How can devotee-parents deal with children who don’t practice bhakti seriously?

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Transcript

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parents offer too much discipline in their early days and then the children rebel and then the parents also hesitate to later offer any discipline. Let me just set an example, not tell them anything but still their heart is very pained to see the children not practicing spiritual principles. So, what to do? Yes, the balance between love and discipline is something which all of us have to learn individually and a balance is never a static formula.
It’s like if I’m riding a cycle, the normal balance will be in the vertical state but if I want to turn right, then the cycle has to be bent towards the right. But, if I keep it bent towards the right, then I’ll go in round circle all the time. So, after tilting it towards the right a little bit, then I have to make it balanced once in a while.
Then, again, if I turn towards the left, I have to tilt it towards the left. So, like that, balance is dynamic. And, we all learn by experience.
sometimes we may tilt too much in the direction of discipline. Sometimes we may tilt too much in the direction of love. But, overall, if you strive for balance, then the children do understand.
So, one of the things is that, if you study the broad bhakti tradition, we are, is called emerged at a particular time in history. And, especially in America, it was a very turbulent phase of counterculture. And, Prabhupada gave presentation of bhakti to people who had practically no knowledge of bhakti at that particular time in their particular lives.
So, often, we become fixated to a particular historical phase and the presentation of bhakti in that phase. But, if you study the history of the tradition of bhakti, every generation has practiced bhakti in its own way. If you just look at the way Bhaktisudhan Surya Thakur spread Gaudiya Gita and study Baldev Devashis commentary on the Bhagavad Gita.
Radically different ways of looking at the Bhagavad Gita. So, of course, these are acharyas, but this principle is similar, that every generation will find its own way of practicing bhakti. Now, that does not mean that there is nothing eternal to bhakti, there are certain principles that are actually eternal.
See, even now you see that most of the gurukulis, the childhood impressions that they have had, at the very least, they continue in the form of the attraction for kirtan. They may not chant japa, they may not come for bhagavatam class, but they do love kirtans. So, to some extent, children may not express it right now, but yes, even if the parents neglected them in some way, offered them too much discipline, but that was done out of good intentions.
The parents were not drinking, the parents were not taking drugs, the parents were not neglecting their children and doing something bad. So, the children have got something good and they are not consciously acknowledging it because they may feel that my parents will again start disciplining me if I acknowledge this. But, they are showing their appreciation of it in their own way, in a way that works for them, that is primarily to kirtans.
And, if they see that they are accepting for too long, they have felt that we are being molded into something that we are not. We are being molded. They are being forced into some mold.
So, now they don’t want to go into that mold at all. So, if they see that they are accepted for what they are, then that acceptance will itself prompt more openness. If again that attempt to mold them is done, then again they will clamp and close down.
This was what I was doing throughout my childhood. I don’t want to go through that again. But if you say accept them as they are, they will want to open up because at their core they know that this is good.
They have got some taste for kirtan. And the taste for bhakti that they have got, it’s not going to be forgotten. So, we just facilitate them in a way that they can accept it and more or less now most of them have grown up into youth.
So, we can’t control them in any way. So, it’s best to accept them where they are and offer our love. And gradually the impressions that they have got in their childhood, the intelligence which they have, they will act on them and they will come closer to Krishna.
Thank you.