Does bhakti become more and more complicated as we go into the details?
So, bhakti seems to become more complicated as we go more and more into the details, yes, at one level, it's a, it's normal in every subject, if you see, if a child is taught alphabet, you learn ABCDEV, learn some small words, but as they go deeper, there are so many bigger words also, and there are sentences you make with the words, and there are long sentences, so any subject at one level, when you go deeper into it, we see that there is depth to it, there is complexity to it. So, similarly with respect to bhakti also, there is, as we go deeper, there is some amount of complexity that comes up, but at the same time, the important thing is not to get too caught or worried about the rules, sarvavidhi nishedasur etayo reva kinkaram smartha vyasatadam vishnu smartha nijatujyat The purpose of all the rules is to help us remember Krishna and if following some rule puts us in so much anxiety, so much agitation that it distracts us from the remembrance of Krishna, then we don't have to go that hard on that particular rule.
Ultimately, everyone of us will practice bhakti individually. There are certain basic standards expected. But ultimately bhakti is an individual process.
It's an individual relationship between us and Krishna. It is guided and mediated by the spiritual master, the representatives. But the same Arjun and Prabhupada also said in the 18th chapter that experience is direct and personal.
Ultimately we will experience Krishna. So we have to practice bhakti in a way that works for us. And that means that we can we don't have to openly reject any rules or go on a campaign against any rules.
If we find a particular rule difficult, then we recognize, OK, this is not particularly working for me. Let me do other things and let me move on towards Krishna. So we could say each rule is like one channel for our consciousness to move towards Krishna.
So there is a rule and there is a purpose of the rule. The purpose is remembrance of Krishna. The second is water flowing.
The channels are pathways for the water to flow. But ultimately the water is meant to flow towards the ocean. Similarly, Krishna is the ocean and our consciousness has streams, channels.
The water is meant to flow towards Krishna. So sometimes one particular channel may get blocked for a particular devotee. And for some other devotee it might be some other channel.
So if that channel is blocked and the water does not pass through, then one doesn't have to obsess on that. Just make sure the water keeps flowing through the other channels and we keep growing in our bhakti. And some devotees who have a particular interest in a particular service, they may actually love all the rules because they want to get everything right.
But somebody else who does not have that much interest, the rules may feel like a burden. So we have to see what service we can do constructively for Krishna, what service can give us steadiness and gradual taste and we keep doing that. So if some service seems very cumbersome, then we can respect that service and do it as it is practical for us.
But we don't restrict the flow of our consciousness towards Krishna to only one channel. If that channel is blocked, so we keep the consciousness flowing through other channels. Does this answer your question?