How can a devotee work in an anti-devotional profession that goes against the four regulative principles?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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place where say some kind of anti-devotional activity is happening say in the meat packing industry or something like that then what should we do in such a situation Ideally speaking we want to avoid any involvement in a profession which is directly leading to anti-devotion At the same time Bhakti is not limited by anything Bhakti is the soul’s connection with Krishna It can be impeded but it is not stopped by anything so sometimes we may just be put in a circumstantial situation where a person has to a person we just have no alternatives suppose there are people who have been for many many generations their family has been fishermen and if they become devotees that’s all that they know they will not be able to give it up anyhow so whatever happens we should firstly never give up the practice of Bhakti whatever happens now secondly while practicing Bhakti even if there is some wrong activity involved in some wrong profession we can see within that profession whether we can gravitate towards the least amount of direct involvement so that way we are not directly hands on involved in that wrong activity as much as possible secondly we try to as much as possible try to find some other profession if it is possible and we do diligently try Krishna will arrange something if that doesn’t work out then we can see that as also a way we can serve Krishna so that means we don’t have to we can find a virtue even necessity that means that this is what I have to do I am trying to give up this I am trying to move on but it’s not working out what I get is maybe this is the way Krishna wants me to bring him to the people in this profession so it’s not that we may directly preach how we present Krishna that may vary according to time and place sometimes Krishna may put devotees in particular situations which they don’t want to be in for some higher purpose so there was one devotee who was in the American army and he had to go to Iraq he didn’t want to go his spiritual master told me if it’s your job you go no I will have to kill this is political background that’s your job just do it so when he went there when he was in the army and he was trying to preach to his friends not at all interested his colleagues but when they were in the middle of the war the Iraqi insurgents they were outnumbered so they were just doing ambush attacks and all the American soldiers were in great stress so he was like a squadron leader and he throughout I was chanting Krishna he says it was in the war fields of the middle east that I discovered how wonderful the name of Krishna was it just calmed me down by his cool headedness he was able to deal he was able to lead his team through a lot of dangerous situations so after one of them his colleague asked him how do you stay so cool and then as he realized I understood why Krishna had brought me to the Middle East he says there in America they were not interested in hearing but now with their existence being on the border of life or death they were really interested so he told them I understood spiritually that I am not the body and the soul so is eternal so is indestructible and I try to stay at the spiritual level by chanting people were really interested many of them started hearing the Bhagavad Gita and he was a good singer so he started doing Kirtans in the American Army campus and I think that was he did the first Rath Yatra in Iraq in the American barracks so he wrote a series of articles about his experience called the Battlefield Bhajans so as devotees we can try to find virtue even necessity so if sometimes Krishna puts us in a particular situation where anti devotional activities are just a part of the whole thing again we shouldn’t be resentful instead of being resentful just see how can I serve Krishna in this situation and then Krishna will reveal his plan and neither will continue there will come out of there just see that also as a service and try to see how we can do that service