How to avoid worldly distractions in concentrating on Krishna?

From: Birendra

A few years ago I was able to concentrate on Lord Krishna. But nowadays I find it hard to offer prayer even for two minutes. My mind wanders away from him and what enters my mind is job pressure, work load, office politics, family matters, all that nonsense. How to control the mind so that it is concentrated on the chanting of Lord Krishna’s name, even for two minutes only?

Transcript

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question from a few years ago I was able to concentrate on lord Krishna but now a days I find it hard to offer prayer even for 2 minutes my mind wanders away from him and what enters my mind is job pressure work load, office, politics family matters, all that nonsense how to control the mind so that it is concentrated on chanting of lord Krishna’s name even for 2 minutes only answer first is don’t see all that as nonsense see all that as a part of Krishna’s sensible plan to make us realize our helplessness to make us realize that if we keep trying to tackle with the worldly problems, they are endless and that we need higher help so if we just try to dismiss everything that is happening in the world as nonsense that’s the attitude that we try to have when we are praying and we know in our heart of heart that those things are very important for us they may not be very important from the transcendental perspective when we are spiritually advanced and nothing in the world matters to us but at this point in our spiritual advancement the worldly ups and downs do matter to us and rather than trying to hide our material life from Krishna or to try to keep Krishna separate from our material life we can try to see Krishna’s hand in that material life and its problems so see the problems that are troubling the mind as a part of the nature of the material world that is arranged by Krishna to force us to take shelter of Him so what is happening in the current situation is that we are thinking that our relationship with the material world is one thing and our relationship with Krishna is another thing and we want to separate the two and keep them into separate compartments of our life but no we need to bring Krishna into all aspects of our life so while praying to Krishna what we can do is we can try to at least intellectually contemplate that ultimately Krishna is in control of everything and then we seek Krishna’s guidance to pray to Krishna to help us not necessarily to solve the problem but to remember Him and to see His hand in the problem so that we can deal with it properly so just as if we had a close friend how would our relationship with that friend develop if all that was heavily weighing down on our mind if we kept it all separate aside and just tried to be very friendly and very loving and very gentle and overall it would be very artificial with that friend and our relationship would not deepen similarly if we have so many problems in our life and we try to put all the problems aside and just think that I can be very intense and devoted to Krishna we are trying to keep our relationship with Krishna at a very artificial level of course another kind of artificial level relationship with Krishna is to expect Krishna to be a problem solver for all our problems that there we are not serving Krishna we are trying to get Krishna to serve us that is also artificial but the point is if we are to get Krishna in our heart then whatever is currently in our heart we have to connect that with Krishna so if the worldly ups and downs are a problem for us then we can pray about them to Krishna that is not necessarily outside the realm of pure devotional service pure devotional service means to constantly remember Krishna but if we are faced with worldly situations that we have to deal with how can we remember Krishna while dealing with them well by understanding that they are controlled by Krishna and by connecting them with Krishna so we can pray to Krishna to give us the intelligence to deal with those problems and to give us the strength to face those problems as long as they are there and in this way when we sort of mentally unload the problems of our mind by connecting them with Krishna seeing Krishna’s hand and feeling Krishna’s presence then we will be able to concentrate wholeheartedly so don’t try to compartmentalize our life into one hour we as the control and master of our material destiny and then we in our relationship with Krishna no it is actually Krishna our material life and we all three are in the same one compartment and often Krishna will purify and illuminate us through the ups and downs of material life and we need to be attentively conscious and prayerfully vigilant to see how Krishna is guiding and helping us and that is the essential issue of the Bhagavad Gita it is not renunciation of action but it is renunciation in action so we continue to do the action but we are renounced in terms of the fruits that come out by knowing that Krishna is in control and we want to offer the fruits to him so overall if we try to connect all aspects of our life with Krishna and even share our heart’s problems with Krishna not just for getting him to solve all of them but to deepen our relationship with him and to seek his guidance so that we can become stronger sometimes in the name of pure devotional service we feel that we should not pray to Krishna for anything other than our pure devotional activities and sometimes we also wonder that if I pray to Krishna about some worldly problem then what will happen if that problem doesn’t get solved maybe our faithfulness in Krishna will decrease so let me not pray at all to Krishna but the point is if we look at the way Bhagavatam approaches prayer it is very different from the current notion of prayer as a shortcut to shopping people just use prayer they go to praying with a list like people go to shopping with a list in Bhagavatam there are so many prayers if we look at the Brahma Samhita which Bhagavatam calls the essence of the Bhagavatam actually there is no asking anything from the Lord, there is just glorification of the Lord and similarly there are other prayers where one is in the Bhagavatam where the devotees are simply glorifying the Lord and practically not asking anything from the Lord so what are they doing? by glorifying they are connecting with the Lord similarly if we look at Shravanam and Kirtanam now the purpose of hearing about Krishna the purpose of speaking about Krishna what is the purpose? the purpose is to deepen our relationship with Krishna when we hear about him more, speak about him more our relationship with him will improve similarly the purpose of Vandanam, the purpose of prayer is to deepen our relationship with Krishna so when we are dealing with Krishna through our prayer, through our meditation at that time we need not necessarily ask Krishna to solve all our problems although even that is not wrong especially if those problems are interfering with our devotional life then to solve, to ask Krishna to help in that which is going to help us in our devotional life, that is not wrong, but we should not make our relationship with Krishna dependent on Krishna solving that problem on our terms that means we should not say to Krishna Krishna, only if this job problem is solved then I will practice Krishna Consciousness if this job problem is not solved then this process of Krishna Consciousness does not work, so I will give up my relationship with Krishna not like that, that would be very motivated devotional service but irrespective of whether the problem is solved or not, if it is a problem for us then we can pray to Krishna, connect that problem with Him and ask Him to help us give the vision by which we can see His hand and His plan behind that problem and especially more than that we can ask Him for the strength and the wisdom to solve that problem so when we face a problem we need a vision to see Krishna’s hand behind it and we need intelligence or rather we need intelligence to see Krishna’s hand behind it and we need determination to do our part rightly in that vision of Krishna, so we can ask for both so this particular problem is coming how should I see your hand in this and ok the situation is what should I do actually in this, so when Srila Prabhupada was asked what is the best prayer that I can offer, it was Krishna please give me the strength to serve you so now why do we need the strength to serve Krishna because there are so many challenges while serving Krishna and one says the chanting of Hare Krishna Maha Mantra is also a prayer to Krishna to give us the strength to serve him, oh Krishna please engage me in your service so often problems don’t block the way in our relationship to Krishna problems are the way that our relationship with Krishna develops, if there were no problems in the material world nobody would have generally wanted to develop any relationship with Krishna also so problems of this world are what forces to develop our relationship with Krishna, because we understand that I have a transgenders problem and I have to return back to Krishna, so don’t we shouldn’t separate our material life where we are problem conscious and then our spiritual life where we try to be Krishna conscious we try to do the two separately then the problem consciousness will enroach on our Krishna consciousness rather we try to always be Krishna conscious and then we try to see, the problem may be very big for us but then we understand that Krishna is bigger than that problem and we understand that Krishna will guide me Prabhupada writes in the purport that the Supreme Lord can in one of his purports in the Bhagavatam he says the Supreme Lord can send problems and the Supreme Lord can remove problems, what he wants is that the devotees should surrender to him so of course Krishna doesn’t send problems maliciously or willfully on us Krishna sends problems to us according to what we have only done in our past karma but whatever be the cause of the problem the purpose of the problem is to help us come closer to him so therefore by connecting the problem with Krishna and seeing that Krishna is bigger than the problem then the problem can become the impetus for us to take shelter of Krishna thank you