If the husband practices bhakti, does the wife automatically get the benefit even if she doesn’t practice?
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back to Sita.
Thank you. Question from Ram Teertha Prabhu. If a husband practices Bhakti, does the wife also get the benefit even if she is not practicing? And it is said also that 21 generations of relatives get delivered if one becomes a devotee.
What if the relatives, what if the say children of a pure devotee commit sinful activities and how can one avoid becoming complacent by hearing such statements? Answer, there is firstly the sharing of karma which is there. There is materially all of us are very strongly connected with each other. When we are in a family, when we are in a society, when we are in a community, when we are in a country, then our karmas get interlocked with each other and especially when there is a sacred bond of relationships, the karmas are locked together.
So yes, the husband and wife, they are joined together in the punya and papa, that is done. At the same time, the Bhagavatam is clear that all of us are ekastu, we are all alone in material existence. Srila Prabhupada writes in the 15th chapter of the Srimad Bhagavatam, 15-16 chapters, where he is talking about the departure of Lord Krishna and the retirement of the Pandavas.
Therein, he writes in the purport that we all have to drive our own plane, we all have to fly our own plane. He describes how when the Pandavas departed, they did not even wait for anyone and they just left. So Draupadi was surprised that her husband who had so carefully nourished and protected her, just left at that particular time when they were to renounce.
So Prabhupada writes that we have to fly our own plane. That means we have to pursue spiritual perfection, each of us ourselves. And ultimately, going back to Godhead is not just a matter of physical relocation, it is a matter of devotional redirection.
Unless we learn to love Krishna, what will we do in the spiritual world? If everybody else is loving Krishna and the whole spiritual world is centered on loving Krishna, and if we don’t love Krishna, even if we go there, what will we do over there? Suppose sometimes we may be in a place where everyone is a soccer fan and we have no interest in soccer, we’ll just feel completely out of place over there. So multiply that many many times and we may get an inkling of what it would be for a person who doesn’t love Krishna to be thrust in the spiritual world amidst people who are all loving Krishna, out of place. So first of all, we should always remember that each of us has to turn towards Krishna and choose to love Krishna.
And no one else can love Krishna for us, because love is a relationship and it has to be between the lovers. It cannot be between someone else on our behalf. So having said that, our horizontal relationship with people in the world and our vertical relationship with Krishna, they’re not entirely disconnected.
So if we become devoted to Krishna, that does benefit others also. Now in 7.10, the Srimad Bhagavatam, 7th canto 10th chapter, after Prahlad has finished his prayers in the 9th chapter, Prahlad actually asks that, let my father who was so sinful, let him be delivered from his sins. And Narasimhadev replies, I actually want to speak of you, Prahlad, that three times seven, that is 21.
The Pitaputa, 21 generations of ancestors will be delivered, have become delivered just because you have practiced Bhakti and you have attained pure devotion. Now what does this exactly mean? If everyone has free will, how can everyone be delivered? The scriptures use words to convey certain specific points in certain contexts, and without those contexts, we may not understand the words properly. So here what it means is that the doors for deliverance will open for them.
That means if somebody is related to a devotee, then they will get lots of opportunities for practicing Bhakti. Now suppose if a person is in a jail, and the door of that jail opens. Now that itself is a big thing to have the door of the jail open, because quite often, usually the door is closed.
But still, after the door is opened, the prisoner still has to walk out of the door. So similarly, this material existence is like a jail. And the door to liberation, the door to going back to Krishna is opened for those who are related to a devotee practicing Bhakti sincerely.
That means they also get abandoned opportunities for connecting with Krishna, for coming closer to Krishna, for attaining Krishna. And these opportunities themselves are no small thing. As it is said in the Chetan Charita Amrit, In this world, there are so many paths, so many ideas of what should be done, that it’s easy to get lost amidst all these paths.
And if someone doesn’t get lost, they are fortunate. And Bhakti enables us to attain such fortune and enables us to share that fortune with others. So just to know the way is also a blessing.
Now to walk along the way is a further, requires some further specific endeavor by them. So it’s not that just by being related to the devotee, one will be automatically liberated. Scriptural promises are demonstrations of the magnitude of Krishna’s mercy.
At the same time, those promises cannot be divorced or cannot be taken in isolation, separate from other statements in scriptures. The scriptures talk about certain universal principles and the promises are not meant to supersede or cancel those universal principles. The universal principle is that it is we who have to remember Krishna.
It is we who have to remember him at the time of death. It is we who have to turn towards him. So that is something which no one can do for us or we cannot do entirely for someone else.
And if, say, the relatives of a devotee commit wrong activities, some sinful activities, surely they will get the consequences for that. But because they are related with Krishna, or Krishna’s devotees, so not only externally, because the devotee is connected with Krishna, but also internally, because Krishna is present in their hearts also, Krishna will repeatedly remind them of the right course of action and will repeatedly prompt them to make right choices. And thus the chances of coming on the right path are greater.
So we should not become complacent, say, just because somebody related to us is practicing bhakti diligently. Because, yes, we will get some benefit from it, but we shouldn’t think of the benefit of someone else practicing bhakti as something which is automatic. It’s not like inheritance that, say, if my parents have earned a lot of money, then after them automatically the inheritance is going to pass on to me.
I don’t have to do anything for it. So even the inheritance also sometimes the parents may just decide to give their legacy, give their property to someone else. So the point is, there may be some guarantee that by natural succession, the inheritance of the parents may come to us.
But bhakti, spiritual credits of bhakti are not like a physical property. They are more of a spiritual affinity. So it is a bhakti, bhakti is not a material property to be inherited.
It is a spiritual affinity to be imbibed. And that means that each one of us has to do this ourselves. And the association of others, the association of our relatives can help us definitely.
Their words, their example, they can all inspire us, they can help assist us in practicing bhakti. But no one else’s bhakti can substitute for our bhakti. Now here, specifically with respect to the husband-wife relationship, it is traditionally understood that the wife and the husband are one unit.
Once they are bonded together in marriage, then the wife assists the husband, and then both of them together practice bhakti or together do dharma, and then both of them go to work together to the same destination. This is true more in Karmakanda, because there the goals are material and the relationship also is material. In the Bhagavatam seventh canto, it is said that in the chapter about duties of householder, it is said that if the wife faithfully assists the husband in his practice of bhakti, and the wife and the husband goes back to God, the wife will also go back to God.
But it’s clear over there, the wife has to faithfully assist the husband, and faithfully assisting the husband in today’s context means that the wife also has to practice bhakti properly. And especially in Karmakanda, the material relationships are much more important, are given much more importance. In bhakti, more than the material relationships, it is the spiritual connectedness that is more important.
And that means that if we neglect to practice bhakti, we ourselves don’t practice bhakti, then we will not really get the results, we will get the opportunities, many many more opportunities than what others would get. But we have to make the choice. So Vishal Prabhupada in the Krishna Consciousness movement, he stressed this point that everyone has to practice bhakti individually by giving initiations to both women and men separately.
Of course, he wanted ideally that both husband and wife should practice bhakti together, but still in today’s society, the husband and wife are not as integrated a unit as they were in the past. So sometimes the husband may want to practice bhakti and the wife may not, or the wife may want to practice bhakti very seriously, husband may not want to practice so seriously. Whatever it is, we all will move towards Krishna progressively to the extent we practice bhakti, and we all have to see ourselves as individuals, and recognize that I individually have to move towards Krishna.
And collectively with someone else if I move, then both of us, our bhakti can mutually inspire, assist each other, and there can be synergy where one plus one becomes more than two. At the same time, there has to be one, there has to be something on each person’s side also. It is not that just the other person practices bhakti, and one person practices, and the other gets the results automatically.
That’s not how, especially in the spiritual circles where the essence is the soul’s redirection of the heart towards Krishna. So you could say punya is credits that can be shared. The one person acquires punya, and that is to some extent, not entirely, but at least to some extent it is like material property.
But bhakti is not like material property. It is not a physical asset. It is not a physical asset that can be shared.
It is a spiritual affinity that has to be, it has to be individually cultivated. And we shouldn’t downplay the material relationships, of course. The material relationships are important for orderly living in this world, and they are also valuable aids in our spiritual journey.
But we shouldn’t think that just the material relationship alone with someone, with someone, even if they are an exalted devotee, will automatically guarantee our own spiritual elevation. No, we have to strive to elevate ourselves, and Krishna will, because of the connectedness with the pure, because of our relationship with the pure devotee, Krishna will show abundant mercy to us, often more than what he would show to others, and he will help us in many ways. At the same time, we also need to express through tangible action our desire to go