How can we decide whether to focus on material life or on spiritual life?

Anwser Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so if we are having difficulty in deciding what to do in our career how to take things forward better to just let things move along their own way and focus on our spiritual life or go out of our way to improve our material life by examining various career options, relocating to different places and then adjusting one’s spiritual life accordingly basically whether to focus on spiritual life and let material life go along or focus on material life and let spiritual life go along however it works yes, this is a question which requires three main things first is our obligations to our family and others second is our aspirations, what we want to do in the long run and third is our own talents and interests so let me start first, obligations so if we have parental obligations where loans or debts or something like that then Krishna Consciousness should never be used as an excuse for avoiding those responsibilities we need to do whatever it takes to clear those debts and do the obligations so that means focusing on material life then that’s okay so generally when it comes to focusing on spiritual life spiritual life basically there is association, there is Sangha, there is Seva there is Sadhana now Sadhana is something which you can practice alone wherever we are but it requires determination and Sangha makes Sadhana easier to follow in many ways and Sangha is an association available only at specific places, not at all places and Seva is also very important now that’s why I talked about our own aspirations and our own talents and interests some devotees feel a great strength of strength just by coming in association, just coming to a temple where there are hundreds of devotees and then they can just say Hare Krishna to many people they just feel a lot of strength by belonging to a big group others feel that oh if I come to a temple with a large number of devotees it’s nice but then I get lost in the crowd I feel that so many things are happening I am not doing anything worthwhile over here I also want to do something something which will be my offering to Krishna this is not a feeling of the ego, it is actually the nature of the human person because we all are individuals we have an individual relationship with Krishna and we all will feel the need to make our individual offering to Krishna so now which is our priority? Do we feel greater strength in Sangha or do we feel greater strength in Seva? Of course if we can get Sangha and Seva together that’s wonderful but if that doesn’t happen then which to prioritize will depend on our nature and sadhana is something which is important at the same time quite often when Sangha and Seva are going on well or at least one of them is going on well we also feel inspiration to do sadhana because then we feel okay I am preaching to people and then I should also be practicing what I am saying that way we can take things forward so moving on now with respect to generally if we are well qualified in material life and although there is no certainty ultimately in material life but there is a reasonable amount of reasonable amount of predictability we could do whenever a person has good degree good academic track record and they can get a good job they may not get a great job but it is unlikely that they will ever come to the level where they just can’t get a job so if if you are not planning to become brahmachari which is a different different equation consideration at that time if you are planning to be grahasthas then some amount of material security is essential so now there are broadly three ways to do this one is initially focus a lot on material life earn a lot and then take up a low profile like a low demand consultancy kind of job and then focus on spiritual life so many devotees they start off their job till 40 they will work, 45 they will work and then they will just want to retire and then during this time they do as much service as they can but they are substantially focused on their material life other devotees feel that they are in for the long haul so they focus on spiritual life and adjust material life accordingly wherein they take up jobs that allow them to stay in association they try to take admission in colleges also where whatever they are doing jobs they try to do it where they can get good association good association means good spiritual facility whether it be sangha or seva so if you are preaching where there is opportunity to preach we try to take up a job there or whatever it is now so here material life is a consideration but material life is substantially filtered with spiritual life now if we have specific talents or specific interests then that will become a major consideration also so if a devotee has interest in some form of art then whether they are going to do it as a hobby, whether they are going to do it as a profession or whether they want to do it, develop it but simply as a seva whatever it is they have to decide that if its preaching usually has a lot involved in the dynamics of preaching first is that preaching requires time it requires capacity to connect with people but along with that people also see how we are living our material life first and foremost within that is whether we are happy our family is harmonious our children and family are well taken care of after that of course people see the financial level, the social position but more important than that we are not preaching prosperity theology prosperity theology is a prominent Christian idea that if you are sincerely devoted to God, God will bless you with material prosperity that is not our preaching so that’s why once we start speaking our philosophy then people don’t really check so much what your material status is although initially a high material status does make a difference in attracting people but after when people get the philosophy people don’t see don’t see so much what our standard of living is they see the standard of our consciousness the standard of our relationships within our family, within our community so in that sense an impressive material position can be a good starting point for preaching but if to get that good starting point takes so much competition and struggle that afterwards you don’t have the time only to preach then what is the use just like say somebody may say I can get a PhD and then a doctor in front of my degree will attract me to speak it’s true but if somebody to get a PhD, they just don’t have the intellectual caliber to get a PhD they struggle for 10 years to get a PhD what is the use so in general like Krishna said yukta is regulated so the idea is that just like when we eat nobody has to tell us really how much you should eat somebody may say you ate too much, somebody may say you ate too little but we know how much we need to eat and even if some people think it is too much that’s fine, that’s what I need and other people say it’s too little that’s also fine as long as we are not starving, as long as we feel energized, that’s fine so in fact in Denver I gave a series of 3 classes on understanding how to understand our kota in material life Krishna talks about kota so one of the metaphors I use there is food so we can’t actually judge we can’t actually decide what is our kota based on simply what others say we can definitely take experience from others take the input from others like say I can eat very sparsely now and I am not feeling weak but if a doctor is going to tell me your diet is lacking this and this and this and this is going to cause long term health hazards I have to consider that although I don’t feel anything right now so there are senior devotees who may give us some inputs and we can take them but again we have to see the validity, how expert they are a doctor is giving objective medical opinion based on established research sometimes devotees may just give some advice but that may be coming from their subjective reference points it may not be so basically at our level we can we can by observing ourselves come to an understanding of what will be my kota that means for this it is always good to try to get our thinking to the mode of goodness one of the ways to get the thinking to the mode of goodness is by writing down as long as thoughts are in the head running here, running there just keep wandering but if you get thoughts out, write down, this decision if I take, the pros, these are the cons this decision if I take, these are the pros, these are the cons write them down when major decisions have to be taken often they just they just consume our mental energy because we are constantly thinking about it, should I, should I not should I, shouldn’t I, but instead of that if we just write things down one at a time at one time we write things down and then we decide that I am not going to constantly think about it, if any new thought comes in the mind, I just note it down and add it over there and decide maybe if the decision you have taken a few months, then you can decide that every week I will spend half an hour to one hour deliberating on this so whatever new points you have got note it down, look add them to your main file and then revisit again and then think of yeah this point is a very important point I didn’t highlight it enough, this point actually is not all that important I never thought of it this way so you will get perspective so basically when you write things down like you are taking a snapshot of your mind now the mind has a component which keeps changing say today I may desire to eat this food, tomorrow I may desire to eat another food, that is a component which is changing in the mind, but the mind also has a component which is quite enduring, say a Brahmana likes to study that is not just like a passing feeling of the Brahmana, Brahmana always wants to study, so like that we will be able to find whether our feeling right now or is that a passing desire or is it like a lasting inclination if we see there for 3, 1, 6 months overall what I did 6 months ago, that is the same thing I feel right now that means this is the reasoning which is important, this is what is really important for me and then based on that if we take a decision we will follow it up with conviction otherwise sometimes we take a decision and we keep second guessing ourselves that means you know, maybe I should not have done this, maybe I should have done this, then even if it is the right decision we will not implement it rightly we will not implement wholeheartedly and it will not work well, so once we take a decision go into it wholeheartedly this is the way I am going to serve Krishna and of course as we learn we may do some course correction that is always possible at least if we decide something we will decide it with adequate thought and we will implement it with our whole heart so basically to summarize once again we have to find out what it is that inspires you the most in your spiritual life whether it is Sangha, whether it is Seva whether it is Sadhana and then decide which situation makes you the strongest in spiritual life just for spiritual life that is what you decide with respect to material life you have to decide what is your quota that means what you feel how you would like to go ahead with your material life and both of these you can decide by journaling and then evaluating for a fixed period of time and then later on say when you have to get married also then you will also be clear about what you your future will be like so when you talk with your future spouse also they will know that this is what they are becoming a part of, this is your vision for the future and then that way they will not be frustrated and they will not be unclarified expectations so it is important for us to, we can’t know the future there is a saying I read these articles on the Gita so one article I wrote called plans may not work but planning works that means plans refer to specific things I will do this, this, this, this quite often we make plans and when they don’t work we just give up plans but the idea is that more important than specific plans that we make is the thinking that goes into the plans which helps us to understand our own priorities and then even if a particular plan doesn’t work, the planning that we have done it helps us to do this didn’t work, I will go like this maybe I just give this up, it is not so important for me, so in that sense even if through all this thinking decisions emerge immediately still the overall going through this thought process will help you to know when some avenues open for you should you take them or should you not take them so sometimes we are ourselves able to make decisions immediately, sometimes some decisions are thrust on us so at that time also we have to some situations are thrust on us, we have to decide that time also we are going to decide better so it takes some time and go through a whole process of introspection where I call the process as I am writing a book on called Yoga of Journaling Yoga of Journaling and the subtitle is Training your intelligence to become the counselor of your mind so when we get our thoughts out, it is like the mind is speaking and then after that calmly evaluate them afterwards, intelligence is there sometimes the mind and intelligence may agree sometimes the intelligence say no, mind you are wrong sometimes the intelligence say this point is really good, the mind makes sense so Krishna says the mind can be the friend and the enemy so when we say the mind is the enemy it is not that all the ideas the mind gives are bad, it is rather the mind gives us good ideas and bad ideas both but then the mind doesn’t allow us to check which is a good idea and which is a bad idea so then it becomes a bigger problem so if you get the clarity to evaluate then we will find that the mind will give us good ideas also sometimes did I answer your question?