How can we pray for those who are troubling us?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Question How can we pray for those whose anarthas are troubling us? What should we pray for them and how can we get the motivation to pray for the well-being of those who are troubling us? Answer Even when somebody is troubling us, we should know that actually, first and foremost, it is our own karma coming to us. That person is simply an instrument for our karmic reaction to come to us and if we entertain hateful, resentful thoughts about that person, the result of that is going to be, we will probably act on those thoughts and do further bad karma which will aggravate and complicate our situation bringing further suffering on us. Now, this doesn’t mean that we just have to passively endure every suffering.
It means that we choose a dharmic way to deal with the situation. So, if somebody is troubling us too much, then we move away from that situation if necessary, but along with that we can pray for that person. What do we pray for? This again means the philosophical vision.
Philosophical vision means that we see that a person who is doing some harm to us is also a soul like us and that soul at the core is pure. That soul is also a part of Krishna and actually that soul is overcome by some conditioning, some anarthas because of which a person is acting in bad way, in ways which are hurting to us. So, just as we have our anarthas which are troubling us, that person has anarthas which is troubling that person and in that sense, instead of thinking that person is my enemy and I have to fight against that enemy, we should see that all of us are at war and we are all on the same side.
We are all fighting against the forces of illusion and the forces of illusion are making all of us act in destructive ways to various degrees. Some people may be acting in destructive ways to a far greater degree and some people may be acting in destructive ways to a lesser degree, but everybody is forced to act in destructive ways by the anarthas. So, when this is happening, we should see that, okay, that person is also being overcome by anarthas and let me help that person.
How do I help that person? I help that person by praying that whatever anarthas he or she has, let Krishna please give this person the strength by which he can fight and overcome the anarthas and especially that person is also a devotee sadhaka and we should know that the person is trying also in some way or the other and we can pray to Krishna that please give this person the intelligence, the inspiration and the motivation to fight with anarthas and to conquer over the anarthas and when we are being hurt by that person, we may have to move aside so that we don’t, it’s not that we have to be trampled by that person repeatedly, but at the same time, how do we get the inspiration? We should know that our spiritual advancement doesn’t depend only on how much we remember Krishna. Yes, that is important, but it also depends on how much we remember Krishna and Krishna’s message and Krishna’s mood while dealing with Krishna’s other children. So if we can have a benevolent disposition towards others, even when those people are hurting us, that indicates that we have really developed a or we, if we are not developed, we are desiring to develop advanced level of Krishna consciousness and it is that which will replace Krishna very much.
So, by keeping in mind that even when other people are troubling us, we still have the opportunity to make spiritual advancement. This may seem to be a little self-centered concern, but at our level, somehow or the other, fix the mind on Krishna. So, once we fix the mind on Krishna, in this way, we will move forward and realize that actually, this gives us relief, this gives us strength and we can move forward in our life, finding some way even in the presence of that person or finding a way by avoiding that person, we move forward in our spiritual life and our prayers and good wishes will help that person also to move forward in spiritual life.
So, to summarize, we can focus on remembering that it’s not that that person is our enemy, we are all at war against the common enemy and we need to introduce ourselves, we need to give prayers and by seeing that, by praying for such a person, we will actually be making spiritual advancement ourselves and pleasing Krishna, thereby, we can pray that that person be able to battle and overcome the anarthas which are troubling that person and thereby causing that troubled person to trouble us. Thank you. Hare Krishna.