Is it good to be a nationalist and a Krishna devotee?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Is it good to be a nationalist as well as a Krishna devotee? Do soldiers attain higher spiritual planets after death? There are two different questions. Let me take this first.
Is it good to be a nationalist as well as a Krishna conscious devotee? It is definitely not good to be an anti-nationalist wherever we are in. See, as I said, all of us, we have a particular kind of body, particular kind of mind and based on the body-mind that we have, we will have a particular set of interests. Now bhakti is at one level of connecting with Krishna directly.
At another level, it also involves connecting what we are connected with, with Krishna. If I am intellectual, I am connected with intellectual stuff. Then I will try to connect intellectual thing with Krishna.
If I am interested in music, now it’s not just that we will learn traditional forms of music, but we will also use current forms of music and use them to say Krishna conscious music. So like that, just as with respect to music or language or food. Now when we are offering food, whatever food we take, we offer it to Krishna.
But then we may offer some traditional foods to Krishna, we offer contemporary foods to Krishna. The principle is we offer it to Krishna. Just like all of us have different interests.
So like that, with respect to food, music, reading. Similarly, with respect to social involvement. Some of us may be more socially conscious.
Some of us may be less socially conscious. Some of us may have more of a fervor for nationalism. Some of us may not have that.
Now it’s only if nationalism becomes a value which competes with our Krishna consciousness. We start spending more time pursuing nationalistic causes than Krishna conscious causes. Then it becomes a problem.
But if we can channel the two, that’s perfectly fine. If we can connect the two and integrate the two, that means we take the Krishna conscious principles and we, you share them with people who are more of a nationalistic orientation. It is, the important thing is that we as devotees connect, as we connect ourselves with Krishna and we connect that which we are connected with Krishna.
So if somebody is from a nationalistic background and then they become devotees, then they will know best what language to speak, how to present, so that the other people who are nationalistically oriented also can become connected with Krishna. They may not become connected with Krishna at the same level of connectedness as devotees may be. But they become more fervent.
So we can see national activism as a special interest. Some people have it, some people don’t have it. It’s just like some people might be interested in learning music.
Some special instruments they learn so that they can use that music to serve Krishna. So like that, if we have some particular interest, we can use that. It’s not an obligation, but it’s not a, it’s not something which is, it’s not necessary to do it, but it’s not wrong to do it.
The key thing is when we are doing it, are we connecting with Krishna more or are we connected with that thing more? Like suppose I’m learning some new musical instrument. I can spend my whole life learning that instrument. And for learning that instrument, I start singing this song, that song, which has got nothing to do with Bhagwat.
And then my purpose is lost completely. That shouldn’t happen. I use some time to learn, but then I use it in Krishna’s service.
So like that, if we are having nationalistic interest, we have to see whether the nationalistic sentiment is dominating my consciousness. When I’m chanting Hare Krishna, I was thinking of something about nationalistic issues. They did like this, they did like that, they did like that.
If it’s dominating our consciousness too much, then we have to be a little regulated in that. We can find out other devotees who are of similar interest. And then we can, especially some senior devotee who understands that thing, then they can guide us to what extent we can be involved, what we have to be careful about and how we can move forwards.
So the principle of bhakti is to connect what we are, connect us with Krishna and connect that which we are connected with, with Krishna.