How to deal with senior devotees who make life difficult for everyone in a community?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
sometimes there are some people who who may be in a community but you know they don’t behave very ethically or they are very harsh judgmental or say they are they create trouble they hurt others and such people sometimes because they are senior then it’s difficult to take action against them also so what do we do in such a situation this is I am going to talk elaborately about this if we get time I will talk about it briefly here it is said that there are two kinds of people some people bring happiness where they go and some people bring happiness when they go so now in the devout community it is not that the devotees who are there have suddenly come down from the spiritual now all of us even if we have been here for many years we have our conditions we have our particular natures some of us may be may have been born and brought in a rough and tough culture some of us born in a very sensitive cultured environment and there will be differences so when in the devotee community we find that some people will be very loving some people with them we just click and with some people it’s like as soon as we start seeing my blood pressure goes up I don’t want to be with them sometimes it happens like that so we should see that the whole art of practicing bhakti is the devotional reinterpretation of reality that means we the devotees are very kind and loving we see that Krishna is pulling us towards him through them then how much loving Krishna must be and feeling like that we become pulled towards Krishna through them and there are other devotees through whom Krishna pushes us towards him it is when they are they sometimes act unreasonably they act on some troubling ways we needn’t see it is that particular devotee’s nature and that’s how they are acting but rather than just obsessing over that we should see that Krishna can teach different things to different people so sometimes sometimes some painful lessons about the nature of the material world may come even through devotees for example when Draupadi was gambled away by Yudhishthira Yudhishthira was a devotee and he was Dharmaraj and Draupadi just gone for after the coronation she just gone for gone to another relative’s home and suddenly she was called out she was subjected to a terrible pedigree devastating dishonor now in a sense you could say her husband let her down but she never held it against Yudhishthira she did her best to try to avoid the calamity when that didn’t happen she just took shelter of Krishna so sometimes in devotees also some devotees may just behave in ways which are unreasonable so we at a ultimate level we just see that it’s Krishna Prabhupada says don’t expect utopia in this world that we are not a community of ideal we are all a community of people with ideals we are trying to come to those ideals I should have a community of ideal people around and we will not find such a community anywhere in the world and if at all a community of ideal people we find we will not get entry there because we are not ideal at least I am not ideal so it’s like we just have to the the capacity to love the unlovable is actually the character of love to love those who love us it’s very easy but to love the unlovable that is where the test comes now that doesn’t mean that the other person is insulting us, backbiting us deriding us, we still keep subjecting ourselves to torture no we just understand that you know sometimes this is just a part of living in a community this is the nature of community and it’s not that that particular person is a problem every community will have some people who are like that and you know who knows some people may be thinking you are like that I am like that once I was giving a class so everybody asked I was talking about tolerance so we have to tolerate many things in life what are the things we have to tolerate so one devotee said yes we have to tolerate devotees we have to tolerate devotees I said yes that’s a good realization for practicing bhakti we have to tolerate devotees but as we become more advanced we will realize that devotees are tolerating us so it’s just a process of mutual tolerance and sometimes some people just do not match we can’t gel with someone it’s not that we have to have a very close relationship just keep a distance from some people and it’s said that good fences make good neighbors this is my property so like that if we after a few interactions with people we understand what level of proximity or distance is good in this relationship some people will become very close to some people keep a distance there is nothing wrong in that we are all individuals and we will have different degrees of relationships now having said that we just have to be realistic and adapt ourselves we have to know that everybody in the devotee community is not necessarily going to be inspiring because I am of particular nature I will be inspired by particular devotees so the devotee community is like a hospital in a hospital we come primarily to be treated by the doctor and we may bond with other patients who are also taking treatment similarly but sometimes some people go to the hospital if the hospital is not very well monitored the patient who goes to get treated for one problem gets infected by another problem in the hospital it can also happen sometimes we may have certain conditioning but associating some other people you might get some other conditioning so we have to be careful that we associate with those devotees who inspire us and some devotees by nature are discouraging just keep a distance from them bhakti requires a tender heart but bhakti also requires a thick skin we need to cover our tender heart with a thick skin we are whoever we are we are going to be criticized whoever we are there are going to be people who will backbite us who will speak negatively about us it’s just the nature of the material so we can’t be hypersensitive some people like some people some people won’t like some people so a lot of problem comes when we when we expect everyone to like us or we expect even this person should like me no some people just won’t like us just leave it at that just move on in our life why this person thinks like this about me why this person thinks like this about me you know they are just different we are different and some people click some people don’t click just move on we have not come here in the devotee community to be liked by everyone we have come here to serve Krishna why serving Krishna we will click with some people we won’t click with some people we don’t have to be on a campaign against anyone else but if somebody doesn’t like us just leave it we are here to practice bhakti and they are also there to practice bhakti what level they want to practice how they want to practice that’s up to them if somebody is somebody is going beyond not liking us to actively troubling us repeatedly then we have to deal with them appropriately we may have to tell the same three options we change ourselves we change the person or we walk away say we may just tolerate them or we may report to the authorities authorities take some action against them or we just change our service so that we don’t have to interact with them these are practicalities you have to deal with but in principle we just learn that I have to move on in myself to Krishna and just as the Ganga it is moving towards the ocean sometimes it goes straight sometimes the obstacle comes it may go left it may go right it may go above it may go below sometimes we just erode the rock and then go through so like that we have to make sure that no person becomes like a rock who stops us going from Krishna from going towards Krishna find some way around find some way around and move on in our journey towards Krishna some people may be very big troublemakers that’s like that then you just keep a long distance from them find some other service and move on see it’s very easy to understand that attachment is is a distraction if you are too attached to someone you are always thinking about that person and then we cannot think about Krishna but just as attachment is a distraction in the spiritual path aversion is also a distraction in the spiritual path when we are attached we are thinking too much of a person positively when we are averse we are thinking too much of a person negatively but essentially the same thing we are letting some person other than Krishna dominate our consciousness so just as if you are too attached to someone you will do the appropriate things to regulate that attachment maybe create some disturbance or whatever it is similarly if you are too averse then you have to do the necessary things to decrease that aversion and just move on in our practice of if we have to we are in a situation where we just have to work with that person there is no alternative if we try and it doesn’t work we have to work with that person and we should know that we will be working with them but we are not working for them we are working with them for Krishna so that means say if there is a there is a cloth shop where there is an attendant who shows clothes and there are some customers who are very finicky they will look at hundred dresses and they will not take anything afterwards now the attendant has to clear all the mess and put everything together and they will just get irritated he has wasted so much of my time so now if such a customer comes the attendant has to deal with them the attendant just gets irritated or the attendant knows that actually my salary is not coming from this person there is a camera and my boss is watching and my boss is going to give me salary so even if even if this person doesn’t make a sale the attendant may fail to make a sale but the boss observes you and you handle them well you are a cool guy you may fail to make the sale and still the boss will promote you you are courageous you know how to deal with difficult people so like that sometimes we have to work with difficult people and in working with difficult people Krishna also knows it is not easy for us Krishna is observing so if we work with difficult people then rather than simply reciprocating simply reacting to them we treat them at the same level we are courteous with them but we are not really serving them we are serving Krishna they are simply a medium to whom we are serving and they are serving some people is a pleasure serving some people is an austerity so we just accept that and if at all we are put in that situation then we do it and we see that this is the way I am serving Krishna when we are going through difficult situations Krishna knows that in the 10th canto there is a description that when Arbuni came he gave a parvaja flower to Krishna and Krishna gave it to Rukmini and Satyabhama got upset and then Krishna brought a full parvaja tree for Satyabhama and then when again Krishna came to meet Rukmini he thought Rukmini will be upset and then she will demand something but Rukmini did not demand anything and by not demanding anything later on Krishna says Rukmini won my heart so point is that even when nothing is being spoken Krishna is noticing so if we are going through difficulties we are dealing with difficult people Krishna notices that so we are not if we are simply reacting to the way that person is acting then where is the Krishna element in our relationship a devotee whenever they relate to another person it is not only two people it is a third person it is Krishna in that interaction and we act in a way that we please Krishna and so we can appropriately act in a mode of service to Krishna even when we are dealing with difficult people answer the question