When doing our prescribed service deprives us of devotee association what should we do?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so when we are doing one service and it’s an important service it’s a special service to a spiritual master but then there are other events which are more social or where devotees come together do kirtans and there is a whole sense of togetherness which we miss and we feel like we should be going there but we are almost like trapped here in a particular service so what should we do at that time there are three different things first is as you said rightly the mind’s nature is to be dissatisfied we all are moving from the lower the mind’s nature is to be dissatisfied and usually we because our society our culture is in the mode of passion even we tend to be in the mode of passion most of the time and one characteristic of the mode of passion is lobha lobha means greed that means basically what that you know the mind always wants what we don’t have and this will not change no matter what we have so for example say when I am right now travelling and I am giving a lot of classes there are times when I should I got such ideas to write I should just leave everything and write but then I have had times in India when I have been writing I had lots of time for writing I feel this is so boring I want to travel I want to speak there is no one to speak I can’t speak I have to sit and write like this so basically this is one thing the platform the mind is going to keep us dissatisfied so we we if we keep seeing that which we don’t have we are dissatisfied and we can see that as a conditioning of the mind and it will keep seeing what I don’t have as long as I am in the mode of passion so if you start with that point then you won’t become too disturbed by the dissatisfaction because this is to be expected in the mode of passion we have to consciously force our mind to come and look at what we have so now in the moment of temptation or in the moment of dissatisfaction it is very difficult to appreciate what we do have so I would suggest two three things we could do for that is write down I know it is difficult to get time but still if there is a particular problem of the mind which keeps coming regularly then it is good to write down with our intelligence certain rational philosophical logical counters to that particular feeling of the mind for example I am feeling dissatisfied because I can’t write right now I have got so many programs so many meeting people so many answering questions so I can think that but here also I am doing service and this is also something special what are things I like about this and how that can be done later so basically whatever we are doing is also valuable but in the moment of dissatisfaction we don’t sense that value but if I use my intelligence think that ultimately my life is to reach people with Krishna’s message so I am doing that right now whether in this form or that form if I remember some moments of satisfaction which I have had in this service also that helps me so to some extent our intelligence is often paralyzed by the mind’s emotions so at that time we need to activate it through some external resource that means if I have written things down before it’s not that they are new points they are my own thoughts what I have heard, what I have accepted, what I understand at that time they don’t come to the mind so if I find this is a particular way in which mind troubles me then I write those thoughts down thoughts about the importance of the service that I am doing right now reflection of that so mind is saying that I want to do that how this is also important how this is also relishable how this is also special we write that down and then when we look at that the mind gets calmed down at least we get some intellectual resource to calm the mind down to silence the mind basically actually at a lesser level definitely because once we come to the mode of goodness it’s much lesser once we are in transcendence we are actually satisfied but in the mode of passion it is much much more so just like the basic metaphor I like for dealing with the mind is like a child every child wants a particular toy and the mother is in a situation where she has to say no, we don’t have the money for it and the mother has to be in a position of pacifying the child but the mother also feels resentful why don’t we have the money why are we so poor the mother also becomes grumbling both of them will be miserable so like that our intelligence has to act like the mother and for that purpose we need to have some resource to activate the intelligence so writing down the importance of the service would be very important and for that we can refer to some other sources for example there is a book written by Satsvarupa Maharaj, Life with the Perfect Master where he also went through such situations you know he was serving Prabhupada at one level it was very intimate service but then he saw other devotees you know they were leading yatra they would come 10, 15, 20, 100 devotees with them Prabhupada would almost like take him for granted and give so much time for them so he would feel that am I doing anything worthwhile so it’s quite a candid account of the struggles which he went through when he was serving Prabhupada, what he faced his mind also felt dissatisfied reading that can be quite helpful but another thing which we can do is maybe ask some other devotees with whom we are close if we hear from them how they would long to be in our place not just they would long to be but try to hear their reasons for that or you just get to be with a spiritual master that’s fine but how they can appreciate what is it that they look for what is it that they cherish and how we can get that, how we can get a little bit of that attitude so basically the mind tricks us by forcing us into one perspective of things mind’s way of looking at things is one way but there are other ways of looking at things also so we somehow need to if I look at things in the way the mind is looking, we will sentence ourselves to dissatisfaction we need some other ways of looking at things so with our own intelligence we get some other way, if we have written things down we get another way and then if we talk with others who also value the service which we are doing, which we are getting to do then we may get some more perspective on this so the basic point is to say that I should not feel dissatisfied, to say that my mind is poisoning me, all those things are philosophically fine but practically they don’t help what do I do to deal with them so I just have to get some alternative perspective of things and that’s the first thing now this is with respect to general problem with the mind secondly you know even the most intimate or the most precious of services they can be demanding and sometimes you just need a break just like it is said that you should not go too close to the deity, to the fire and to the spiritual master so like that sometimes when we have lot of proximity that can lead to exhaustion or just feel I need a break so if if we recognize at this point this capacity my capacity is getting exhausted now how do I know that it’s through experience, sometimes I just can’t take it anymore but next day after good rest we wake up ok things are fine but sometimes it’s just beyond it I just can’t do it so if we over a period of time recognize our capacity then we can ourselves plan some breaks and how to do that practically you may have to use your intelligence but I don’t think anybody is going to resent as if we need a break from a particular thing so maybe somebody else does the service on that particular day or we just take a break we can go somewhere else or whatever asking, wanting that break is not something anti-devotional it will just be a practical necessity it’s a practical necessity it’s just that human mind needs variety it’s just natural so even if you are doing something very wonderful still after sometime the mind just needs a break sociologists, psychologists have found that you take a break and come back you do that thing much better so you see that wanting a break is not a lack of devotion we are not running away it’s not a lack of devotion it is just biological biological necessity, biological need so now how exactly to fulfill that that can vary from person to person and sometimes we just have to pass it on this is not going to be lifelong it’s not going to be year long also in a few weeks it’s going to be like this let me deal with it and then afterwards things will be different so we may have to manage things but wanting a break and planning a break it’s not wrong the third thing is that it is sometimes sometimes some things are best appreciated from a distance that means what that say like I try to do this that say if I am travelling now and it’s going from one place to another to another, just all the time get tired I need a break but then a break is not practically possible but you just sort of conceptually take a break and think of myself from a out of body perspective here I am now I am in America, I am going to be here for two days more after that I am going here this is probably second third time I have come here and then we just we just try to these are all ways in which we need to manage the mind, like a mother sometimes child is crying, mother has to find out ways in which she can pacify the child so just looking at ourselves from a slightly different perspective we can start seeing you know this is interesting this is nice just like instead of letting the mind keep speaking this is going wrong, that is going wrong these petty irritations are there but if I look at the big picture this is special so just distancing ourselves a break also gives us that only we can’t take a break like that just mentally distancing ourselves and looking at the situation so maybe down the line Satsang Maharaj wrote that one of his biggest regrets when he eventually had to write the Leela Amrit he said I was a servant of Prabhupada and I told Prabhupada Prabhupada you know I want to preach Prabhupada said no you are doing very good, you are staying here he said no Prabhupada I want to preach and he left and some other devotee became servant he says if I had stayed with Prabhupada I could have written the Leela Amrit so much better so he said one of my biggest regrets of my life is that the whole rest of my life was there for me to preach the time which I had with my spiritual master even then we knew it was limited Prabhupada was not going to be there forever with us but I squandered that so if we think from a long term perspective we will realize that these times are special so either we physically distance ourselves or mentally or conceptually distance ourselves and take a fresh look at things and that way we can pacify the mind but basically recognizing the mind is going to be dissatisfied and we need to learn to focus on what we have rather than what we don’t have but then if the mind is feeling strongly dissatisfied then we do something practical either take a break or distance ourselves by dealing with that overall after all we have to live with our mind so by blaming the mind for being like this or blaming ourselves for having thoughts like that all that doesn’t really help we have to do what it takes to live with the mind so how to do that from a practical perspective I have my mind you have your mind so you have to find out what will you do I’ll have to find out what I can do but it’s possible once you get out of that whole idea of guilt I should not be feeling like this that’s no use what can I do just because I’m feeling like this doesn’t mean I have to act on these feelings we can acknowledge our feelings and then decide how to appropriately process them saying I should not feel like this usually doesn’t make the feelings go away exactly no so instead of that just acknowledge the feeling okay I’m feeling like this now what can I do about it sometimes we just neglect it sometimes we act on it and deal with it we don’t have to just act the way we feel but we can acknowledge the feeling and then act in an appropriate way based on that feeling saying I should not feel like that is not of much use it is just like self denial