​How can we connect with Krishna when we have to work eight hrs daily in office?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
How can we connect with Krishna, or think of Krishna, when we work in a factory or office for eight hours a day? Yes. Primarily, it depends on how we connect with Krishna, when he is directly in front of us.
When we have opportunity to come to temple, when we get associated with devotees, when we have opportunity to chant the holy names, at that time, how much we connect with Krishna, that is more important. Now, suppose, say, a husband is working in some different city, and the husband comes back home, and then he tells his wife, you know, when I am there, I think of you constantly. But then the wife starts talking with him, the husband starts checking his messages, SNS, and the wife will say, see, when I am right in front of you, you are not even thinking of me then.
How can I believe you are thinking of me when I am not in front of you? So, similarly, when Krishna is right in front of us, when Krishna is manifesting as the holy name, when Krishna is manifesting as scripture, when Krishna is manifesting as the deities, at that time, we focus on trying to offer our consciousness as much as possible to Krishna. These are the times when we solidify our connection with Krishna. And if we do this solidly, gradually, Krishna will enter into our consciousness as the goal of our life.
See, Vishwanath Chakra Thakur gives an example of how we can think of Krishna constantly. He says, suppose a person, a man is working, a person may be far away from home, and he may be doing various kinds of jobs, may be meeting with this person, negotiating here, dealing there, traveling there. But through it all, a man is thinking that I am doing this for my wife, or this is for my children, I want to take care of them, I want to maintain them.
So, it may not be, his thoughts of the family may not be constantly in the foreground, but they are there in the background as the purpose of why one is doing that thing. So, similarly, he says, as we keep practicing bhakti, as we understand the philosophy, Krishna becomes the goal of our life. And Krishna becomes the goal of our life, then whatever we do, we may be in an office, we may be doing a job.
Initially, we may do a job because we just think, yes, I want to earn a lot of money. I want to become wealthy and famous and popular. But as we start practicing bhakti, more and more, Krishna becomes the goal of our life.
Then we say, I am doing this job so that I can get Lakshmi, I can use Lakshmi in Krishna’s service. So, the activity may remain the same, but the motivation, inspiration changes. And that’s why, to the extent we are associating with Krishna nicely, when Krishna directly manifests before us, to that extent, our attraction to Krishna increases.
To that extent, we become inspired by the desire to serve Krishna. And when that desire to serve Krishna becomes the primary driving motivation in our life, then that desire to serve underlies all our other activities also. Whether it may be in the family or in the office, that motive will be to serve Krishna.
And that will define and that will be the background presence even without the foreground presence. And additionally, even when we are working, we can try to create spiritual stimuli. If we are working on a computer, we can have some Krishna related wallpapers.
If we are doing work that is not intellectually demanding, we can hear some soft spiritual music, some kirtans. If we strive to serve Krishna and we strive to remember Krishna, Krishna will give us intelligence about how we can remember. Krishna will give us ideas.
As many devotees during their lunch break, they may hear some philosophy. Or if we find within our professional circles, there is someone else who is spiritually minded, then we try to share Krishna consciousness with them and that way also we can spiritualize our workplace. But principally it is not that to remember Krishna is not possible when we are working.
We shouldn’t think of remembering Krishna as a simplistic, artificial stuffing of our mind with Krishna. Remembering Krishna is something that organically emerges when there is attachment to Krishna. So we focus on the direct devotional activities by which we become attached to Krishna.
And when that attachment to Krishna comes, then organically, he will animate our whole life as our driving purpose.