​How can we balance brahmana and kshatriya roles?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
more toward Varanashram. But it is not necessary.
It will vary. So, when a person tries to balance both his Ramana and Kshatriya roles, it may be that other people may just take one aspect of it or even that person, oneself may get caught in one side too much. So, how does one balance? I think that is why we need the association of devotees who will balance.
And broadly speaking, if we have a good friend circle, in our life, we need to have at least one person through whom we look at our mind. Normally, we look at everyone through our mind. That means if somebody comes and praises me, I think, pure Mastala that I am catching his focus.
We think if this person is praising me, he must want something from me. And if somebody criticizes me, I think that this person must be envious of me. So, what happens? The mind is always with us.
And we look at everything through the filter of our mind. Of course, by purification, the filter of the mind will go down. But if we have at least one devotee, instead of that devotee we trust so much that instead of we looking through our mind at that devotee, we look at that devotee and we look at our mind.
Okay, my mind is saying this and this devotee is saying this. So, we look at the mind through the devotee’s guidance. And in some cases, even if it is not one devotee, sometimes for different aspects of our life, we may have different guides.
That may also work out. We have to see what is practical. But the point is that these things, major decisions about balancing, when we are playing different roles, the major decision of balancing cannot be done by our own introspection or intelligence.
Ultimately, it is our life. And we have to decide how we are going to serve Krishna, of course, under the guidance of our spiritual master and our authorities. But it is our responsibility.
So, we have to take the decisions, we have to implement the decisions. But because we are doing it, we are too close to ourselves to observe objectivity. And that is why we need input from others.
So, if we are in the association of devotees, and not just in the association, but physically, but association in terms of taking guidance where necessary from others, so that they can give us an objective perspective. Objective means they look at us from a distance and they tell us, then we will be able to balance. But then whenever we go off balance, they will help us to come back.
That is one thing having guidance. And within ourselves also. Now, usually we need times of Satva Guna reflection.
Most of the times when we are doing things, we are in Rajoguna. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Because for doing things, to some extent, passion is required.
But if there are times of Satvik reflection, which we also have. So, it is said that when the airplane is traveling, 95% of the time it is off track. If the plane is going from Mumbai to Calcutta, 95% of the time is off track.
Because the wind pressure is there, the clouds are there, the atmospheric conditions are there. And how does the plane reach the destination? Constant reorientation. The pilot is watching, oh, it went off track, bring it back.
We go off track, bring it on track. So, like that in our life also, while doing things in the heat of the moment, in the passion of doing things, we may go off track. But if we have times of introspection, maybe once a week, we sit back for some time, like 10 minutes, 15 minutes, we may write down what events happened in our life.
I just sit and think about them. What I did? Did I do it properly? Could I have done it differently? Now, if we look at time, if we look at the past, the past is not like a time axis on the chart for us. The past lumps up.
There are some moments of great significance and other moments are routine. So, the moments of great significance, either when we did something wonderful or something terribly bad happened or some altercation was there or whatever. So, then when we look back, we will see, okay, this is what happened, maybe I could have done it this way or maybe here this was too much, maybe this could have been adjusted like that.
So, if we have those times for introspection, then we can ourselves do the reorientation. So, it is almost inevitable that we go off track. But when we go off track, if we have periodic times for introspection, then it is called a Sihavalokan.
Sihavalokan means, it is said a lion when it is chasing a prey, it keeps running, running, running and stops and looks around, which is where has the prey gone, where have I come and then again runs. So, like that the periodic breaks for introspection if we have, we will ourselves reorient ourselves and I will be taking guidance from others also whenever required and they will also help us reorient and that way we can maintain the balance. As far as others, for de-perceiving others, it is important that if we are trying to understand someone, if we are, one of the principles and a part of Shastric Advisory Council, which is the advisory body for the GBC and Shastric issues.
So, one of the principles that we have in studying Prabhupada’s works is that on any topic, if you want to understand Prabhupada, we should look at all the statements of Prabhupada in the topic, not just one of his statements. Because one of his statements may be on this side, other two statements may be on the other side. And if we take only one side of Prabhupada, we will get or share an imbalanced conception of Prabhupada.
So, basically to understand a person, we have to look at their full range of either activities or life or whatever. Then we can avoid misunderstanding. Thank you very much.