Devotionally, we need to be humble. Professionally, we need to promote ourselves. How to reconcile?
Ok sometimes the devotional values and the professional social values may be conflicting say we learn one thing from science and another from scripture or you know we need to promote ourselves at work but we are expected to be humble and devote ourselves so how do we manage these things see what unifies it all is service attitude you know I am I am a servant of Krishna whether it is a temple, whether it is my office, whether it is my home wherever I am, I am meant to serve now how best I can serve in this situation that will vary according to time based circumstances in some cases as a service we may have to speak formally assertively, even aggressively at times so at other times as a service we may take the lower position and just agree with whatever somebody else is saying or let the other person's opinion prevail the important thing is so in a functional way you know we think of humility means you know it is not that humility means we let anyone and everyone trample on us let our opinions go unheard humility Prabhupada defines in 13.8 to 12 that is the that verse he says humility means to not be anxious to have the satisfaction of being honoured by others to not be anxious to have the satisfaction of being honoured by others, Prabhupada is not saying that we should not be honoured by others he is not saying that if we are honoured we should not feel satisfied he is simply saying that we should not be anxious for that that should not be our driving purpose the way I put it in one of my Gita Digi articles is humility means to not let our ego interfere with our purpose so I have a certain purpose to do and I will not let my ego come in the way so if you consider this understanding of humility actually it works even in office in office if I am a team leader and if my subordinate gives some good suggestion which is a plan better than my plan then if I am humility I will take their suggestion if my purpose is actually to get the team to perform well and somebody is giving a better solution for their performance then humility means I accept it so to not let my ego come in the way of my purpose so actually humility if we think simply that means let anyone and everyone trample on me that is not humility that is actually a caricature of humility so humility in that sense is empowering because this is my purpose and how can I achieve this purpose so sometimes you know humility means that we tolerate dishonor also for the sake of humility for the sake of our purpose but sometimes if this is the place where I am being dishonored I cannot do my service here I will go somewhere else so actually Prabhupada when he was preaching in India he found that Indians were not taking him very seriously he went to America what was he doing by that it was in America he got more receptive audiences his purpose was it doesn't mean humility if I go to a place where there is a program and there very few people come and those people are not interested is it that oh you know by going to this program and speaking where people are not interested I will be developing humility well there are other ways to develop humility also that is not the only way to develop humility so the important thing is I do my purpose so if my purpose requires me to work with some person who is very demanding who is very irritating and that's what my purpose is I have to do the service with this person then I will tolerate by enduring whatever I have to deal with that person but humility doesn't necessarily mean that we have to be trampled upon humility means that our purpose is more important than our ego and that way if we see we can avoid these conflicts not by denying the presence of those conflicts but rather by going to their root what is my purpose so I am serving in my office at that time if the job requires me to promote myself then well I do that that job is the way I am serving Krishna the job is the way I have financial security by which I can serve Krishna the job is the way I have a social position by which I can serve Krishna so job is my service to Krishna in one sense and therefore let me do whatever it takes to do that job so humility basically we have certain stereotypical notions of humility if we remove those notions and focus on the principle that humility means to not let my ego interfere with my purpose then we can actually see how humility is very empowering in focusing on what is important for us and with respect to science I think specific issues will have to be dealt with in different ways but broadly speaking there is no need to highlight the conflict between science and scripture the important thing is that as I in yesterday's class I told science is a tool for functioning in this world and as far as the tool is concerned we use it but as far as understanding the ultimate purpose of life science doesn't have any guidance for that so there are some areas so there is a jurisdiction of science there is a jurisdiction of scripture there are some places where there will be overlap and that we will have to negotiate but we don't have to highlight that overlap focus on okay so Prabhupada was pragmatic scriptures talk about Ayurveda but Prabhupada didn't emphasize that every devotee has to take Ayurveda only the body is material and whatever treatment works for the body you take that Ayurveda has a different model of the body Allopathy has a different model of the body of how the body is you have to ask an Allopathy what is Jatra Agni, digestive fire there is no fire in the body, there is temperature but there is no fire in the body it's a different way of looking at the body so Prabhupada was not very obsessed, Prabhupada was not very very particular about these things so if we treat science as simply an operational model for functioning in this world then whatever way, whatever tools we need to use for science we use them and for understanding the ultimate goal of life and pursuing that goal of life we get knowledge from scripture then we can minimize the conflict so we don't have to brand all scientists as faithless or atheistic, they are not science is simply a profession for them some of them may be atheistic but then some of them are theistic also and most of them are actually neither atheistic nor theistic for them science is simply a job they do a job to earn a living so our conflict is not with science our conflict is with atheism and there is an overlap between science and atheism where atheistic scientists use science to promote their atheism but science itself is not in confrontation with scripture science is simply a tool for operating in this world and if you understand the jurisdictions then a large amount of conflict can be minimized does that answer the question? yes.