Should we stick to commitments even if doing so makes our life unbalanced?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so suppose we make some commitment but then sometimes other engagements come up and then if we try to stick to that commitment, our overall balance of life gets affected, if we have to stay awake late to read Bhagavatam then here we can’t wake up for morning program or we feel sleepy throughout the day, so what do we do at that time? See even when we talk about commitment, it is always better to see it more in terms of a of a direction for progress rather than the specific quantity of progress so what that means is, that rather than just saying that I will read 30 minutes every day, that’s a good plan, but life often comes in the way of our resolutions, but when life comes in the way of the resolutions, that doesn’t mean that we have to just give up going on the way, sometimes just instead of 30 minutes every day if I plan, ok, I will read 3 and a half hours every week and some days I may be able to read more, some days I may not be able to read more so if there is an overall direction, this is the direction which I need to go, just like if I am going if say I am coming from the place where I am saying temple here, then if there is traffic, at that time naturally I will have to move slowly, and now if I am moving slowly because of traffic that’s unavoidable, but if after the traffic goes that time also I will keep moving slowly that is pointless so like that sometimes there is too much traffic in our life and we cannot move forward that’s just acceptable, that’s ok but it’s not that things are like that all the time, the problem happens when we make resolutions and we oscillate from one extreme where I think if I make a resolution I must stick to it in all conditions no matter what happens I said that don’t make resolutions like like lines in stone we have to be a little flexible, we have to be realistic but the other extreme is we try to make resolutions like that and if they don’t work then we go to the other extreme and think let me not make any resolutions that is also not desirable so we can have overall balance, sometimes even a week may not be able to do anything but we can have in a month sometimes in this week I may not be able to study, but next week I can compensate so if we have a overall sense of direction in which we are going the resolution is primarily about the direction where we want to go it’s not about a specific distance that we cover every day, that distance is not in our control but at least if we have a sense of direction where I want to go, then whenever the opportunity is there, I can grab that opportunity and then I can move onwards see if you don’t have any resolution at all then I think oh, you know today afternoon I don’t have anything to do, what should I do, maybe I can study maybe I can chant, or maybe I can, I am not associated with devotees yesterday night I slept for only 5 hours, 15 minutes so let me sleep for 10 minutes and then 10 minutes becomes 1 hour or 2 hours so if we don’t have any direction also in our spiritual life, then the mind makes us choose the path of least resistance, whenever we don’t have anything to do so it should never happen in our spiritual life that we have time and we don’t know what to do, so if we have a plan we will be looking, ok wherever I get time then immediately I can start doing these things that’s why we don’t have to necessarily make the resolution an absolute commitment to a particular level of quantity of achievement, it should be a commitment to moving in a particular direction ok