​How can we balance our studies and our bhakti?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Does that answer your question? So, how do we balance our studies and our devotional life? Now, one big problem we all have is so much to do and so little time to do it. Have you felt like that you don’t have enough time? We all have felt like that.
It’s like we have so many things to do. Sometimes, we want to go for a trip. And then, we feel, I want to take this dress also.
I want to take this dress also. I want to take this also. And then, some people want to take their whole house in their suitcase.
Now, it looks impossible because it is impossible. We cannot fit the whole house into the suitcase. We have to select.
Okay, these are things which I really need. These are things I really don’t need them. I can manage without them.
So, like that, our 24 hours is like the suitcase. And all the things that we have to do is like our house. So, now, we can’t fit all the things that we have to do in 24 hours.
That means we may not be able to do every day all the things that you like to do. But on different trips, you might take different things. So, like that, on different days, we do different things.
And what this means practically is that we have to prioritize. What is more important? What is less important? And sometimes, when our study pressure is more, at that time, our devotional activities may become less. And the study pressure is not so much, our devotional activities may become more.
It’s like, say, if you are going from here to Florida, sometimes the traffic is more. At that time, we go at a slower speed. And the traffic is less, we just move faster.
So, like that, sometimes in our life, the traffic of things to do becomes too much. And we may not be able to move so fast. Other times, we move faster.
One important thing to recognize is that we often think of time in terms of activities. Okay, in the morning, I’ll be doing this. Afternoon, I’ll be doing this.
Evening, I’ll be doing this. We think of time in terms of activities. But time is not taken only by activities.
Time is also taken by thoughts. Time is also taken by desires. Suppose you come to school, and you have a friend who snubs you, or who neglects you, or who disrespects you.
And then you feel so angry. Why did they do that? And then we are sitting in the class, we’re looking at the teacher, and we are thinking of revenge fantasies. Next time, I will show you.
So now, one hour I sit in front of the class, sit in front of the teacher in class, and I’m only thinking of revenge fantasies. Nothing else. So what has happened? That one thought has taken so much time.
So now, in terms of our daily schedule, we don’t write in the schedule. In my timetable, one hour for revenge fantasy. But our thoughts do take time.
So when we actually practice bhakti nicely, when we chant, when we study scripture, then we can catch our mind when it starts wasting our time. So when the thought comes like this and starts wasting our time, okay, person did like that. It’s not a good thing to do.
But I’ll see how to deal with it later. I’ll not bother about it right now. Maybe we talk with them and maybe they had no intention of snubbing us.
They just didn’t notice us only. Or maybe we had done something which they had misunderstood because of which they had got angry. We clarify.
Afterwards, we can deal with that. So if you observe, a lot of time goes because of our thoughts. And then if you put the time for bhakti, whatever devotional activities we are doing, if you put the time in doing those activities nicely, you’ll be able to catch.
Sometimes you play some games in which you have to catch some thief. So like that we can treat catching the mind as a game. Now, where is the mind going? And we treat it like that, we’ll find that we’re going to save a lot of time.
We’ll be able to avoid a lot of unnecessary trouble if we can just avoid the mind going here and there. So that way, when we save that time, we will have more time to do constructive things. So we shouldn’t think that the time that we are doing in bhakti is actually taking so much of my time.
I have studies to do, I have this to do, I have that to do. The time we spend in bhakti, that will actually save our time. And that will enable us to do our other activities better because the time we waste invisibly in thoughts, that time will be saved.
Any other questions?