Can devotee-couples avoid having kids to avoid distraction in bhakti?
Thank you.
Hare Krishna. Question. Can devotee couples avoid having children so as to not have distractions in their bhakti? I have seen that once devotees have children, they can't come to the temples, they find it difficult to come for yatras, they can't do much service, and the amount of devotional contributions that they were doing decreases substantially.
Therefore, I feel that having children can become a big distraction in one's bhakti. To ensure that one's bhakti stays focused, can we as a devotee couple decide to not have children? Answer. The idea that having children is a distraction from bhakti stems from a very restrictive and externalized conception of bhakti.
Bhakti is essentially a disposition of the heart. It's a disposition of selfless service towards Krishna. And yes, there are certain external activities which are very important for cultivating this devotional selfless disposition.
You mentioned coming to the temple, attending programs, going for yatras. These are all very important devotional activities which foster that mood of selfless devotional service within our hearts. At the same time, bhakti is not limited to these activities alone.
Bhakti is an inclusive disposition of the heart which includes these activities, which is largely nourished by these activities, but it is not to be reduced to these activities. So, we want our whole life to become spiritualized. And in the grahastha ashram, one of the ways in which one can actually enter devotional service is by getting children and taking care of children.
That is a form of service in the history of our movement. There have been times when devotees operated on this restrictive conception of bhakti where bhakti was reduced to certain specific activities alone. And mothers, even after the children were big or after they had children, and the children were infants.
Sometimes they were told by the temple leaders, you should go for book distribution, you should go for doing other services. And then the children were not well cared of. When a concerned mother wrote to Srila Prabhupada, and this was what he wanted, Srila Prabhupada replied in a letter, I am surprised that you are giving up your children for doing other things.
Your children are like your deities. You should take care of these children. These are Vaikuntha children, Prabhupada said.
So, the point is that taking care of one's children, seeing them not just as my kids, but as Krishna's children, this is actually a form of devotional service. Prabhupada equated the children with serving their deities. Not in the sense that we think in an impersonalist, mayavadi sense that the children are Krishna, but that the children are connected with Krishna.
Krishna says in 4.34 that we should go to the spiritual master and learn from the spiritual master. And then in 4.35, he states that, In 4.35, he states that once having seen this, once having acquired knowledge like this from the spiritual master, you will not fall into moha again. And what is the moha? The moha is to think of the separatist mentality, to think of things as disconnected from Krishna.
Krishna says you will see all living beings as belonging to me and as mine. So, similarly, if we have spiritual knowledge, we should be able to see all living beings as connected with Krishna. What to speak of our family members and what to speak of the children who are so much dependent on us.
Yes, they are definitely connected with Krishna. So, taking care of children is devotional service. When we do preaching, what are we doing? We are actually attracting souls, inspiring them, guiding them so that they can render service to Krishna.
And what are we doing when we are begetting children? We are essentially doing the same thing. We are actually inspiring souls to take devotional service to Krishna. Now among these two forms of service, there are differences, many significant differences in terms of doing outreach and attracting people or having kids and attracting those souls towards Krishna.
The main difference, however, in terms of the number of people, we may say that, oh, I can do outreach and attract scores of people. But when I decide to have children, then I have to focus so much energy on just one or two people. One or two or three children, whatever.
Yes, but actually taking care of the children can bring about a far greater level of selflessness within us than might preaching to many other people. Because as the kids grow up, they are very perceptive. And they are there almost throughout the day with us and they will see if we are walking our talk or not.
And to the extent we are walking our talk, to that extent they will be inspired and they will follow. So in terms of our developing a mood of self, at least some level of selflessness in our service, yes, when we are taking care of children, we are not just self-centered. We are not thinking of our own glory.
We are not thinking about how I'll become famous by preaching to so many people. We have to actually do the service in quite a selfless mood. And then further, we have to walk our talk in that way.
If we have this inclusive understanding of bhakti, we can see that taking care of children is also a service. Yes, for the few years initially when the children are infant, the external form of devotional service may be decreased. But in due course, in the process of teaching the children the bhakti culture, the bhakti wisdom, the bhakti principles, often that devotional service gets intensified and deepened.
And in that way, one becomes more, because at that time one is taking up ownership of the bhakti culture. Ownership not in the sense of possessiveness, but ownership in the sense of responsibility. So we take up, we recognize that we have to not just be practicing bhakti, but we have to teach bhakti.
So we think about the philosophy more deeply. We think about the culture more deeply. We imbibe and internalize these things more and then try to share them with others, with especially our children in this context.
And in this way, this is a very valuable form of devotional service. Also from the broader perspective of society, today many parents are baffled about how to take care of children. So if devotees set a good example, and devotees can raise children well, then that itself becomes a very valuable example for the broader society, for others connected with devotees.
And in this way, this is a valuable service. So now, of course, it is a valuable service. Now whether it is a mandatory service, or is it a service that everyone has to do, everyone in the grahastha ashram has to do or not, there may be different stands on this.
In general, in the grahastha ashram, having children is a natural aspiration of the heart. And Prabhupada would sometimes quote Chanakya saying, Putrahinam grahasuniyam, that without children, the word putra is used in an inclusive sense over here, for children in general, not just male children. So without children, the household seems to be empty.
So it is a natural aspiration of the human heart to have children. And the grahastha ashram is the place where this aspiration can be naturally expressed. So it is not a very common practice for someone to be in grahastha ashram, and to voluntarily choose to not have children.
But this is something which is usually left to the discretion of the couple. The normal standard expectation is to have children. And that is, if a grahastha couple decides to have children, the senior devotee is a spiritual master, whoever is there in a proper spiritual riding position, they will give blessings for that.
But if someone, this is a valuable service which is to be done in the grahastha ashram, but if some couple for whatever reason decide that we don't want to do this service, we are doing other services and we feel those other services are important, and that is what we feel more inspired to do, then that is something which is for them to decide. It is, they can consult some senior devotees about if at all they want to avoid doing this service, that avoidance should be done in a positive mood, not in a negative mood thinking that this is very entangling and this is very distracting. No, that is based on a negative conception of children, and that is not very healthy for bhakti.
If we can have a more positive conception, just as when somebody has become a brahmachari, the primary focus should not be avoiding the entanglement of grahastha life. The primary focus should be maximizing one's service to Krishna. Similarly, even if one, in some exceptional situation, decides not to have children, that should not be done with simply the negative focus that oh, that is very entangling, that's why I don't want to do it.
Rather it should be done with a more positive focus that yes, I want to serve Krishna and these are the particular ways I want to serve Krishna. We want to serve Krishna and not in this particular way. But it is not to be, one should not become judgmental and think that oh, we are so sense controlled, we are so pure, and we are serving Krishna in this way.
Pride in any form is unhealthy for bhakti, and that should be something. So pride at one's own sense control or negative attitude of things being entangled towards taking care of children, such conceptions, if they can be avoided, and if after consulting one's spiritual guides, one feels that this is the kind of service I want to do, these are the kind of service I want to do, and this particular service we don't feel inspired to do, then in certain exceptional situations, that particular thing may be done by the devotee couple at their discretion. Overall, bhakti is an inclusive emotion of the heart that actually subsumes, subsumes and includes all our activities, including the normal activities of grahastha life, which is begetting children.
Thank you. Hare Krishna.