How can we avoid blaming our spiritual life for our not being fast enough or ambitious enough in our material life?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
sometimes in the corporate world our non-devotee colleagues seem to take faster decisions and because we think of various things we have a more structured way of thinking so we are slow in decision making and we fall behind them in the competitive world and then we sometimes blame our spiritual life it is because of my spiritual commitment that I am not able to succeed materially so how to deal with this situation there are two different things over here one is the speed of decision making and the second is the level of material ambitiousness first is with respect to speed it is not always necessary that the speed of decision will be the best decision sometimes it may work out that when people act according to gut feeling they may work out right sometimes it may work out wrong also so I would say that speed of decision is not always advantageous and even as devotees in our professional life there are times when we may also have to take as we say think on our feet we may also not have time to think of various factors and if we have to take decisions we should take decisions and of course we can learn from those decisions afterwards whether I took the right decision or not we can prospect afterwards or retrospect rather then we can see and we can learn so if say a devotee is working in a share market and that requires making fast decisions to some extent then the devotee has to do that of course within the share market also devotees may choose to invest in more long term investment rather than the short term oscillation that is a matter of where one can situate oneself productively and without an unreasonable degree of agitation so even in say a passionate sport like cricket there are different players with different personalities some have fast reflexes some are slow to change and that’s just a matter of personality and if a person has, if a cricketer has a challenge whether that person is very flexible or very steady that person often succeeds so I would say it’s not just a matter of our spiritual life it might just be a matter of individual nature and we can choose a kind of situation which is compatible with our nature and there may be devotees who take fast decisions and there may be non devotees who take slow decisions speed of decision making is more a matter of individual nature than about one’s devotional or non devotional orientation and if we are in a profession which requires fast decision making then it’s better that we have an orientation or a cultivated orientation and if we find that that’s just not our nature then it’s better to focus on a even within that profession we can actually adjust and place ourselves in positions where so many fast decisions are not required so that’s first thing second thing is the level of material ambitiousness we can’t have one size fit all formula for everyone some devotees may feel that I just want to earn enough so that I can focus on my spiritual life and their goal is not so much to advance in their career as to just earn enough so that they can practice their spiritual life and maybe they also want to save and later they want to retire or whatever or they want to take a less demanding job in future so for some devotees it may be that their career is only for earning they have no interest in that subject at all if they want to grow it’s primarily for earning it’s not so much in terms of growth in that particular subject and that is a laudable attitude where a devotee focuses primarily on Krishna and sees everything else direct towards Krishna but that is not the only devotional attitude it may also be that a devotee may have a higher level of ambitiousness now naturally there is a higher level of ambitiousness in material life their commitment to spiritual life may decrease the amount of time available may decrease and that need not be seen always as a contamination or as a sign of insincerity all of us have different, we have come from different backgrounds all of us have, so rather than if some devotee has more but an ambition rather than seeing that as a sign of less sincerity we recognize that all of us come from different backgrounds and we all will have to work our own individual way towards Krishna so Krishna also in 12.8 to 12.12 talks about different levels at which one can practice bhakti just fix the mind with Krishna, try to practice Adhna Bhakti work for me, work for some good cause and give the fruits to me and is it by all these pursuits one will come to pilgrimage so in that sense, the important thing is there is a passing craving and there is a constant craving in general, anybody in this world say if I talk about the ashram person, I talk about vocation anybody, whether a person is a brahmacharya, jnana star if one sees a practice and so on, some lust may come and it’s just a passing thing, the perception comes, the desire comes one rejects the desire, it goes away but if there is a constant nagging attack which is constantly troubling, troubling, troubling then that’s a different situation so like that, even in our profession sometimes it may happen that we see somebody who passed out at the same time as us that person is in a very good position in the company and very successful, that time we say oh I could also have become like that so if it has just happened, occasionally it happens it comes and goes, that’s fine even if we had not been devotees even if we had been non-devotees and even if we had been very successful there might always be someone who was more successful than us and that feeling could happen so occasional feeling is one thing but if there is a constant nagging feeling of dissatisfaction then we may have to accommodate that by taking a higher level by being more mentally ambitious the whole idea is that we cannot wish away our conditions we have to work our way through it so how we work our way that will be different for different persons so initially our movement’s definition of success was that people just drop out of the world and join the temple even if they don’t become Brahmacharis they don’t become Dharamshala still they are in the temple only most of the time but then overall as the movement has expanded we have recognized that it’s not that the whole world is going to drop into the temple if we are going to benefit the world then we also have to benefit the world and while being in the world we show people how to balance between the two so one model of success is complete integration in the temple the other is penetration into the world and that is also one example of success so we also need to find out within the devotee community those devotees who will understand this and it’s always possible that when we decide to become material ambitious we can get so snatched by the passion of material life that we can completely give up spiritual life that should not happen so we need some devotee association and even that pursuing a higher level of material ambitiousness that should also be done under the guidance of some devotees but not all devotees may be equally understanding so there is also in Prabhupada’s life I think when he was in Allahabad one of the he interviews many people so one of the person he says Swamiji was a very spiritual person but at that time the main thing he was thinking was how can I earn more money that was his main concern so there can be phases in a person’s life of course Prabhupada is transcendent but the point is even for him there can be phases so we need sympathetic devotee association which will understand our situation at the same time ensure that we don’t do too much in the material life so if you feel that because of our practice of spiritual life we are not being as successful as we could have been then we have to see whether that kind of feeling is a constant feeling or just occasional passing feeling occasional passing in this big life but if it’s a constant feeling then we’ll have to decide what we need to do maybe for a few years maybe a few decades also what it works out we may focus more on material life and achieve our material ambitions and that way also we can serve Krishna it’s not that yes that would be a different way of serving Krishna the effects may not be as directly visible as if we are constantly visible in the temple doing services directly but that is also a way of serving Krishna so but another reason for this could be that we don’t have strong association in the sense that if we have very good devotee friends we all need a sense of belonging a sense of acceptability and respectability within some social circle if we are associating too much with only our colleagues then we will want to be more and more respectful in that circle and that means doing what they are doing better than what they are doing but if we are more and more devotee circle and we are not so much identifying with that social circle we are getting satisfied with the sixfold exchange in the devotee circle then that will not matter so much that means it could be just because that’s the condition we need to work out that’s one extreme the other extreme could be that it’s just something passing we don’t have to worry too much about it it’s just that our relationships are not as strong within the devotee community as they are in the outside community that’s why we are getting that so what is the cause we can find out and then accordingly deal with it it’s a small percentage