How can we differentiate between yukta-vairagya and bhoga-vrtti?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Question from Manoj Duhu.
How can we differentiate between Yukta Vairagya and Bhoga Vritti? Answer, it ultimately depends on motivation and consequence. There is no universal principle of how much one can utilize in Krishna’s service and where one will start going into the enjoy mentality. This will vary depending on person to person.
But the broad contours of this decision can be understood by looking at internal. Before we do that activity, what is our motivation in doing that activity? When we are doing, when engaging in a particular activity, it may not be so easy for us to observe what exactly is my consciousness. But before it and after it, when we see the consequence, what happens after we engage in that activity? Does it enhance our Krishna consciousness or does it diminish our Krishna consciousness? By that, by the motivation and the consequence, we can understand whether when we are engaging something material in Krishna’s service, which is the essential principle of Yukta Vairagya, when I’m engaging the material, am I actually engaging in Krishna’s service or am I engaging in my own self-centered desire service? So before I start activity, I can look at what is my motivation.
Am I looking forward to this just because it is going to give me enjoyment or it is going to help me to serve Krishna better? So when I think in this way, then I can clearly see that usually there will be both. That is, whenever we use anything in Krishna’s service, we also get some distinction by that. So Yukta Vairagya can mean, for example, using technology.
So when we use technology in Krishna’s service, at that time, the technology enhances our reach. At the same time, it can also intoxicate us. It can make us feel that I’m someone special.
I have this technology, this, this, this. So over a period of time, we’ll start observing that our consciousness goes in particular directions. What is it that we look forward to? We see Shila Prabhupada, when he went on his first flight.
Now, of course, nowadays flying is very common, but in those days it was not so common. Shila Prabhupada went on his first flight from New York to San Francisco. When he arrived in San Francisco, what did he tell his disciples? He said, you know, from high up in the airplane, all the buildings were looking like matchsticks.
And I was thinking that if they are so small from that height, then from Krishna’s perspective, Krishna in the spiritual world, how insignificant they were. So Shila Prabhupada, even in a plane, he was always Krishna conscious. He’s always thinking of how to serve Krishna.
So like that, when we use any technology or when we use anything material in Krishna’s service, whether we are looking forward to the special attention that we will get because we are using something unusual, something modern, something special in Krishna’s service or whether we are serving Krishna. So before we start that service, we can do the introspection. And when we detect that there is this lower motivation also, then we can pray to Krishna to help us become free from that lower motivation.
And along with that, we can also look at the consequence. Does our devotion get enhanced? Does our remembrance of Krishna get enhanced or does it get diminished? So how do we detect that difference? That is something which we can also see after using a particular material thing in Krishna’s service. Then the fruit of any service is the increased attraction to Krishna.
We do services for what? All kinds of services are ultimately meant to increase our attraction to Krishna because our eternal relationship with Krishna is based on service. So the more we serve Krishna, the more we are returning to our eternal position. And in that eternal position, the love for Krishna is natural to us in our eternal position.
So that love for Krishna is eternally there in our heart. And when we do services like hearing and chanting as well as other services, then by those services our attraction to Krishna awakens. So if by doing a particular service, our attraction to Krishna is not increasing, we are instead feeling our attraction to material things increasing, then that is a good sign that we need to do some course correction.
Maybe we cannot use that much resources in Krishna’s service. So if we start becoming infected by material desires, then we do not do those things because ultimately our goal is to become purified. So another important factor in both these underlying both this motivation and consequence is our sadhana.
Our sadhana is meant to offer our heart to Krishna. So when we are studying scripture nicely, when we are doing our mantra meditation properly, so by these we offer our heart to Krishna. And once our heart is offered to Krishna, then we can offer the world and its resources to Krishna.
But if our sadhana is not proper, then we are not really offering our heart to Krishna. So then when we take the worldly resources, those worldly resources don’t go to Krishna, we offer them to ourselves because our heart, if it is not offered to Krishna, by default it is offered to our ego. We live for proving our greatness and hearing the world sing our praises.
The whole process of bhakti is to change that mentality. We don’t offer ourselves to our ego, but we offer ourselves to Krishna. So this is what is essentially to be done by sadhana.
And seva, in which we use the principle of yukta-vairagya, is also meant to assist in the same process. So if we do our sadhana properly and our heart is offered to Krishna, then after that when we use the world’s resources, we will use them also in Krishna’s service. But if we don’t do our sadhana well, then when the world’s resources come, we may still have some intention of using them in Krishna’s service, but it is the sadhana that nourishes and strengthens our desire to serve Krishna.
And if you are not doing sadhana properly, then the desire to enjoy will overpower the desire to serve. And then the desire to enjoy will make us use those worldly resources for our own pleasure and not for Krishna’s service. Thank you.