If parents have two children – one bright one dull – is it the parents’ karma or the childrens’ karma?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, if parents have two children and one of them is good at studies, the other is not so good.
So, is it the destiny, is it the karma of the parents or what is it? See, both play a role over here. That means, yeah, both, both of them. See, how it is that we live in an interrelated world and in that interrelated world, our karma and others’ karma, all that intersects.
So, that means, say, if say, we have a very troublesome neighbor. Now, that means that by our past karma, we are meant to have that neighbor. Have somebody who will trouble us.
So, we chose a house over there and then that person happened to be there and that person troubles us. So, now, at one level, that person is choosing to act wrongly, choosing to irritate us. Now, if they are unnecessarily troubling us, then they are also getting bad karma because of that.
But it is that we are being troubled right now. Now, it could also be that now they have an irritating disposition and they act on that irritating disposition and irritate us. So, there, by their destiny, by their past karma, they have an irritating disposition.
But they can control it. They don’t control it, they act irritatingly. And then that troubles us.
So, now, that person over there is actually their karma and our karma. It’s interpenetrating over there. So, like that, if a child is intelligent, that means that soul has done some good karma by which that soul is meant to be intelligent.
And the parents have done some good karma by which they are meant to have an intelligent child. And those two karmas intersect over there. And similarly, if a child is not so intelligent, then that child has done some karma by which the child has a mediocre intelligence.
And the parents also have some karma by which they have got a child with mediocre intelligence. But the important thing is in spite of this, whatever the child has, whatever capacity, whatever resources the child has, see, if the parents offer loving support, encouragement, the child can grow from there also. And it’s not necessary that everybody has to have the same kind of intelligence.
See, when people are born in this world, you know, some people may be more richly endowed in things, others may be less endowed. But everybody has some endowments. So rather than the parents feeling that oh it’s my destiny that I got a less intelligent child, we can think that it is my responsibility to help this child to help this child discover what he or she has.
So everybody has some talents. It’s not that that second child who is less intelligent, parents should think, oh no, if only I had a second child who was like the first child, it would be so nice. No.
You know, God has made all of us unique. And all of us can contribute in our own ways. You know, if God, say, what to speak of our children, if you think of ourselves, you know, we may think if only I had been like that person, it would be so nice.
But no, if God had wanted us to be someone else, He would have made someone else. But He has made us. So what our focus should be is not that I have to become someone else.
I have to become the best me. Whatever I am, I want to become the best me. So rather than thinking, oh, why I got a child like this, if only this child had been like that.
We can focus on that, okay, this child’s talents are easy to discover. And I can help this child’s talents to grow. But this child, I have to put more thought, more intelligence.
I have to, I have greater opportunity to serve this child. And as a parent, a parent’s duty is to serve the child. Help the child grow.
So I am putting more effort, more intelligence in that. And that way I am doing more servicing. And if I have this understanding that it’s by God’s plan, by Krishna’s arrangement that this is happening, then we can see even helping a less endowed child to grow as a form of service to Krishna.
By Krishna’s plan, this child is there. And I am not just serving, I am serving this child and I am also serving Krishna by serving this child. That way we can help that child also to discover whatever potential they have and develop those.
Very Krishna.