How can we harmonize our inclination with higher instruction while serving?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
The question is, how do we know what it is that we are inclined to? And we also have to do various services, we try to accumulate ourselves and do those services. Yes.
See, one thing is that when we say, I would like to do services according to my nature, what is my nature is also, it takes time to understand this. Usually, we need to come to some level of sattva guna to be able to look within and understand. If we leave it to the mind, this whole philosophy of working according to our nature will become the mind’s excuse for not serving Krishna.
How? The mind will say, whatever you are doing, that is not your nature. Oh, I want to preach. It’s not my nature to go and talk with people.
Please do some management. No, my nature is not to manage. So, see, the nature of the conditioned mind is it will always find some reason for dissatisfaction.
The nature of the conditioned mind is it always finds some reason for dissatisfaction. That’s why in the initial stages, in the initial years of our bhakti, we should simply follow the principle of doing what we are told to do. But while doing what we are told to do, we can observe ourselves.
We can see, we can, actually it’s not very difficult to make out, some things while doing, we also feel comfortable and joyful. Some things we have to labor and struggle to do it. Some things we just, when will this get over? And it’s not wrong to feel like that because we have our own natures.
So, we observe ourselves and as we keep practicing bhakti, gradually over the process of spiritual growth, we will gravitate towards what is our nature. So, we shouldn’t use the philosophy of nature for justifying not doing what we are going to do, but we can keep observing. And usually, guna and karma, Vibhagya Shri Krishna says.
So, guna and karma, in today’s term, how we can understand it is that guna means, if something is according to, qualitatively according to our nature, then we feel comfortable doing it internally. And something is our karma, that means we are competent doing it externally. So, inner comfort and outer competence, in doing a particular thing, that is a fairly reasonable parameter for understanding what may be our nature.
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