We talk a lot about practicing bhakti but not about practicing morality – why?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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When we practice, sometimes we focus on becoming devotee but we don’t focus on normal ethics. And devotees may also not behave ethically in dealing with non-devotees, in dealing with husband, wife and other people. I would say, the two things are there.
First is, that the Bhagavatam and the Bhagavad Gita are already spoken to people who have very high ethics. And that’s why the Bhagavad Gita and Bhagavatam don’t talk so much about ethical principles. They talk about transcendental principles.
But that doesn’t mean ethical principles are unimportant. And Prabhupada was asked, how can we know your disciples? So Prabhupada said, they are perfect gentlemen. Gentleman means they are well behaved.
They are ethical, moral. So, we are not devotees of ethics. We are devotees of Krishna.
So in some emergency situations, sometimes a devotee may do something for the sake of serving Krishna, which may not be exactly ethical in the strictest sense. But a devotee never routinely flouts ethics. So, as I say, the philosophy is very clear that if you want to go to the mode of pure goodness, we have to come to the mode of goodness.
And mode of goodness means behaving ethically. So definitely ethical behavior is required. But, now as far as devotees specifically not behaving like that, I would say sometimes we we expect devotion to act like a magic wand which will undo everything of a devotee’s past.
Devotion is like that, but that magic wand takes a long time to manifest. So just because somebody is chanting Hare Krishna or is following four regular principles, that does not necessarily mean that person’s character is entirely reformed. See, what happens is we are all formed by the way we were in the past.
Kind of upbringing, the kind of association. So, those influences may not go away immediately. So I would say that say if we have some position of influence, if we are introducing some people to Krishna, we are training them in bhakti, then we should definitely emphasize ethics also.
But along with that, if we find some devotee behaving in troubling ways, we need to see that the bhakti movement is like a hospital. Different people come with different sicknesses. And we don’t go to the hospital to find out who is how, what sickness who has.
We go there to ourselves get cured. We focus on those devotees who inspire us. Other devotees we can respect from a distance.
We don’t have to take them as examples. And if somebody’s dealings are really very questionable, then we may report to the authorities. This is what has happened.
Sometimes they may take some action, sometimes they may not take any action. We don’t have to get too distracted by that. just like the world is very big, even Krishna’s movement is also very big.
That’s why within that movement lot of things will happen. We have to clear, keep our purpose clear. I have come here to move closer to Krishna.
And whatever it takes for me to be closer to Krishna, I will do that. So if a certain devotee’s association is discouraging me in my bhakti, I will keep that aside,