How does Hanuman embody humble ambitiousness?
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
let me take the first question first when we talk about Hanuman if he is an example of being humble and ambitious he is not even a prince if he has been ambitious he could have been a prince and he could have had a more influential position for serving the lord I will talk about the ambitious aspect in a future class but the central point which I will be talking about is that devotion means purposefulness Prabhupada translated bhakti as devotional service so we have a purpose to serve the lord and if that purpose is great we are ready to do great things Hanuman’s ambitiousness will be seen when he alone is ready to go into the camp of Ramana not only does he have to go alone to the enemy camp he has to actually alone cross the ocean to go to the enemy camp so the ocean itself is filled with danger which he has to cross alone and then after that he has to go further into that enemy camp all alone sometimes there are movies which talk about say some group of spies entering the enemy camp but before they can reach that there are so many dangers ahead so basically for us the essence of devotion is being purposeful in the service of the lord and if that purpose is great we are ready to do great things so we don’t think I am great but my lord is great and if this is what he wants me to do he can greatly empower me to do it so that purposefulness gives us a sense of ambition at the same time there is humility for a devotee and humility doesn’t just mean when people come in front and fold their hands and tell everyone I am very fallen, I am very fallen, I am very fallen ok after that what? in conduct humility simply means that we don’t let our ego come in the way of our purpose we have a purpose and if somebody’s behaviour or people’s conduct or some situation leads to the hurting of our ego but that situation is required for furthering our purpose we are ready to do that so Srila Prabhupada when he was in India he was respected as a sadhu when he went to America nobody knew him here in India although he was poor any wealthy person’s house he could go to they would give him a respectful place give him food and they would hear from him when Prabhupada went to America he stayed with the hippies and the hippies would just eat the food and he would have to wash their plates so Prabhupada was ready to do that because he saw these hippies, the people in India who were receiving him they were pious and they do interest in becoming spiritual Prabhupada saw in America that people are interested in becoming spiritual so basically if we centre on the point of purposefulness then for the purpose of the lord if our ego comes in the way we are ready to have that ego being hurt or bad also but for the purpose of the lord if great things are to be done we are ready to be ambitious also