Judgmental attitude ruins relationships

Sunday Feast Lecture at New Ramana Rati, Alachua.

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so today I will share one formula which I hope you will never use this is a formula for ruining relationships so before I tell the formula I will start with an incident this happened around 10-12 years ago in my life so I was a brahmachari in Radha Gopinath temple in Mumbai and I had just come on I think some festival day for prasad I had come a little late so I saw prasad is in finite quantity the sweet had already got over so I felt a little upset the sweet is over and just when I sat down to take prasadam there was a single devotee sitting outside and I could see in his plate there had been sweet and it had got over there was sweet in his plate and it had got over so then suddenly that devotee said is there any sweet and then he asked one server, he asked the second server he asked the third server I started becoming mentally very offensive I said what is this he already had sweet and if one server has said that there is no sweet available why are you asking and because he was a senior devotee many devotees were running around trying to find some sweet here, find some sweet there find some sweet there and then finally one young devotee brought his own plate servers often make their own plates to keep prasad and he started serving sweet from his own plate into this devotee’s plate I was seething practically what is this and just as this devotee was serving the prasadam in his plate this young devotee said no I don’t want it he did not get sweet and he said he did not get sweet give it to him so he was asking for sweet not for himself but for me and I just I was thinking that if this young devotee had not brought his own plate I would never have come to know his intention and I would have thought that you know this devotee was so whatever so greedy for sweets initially at least in the initial phases of our spiritual life often we try to reduce spiritual advancement to simple formulas so a devotee who does not take sweet is a renounced devotee and a renounced devotee is an advanced devotee and therefore a devotee who asks for sweets is not an advanced devotee so at least I tried to reduce things to simple formulas and it doesn’t work but the point I am making is that we often succumb to the error of judging without understanding judging without understanding is the formula for ruining relationships we see certain behaviour which someone does and we based on our limited experience presume what motivation what intention might be driving that behaviour and based on that we arrive at judgments about that person so what we see is the behaviour what we assume inside the person’s heart is our interpretation or our assumption about their intention and then based on that we make a judgement and such a judgement can be disastrous for relationships this is especially evident in the Ramayana in the Ramayana there are many pairs of brothers there is Ram and Lakshman is the most famous pair of brothers both of them go to the forest second pair of brothers is Bharat and Shatrughan who stay in Ayodhya the third pair of brothers is Ravana and Kumbhakarna and Vibhishan a fourth pair of brothers is Vali and Sugreeva now Vali and Sugreeva were the best of friends they were brothers and they were the best of friends Vali was the king and Sugreeva was his faithful assistant and at one time both of them went in pursuit of a demon Mayavi and this Mayavi went and hid in a cave so Vali told Sugreeva you stay outside I will go inside and I will find this demon and kill it so Sugreeva said let me come with you because who knows this demon might have some more assistants over there some more demons there better you don’t go alone he said no this demon has troubled us enough if he comes out I don’t want him to escape if he comes out by some other way so you stay at the guard as guard at the door and I will go inside so he instructed his brother the Ramayan says actually bound him by a box don’t come in stay guard over here and then he went inside and for a long time for hours and hours days upon days Sugreeva was just waiting outside and neither did Vali come nor did he hear any sound and finally he heard the he heard the cry of the demon and he did not hear any sound of Vali and he saw blood trickling out of the cave now Sugreeva started thinking I have heard the demon but I have not heard Vali so he inferred that Vali has been killed and he started thinking now he knew Sugreeva was also a heroic warrior but he knew Vali is much stronger than me so if this Mayavi has killed Vali then there is not much chance that I will be able to overpower him so he decided to trap that demon in the cave and he got a huge boulder and pushed it on the mouth of the cave and then with a heavy heart he departed he informed the citizens the courtiers they had a period of statewide mourning for the deceased king and then the courtiers told we need a king and you are the natural heir Vali’s son Angad was too young at that time so then Sugreeva became the king and then a few days later Vali marched into the kingdom and when he marched into the kingdom he saw Sugreeva sitting on the throne and as soon as he saw Sugreeva sitting on the throne he he roared in anger and just pounced on Sugreeva, Sugreeva is intelligent he understood what has happened immediately got off his throne and went to the feet of Vali Vali had told him so happy that you are alive I thought you had died but Vali was furious so when he had killed the demon he had to search for a long time to find and kill the demon so he had decided not to waste any energy in roaring so the demon was screaming when he was being pounded to death and when he came out he saw instead of my brother at the door at the mouth, he saw there was a huge boulder and it had taken a huge amount of energy and creativity for Vali to force his way out of the cave to push aside the boulder he felt the boulder had been positioned in such a way that it could not have happened naturally so how did it come there so he already had a nagging suspicion didn’t Sugreeva do that and when he saw Sugreeva sitting on the throne he felt his suspicion confirmed Sugreeva he wanted to assume the throne that’s why he did this whole hilarious scheme and he just pounded on Sugreeva Sugreeva was the blows of his brother did not hurt him as much as the anger and hatred in his brother’s eyes how could my brother think that I would ever betray him he still did not have the heart to fight back and he stood there hoping for some other time when he would be able to clarify but that time never came time and time again Vali would try to have Sugreeva assassinated by sending different Vamanajan generals Vali himself would go finally Sugreeva had to find a hideout where Vali being cursed could not enter and eventually they were best of friends they would have given up their lives for each other but they became enemies for life and finally Lord Ram had to reinstate Sugreeva by killing Vali now if you see the situation both Sugreeva and Vali made inferences and both made wrong inferences Sugreeva saw the blood coming out and he heard the roar and he inferred that Vali is dead so it was a wrong inference and similarly Vali made a wrong inference that Sugreeva is an intention the difference between the two is that Sugreeva had no chance to do any clarification if that demon were alive and that demon was going to come out that demon would have wreaked havoc once he thought that the king of the Vanaras has been killed now all the other Vanaras and the whole Vanara kingdom would be fair game for him he could wreak havoc so Sugreeva did not have the chance to seek clarification whereas Vali he had the chance to seek clarification after all the person whom he was suspecting was not a demon it was his own brother and a brother who had served faithfully for years and decades a brother who had whom he had known so closely so he is not giving the benefit of doubt to Sugreeva that was the cause of the ruin of their relationships so he judged without understanding and judging without understanding can cause unnecessary complications in many relationships it’s natural to some extent for us as human beings to try to make sense of the world around us we try to make sense of natural phenomena around us and that’s how science has developed and we try to make sense of people’s behaviour around us and that’s how we try to understand people so when we observe certain behaviour, why would this person speak like this, why would this person do like this that’s a natural human question that comes the problem is not asking this question asking is natural but the problem is in assuming that we assuming that we can know the answer ourselves by our inference so psychologists call this as attribution error attribution error means we see certain behaviour and we attribute certain motivation to that behaviour and usually in attribution the people whom we like we attribute positive motives to them and the people whom we don’t like we attribute negative motives to them and of course for ourselves we assume the most positive motives so for example if I see someone else overeating I don’t like that person then I think he’s a glutton he eats so much now if I overeat I was hungry I was hungry so we usually if we see somebody oversleeping lazy fool if I oversleep I was tired so in this way we can see this in many behaviours it is not so much the behaviour but the past attitude that we have developed towards a particular person the past judgments we have already passed in our mind about that person we build on those judgments further so in general because we are finite living beings the amount of information that we can have about others is limited we can observe them for a certain amount of time and based on those finite observations we can arrive at certain inferences the if we arrive at certain negative inferences about someone then why would this person do like this so when we arrive at negative inferences the if nothing else happens at the very least our relationship with that person becomes odd we become a little more sceptical and suspicious in future in our dealings with that person and instead of a warmth a sort of coldness starts entering in that relationship and people may not be able that person may not immediately be able to lay a finger on what’s wrong but they start sensing something is wrong what’s wrong and what happens is they also do their attribution in they may say that instead of thinking maybe there is something wrong with me because of me this person is behaving like this is a cold hearted person is an insensitive person so by that from both sides when there are attribution errors the distance between the two people in the relationship starts becoming more and more and more now how do we deal with this tendency to to make attributions in general the first thing is to know that we are not gods means we can’t know everything atheists they they also believe in god but you know what kind of god they believe in they believe in a god who will take advice from them that means they will see something in nature and they say if god created rains why would rains fall on the oceans when there is no need for water so if god created rains rain should fall only on the earth when there is need for water so this is called negative theology you don’t believe in god and then starting from that presumption of disbelief in god they try to find out everything that is wrong with the belief of god so what is happening god is non-existent till they want to give advice to god and then their god temporarily pops into existence gratefully accepts their advice and disappears into non-existence so they they like to everyone likes to serve god as an advisor as an advisor god you should do like this you should do like that why don’t you do like this so now this same tendency wherein atheists may do it explicitly god you should do like this god should be done like this we may not go to that extent explicitly but we assume that people should be acting like this or people should be acting like that and when they act in somewhat different ways we think that we know enough about them to assume what their motives are and based on that we pass judgements so we will observe many things in the world around us and even in devotee community so if somebody has been practising bhakti consistently for many years it behoves us to give them the benefit of doubt they they at least know what they are doing usually when we find faults with someone that means we see some behaviour we think that okay this behaviour must be because of this motive and then we find fault now the people who are good at fault finding are often good at fault finding in everything except fault finding about fault finding that means find fault in everything but there is a major fault in fault finding and what is that fault? that fault is that fault finding very rarely helps in fault correcting it’s only when it’s only when there is some foundation of a good relationship that a fault some fault that is found is accepted gratefully and some correction happens there was a I try to write so I have studied a bit about writing so in Wisconsin University about a decade ago they decided to the Ayurvedic students they decided to start a writer’s club so the boys they formed a writer’s club and they decided that we will we whatever we write we will all critique each other’s writings and in this way whatever mistakes are there we will correct those mistakes and by that we will all become good writers now when the girls came to know that the boys have formed a club writer’s club the girls said we will also form a writer’s club but the feminists the girls were feminists so they said we will do the opposite of what the boys do so instead of finding faults in each other’s writings we will find the good in each other’s writings and then the researchers did a survey 20 years down the line some of the boys in this writer’s club not one of them had become a professional writer not one of them only 2-3 of them had become decent writers all the others had given up writing as an impossibly difficult project on the other hand the girls out of them 3 had become published professional writers 7 of them had become good writers good writers are above average writers and all of them were more or less good writers so now normally in the process of writing it is that if you write something there are editors who review and mostly when they review largely what they give is corrections critically, this is important but if there is no framework of encouragement then the criticism simply is discouraging and especially now if something is our if something is a matter of our livelihood if we are at a job and then the boss criticises us we don’t like that criticism but still we have no alternative we need the job, we need to earn a living so we accept the criticism we try to correct ourselves and move on that is because of necessity so criticism can lead to improvement if there is necessity for the improvement it is going to be a very serious consequence if the improvement is not done the second situation where criticism leads to improvement is when the person is very highly motivated if somebody is out, I want to become a good writer I am not going to get discouraged no matter what happens then when the criticism comes in spite of that I will keep writing I will improve but when people’s motivation is not very high and when people are doing something which is seen as voluntary then criticism usually kills the motivation to do that and people just give it up and that is why ultimately Krishna Consciousness is our supreme necessity but in the condition stage we don’t feel it as a necessity yes whatever basic standards of sadhana are there, we might practise them but beyond that the journey of self improvement is a long journey and we often don’t feel it very necessary because I am chanting 16 rounds how attentively I am chanting ok I can try to improve sometimes sometimes it’s too much trouble we don’t bother about it so the point I am making is that for most of us in the sadhaka stage we don’t see self improvement as an absolute necessity and usually we are not very highly motivated to improve ourselves so because of both these things when we get criticism while doing something we most often fold up and give up so why bother about it if I am going to do this and I am going to get criticised I am going to get mistakes why bother doing it and in this way whatever initiative devotees may have in bhakti that initiative gets killed so that means I am talking this is a separate subject I am talking about is that there is nothing wrong in people’s heart but we assume that something is wrong now I am talking about when something is actually wrong even then correcting that doesn’t lead to correction so correction doesn’t inspire people to correct they say that psychologists say that if a person is to change behaviour people need knowledge people need the desire and people need the skills if I want to become a better writer I need to know the knowledge of grammar, of writing I need to have the desire to become a better writer and then I need to have the skills if I made a grammar mistake how do I know it? maybe I have a spell check or I have some software or I have some editor who will tell me so we need the knowledge, we need the skills and we need the desire similarly in our bhakti also when we are practising something and we need to change we are doing something which we are doing wrong but unless we see someone else doing something wrong unless they have the necessary resources for improvement just telling people what they are doing wrong doesn’t always, in fact very rarely inspires them to do the right thing so we see that if Sri Srila Prabhupada came to America if he had wanted to find faults he would have found so many faults, everything in America one of my devotee friends had once gone to Jagannath Puri for a Rath Yatra so at that time during the Rath Yatra they had just gone to Gaudiya Mutt and there was a Sanyasi who had come there so this devotee thought oh I will get some opportunity to serve a Sanyasi so he asked can I serve a Prasad so then the Sanyasi assistant asked him are you initiated? he said no I am not initiated he said if you are not initiated you cannot serve a Prasad to a Sanyasi that is the standard they followed over there maybe not in all Gaudiya Mutt but this particular Gaudiya Mutt now see this is the standard a Sanyasi will not even accept Prasad from a non-initiated that is a fault you are not initiated so you cannot serve a Sanyasi but here we have Srila Prabhupada he is not just a Sanyasi he is a Mahabhag and not only even on accepting Prasad he is actually cooking and serving Prasad normally he is cooking and serving Prasad he is actually in the early days when the devotees would come for them this just seemed like a free hotel so the lower east side it seemed like a free hotel so they would come normally we go to a hotel we eat food just leave the plates and go away so like that people would leave the plates and go away and so here we have a Sanyasi not just a Sanyasi a Mahabhag and what he is washing the plates he is washing the plates of people whose only regulative principle is breaking all the regulative principles so what compassion actually how it was the first time one devotee he just Prabhupada would offer second servings, third servings fourth servings he ate so much that he had no energy to get up only after eating just sat over there and he watched and then Prabhupada was talking with him for a long time smiling gently and after that finally Prabhupada started picking up the plates and washing that struck him, oh Swamiji himself is washing all these plates he was shocked even though they were hippies they had an understanding that Swamiji is a learned person he is an elderly gentleman, he is learned he is washing our plates then he said Swamiji can I help you and then in the future he got some of his friends some of the hippies and they started helping him washing so Prabhupada if he had been focused on finding faults then everybody would have been disqualified in the practise of bhakti everybody would have been disqualified, nobody would have got the opportunity to practise bhakti so Prabhupada would say that you can find gold even in a filthy place so as devotees now there is also the other issue that we are a movement and we want to follow certain standards and what if we see somebody not following the standards isn’t it our duty to correct them isn’t it our duty to point it out that this is wrong, this should not be done yes there are certainly we have certain standards and we want to follow the standards but again the purpose of standards is inspiration not condemnation the purpose of standards is to inspire others to come to that level it is not to judge and condemn others sometimes standards are abused as weapons in ego battles in ego battles ego battles two people are there, they have an ego battle I follow the standard, you don’t follow the standard so the standard becomes a weapon for beating someone down in an ego battle and in this case the standards are important but what they are used for is also more important Krishna talks about in the Bhagavad Gita 16th chapter, 17th verse he says he says he says the ungodly, the demoniac people he says they don’t do naam yajna they do yajna for naam they don’t chant the names of god they do yajna, they do sacrifices for the sake of name and it’s with pride arrogance so if standards if standards become tools for beating each other, if in a family the husband and wife started using standards as tools in domestic ego battles then the whole family the same spiritual culture which is meant to bring the family together can actually pull the family apart, rip the family apart so standards are important but like in everything else the purpose of the standards is also important the purpose of the standards is to help us all move closer towards Krishna and if that purpose is being lost then we have to see what is the best way I can fulfil that purpose and certainly standards have to be protected but that also has to be done in a way which leads to people coming closer to Krishna if that doesn’t happen then people get alienated so in the Ramayan again going back after Ravana has escaped, Vibhishan he is the only survivor in that family of Ravana and Vibhishan has to do the last rites of Ravana and at that time Vibhishan becomes very thoughtful and he says I can’t do the last rites of this person he was so demoniac, so wicked I tolerated all his atrocities but when he cast an evil eye, he is telling all this to Ram when he cast an evil eye on your wife that was too much he said I cannot do the last rites of this person so Lord Ram becomes grave and he says to him that the soul is always pure and because of conditionings a person may act in wrong ways but no resentment should be held against the pure soul Ravana did wrong and he got just dues for that now as a brother as a non-judgemental brother you should do your duty by which his soul can attain an auspicious destination there is elaborate discourse there in the Ramayana where Ram pursues Vibhishana and then Vibhishana does the last rites so even now I am talking about third case that there is somebody who has done wrong and the person is deviating from whatever the expected standard so at that time if we can help that person to come back to the right standard that’s well and good but if we become judgemental then that judgmentality often alienate the person more than whatever that wrong was done so as devotees our ultimate goal is not just like Shri Prabhupada he was so so resourceful if we just want to if we just take standards as absolute and don’t recognise the way in which people have been brought closer to Krishna then we miss out many opportunities to facilitate people coming closer to Krishna now one of the offences to the holy name is to give a mundane interpretation of the holy name eventually Prabhupada was asked by one of MP he said that Swamiji what is Vaikuntha like? so Prabhupada said it is like an ocean of LSD like an ocean of LSD now which Shastra has it said like this? LSD is not mentioned in Shastra to compare the bliss of Vaikuntha with LSD LSD of all things is a sin it’s an offence but Prabhupada his purpose the point is not to get it right the point is to get it across we may get something right but if we don’t get it across then what’s the use? people have to understand it and by understanding it they will be inspired to come closer to Krishna Prabhupada in his Bhagavad Gita 15.7 so he says that Krishna is saying that spiritual abode is not illumined by the sun nor by the moon nor by fire so in India the primary colleges are called IITs there is an IIT professor who read Prabhupada’s Gita and he said he doesn’t translate the Gita properly see this 15.7 he has added electricity now where is electricity coming from? there is no electricity how can he add like this? and not only he is adding it on top of it he has the audacity to call that as as it is first of all he is adding something and then he is saying this Bhagavad Gita is as it is how can he do that? so then I tried to explain to them the purpose of scripture somebody can do a perfect literal translation of scripture but scripture is not just a book of language scripture is a book on living and the essential message of scripture is actually understood by those who are living it and they can share the living import with others so the point of this verse the point is that Krishna is saying the spiritual world does not require any any separate source of illumination the spiritual world is self luminous and that point becomes clear just a few verses later this is 15.6 and 15.12 Krishna says he talks about the material world and he uses the same three things he says that that this world is illuminated by the sun, the moon and fire so basically Krishna’s point is to convey the glory of the spiritual world by showing, by telling how it does not require any source of illumination now Prabhupada is presenting the Gita to a audience who largely lives in an artificial civilisation if many children small children they are asked where does milk come from? they often say it comes from the fridge they don’t know it comes from it comes from a cow this comes from the fridge so like that people live in a society where most of their light comes from electricity so for them even if there is no sun, there is no moon there is no fire, it doesn’t matter as long as electricity is there when there is no electricity, big problem so the point of this verse is there is no need for illumination in the spiritual world so because Prabhupada is writing to an audience whose most prominent source of illumination is electricity so Prabhupada adds that and if Prabhupada had his own agenda he wanted to change the Gita then he could very well have just given his translation in purpose he could have avoided the Sanskrit, he could have avoided the word to word translations he has given so he forces us to take as anybody who reads the Gita can see there is no electricity here and Prabhupada is putting electricity over there so by forcing us to think Prabhupada takes us deeper inside the spirit of scripture so the point I am making here is that Prabhupada’s Bhagavad Gita is as it is in the sense that the ultimate purpose that Krishna is wanting to fulfil, Prabhupada’s Gita fulfils that the point is not to get it right, the point is to get it across to present things in such a way that people understand it and people act on it the same applies with respect to correcting others, with respect to criticism I will be perfectly right in correcting someone but will it have the right effect? If that discourages the person, if that eliminates the person, if that makes the person rebellious then I will need to think more to correct her before doing that correction I will conclude with one last incident from the Srimad Bhagavatam in the fourth canto there is a story of Pruthu Maharaj there are multiple incidents in Pruthu Maharaj’s life but one is when Pruthu Maharaj wants to perform the hundred sacrifices so Indra becomes insecure and when Pruthu Maharaj has completed 99 sacrifices, Indra starts coming and interfering again and again and again so now at this point things are almost black and white Pruthu is doing the virtuous activity and he is doing it righteously he has got sages and he is doing the sacrifice he is ready to spend his royal resources for doing the sacrifice so Pruthu Maharaj is right and Indra is wrong Indra is insecure and he is power hungry he doesn’t want to lose his chair and that’s why he is taking on all sorts of cards and creating traditions of hypocrisy actually so things could not be more black and white than this and yet in the Supreme Lord Vishnu he sends Brahma to resolve the situation when the conflict is going on and Brahma does not correct Indra instead he counsels Pruthu he tells Pruthu why do you want to do the sacrifice just leave it just leave it now I come from India cricket is a very big sport so there was one of India’s greatest cricket batsman he was he was on in cricket there is century there is double century so one time he was on 195 almost close to double century and at that time the captain declared the wins and this batsman he got so angry he said I will unless you change this captain I will not play under this captain so people are so hungry for achievement so now Pruthu Maharaj would have said I want to make a century of yajnas why are you stopping me and I am not in fault but when Brahma instructed him Pruthu accepted Pruthu Maharaj accepted why because the point is Indra is attached because Indra is attached trying to instruct someone who is attached that will only make that person more rebellious so to resolve the situation instead of trying to correct Indra what did Pruthu do Brahma said Pruthu you stop it so here if we simply go by right and wrong Indra was wrong and Pruthu Maharaj was right but the principle in the Bhagavad Gita is something we could call as right beyond right that which is not just factually right but that which serves the ultimate right purpose the right purpose was maintaining the cosmic harmony avoiding conflict between the ruler of the earth and the ruler of the heavens so like that even when someone is wrong and we know that we are right and that person is wrong still sometimes trying to correct that will create far greater conflict in the situation make the situation worse so it’s better to just take a as Pruthu Maharaj said no need to bother about it take a humble role and resolve the situation so in this way we can actually maintain the community and the relationships in a co-ordinary way I’ll summarise I started by talking about the formula for running relationships that is judging without understanding I’ll give you two examples one from my life of that Srinidhi Bodhi asking for sweet and the second from the Ramayan of Bali is judging Sukrima so we observe behaviours and we attribute motives to those behaviours and often depending on our preconceptions or judgments about other people we ascribe negative motives towards people whom we don’t like so the way to avoid this is to remember that we are neither God nor are we advisors to God nor are we advisors to the world so if we find that some if somebody is doing something wrong rather assume something that seems wrong rather than assume that they have a wrong motive we need to give them a benefit of doubt and we can clarify ask them, why are you doing this? what is the reason? and even if they are wrong correcting them doesn’t always lead to correction so in Wisconsin University example I gave this correction of writing writers meant that nobody ever blossomed so especially when something is voluntary or is seen as voluntary and something for which people don’t have high motivation in that when correction is given people just stop doing it and in bhakti the path of self improvement is seen like that by most of us so people just discourage devotees and they don’t strive to do anything better to improve themselves in any way and then even if someone is wrong and that person needs to be corrected but still we need to check whether the correction will lead to improvement or not so if it is going to lead to alienation and further rebellion then we can focus on a higher principle as is demonstrated in the story of Pruthu and Indra so of course this is a very complex subject and there are many situations that I have not considered but this was just something which I have made this mistake I have seen many times of judging others and unnecessarily alienated people so I thought I will share this with you if there are any corrections, comments I am most welcome thank you