How can we increase empathy and heart-to-heart interactions in the devotee community

Transcript

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How can we help create a culture of empathy in the devotee community? Often devotees want to share their hearts, but they are afraid that they will be judged and condemned. And that’s why they don’t speak and thus they end up feeling lonely.
Yes, this can be a problem in any society that tends to have high moral standards, standards that are going to be difficult for people to follow. And then we struggle inevitably. So, within our tradition itself, talking confidentially is considered to be a vital principle within the practice of bhakti.
So, it’s a way of expressing love, affection. So, we need to, if we are to follow the principles of bhakti diligently, just as we chant the holy names, we need to do this also properly. Now, of course, the fear of being judged and condemned, especially if we open our heart to someone and that person gets us into, maybe speaks back to others, that can become a serious problem.
That’s why we have to be careful. We share our heart to some small extent and see what the person says. We can move ahead and then decide how best to take things.
If the person doesn’t betray our trust, then we can share more. So, it’s intelligence and experience that will be the key over here. And in general, while it may be a need for everyone to be able to share their hearts, the need will be felt more acutely by some and not so acutely by others.
Quite often talking about a subject to those who have not felt the need for the subject is simply a way to create dissonance. So, we can ourselves, while interacting with people, get a sense of where they are coming from and thereby understand whether they would be the appropriate people for us to share our heart. Over a period of time, as the understanding that we are all in the same boat, that we all have an inner outer distance, which we are all trying to bridge at our own pace, in our own way, then that will enable us to move ahead without getting too caught up in things, without getting too overwhelmed by negatives, without getting, we are simply like judging, we judge the devotee community and say that, oh, everybody is superficial over here, nobody has empathy, nobody has heartfelt exchanges.
That is also a temptation. That may be a reality to some degree, but that is from within our experience. There are devotees who do have rich interactions.
They may be few, but they are there. And in many ways, we are a young movement right now, wherein we are following values that are radically different from the values of mainstream society. So, there is no need for us to be too strong in saying that, if we are to avoid judging and labeling, especially in the sense of being judgmental, then maybe we can begin by avoiding being judgmental about the devotee community itself and recognize that this is a universal human phenomena, wherever there are high moral standards to be followed and gradually we can be a part of the change.
So, we find one or two people with whom we can have heartfelt exchanges. We can talk with devotees who encourage those things and there are, there is more and more emphasis on emotional healing as a part of caring for ourselves. That we are parts of Krishna and as his parts, we need to take responsibility for what happens to us, for what happens through us.
To us means how our emotions are affected by our situations and other’s behavior. What happens through us, that means how our actions are going to affect other’s emotions and we become more and more mature. So, the way to change would be threefold in my understanding.
First is recognize that there is adequate grounding in scripture for empathy, heart-to-heart communication, for addressing issues of the heart and highlight those things based on scripture. Second is recognize this is a common problem in societies with high moral standards and avoid judging and then begin the change by doing it ourselves with a few trustworthy trustworthy friends and gradually the culture will grow as it indeed is growing.