Does chanting purely itself give rise to virtues or should we strive to develop virtues?
Should we chant purely simply for pleasing Krishna, for developing a love for Krishna and from that all qualities will come automatically to our tolerance or should we also make some efforts for developing these qualities separately essentially bhakti at least the way I understand it is, the most important practical, from the practical perspective the principle is anukulyasya sankalpa pratyekundyasya vajra now I accept what is favorable and I put aside what is unfavorable and interestingly see if you see these two are called as limbs of surrender so this is if there are six things anukulyasya sankalpa pratyekundyasya vajra so it is a protection that Krishna will protect, the confidence that Krishna will protect that I am dependent on Krishna so like this there are six elements now significant is that among these six the next four are emotions whereas these first two are actions you could say emotions or dispositions Krishna will protect me Krishna is my maintainer I am nothing without Krishna now all these are dispositions they cannot come automatically they will take time to develop so it is significant that along with these dispositions and surrender the definition of surrender also includes practical actions anukulyasya sankalpa pratyekundyasya vajra accepting that which is favorable and putting aside that is unfavorable in one sense if we have the concept of surrender like Draupadi raising her hand and surrendering this is quite opposite to that, this is quite resourceful this is quite active ok is this favorable and accept it, is this unfavorable and I will avoid it so surrender in that sense is not just passive dependence here surrender is active choosing I understand ok this is favorable actively choose things this aspect of surrender is also very important and it is not just he is not talking Bhaktivinoda Thakur elaborates on this also he is not talking just about some preliminary stage he is talking about surrender which is an advanced stage so now in our practical practice of bhakti we have to see how things work the aspiration is for pure devotion at the same time we have to connect with Krishna so that means that I think yesterday I mentioned that we cannot become pure devotees without becoming devotees what that means is ok I will give a couple of examples for this say if there is some big problem in my material life some huge problem is burdening and I think that I want to practice pure devotional service so I will not pray to Krishna anything about this and whatever happens Krishna knows everything, Krishna will take care of everything and I will pray only for increase my chanting, increase my hearing and I will not even mention to Krishna about my material problem now ok I may think I am aspiring for pure devotion but that particular problem is actually occupying a huge place in my consciousness, it is a big burden on my heart and basically bhakti is the connection of heart to heart we want to connect our heart with Krishna so something which is anyway having a big place in my heart, if I decide that I will not talk about it with Krishna I will not pray about it to Krishna then what is going to happen is a large part of my heart will stay disconnected from Krishna in our present condition stage material things do affect our consciousness if I get some big disease, if I have a major financial problem, if I have big relationship of fever these things consume our consciousness so if my conception of pure devotion is that I will not talk anything about my material life with Krishna, I will only focus on bhakti, then a large part of that which is in our heart will stay away from Krishna so if you focus on the point that I have to develop a relationship with Krishna, so if there is something which is burdening my heart then I offer that in prayer to Krishna and then in this case the surrender can be that Krishna this is what I feel is the solution to the problem but whatever is the solution, whatever is your will, let thy will be done please give me the strength to serve you so just speaking it out or praying to Krishna about it that can quite often unburden the heart and then we can connect better with Krishna so what I am saying over here is that pure devotion is our aspiration but sometimes in trying to stick to the ideal of pure devotion even devotion doesn't remain in our heart because what happens is the material things do take a lot of a lot of consciousness of mind and if I think I am not going to think about anything material with Krishna then practically I feel I have nothing to connect with Krishna so the problem, it can be a problem if I am only asking Krishna for material this problem, Krishna solve this, Krishna solve this and I am not doing any sadhana, I am not praying for the increase of my bhakti at all, I am only praying for material things but for us in our life we don't have to once we have dedicated our life to Krishna we don't have to make a rigid separation between the material and the spiritual because even the material affects the spiritual and even the material can be used in the service of the spiritual so we definitely need some time for directly spiritual activities but even the material activities can be spiritualized so that way this is slightly different from your answer but I am giving this as an example to illustrate sometimes talking to Krishna or praying to Krishna about material things with a surrender eventually, whatever is your will I will accept it but this is what I feel that surrender mood can come at the end but we can express our concern to Krishna and that way we authentically connect with Krishna otherwise it is just ethereal and thinking of pure devotion but then my whole consciousness is consumed with practical problems and I don't know how to deal with them so similarly rather than seeing any efforts to develop humility or tolerance as something separate from bhakti we can see them also as activities which are uncool to bhakti and we accept them so that way if we do it it is quite helpful now for some of us we may find that yes by chanting it happens that all wonderful qualities blossom but in many cases it doesn't happen sometimes unfortunately what happens is our chanting and our practice of bhakti it makes us more judgmental instead of more understanding I follow my standards, I am following strictly and actually if I am really going spiritually I should become more empathic towards others but I become more judgmental towards others this person is like that, this person is like that this person is like that so what is happening is because of our past conditionings we are not able to chant purely we are not able to practice bhakti purely so then we are chanting but we are becoming judgmental towards others we are not really becoming compassionate towards others so then because of our conditionings we may not be able to access pure bhakti right now so at that time doing those things which are uncool for the practice of our bhakti that is fine Prabhupada would say that one time, I don't remember who now one of Prabhupada's servants said that one day after they came back from a program he heard Prabhupada hearing his own lecture and then he asked Prabhupada Prabhupada, you are hearing your own lecture Prabhupada says yes I was checking what I spoke I also learn and I improve so now we must say Prabhupada is a pure devotee Krishna is speaking through him why does Prabhupada have to improve no but Prabhupada is also seeing from his perspective what can I do so one of my friends has done his PhD in bhakti sadhana sevita so he showed me a book so that was bhakti sadhana sevita thakur's English vocabulary book like the students learn for GRE or SAT they learn English words so bhakti sadhana sevita thakur he wanted to preach in English so he was learning English words he was writing down words and their meanings so even an acharya may have to do what is required for gaining the skills for serving Krishna so for Prabhupada also his father had him train for learning Mrudanga so now what happens is when it comes to relatively grosser skills like this say learning English or learning Mrudanga we understand that it is not just by pure devotion these will come sometimes somebody may be singing with great devotion they may be playing all the Mrudanga steps wrong it is not necessary that their pure devotion will automatically manifest as right Mrudanga beats so when it comes to things which are little more physical when things are little more physical we understand that pure devotion won't automatically develop this I have to put in some efforts to do this and we don't say why are you doing this Mrudanga learning that is an activity which is anukul to bhakti so we put in the time for learning so when it comes to qualities things become little hazy there is the body, there is the mind and there is the soul so when something has to be done for the body we understand it it is what is required I will have to do it but when it comes to the mind does everything at the level of the mind automatically develop by the practice of bhakti means say as tolerance or humility or whatever qualities we are talking about which are subtler they can be of the soul, they can be of the mind I won't go into that right now but is it that they will develop automatically they may or they may not if our practice is not pure but we have to see what is anukul to bhakti so in some cases if we learn some principles about how to practice tolerance or how to practice forgiveness how to practice patience and those can help us in our practice of bhakti then we see that as anukul anukul to bhakti and we do that so these sort of things they are not substitutes for bhakti if I start thinking all that I have to do to improve my relationships is I learn these tips for developing tolerance or I learn these tips for public speaking or whatever for influential speaking so that is not going to work but while we are in a devotee community and we have to work with others if certain things can help us in minimizing conflict or maximizing our productivity then we can see it as anukul to bhakti and we can use that in our practice of bhakti is that ok? so should we stop or it's almost 3.45 now yeah one last.