How can devotees choose a career that is compatible with our devotional life?

Transcript

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Question, when a devotee wants to pursue a career for living and earning in the world, then how should that career be chosen so that it is compatible and harmonious with our devotional life? Because we will have to encounter people who are non-devotees or non-devotionally inclined and we will be in a non-devotional environment.
So how can we choose a career that is suitable for our devotional service? Answer, the essence of Varanashram dharma is the intention of harmonizing our material occupation with our spiritual aspiration. So in Varanashram, actually in and of themselves, Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, these professions or these divisions and the professions corresponding to them are not spiritual, they are material. The qualities of a Brahmana also, Shamo, Dhamo, Tapa, Shoucham, sense control, austerity, they are conducive for spiritual life, but even materialistic people can have those qualities.
So in the Vedic culture, when a person would be practicing Varanashram, in the Varanashram dharma, then whatever the material inclinations of that person, accordingly that person would be integrated and engaged within the social structure so that that person would earn a living and also make spiritual advancement. That means a Brahmana is an intellectual who likes to study. So such an intellectual can study any subject.
But when the social structure is arranged so that the person can maintain oneself while studying scripture and teaching scripture, then the inclination is utilized. Srila Prabhupada would use the word dovetail. And the person’s material concerns are addressed while also the person is helped in making spiritual advancement because the person is studying scripture.
So now, Srila Prabhupada wanted to revive Varanashram dharma and while at an institutional or social level, how that is to be done is a matter of much discussion. But at an individual level, every devotee can take an inventory of oneself to find out what one’s talents and inclinations are. So often we say that we have a Prabhupada book called Journey of Self-Discovery or we say Discover Yourself.
So actually discovering yourself at one level, of course, it means understanding that we are souls who are parts of Krishna. But discovering yourself at another level also means discovering what kind of conditionings we have and what kind of inclinations we have and accordingly how best we can live materially and practice spiritual life while living in the material world. This is something which every one of us will have to discover individually.
And the general criteria for that would be external competence and internal comfort. That means if something, if some particular service, some particular profession is overall according to our psychophysical nature, then we will be externally competent in doing that. And we’ll be internally comfortable doing it.
If somebody has the inclination of being an artist and is made into an engineer or doctor, that person will not be comfortable, will feel miserable, will feel mismatched in that activity. So, in general, if we want to find out what career we should pursue, often if we look at what we are good at and what we feel happy doing, now this happiness need not be spiritual and it is for many materialistic people who have passion for singing and who become singers. They get a sense of fulfilment over there.
There is nothing spiritual about it. But just living according to our material nature, not in the sense of succumbing to our lust, anger, greed, but living according to our psychophysical nature, our varna vritti, that brings a certain level of material happiness. And because the varnasana system, which acted as a supportive social structure earlier, is no longer present.
So, we need to do individually what was earlier done communally, socially. So, many of us basically choose a particular career, say becoming engineer or becoming doctor or whatever, based more on considerations of glamour and earnings than on considerations of compatibility and competence. But even within a particular career which one has chosen, in some cases, some people may want to change their career entirely.
Even people who are non-devotees sometimes change their career. They may become engineers and then they decide that they want to become, they want to take up some other profession. But even if somebody doesn’t take such a radical step, even within a particular profession, a devotee can choose something which is according to one’s nature.
That means if somebody goes into engineering and becomes an engineer, but then finds that, say, the engineering lifestyle is very passionate. Suppose somebody has the inclination to go to software. So, the whole software field is very passionate, very competitive with a lot of deadlines.
But even within that, if one has an inclination more towards goodness, then one may become a teacher of software, may become a teacher of engineering. And that will be a little bit more sattvic, more in the mode of goodness. And if one has an inclination for that, then one can be happy with that also.
So, in general, if we can, over a period of time, keep observing ourselves and noting down, what are the things that we feel satisfied doing, what are the things which we are good at, that helps us to discover our career, discover our, our psychophysical nature and how we can best serve Krishna. Now, with respect to the external contaminating environment that may come, in general, if we are good at some things, then the external environment doesn’t affect us too much. That means if I am good at writing software programs and I like it also, then although I may be in a social environment where the other people may be anti-devotional, immoral, and that may drag me down also.
But actually, if I am absorbed and satisfied in my work, then the inclination to flip out onto the wrong side of things will be much, much lesser. The temptation will not be so much alluring. But if we are in a career which we are not good at, which we don’t feel happy about, then the mind is always looking for alternatives.
And then at such times, the whole quick fix, the quick pleasures that material life promises to offer, they become much more attractive. That means that the material association that we get while pursuing our careers will affect us more if we are not focused and satisfied in the work that we are doing. And the more we are focused and satisfied, the less we will be affected.
And the less we have to have a social circle wherever we work. So within the social circle also, within the group of people who we are working with, we can find out those who are relatively sattvic, who value qualities that are compacted with the mode of goodness. Although they may not be entirely in goodness, still if they are inclined towards goodness, their association will ensure that we have some friends with whom we can relate in the professional circles.
At the same time, we won’t feel obliged just because of friendship to compromise our principles all the time. And this kind of identifying a compatible social circle and then investing time to develop relationships with those whom we find compatible, that goes a long way in also ensuring that we don’t get contaminated while working. Some devotees also have the inclination that irrespective of what their long term inclinations are, they feel that we can work for a longer, we can work more in a particular field because that field uses more earning.
And once we earn a good amount, later on, I can take a less demanding job and then I can spend more time pursuing my spiritual life. And that way I can have my material concerns taken care of in the few early years or decades of my career. And later on, I can be free without much financial anxiety for focusing on spiritual life.
Now, this can be a good strategy provided in the initial phase one, one is focusing on one’s material career, one doesn’t get so caught up in it that one loses contact with devotees, one loses track of one’s ultimate objective and gets ensnared. So no matter how demanding or how busy our material career tends to become, it’s important for us to have adequate time for our basic practices of devotional service. And in such situations also, if we are on the fast track for earning some quick money, it is important that we don’t lose track of the ever-present danger of looking for a better tomorrow while letting our today become entirely spiritually empty.
That means some practice has to go on and maybe in the future will intensify it. But the basic devotional practice needs to go on throughout because devotional service is not just doing an activity. Devotional service is also developing a mentality.
So it’s not that we just need more time in the future to do the activities of devotional service. We actually have to change our mind so that the mind is attracted to Krishna. And if for the first 10, 15, 20 years we decide that I’ll work very hard, I’ll earn a lot of money and then I’ll practice devotional service.
But during those 20 years, the mind will get molded so that it takes naturally towards material things, material calculations, material associations and then remolding the mind later will be difficult. So that’s why we need to have adequate amount of time to make sure that our mind is slowly getting inclined towards Krishna and it gets adequate exposure to Krishna Consciousness so that the redirection of the inclination of the mind is kept on track. So overall, firstly by looking at what we are externally competent and what we are internally comfortable with and then secondly by looking for a social circle that has relatively good sattvic values and by making sure that we give adequate time for at least the basic practice of Krishna Consciousness, we can ensure that whatever career we choose, that career will not take us off track from the path of our devotional service but will help us to become more and more focused on our devotional journey.
Thank you.