​How can we make right decisions when what is right is not clear and the decisions have serious consequences?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Quite often our decisions can have many consequences and it’s not so easy to decide what is right and wrong. Because they are shades of grey.
So, how do we take the right decisions? Usually, it is that, Bhaktivinoda Thakur says that if I have gone off track, then that is not that, it doesn’t mean that I have to come back and start again. From wherever I have gone off track, then I come back on track. So, basically he makes a point that spirituality is not a rejection of whatever we have done in the material life.
It is rather, wherever I have come in the material life, from that point I have become spiritual. You don’t have to reject what I have done in the past. He talks in the context of, some people think progress means rejecting whatever the past has been.
Because past is all old fashioned. He says, no, in the past also there is learning. So, we move forward from there and learn onwards.
So, like that, when we take decisions, we use the best intelligence that we have. We take the best guidance that is available and take a particular decision. And then if it doesn’t work out right, we may change that.
And we just come back on track. There are consequences, no doubt. But then, that’s what life is.
We never have omniscience to know everything about a particular situation before we make a decision. Prabhupada writes in a purport that a devotee may be perplexed, but a devotee is never discouraged. Now discouraged means I don’t feel like doing anything.
Perplexed means that I don’t know what to do. So, perplexity is possible. So, Srila Prabhupada also says in Markina Bhagavad Dharma, My dear lord, you must have some work for me to do.
Otherwise, why would you have brought me here? The point relevant is, he is using the word anumane. Anumane, it is my anuman, it is my guess that you must have some purpose here. So, it is not that Prabhupada knew clearly, I’ll go here and I’ll meet this person and this person will become a devotee.
I’ll open a center here. No, Prabhupada was basically taking steps and it worked out. So, one thing worked out fine.
If it didn’t work out, he took some other step. He was just trying out. So, in real life, even a pure devotee may not always have complete omniscience about how to serve Krishna.
There is complete conviction that I am going to serve Krishna, no matter what happens. How exactly to serve Krishna, that may be revealed according to my circumstance. So, we focus on the principle of service and usually, you know, the service attitude is like a torture light.
When there is darkness around me, if I want to see the full road ahead, I can’t see it. And I don’t even know when the light is going to come. So, I may just stay trapped over here.
If I have a torch light, the torch light can show me one step ahead. I take that one step ahead, the torch light shows me further one step ahead. So, like that, we can move on, move on.
And eventually, when the darkness goes, the light comes, we can see more clearly. So, similarly, if you have that service attitude, Krishna, how can I serve you now? What can I do to serve you in this situation? One step, one step forward, one step forward. And eventually, things will become clearer about how we can serve Krishna.
So, sometimes when we, there are serious decisions to make, but decisions are always dynamic. If I find this is all going off track, bring it back on track. And yes, there will be consequences of certain less than correct decisions.
But then we learn from experience. And Krishna is so expert that sometimes Krishna can bring good out of the bad also. We look at Srila Prabhupada’s life, the 40 years which he tried to preach and couldn’t preach so well and didn’t get so much success.
Eventually, when he got so much success, that was to his glory. So, of course, we can’t say that it was bad, ultimately Krishna’s plan. But the point is that even with something seems to be bad, Krishna can bring the good out of it eventually.
So, we focus on trying to serve Krishna to the best of our capacity, best of our intelligence, taking decisions accordingly. And eventually, Krishna will make things out right.