Can we progress in both spiritual life and material life?
And return back to Krishna for the purpose of making sure that we give adequate time for sadhana we should separate I need to go to temple I need to chant japa I need to associate with devotees for that purpose we can separate this is material this is spiritual but after we have done that you know that if Krishna is the goal of our life then from that ultimate purpose point of view everything is spiritual so Krishna also says yathah pravrtir bhutanaam yena sarva-midamtatam svakarmanatam abhyarcha siddhim vindati maanavah that worship him through your work svakarmanatam abhyarcha by your work worship him so some people translated this as work is worship but actually if work is worship then the donkey is the greatest worshipper so work itself is not worship but Krishna says by our work we can worship him and he uses very the first two lines of this verse are what yathah pravrtir bhutanaam yena sarva-midamtatam he who is the source of everything and by whom the whole world is pervaded that means Krishna is giving these two lines before this svakarmanatam abhyarcha this is 18.47 in the bhagavata 18.46 why is he giving this to give us this vision that we shouldn't fragment the world from Krishna this world is connected with him and what we do in this world can also be done in a mood of service now Krishna has given us certain talents Krishna has given us certain resources Krishna has given us certain positions in society and they are all meant to be used in his service now sometimes some talents can be directly used in Krishna's service now we may become preachers we may become we may do deity worship we may do counselling, mentoring but apart from that we have a profession and now whatever we are doing if we do it in the mood of service for Krishna we can and should excel in that so it is not that material progress and spiritual progress are inversely proportional that is not essentially true what is true is sense gratification and spiritual growth do not go together but when we talk about material progress, material progress and sense gratification is not necessarily equal if a devotee is in a particular career and the devotee grows in that career that is not necessarily pratikul to bhakti only if the growth in career means that the devotee has to spend so much time in the career that there is no time left for spiritual life or for growing in that career the devotee has to do some anti-devotional activities, give up some devotional principles and that is unfavourable but if by doing our profession well by using our god given talents if we excel in our profession we shouldn't think that that is against the principles of bhakti put it another way suppose some person is very wealthy and that person becomes a devotee because they are very wealthy or not just wealthy they may be influential in some other way they may be in a big post in some company or some government if some person is influential in some way and if they become a devotee then what influence they have that can be used in Krishna's service so if a person after becoming a devotee becomes influential so if a person acquires influence before they became devotee that can be used in Krishna's service but if a person becomes a devotee after that the influence they get can't they be used in Krishna's service that can also be used so the problem is not material progress per se the problem is material progress that comes at the expense of spiritual progress but it is not that all material progress has to come at the expense of spiritual progress in fact what I have seen when I was in college that many devotee students after they become devotees initially their academy performance sometimes goes down because they start thinking this is all material this is all maya but if they get proper understanding then actually quite often their academy performance improves because they don't realize that they don't waste so much time which other people waste in gossip and chit chat and so many things and although bhakti takes a lot of time a lot of time is also saved and they can actually work more productively so it is material progress and spiritual progress they can go together and rather than seeing material and progress it is not that at every moment a devotee has to be analyzing is this material is this spiritual it is we focus on serving Krishna now suppose there is a class and in the class there is a joke am I laughing for Krishna's pleasure or my pleasure if everybody starts thinking like that then what will happen is that the speaker will start crying I am making a joke nobody is laughing so it is not that we have to constantly be analyzing we make sure that we have adequate time for our spiritual life but apart from that whatever we are doing we do it with a spiritual intention now if we start thinking you know this is material no we will unnecessarily dishearten ourselves because if we are involved in some activity if we are going to do it we need to do it well if we have family responsibilities start thinking you know this is material this is not spiritual then we will dishearten ourselves unnecessarily there is no need for that you know even if our family members are not devotees still by doing our family responsibilities we can be acting in a mood of devotion so they may not be devotees but still doing our family responsibilities can also be devotional service if we are doing it in a mood of devotion but if we do our family responsibilities well and then our family members because of his or her bhakti they become better people that attracts them towards Krishna and if anything that attracts people towards Krishna that is unaccompanied to bhakti so we don't have to constantly divorce between the two now regarding how much to how much can we progress in material life that is something which has to be individually decided nobody can mandate that but in principle we shouldn't equate this material progress as antithetical to spiritual progress but it is true that when one starts pursuing a lot of wealth lot of position lot of fame and that may require consume one's time and thought and energy so much that one may not have time for spiritual life so if we make a plan this much time I am going to give my spiritual life this much I am going to do in my spiritual life and after that remaining whatever time I don't have to be half hearted this is material this is material no if I am going to give time in that just give it whole hearted now what we are is Krishna's gift to us what we become is our gift to Krishna what we are all the talents that we have whatever resources we have it all is Krishna's gift to us and what we become by that become not just as devotees but even our material life if we get position if we get power if we get fame if we get wealth we can see that this is my gift to Krishna so that I can use it in Krishna's service we see if we look back at the ancient culture of India it was developed materially also Sanskrit as a language grammar is a very evolved language it's grammar is quite intricate and it enables one to communicate certain concepts in a very attractive way but for doing all that all our Acharyas they learn Sanskrit it is not that just because they were Acharyas they were born talking Sanskrit no they all put time learning Sanskrit so why? because it's a tool for serving Krishna so whatever is required we can use it one of my devotee friends has done his PhD in Bhakti Siddhant Sri Thakur so he showed me a book that is Bhakti Siddhant Sri Thakur like students nowadays memorise English words for GRE or TOEFL so that was Bhakti Siddhant Sri Thakur's English vocabulary book he was memorising English words of course his English vocabulary was quite extraordinary but the point is he learnt it it was not that he was born with it so we don't have to divorce things as material and spiritual we need to separate so that we give adequate time for spiritual life but afterwards we can just direct everything in the service of Krishna and yes there can be endless aspirations so over time there is organic renunciation that comes organic renunciation means as we keep pursuing material life at a particular time this is really not worth it so if we are forcibly deprived from something then always there will be in that maybe I could have achieved more maybe I could have achieved more so if we have certain talents if we have certain abilities and we feel like achieving something we make a commitment to practice some level of spiritual life serious level of spiritual life after that we can use our energies for pursuing material life and gradually we ourselves will by practicing spiritual life steadily we ourselves realize this much is enough there is no end to this let me end this or let me put a cap at this and focus on Krishna so this is something which we shouldn't be judging others for that we should be focusing on how we can learn ourselves and how others will develop that in their relationship with Krishna so what is a quota for whom but what is a quota for whom that will differ from person to person for example somebody has always been living in a rural background they have they live very simply they don't even have running water they may be satisfied in that but suppose we live all around in city and then we are told to live over there that will be very difficult for us just as we easily understand that in the rural urban background what is a natural thing for us may be different from what is natural for them so like that all of us come from different cultural backgrounds we come from different financial levels we come from different intellectual dispositions different levels of intellectual disposition so what is our quota that is something we have to decide it is just like food we may you eat so much and I eat so little no what I need I eat what you need you eat and we all when we are eating we all go through that experiment sometimes we eat too little more often we eat too much but afterwards we also learn I ate so much and then after eating instead of gaining energy I lost energy so that I would eat so much just as nobody has to mandate for us you should eat this much or you should not eat this much similarly regarding our material aspirations as long as you are practicing as long as somebody is taking prasad you don't have to bother how much they are eating they will themselves learn on their own so like that as long as one is practicing basic spiritual life then what level they want to go in their material life we leave it to them and as far as we are concerned we should not have a constant nagging sense of dissatisfaction in material life material life we will never be satisfied but as we keep practicing material life and keep pursuing our material life and keep pursuing our spiritual life gradually we become detached from material life not because it is there can be detachment there can be detachment which can come because of frustration I wanted to achieve it but I can't achieve it like one time when I was in Pune one young man came he had never come to the temple he said I am thinking of becoming a monk next month I said why next month he said I have proposed to a girl and she is going to answer next month if she says no I will become a monk now you know frustration is no foundation for renunciation frustration may initially turn us towards bhakti but we need positive attraction towards Krishna to be able to sustain ourselves in renunciation so by our practice of bhakti if we ourselves realize this spiritual life is so nice so if I am renouncing material life because it is too troublesome because it is too difficult to achieve or because others are telling me don't go in that direction we will always have some lagging hope maybe I will go there and enjoy more but if you are practicing spiritual life seriously we will get higher taste in spiritual life and we will ourselves feel I put in so much effort in material life I get some pleasure but so little I put in some effort in spiritual life and there is so much satisfaction here so why not invest my energy more in this so others can inspire us but this is a decision which we have to individually take and we can take it just as the way we decide by experience by experiment how much we eat like that we can decide how much we want to pursue material life but we should never for the sake of material life give up our basic practice of spiritual life that should always go on and beyond that as we become organically detached we can increase our spiritual practices more and more.