How will avoiding the association of agitating people help if agitation is in our karma?
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Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
we don’t associate people in the mode of passion or ignorance because we don’t want to get agitated but then if agitation is in our karma then we will get agitated because of something else when we are taking decisions in our life we have to understand that there is karma and there is dharma dharma is mind you so now it is raining should I go and stand in the rain to get wet it is our karma to get pneumonia well Krishna has given us intelligence and if I can be outside the rain I should be outside the rain so there is unavoidable trouble and there is avoidable trouble so when we have to do our duty in the course of our duty if there is some trouble that is unavoidable we accept that this is because of my past karma so I have to go out for some work and it is raining if the work is important I have to go for it I tolerate the rain and still go out but if I have nothing urgent to do there is no need to go in the rain so what is my dharma whenever we are making any decisions the decision should never be based on what is past karma what is whose past karma it is what is my dharma if my dharma I have to do this so for example if say we have some of our family members who may be in the mode of passion ignorance or some of our colleagues in office with whom we have to work they are in the mode of passion ignorance then their decisions will just agitate us that is what we have to live with but we don’t have to go out of our way to associate with people in the mode of passion ignorance and get agitated by it so we have to use our intelligence I was talking about a devoted community or anywhere else if we have to if the initiative is on us to seek association then we should seek association that enlivens us not association that agitates us so it is up to us there are some situations that are unavoidable when it is unavoidable at that time we simply tolerate it but there are some things which are based on our initiative to choose so we don’t know what is in whose karma our karma or anyone else’s karma our focus should be on what is my dharma if say some person is troubling me so much that because of that person’s troubling I am not able to do my dharma now if somebody is constantly criticizing me, constantly hurting me and because of that I can’t chat, I can’t study I can’t do any service then I have to see that this is pratikul to my bhakti and I have to do something to create a distance so that I can do my bhakti so just letting people trouble us is not tolerance it is actually it is actually stupidity it is masochism we are just hurting ourselves Krishna tells Arjuna in 2.14 never tolerate but the same Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita tells Arjuna arise and fight Krishna is not telling Arjuna tolerate the atrocities of the cowherds so tolerance is meant to help us practice our dharma more diligently tolerance is not meant to just passively accept anything that anyone does so in the 10th canto there is Vasudev, Devaki Devaki and Kamsa, the famous incident where Vasudev tells Kamsa if it is your destiny to die then anyway you are going to die so why do the sinful activity of killing your own sister now Vasudev could have turned out the same argument and said if Devaki is going to die, anyway she is going to die why am I trying to argue with Kamsa he doesn’t do that, why? because he is concerned what is my dharma so his dharma as a husband is to protect his wife and he is going to do that he is not going to use argument about destiny or past karma to not do his duty on the other hand, Kamsa is going away from his duty, his duty to protect his sister Devaki is his cousin sister, but still sister meant to protect her and he is attacking her then he is reminding of destiny so our decisions should not be based on what is and whose destiny what is whose karma, our decisions should be based on what is my dharma and how can I best practice my dharma