What is the difference between qualities and abilities?

From Manoj P

In one of your classes, you mention that qualities like self-control are different from abilities like intellectual ability that come from past karma. Can you please explain the difference?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Question from Manoj Guru. In one of your classes, you mentioned that abilities come from our past life’s karma, whereas qualities we develop by our choice.
So you mentioned that abilities like singing or eloquent speaking, these come by past life karma. There is self-control, and these are developed by our choice. But often people consider even good singing ability or good speaking ability, this also has a quality.
So what exactly is the difference between qualities and abilities? Actually the difference is more in terms of what is closer to the soul. Our past karma, it can give us various results. So one of the results the past karma can give us is wealth.
Now we easily understand that just because a person is wealthy, that does not necessarily mean that the person is spiritually advanced. Because wealth is a result of past good karma. So just as some results of past good karma can manifest at gross levels in the external world, as a great amount of wealth, some results of past karma can manifest in the subtle body as skills.
Some people can have great memory. Whatever they hear, they remember it. But just having great memory does not lead to spiritual advancement.
That great memory can be used to memorize scripture, to memorize about Krishna, and if it is used in devotional service, then that can lead to spiritual advancement. So when we are talking about qualities, here we are referring to those things which are intrinsic to the soul or close to the soul. The soul, in the spiritual world, it is not that every soul needs to have every material quality.
The soul has all spiritual qualities. That means the soul is gentle, soul is sensitive, the soul is respectful, the soul is self-controlled, soul is in that devoted to Krishna. So these are some things which we develop by our, these are some things which are intrinsic to the soul.
And is it that a person can be self-controlled by one’s past life karma? Not exactly. It’s a person can be in goodness. One person can be in goodness, one person can be in ignorance.
That will be one’s past life karma. And in that sense, we could say that because a person in goodness has more self-control than person in ignorance. So we could say that a person can have self-control even from one’s past life.
But the difference is that a person in goodness may have self-control, but that person may not use that self-control for spiritual advancement. So when we are talking about the difference between qualities and abilities, we’re talking primarily about qualities which help one make spiritual advancement or which are not just help one make spiritual advancement, qualities which actually comprise spiritual advancement. When a person is humble, generally we think that person is spiritually advanced.
When a person is renounced, we think that the person is spiritually advanced. So qualities and abilities, the differentiation is that abilities may be usable in Krishna’s service, but the abilities are themselves not necessarily signs of spiritual advancement. They are simply results of past karma.
So humility is something which a person has to develop. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu doesn’t say that by singing ability one can make spiritual advancement. Now He doesn’t say that for Kirtan-e-Sadahari one has to have a very strong throat.
One has a very sweet throat, then one will sing all the time. No, He says one has to have humility, one has to have tolerance, then one will do Kirtan-e-Sadahari. What does it indicate? This Kirtan-e-Sadahari has got nothing to do with sweet musical Kirtans.
It has got to do with the disposition of the heart. And this kind of humility and tolerance, which Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is talking about, humility like a blade of grass, tolerance like a tree, this is not something which a person can get by past karma. A pure devotee is descended from the spiritual world, a pure devotee might be having that.
And some devotees, some souls may have it from their previous lives, spiritual life, spiritual qualities can also be carried on from one’s past life. But when we are talking about material abilities, which people may think of as qualities, material abilities can come without anything spiritual attached to them. A person does Punya, and as a result of the Punya, a person may get material qualities.
And the material qualities do not lead to spiritual advancement in and of themselves. They do not comprise spiritual advancement, they do not lead to spiritual advancement. A person can have a brilliant memory, and with that memory a person can actually misinterpret scripture and mislead people by quoting verses to prove a conclusion that is opposite to the conclusion of scriptures.
There are scholars who have phenomenal memory, and they use their memory to defy Krishna. They use Bhagavad Gita, and they actually try to dissect the personality of Krishna, and they go to an impersonal conclusion. So their memory is there, but their memory is not taking them towards Krishna.
So when we talk about Bhakti helping us to develop qualities, those qualities do not necessarily refer to singing ability or speaking ability. Krishna may empower a devotee with these also, but they are not the primary characteristics of Bhakti. Now we are talking about Bhakti giving us qualities like humility, tolerance, and these emerge from the soul when the soul becomes a Bhakta, and when they emerge they also naturally facilitate devotion.
It’s not that singing ability or speaking ability naturally facilitate devotion. They have to be consciously used to engage in Bhakti, and then they can help us, but they can also take us away from Krishna, because one can become proud of these abilities. So in a broad sense, those things which are connected with the body, they may be externals like wealth and strength, or they may be internal like speaking ability or singing ability, they are usable in Krishna’s service, but they have got nothing to do with spiritual advancement.
Whereas those qualities which are intrinsically connected with the soul, which are intrinsically connected with Bhakti, like humility, tolerance, they are developed by the practice of Bhakti, and they directly facilitate our own Bhakti. So that is the difference between qualities and abilities.