​If we surrender to Krishna, won’t he help in taking care of our needs?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Yeah, so Prabhupada says that if we serve Krishna, Krishna will take care of both spiritual and material needs. Yes, Krishna will take care. But how? It is not necessary that Krishna has to intervene in some miraculous way.
Krishna may give us the intelligence to do a job responsibly and that way take care of us. We don’t have to take off Krishna as acting only in miraculous ways. Krishna can act in normal ways also.
That way if you see. So, by normal ways means that, as you said, at 12 o’clock suddenly the kirtans came on. It was not suddenly that somewhere mystical, suddenly from nowhere some sound, disembodied sound came from somewhere.
It’s a normal TV but the kirtan came on. You see, Prabhupada, there were no paranormal miracles in what he did. But it’s just that actually, okay, I will not speak this.
I am going to speak this in Prabhupada’s appearance, Prabhupada’s appearance day class. But I will tell about how Prabhupada went exactly at the right time. And Krishna arranged that Prabhupada’s going was exactly at the right time.
It was miraculous. But see, Prabhupada, there was no miracle in the sense that suddenly from somewhere something happened and this happened and that happened. The literal events were all ordinary.
You know, Prabhupada was an old man. He went from Vrindavan to Delhi and from Delhi he went to Mumbai and from Mumbai he caught a ship. And then he came to America.
Satsvarupa Maharaj writes, you know, Prabhupada did not fly through the air and come to America. But the mission was just as extraordinary. What he achieved was extraordinary.
So when we say that Krishna helps, it is not necessary that Krishna has to help through some miraculous interventions. Krishna can help through some ordinary means also. So at one time I have, from my childhood I have a very high eye number.
So at one time the doctor told me that if you keep working on computers, you keep looking at the computer screen, you lose your eyes. Now for me, you know, I can’t physically move around much and I have to work on the computer. So then I had to do something.
So then at that time I just found a software which does text to speech. So most of the time, because I don’t want to strain my eyes, I, instead of reading books, I hear books. So what I do is the computer reads it out and I hear it.
And I have been doing this for 8-10 years and my eyes are fairly OK and I can hear also at a very fast speed. So now somebody is going to say that actually, you know, you should study Shastra. You take Bhagavatam in your hand and you should study.
Well, I can’t do that. But whether it is being studied or whether it is reading through a physical book, reading through a digital book or hearing through a digital sound, they ultimately connect to my Krishna. So for me, I see this text to speech technology as the way Krishna has helped me.
So Krishna helps us. Definitely. There’s no doubt.
But we should not reduce Krishna’s help to some miraculous interventions. Krishna helps us. He helps us even through normal ways.
So, for example, if I say that, you know, it is, this is prasad. So no matter how much I eat, there will be no problem because it is prasad. Krishna has provided the prasad.
How can I say no to prasad? Well, the same Krishna who has given us prasad has also given us intelligence about how much we should eat. Isn’t it? So we have to see Krishna in an inclusive way. And the same Krishna who has given us, say, the opportunity to practice bhakti, the same Krishna has given us intelligence also to decide how to balance various aspects of our life.
So now in some situations, devotees may feel inspired to do full time bhakti and if they are inspired to, that is fine. At the same time, even if somebody is doing full time bhakti, the temple management and temple leadership has to have a vision. OK, if we are going to have brahmacharya ashram, how are we going to maintain that? Now, it’s not that we just leave everything to chaos.
So Prabhupada wanted good management. And so when we say that Krishna provides for the spiritual and the material only, that is true. And the thing I am making is that when we say Krishna provides, that is not a license for irresponsibility.
That is not a license for apathy. Krishna may provide us, provide our material necessities by giving us the intelligence to do our material work more responsibly, more intelligently. Sometimes Krishna may provide for a devotee by, they get a job, the devotee gets a job where you don’t have to work much.
You can just do 4-5 hours work, you can do other things at that time. But at least 4-5 hours work we have to do. You cannot say I will not do the 4-5 hours work also and Krishna will maintain.
It’s not like that. So Krishna’s, again, again going back to the same verse of Yogakshema Mahamyam, we can very well say that when Krishna is saying for whom Yogakshema Mahamyam, Ananya Shintayanto Mameyana Paripasati, those who are constantly thinking about him, for him he says I provide everything. Now this does not mean that he doesn’t provide anything for anyone else.
But the point is that we cannot take one section of scripture and isolate it from other sections. So it’s a reciprocation. So when I don’t have that much devotion to serve Krishna entirely, then I should not demand that Krishna will provide me only entirely.
And if I have more and more devotion to serve Krishna, I will serve Krishna and Krishna will provide me only this. So it’s not that the material has to be deliberately neglected in the name of the spiritual. Actually this unfortunately happened in our movement.
Now in the 1970s and 80s, book distribution was very big. And the temples were run by book distribution. And when the temples were run by book distribution, temples were financially very sound.
But in 1980s, I’m talking primarily about America, in 1980s there was a lot of propaganda against our movement about being a cult and brainwashing and things like that. And some of the devotees were also very aggressive. They started doing book distribution in very unethical ways, misleading people about what the content of the book is.
A lot of things happened. So then there was a lot of anti-propaganda. And during the 1980s, the book distribution just went up, just couldn’t distribute much books.
And without the book distribution of Lakshmi, the temples could not be maintained. And there were devotees who had given their life, maybe for 15, 20, 25 years, they had just been doing book distribution. And the temple had no vision.
Some temples told, you just take care of yourself. These devotees, they had nothing else to do. So you cannot say that Krishna, so if a devotee has given their life to Krishna and then the temple management says, Krishna will take care of you.
Well, Krishna will take care of them, but Krishna takes care of those representatives. And it is the temple leader’s responsibility to make sure that if somebody has given their life, you cannot just ditch them at the last moment and say that now you take care of yourself. And so then the other temples, they decided, they came up with different means.
So the movement went through different phases. And eventually, that’s why presently ISKCON in America or in the West in general, it primarily serves the Hindu community. The Hindu community are the patrons because the counter-cultural phase in America is over now.
And Western people are not becoming devotees in so much quantity. So temples have to go on. So who is going to provide for the temples? So it is the Hindu community that is providing.
So the point is, if we just reject our responsibility and say Krishna will take care. No, it is, it is Krishna takes care through his representatives. So this idea that Krishna will take care can often become a license for irresponsibility.
And that comes when we don’t see Krishna’s, we see Krishna’s hand only in certain ways and don’t see it in other ways. We have to see Krishna’s hand in an inclusive way. And that means Krishna may help us by giving us intelligence to do things.
You know, we had one of the most exalted devotees in our movement of Jayananthal. He would work so tirelessly for organizing the yathras. But then what was he doing? He was also driving a taxi.
He was driving a taxi and he is earning money from the taxi. And from that the temple was running for a good amount of time. So he did not think that I’ll just give up the taxi driving and Krishna will take care.
He did the things also. So the material and the spiritual, we should see them both as connected with Krishna. And Krishna may help us through some material means also.
And we see it all as Krishna’s mercy. Does this answer your question?