If circumstances make following bhakti principles impossible, what should we do?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, if you are not able to chant, because of certain situations, you are not able to chant 16 rounds, or some other activities you are expected to do daily, you are not able to do because of a situation, then what should we do? Well, it’s the answer that will get me into trouble. No, not necessarily.
See, here there are two different things. First is that the intention. And the second is the situation.
That means, sometimes life, sometimes we are just looking for an excuse to stop doing something. Like sometimes we don’t want, somebody wants to meet us. And we don’t want to meet them.
Then what we do, we are just looking for some reason. What reason can I come up with by which I can avoid meeting with this person? And some reason comes up, yes, I have to go here, I have to meet this person, so I won’t meet him. So, we are actually looking for excuses to avoid that meeting.
In some situations, it may be that we want to, that person wants to meet us and we want to meet them, but we genuinely have some other appointment. So, although in both cases, we are not meeting that person, but actually it’s very different. In one case we are avoiding, in the second case it’s unavoidable.
So, same way, in our situation, many times, if we don’t like a particular activity in bhakti, then we are looking for reasons to avoid it. And as soon as a reason comes up, I have got so much studies, I have got so much work, I have got so much this, I have got so much that. And then we use that to not do it.
And sometimes it’s just unavoidable. We may just be caught in a situation where, what can we do? So, Prabhupada was at one level, in principle he was very accommodating. When the devotees wanted to, when he told the devotees to go and preach in, what was the USSR at that time, so with Russia, he would say, we don’t get any vegetarian food there.
Prabhupada says, eat meat but preach. The point is not eat meat. The point is preach.
Prabhupada was not giving a license to eat meat. But he was saying that, let this not come in the way of that. Preaching should go on no matter what happens.
So, now of course, if some devotee deliberately goes into a place where there is no vegetarian food available, without planning and then says, there is no food available, so I eat meat. That’s a very different thing. So, the point is that if we know, certain jobs or certain situations are going to be very difficult for me to find time in, then we may have an advance check whether is this the kind of job I want to take? Or is this the kind of situation I want to go into? And if we can avoid that, that’s good.
But if we can’t avoid that, then if we are in a situation where certain things which we are expected to do, we are not able to do, then we just go through it. And when things become better, then we try to do more. It’s like if you want to go from here to the temple.
You want to get there as soon as possible. But suppose there is traffic. If the traffic is there, you will go slowly.
And because of that you may get late. But what can you do, the traffic is there. But if after the traffic clears, immediately you pick up speed and go.
Now, if after the traffic clears also, you see somebody keeps going slowly, that means they are not interested in going to the temple. So, like that, sometimes the traffic in our life may become too much. And we may not be able to do the activities that directly take us towards Krishna.
So, that’s okay. We may slow down at that time. But once the traffic clears, we again pick up pace.
So, basically, we don’t, we use our intelligence to prevent getting into such situations where, and we don’t, at least, we don’t use such situations as excuses for not doing Krishna Bhakti or commitment to Krishna Bhakti. But sometimes if such a thing happens, we just keep, do what we can in that situation and pick up the pace afterwards. Does this answer your question? Thank you.
Any other questions?