​How can one act with love without the feeling of love?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Question from Preeti Mataji. You said that love is not just feeling, love is actually giving.
But how can the act of giving be done if there is no feeling of love? How can a mother act in a mood of service towards her child if she doesn’t have love for the child? So isn’t love as a feeling essential for the action of love in giving? Answer? Yes. Love is a feeling, but love is also more than a feeling. So here when we say love is not feeling, love is giving, that does not mean that love is, the emphasis, it’s a rhetorical statement.
The emphasis here is that love is not just feeling. Love is actually, that is a feeling that is expressed through actions. If somebody says, I have feelings, but there are no actions based on those feelings, then those feelings are not really genuine.
If a mother says, I love my child, but the mother doesn’t do anything to take care of the child, then the question arises, is this love really genuine? Is this actually love or is it just some imagination that there is love? So therefore, we need to understand that real love is authentic and that authenticity of the love is seen, the authenticity of the feeling of love is seen through the actions that express that love. And that’s why both these go together. It is not that the action can be done without feelings and it is not that when we say that love is expressed through actions, that does not mean there is no feeling of love.
Now having said that, especially when we practice Sadhana Bhakti in a relationship with Krishna, and this also applies to our other relationships, sometimes the feeling itself may not be present. So for example, if say at midnight, the mother has had a long day and she’s exhausted and suddenly in the middle of the night, the baby starts crying. At that time, the mother may not feel like waking up, may not feel great affection for her baby.
But still the mother wakes up and still the mother takes care of the baby. Why is that? Because at that time she understands, this is my duty, this is my responsibility. So when she does the action, and despite however she feels, she does the action of taking care of the baby, fondling the baby, comforting the baby, offering her milk to the baby.
Through the actions, gradually the feeling starts awakening. Oh, that’s my baby, I love her so much. So the A, feelings may be there, but sometimes because of circumstances, because of situations, those feelings may, we may not immediately feel those feelings.
So at that time, by doing the actions, the appropriate feelings arise. So similarly, when we practice bhakti, at that time, sometimes we may not feel like doing certain activities. We may not feel like studying scripture, we may not feel like chanting, we may not feel like doing various activities.
At those times, if we persevere in the practice of bhakti, if we persevere in our determination to love and serve Krishna and to act in that mood of service, then gradually, by that action, the feeling will come. So Vishnu Prabhupada told Giriraj Maharaj, once Giriraj Maharaj, he was one of the leaders looking after the Mumbai project, and there were a lot of bureaucratic bottlenecks, bureaucratic stoppages that were happening, and things were not moving forward. So one day, he had come back and he was disheartened.
So at that time, in the evening, there was aarti, Gaur aarti, and Prabhupada, the devotees didn’t feel like dancing at all. So Prabhupada told them that even if you don’t feel like dancing, dance, and if you dance, you will feel like dancing gradually. So by doing the actions of bhakti, gradually the emotions of bhakti will also come.
So that’s the meaning of Anushilanam. Anukulyena Krishna Anushilanam Bhaktiruttama Anushilanam There is a cultivation of bhakti, cultivation of the emotion of devotion through the appropriate actions, then gradually that emotion grows. So yes, bhakti is a feeling, but when it is said bhakti is not just a feeling, that means two things, that we should not reduce bhakti to a feeling which is not expressed through actions.
And secondly, we should not stop the actions just because there are no feelings. No, we keep doing the actions and we focus on doing the actions while also striving for the appropriate emotions and then the internal emotions and the outer actions, there will be a wonderful symbiosis where the outer actions will stimulate the inner emotions and the inner emotions will strengthen the outer actions. And thus we can become more and more absorbed in the mode of pure emotion for Krishna.
Thank you.