How to respond when others serve in ways that don’t make sense to us – should we criticize them?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, sometimes somebody may be inspired to serve in a particular way that doesn’t make sense to us, that we don’t feel inspired. So, we may start picking faults with what they are doing. And related to your question yesterday, sometimes when you say Prabhupada also spoke very strongly using the word fools and rascals.
So, we may also think that following Prabhupada we should speak like that. Yeah, I would say that in general we have to know that Krishna is bigger than our intelligence. And that means sometimes Krishna can inspire other devotees to serve in ways that doesn’t make sense to our intelligence.
So, if somebody is doing something that doesn’t make sense to us, it is, the best thing to do is try to understand. Try to understand. Now, often we talk about people instead of talking with people.
Talk about, you know, he is doing like that, you know, she is doing like that. And we just start a culture of gossiping. But if somebody is doing something which you don’t understand, you just go and ask them.
Not in a judgmental way, but in a humble inquisitive way. Prabhu, Mataji, this is what you are doing. I saw this.
What does it mean? What is your plan? What is your inspiration? What is your understanding? We try to get some understanding from that. So, better not to just spread a culture of gossip, of prajalpa. That is the first thing.
If what they say doesn’t make sense, you can ask some senior devotee who understands them and who understands us. They may be able to explain to us. And if that also doesn’t happen, then we can report to some authority and tell them this is what is happening.
And it is between the authority and them whether something is to be done or not. They may feel that, okay, this devotee is doing something okay. I don’t bother about it.
If they want to do something, they will do something. We don’t have to bother too much about it. We have to see that, broadly speaking, when we are in a movement, you know, lead or follow or get out of the way.
We lead and do a project if we can. If we can’t, we follow someone who is doing something wonderful for us. Or somebody else is doing something, we don’t feel like following, we don’t feel like leading, just get out of it.
Let others do what they are doing. If they are doing something wrong, Krishna is in control, Krishna will guide, Krishna will correct. We focus on doing our service to Krishna.
And as far as Prabhupada’s strong speech was concerned, Prabhupada had many advantages which we don’t have. Prabhupada had a purely compassionate heart. Prabhupada had age.
Prabhupada had tremendous foresight. No, we don’t have that advantage. Any of those actually.
We don’t have that much compassion. For us, many times when we criticize, it’s out of ego, it’s not out of compassion. And we don’t have that level of foresight.
At least I don’t have. And we don’t have that kind of age and maturity which people will naturally respect. So when somebody, a strong statement is made, Prabhupada would sometimes use fools and rascals.
The point is, there is underlined is compassion. And it is like, see people have some misconceptions and those misconceptions have to be corrected. But for those misconceptions, for people to give those misconceptions, they need to have some faith in us.
If they don’t have faith in us, if they don’t have respect for us as an authority, as a learned person, then when we tell them something that this is wrong, then they start simply labeling us as wrong. You are wrong and they become hostile to us. So it’s only when they have some misconception and we have some understanding of how it is wrong, if they accept as an authority, then they will reconsider their opinion.
Otherwise, they will not. So it’s like when people have misconceptions, they have to be cured. That is like doing surgery.
Surgery requires causing pain. But surgery has to be done only by very qualified person, a surgeon. And even a surgeon does not just do surgery.
Surgeon gives anesthesia. So that means, first of all, we have to be spiritually qualified to correct others. And then the anesthesia is actually the loving relationship we have with that person.
The trust that they have in us. It is only when they have trust in us, then they don’t become so hypersensitive to what we speak. And then when the surgery is done, even then, after that pain medicine is to be given to help them deal with it.
Surgery is a very serious thing. It cannot be done casually. So like that, if you have to correct someone, you have to do it, first of all, when we are qualified and when there is a loving trusting relationship.
That is like the anesthesia which minimizes the pain. Now, some surgeons in emergencies may do surgery without anesthesia. Like say in a war, where a patient or a soldier is dying or sometimes a woman is pregnant and she is already in pain.
And the pain is already so much that some surgery, that surgical pain doesn’t sound much for the soldier or whatever. There is no other alternative. So surgery without anesthesia is an emergency procedure.
And some doctors can do it well, but that is not the standard process. The important thing is not to do surgery without anesthesia. The important thing is to heal the patient.
So, whether it is strong speaking or soft speaking, the important thing is transformational speaking. That people become attracted to Krishna. By our strong speaking, they become alienated from Krishna.
And it’s like we have made the patient worse. And that’s why, if we are not able to understand what someone is doing, let them, we report to some senior devotee if we want. Not in a complaining way, just in a reporting way.
And leave it between them and that devotee or between that devotee and Krishna. And we move onwards in our service to Krishna. Does this answer your question?