What should I do when my devotional service interferes with my duties as a mother?

Transcript

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Question.
I am a mother and in one of your Neeta Daily articles, you mentioned that how if a mother neglects her child, then we will not consider that love of the mother to be genuine. Similarly, if we neglect our service to Krishna, then our love is not genuine towards Krishna, it’s not very deep. But then my question is that many times I find that my devotion disturbs my duty as a mother.
So, how should I deal with such a situation? Answer. It doesn’t have to disturb. Now, if we plan and intelligently balance our life, then we will be able to do our different duties in a proper way.
All of us have a lot of demands in our time and we will have to take inventory of what all is most important and how it can be done. So, when we take inventory of that, then accordingly we can allocate time properly. So, it’s more a matter of balancing and this is a practical matter.
It’s not a matter of principles. In principle, as I have talked repeatedly in my articles and talks that we are souls who are currently in a body. So, we have duties at the level of the body and we have duties at the level of the soul.
So, these duties, the ideal situation is that they go congruently, they go concurrently, they move forward. So, Varanashram was such a social arrangement in which the caring for the body was done in a social environment where the caring for the soul also happened. So, that may not be entirely possible in today’s situation.
But we can try to readjust our life as much as possible so that the two go harmoniously. So, for example, for a mother to take care of the child is important and in the early days of the movement, the understanding of devotion was quite superficial and because of that many devotees didn’t do things properly. So, there’s one letter in which one Mataji devotee wrote to Prabhupada and said that Prabhupada, the temple leaders are telling me to just go out of distribution and to not care for my child.
So, what should I do in such a situation? So, Prabhupada replied back in the letter, I’m very surprised to hear this. He says, you are a mother and taking care of the child is very important. Prabhupada would say their children are Vaikuntha children, that they are children who have been ultimately sent to us by Krishna and it’s important for us to take care of them.
So, we have certain basic devotional activities and then we have supplementary devotional activities also. So, basic devotional activities are chanting our rounds and the following the four negative principles and having some basic name association of devotees so that we feel spiritually inspired and enthused. Now, after that we have our other duties also which are important.
So, after we have done our basic duties then we do our family duties. So, the same challenge would be there for a male also, for a man, for a male devotee along with the family responsibilities, along with the devotional basic duties that we have. There is the other responsibilities that are there, taking care of the family in other ways and also earning a living, going for a job.
So, now after we do our basic devotional obligations then we should give adequate time to our worldly duties and any extra services that we want to take up, that shouldn’t be at the cost of our family duties. Now, especially for a mother, the role that a mother plays in the child’s life is irreplaceable and our devotion shouldn’t lead to the neglect of that. So, at the same time it is good if we can involve the child also in devotion, devotional activities.
That way our devotional, our motherly duties don’t have to become divorced and don’t have to conflict with our devotional duties. They can both become integrated. So, the mother and child can go to the temple, can sometimes go to programs.
But here we have to differentiate between what are the essential devotional obligations of us and then what are supplementary. So, you know, doing various other services, this is not absolutely essential. Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to do it at all.
Naturally, the more we are in devotee community, the more we will feel spiritually inspired, the more we’ll make spiritual advancement. So, it is good if we can do that also, but not at the expense of our basic duties. So, there will be times in our spiritual life when our family obligations will take more of our time.
So, especially say, when the child is just born and in the early few years of life, then after the child grows up, then there will be more time for devotional activities also. So, just like when we are going on a journey, if we are driving in a car, sometimes when the traffic is too much, we go slowly. When the traffic is not there, the road is clear, we’ll go faster.
So, like that, sometimes in our spiritual journey, the road will be very crowded and there are too many things for us to do and we can’t give them up. So, at that time, especially if they are a part of our material duties, it’s not that we abandon them, but that we integrate them with our devotional duties as much as possible. Sometimes our devotional duties may be a little slower and sometimes they may be faster.
So, students, they may want to practice spiritual life also, but when their exams come, at that time, the students cannot say that I’ll just go to chant temple and chant and dance and sing. So, I have to study at that time. So, in every duty, material duty that we are doing, there are times when their demands become more and at that time, we can bring our spiritual duties to the basic minimum, stick to the basic minimum and at other times, when those demands are not so much, then we can expand our devotional service more also.
So, one important point is we should not have self-created duties. So, you know, if a man can be satisfied with a 10-hour, with earning with a 8 or 10-hour job, one should not, one doesn’t have to take a 12-hour job, 15-hour job or something like that. So, we will have to, this is something which is a practical question and we will have to, by our own introspection and maybe some consultation with some senior devotees who know us closely, understand these things, you know, what are the basic devotional obligations for us and what are the supplementary devotional services that we can do and then what are the essential of aparadharma activities, that means our worldly duties that we have to do and what will be self-created duties for us.
So, once we understand this difference properly, then achieving a balance between them is definitely possible and Krishna will give us the intelligence, how we can balance this. So, we shouldn’t do one at the expense of the other, but we should intelligently balance both. Thank you.
Hare Krishna.