If some other temple has better association, should we leave our temple and go there?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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So, if you feel that some other temple has wonderful associations, should we leave our temple and go to that temple? There is the spiritual and there is the material. That means, even the argument is spiritual, but the spiritual is manifested in the material world.
So, to some extent, we bring our material mind with us. And one characteristic of the material mind is it always feels the grass is greener on the other side. So, yes, you could say objectively that maybe there are some temples where many learned devotees have very wonderful grasses given.
And yeah, you can get the enrichment by that. But it all varies. Yes, in temples like Chopa, you might get to have serious devotees and get a lot of associations, a lot of hearing.
But you might not get much room for doing service yourself. Somebody wants to themselves preach. It’s like there are already so many preachers.
You will hardly get any opportunity to speak. So, we have to see what our actual need is. Not just what our mind thinks would be wonderful.
So, sometimes some devotees just want to be in a big association with many senior devotees around them. And that is what primarily gives them strength. Then maybe going to a temple where that kind of setting is there might be helpful.
There is no guarantee of that. But if ultimately our primary connection with Krishna for a long time is going to be our service to Krishna. And sometimes in places where there is not so many senior devotees not such a big congregation actually if you want to take up responsibility you can take up a lot of responsibility.
And Prabhupada says that our spiritual advancement is proportional to the responsibility that we take in Krishna’s service. Because we can do so many services. Okay, wash this plate.
Or serve this prasadam. All that is good. Now you are responsible for the serving of prasadam for the festival.
Then our mind will be absorbed at that time when we are serving the food. Before, after. So much absorption will be there.
So, we will grow not just by the quality of association that we get. But we will grow by the quality of responsibility that we take. So, we can see that even when we have good association we have to be responsible to take that good association.
If we don’t do that, we don’t know. So, it shouldn’t be just superficial craving. Oh, this temple is not good.
Let me go to that. In some situations maybe, genuine temple might be required. But we shouldn’t think that, oh, my spiritual life will be better just before I go to that temple.
The whole principle of spiritual life is inner transformation. And unless we are committed to the inner transformation, no matter where we go, we will not benefit much. Rather than thinking of changing the temple where we are in, we can focus more on trying to take up more responsibility.
And then, if we take up more responsibility, even if we go to some other temple, we will also be able to get more responsibility over there and do more service over there. So, no need to think primarily of changing. And nowadays, social media and internet are available.
Even if you are at one place, you can hear classes from anywhere else. You can correspond with devotees also from different places if you want to. And physical barriers are not as limiting as they were earlier.