annoying us, we are not done the second is when we are doing bhakti we do it wholeheartedly when we are doing our job we do it wholeheartedly so that is we could say almost we box our life into different categories all those categories are animated by the desire to serve Krishna the way we serve Krishna varies so this I do wholeheartedly this also I do wholeheartedly the third is where I become so obsessed with my work that even when I am chanting Hare Krishna even when I am coming to Jain Pala that will go to the zone of obsession or workaholism so we don’t want to be the first level or third level first level where we are thinking we are half hearted at our work and then our mind gnaws us and troubles us and we are half hearted in our devotionals we want to be balanced balance means whatever time is required for our work we do that the best that we can and whatever time we have for our bhakti we do that and what time is required when that will vary sometimes when the traffic is clear we might just move very fast sometimes the traffic is tight we move too slowly so like that sometimes in our life the traffic in our material life becomes very heavy I have to meet this deadline, I have to do this I have to do that then externally we are not going to spend that much time on our devotion other times there might not be so many deadlines and the traffic is clear so basically overall we animate all aspects of our life with the intention to serve Krishna and if I become obsessed with the idea that I have to become the best in this field then when I am coming to the temple, when I am reading scripture, when I am associating devotees so setting goals is not the problem being attached to goals is the problem setting goals inspires us to bring out our best Krishna says don’t be attached to the results so goals are what we set before we do work Arjuna everyday in the Kurukshetra war set goals on the 14th day most famously set the goal that I am going to kill Jaidrath before sunset so Krishna did not tell Arjuna you have forgotten don’t be attached to results no he is talking about two different things setting goals is before we do a work when we have a goal and that inspires us, we are going for book distribution oh I will distribute this many books that gives us inspiration, come on it gives us energy to do things but the results are not, goals are what we set before we do a work results are what we get after we have done the work the results are not in our hands and sometimes we may just do our best and the results may not come so Krishna had some other plan for me I accept it and move on, so don’t be attached to the results so A we can set a goal I would like to come first in my class and we decide for doing this this much time I need to spend and this is how I can balance my life and be whole hearted in that but if it doesn’t work out ok, it is not that we have to be obsessed with it does that answer your question