Do sadhaka-devotees also become free all worldly obligations?
Hare Krishna question it is said in the Bhagavatam that one who surrenders to the lord, he becomes free from all other obligations so does this apply only for pure devotees or does it apply for sadhakas like for sadhakas like me also answer there is a principle and there is a practical application so the principle is that the emphasis, if you say this verse that sarvaatmanaya sharanam saranyam gato mukulna parirutti kartam that the principle in this is that if we devote ourselves to the lord then we are not having any other obligations because there are different people in this world who do different things for us, parents do something for us, the government does something for us, society does something for us, so we are receiving so much from so many different people and in general if we receive something from someone, we have to give something in return to them, that is the general principle of reciprocation so that is the idea of duties now but we understand ultimately that whatever, whoever is doing for me, ultimately it is Krishna who is doing to me through them, so when a mother feed the breast milk to a child it is Krishna who is arranging for the breast milk in her breast she doesn't know anything about how breast comes in a breast milk that doesn't mean she doesn't have love but the point is that she is not the only source of the love over there, so when we see that ultimate connection that is Krishna who is doing all these things for me, then we focus on loving Krishna understanding that whatever love I may get from different people, I will get the fullest love from Krishna so now the stress of this verse is that we should not stay stuck at the horizontal level, so if we could consider our relationship with people in this world as horizontal relationship and our relationship with Krishna as the vertical relationship so we should not stay so caught in the horizontal as to not do anything for the vertical but now does that mean, now Krishna also says sarva dharmaan pratyajamaam ekam sharanam raja give up all varieties of religion and surrender to me so does that mean that one has to give up all dharma entirely we see Arjuna, he didn't do kshatriya dharma, even after hearing Krishna sarva dharmaan pratyajamaam he did do kshatriya dharma, why? because that was the way he could surrender to Krishna at that time so what this means is that any dharma that is pratyakul to bhakti, we can put it aside so for him his kula dharma his fighting against his wanting to protect his relatives would have come against, so he gave up the kula dharma but he stuck to kshatriya dharma so if some of our worldly responsibilities come against our bhakti then we can put them aside so for example if a family member don't practice bhakti at all then we don't have to listen to them, we can continue to practice bhakti but that does not mean that we insensitively reject them or neglect them entirely Prabhupada, the sanyasi who renounced his family but later on when he came back to India then when he saw that his family was in poor financial straits he actually gave them a regular commission arranged for to give, to ensure that they are financially maintained so as much as we can we should do within our circumstances whatever is possible for helping our family members also we should not bother too much about technicalities, what stage of bhakti I am at and whether I am free from the reactions or I'll be free from reactions, we should not go so much into karma, the principle underlying that comes from this verse is that we should not let any worldly obligations stop us from practicing bhakti but that does not also mean that in the name of bhakti we irresponsibly reject all worldly obligations rather we focus on practicing our bhakti and we also try to do our worldly obligations as much as possible while focusing on bhakti and we sensitively deal with situations and relationships in such a way that those people also at least get a favorable impression of Krishna if they don't themselves get connected with Krishna also Thank you Hare Krishna.