In taking care of people’s emotional needs, isn’t there a danger of deviating from the spiritual?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, while addressing people’s felt needs, we may just get immediately entangled.
So, that danger is always there. So, for example, when we are working in the material world, there is always a danger that we may get materially entangled. Even if we are building a temple for Krishna, we may get so caught in fundraising that we may just, they say that we shouldn’t just do pattern cultivation so much that we forget, we shouldn’t do donor cultivation so much that we forget to do devotee cultivation.
So, going to extremes is typical of a mind in the mode of passion and ignorance. So, the mind in passion gets captivated by one thing and focuses on that and over emphasizes that. The mind in ignorance takes one thing and makes it into everything.
yathu krsna vad ekasmin karye saktam ahaitukam atatvarthavad alpam cha tatam samudharatam yathu krsna vad ekasmin to make one thing into everything. That is the characteristic of knowledge in the mode of ignorance. So, going towards extremes is a danger in every activity.
Even in activities such as studying scriptures. One can go into one can go into learning Sanskrit, studying Acharya’s commentaries. And that is all good if that is helping us become more inspired to serve Krishna and that is helping us to share inspiration for serving Krishna with others.
But if somebody becomes a bookworm because of that. They may study a lot but they may not actually make spiritual advancement and inspire others to make spiritual advancement. So, we need to be cautious when we are engaging with anything material.
And with respect to the mind and trying to help address people’s mental needs. We have to be careful. There are two extremes.
One is that if I tell someone I care for your soul but I don’t care for your body and mind. Only when your spiritual problems come to me. Well, very very few people will come.
But the other extreme could be that nobody is going to treat us like a doctor and come to us with a physical health problem. They will go to a doctor for that. But some people are so emotionally clingy and needy that they may start treating us as dumping grounds for all their emotional garbage.
And when that happens then they want us to hear about all the problems that they have. But when we try to encourage them to practice spirituality, they say no. Then if that is happening, then we have to draw a line over there.
We want to address people’s emotional needs so that they can practice bhakti. So we can’t say that I will not address your emotional needs at all. But we are not here to address only their emotional needs.
So we have to see things in perspective. And if we have a structure wherein we have people’s emotional needs taken care of and then we encourage them to practice bhakti. So maybe in future we might have some of our leaders who are into western outreach.
They say that associated with every temple we can have a wellness center. And in that wellness center we can teach yoga. We can have a trained psychotherapist.
We can have a yoga teacher. We can have a psychotherapist. And it’s not the temple but it’s associated with the temple.
So it can work both ways. People who have physical mental issues who come to the temple, they can be referred over there. And people who anyway come there, they can be referred to the temple.
So in that sense, it may if we have devotees who are trained yoga teachers, if we have devotees who are trained psychotherapists, trained mental health care professionals, then they can serve a need of practicing devotees or upcoming devotees. And they can serve a need of non-devotees and by that inspire them to become devotees. So it needs to be seen as one aspect of our outreach.
Whether it is at an individual relationship level or at an institutional initiative level. It can’t become our whole mission. That caution we always