Does responsibility mean doing whatever we are told to do or doing big projects under instruction?
So does being responsible mean simply doing whatever authority tells us to do or doing some big projects again under the instruction of authority yes responsible we can say that it's basically displayed as response able one who is able to choose one's response means I have a particular conditioned response so when it's time to wake up in the morning my conditioned response is I want to sleep but then I know this is important for me to wake up so I wake up that is responsibility so now when it comes to services at one level it is good to be surrendered and do whatever we are told to do and if you are doing even if it is a small service if we are told to do it and we are doing it responsibly, responsibly means that we make sure the service gets done it gets done with a good quality service as expected then there is a responsibility involved even in that in getting the thing done either we do it ourselves or we do it to someone else even if it is a small service so we could say responsibly the difference between this is just a service and responsible services we are aware of the importance, the intention of the service when somebody says clean this floor I just clean the floor but if a 500 rupee note has fallen over there I take it and find out who did it and give it that means being aware of the situation being aware of the intention and doing the thing properly and if some complication comes handling that some unexpected thing happens handling that properly also so that is responsibility so we are not only just concerned with doing that particular thing but we are also aware of the connection of that particular thing with Krishna with the overall Krishna's mission, overall service and then we don't do this one thing in a way that disturbs others but it assists everything else so service and responsible service are differentiated by not just doing one thing but doing the one thing in a way that it contributes to the whole thing so of course there is another aspect of responsibility also is that that we want to offer our best to Krishna so Krishna has given us certain abilities, certain talents and sometimes our authorities may be aware of those talents sometimes they may not be aware of those talents so we have a responsibility to our authority to do what they told us to do at the same time we have a responsibility to Krishna that whatever he has given us we should use it in his service so if we have certain talents, we have certain interests which are not being used in our present service and so with those talents and interests we can do some bigger services then expressing our desire in a humble way is also a responsibility because in the long run we consider as the years, decades pass we may not always have some senior devotee telling us what we should be doing so our responsibility to our bhakti we could say is that we find a service that we can do even if nobody is there telling us to do anything and finding a service like that finding a service that we feel inspired to do that is also our responsibility and it's not just finding that service we also have to learn that service, become expert in that service so if we feel that this could be a service like that then exploring that option and trying to direct our energy towards that service that is also a part of responsibility so whether it's a project, it's a big project or not that is not as important because we have the example of the squirrel and Hanuman and both of them pleased Lord Ram so it was not so much the action as the intention it's not the quantity of the action but the quality of the intention that mattered so the quantity of action for Hanuman was far greater than the squirrel but the quality of intention of both of them was the same and that's what pleased the Lord so if we see that quality of intention and if we try to cultivate that then sometimes we may have certain abilities by which we can do big things and sometimes we may not have those abilities so if we are doing the best that we can do then we are being responsible somebody may become a devotee who travels all over the world and preaches somebody is a person who manages a particular department somebody is just a pujari who not just a pujari but a pujari who does the worship diligently year after year after year they are all responsible and in fact sometimes when there is a service which has greater visibility in the public eye then there is also it is associated with greater distractibility so greater visibility brings greater distractibility because the visibility brings fame and then we may ourselves get captivated by the fame and then we start doing the service not for Krishna's pleasure but for fame or sometimes the visibility brings envy and then our attention also gets distracted in defending ourselves from the attacks of the envious of course this doesn't mean that we shouldn't do that service it simply means that we should just do the best that we can do and if we are doing the best that we can do then we are being responsible.