When should we concern ourselves with helping other devotees and when should we mind our own business?

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Hare Krishna question when should we be concerned about our own bhakti minding our own business within our spiritual life and when should we be concerned with helping others especially other devotees who seem to be in trouble and who are having difficulties so should we try to help them or in trying to help them sometimes our relationships get spoiled, we may commit offences and life becomes more complicated and if we decide that we don’t want to get involved are we being selfish or is that not selfishness but intelligence answer the essential deciding factor is our Adhikar Adhikar is a Sanskrit word which can be roughly translated in English as authority now the word authority often has negative connotations but the Sanskrit doesn’t have those negative connotations it is more like qualification so generally as sadhakas we try to have the spiritual vision by which we see everybody as part of Krishna and we want to help as much as possible according to our capacity just like a patient who has found that a medicine is helping cure a long troubling disease wants to share that medicine with everyone else who is also suffering from that disease similarly a devotee on finding on relishing the potency of Krishna consciousness wants to share Krishna consciousness with everyone that includes new people as well as other devotees so that’s the first point we should definitely have the intention to help now how that intention to help will be expressed through our action will vary depending on time, place, circumstance at certain times it may be best for us to not poke our nose just because a person says a doctor that does not mean that the doctor will go to every department in the hospital and try to set things right the doctor in a particular department and there are patients in that department and the doctor focuses energy on those patients in that department now if the doctor has the jurisdiction, the authority to oversee other departments and has the time and energy to help in those departments the doctor may do that but otherwise the the desire to serve the desire to help the suffering people who are there in the hospital and whatever shortcomings we see in the systems that are set for helping the suffering people in the hospital, the sick people the doctor may want to help but the doctor also has to streamline efforts by which they will be productive and effective so similarly we as sadhakas have to streamline our efforts we are not Krishna and we cannot be present everywhere, we cannot do everything only Krishna can do that and even he doesn’t directly involve himself in the material world he does things through his agents who are all limited none of his agents are unlimited as Krishna is so therefore given this background, what we primarily focus on is what is my adhikar how much can I help in this situation so we focus primarily on what is our area of influence, what is our jurisdiction so if I have been given a particular service, I do that service competently and by doing that service competently I am pleasing Krishna because what I have been told I am doing and along with that if I have spare time and energy and also have some expertise I can offer some help in other areas also, if the devotees in that area want to take help, that’s wonderful but if they are not interested in taking the help then let me do what I am doing right now and when we do a service responsibly and competently, then Krishna will arrange through his devotees to give us greater responsibilities and maybe in future we will have the jurisdiction, the power the authority, the qualification by which we can help in other areas also so this applies in all situations that when we try to serve Krishna we focus on what we have been given, allocated when Hanuman went to Lanka his first mission was very clear, he wanted to find where is Sita, locate Sita then be an instrument for the exchange of tokens between both of them he gave Sita’s signature and then he got a jewel from Sita to give to Ram and then afterwards he thought let me do some extra service and that extra service was he decided to give a demonstration of Ram’s power to the defiant Ravana and in that process actually he originally wanted not just to give a demonstration of Ram’s power, he primarily wanted to see Ravana’s military arrangements his troops and the internal layout of Lanka so that there would be a proper action plan which he could suggest to Ram that’s why he suddenly divorced Sivashree and he got arrested and he was paraded through the city of Lanka and he saw everything and eventually he set fire to put some fear if not in Ravana at least in his associates so that the other Rakshadas would try to deter Ravana from war, so the point is that first do a prescribed service and then do extra service so first he found Sita then he burned Lanka similarly for us we should focus primarily on doing our prescribed service and do it as well and where there are other areas also we should want to help but are we in a position to help when can a doctor help even if there is a patient who needs to be helped the patient should be first of all interested in help most of the times, that is essential then the doctor should be trained enough to help, the patient should have trust in the doctor, then the doctor patient relationship can go on smoothly so if we don’t have the training to help then we have to acquire the training there is no shortage of people who are spiritually sick, but then there is a trust deficit, that trust deficit has to be corrected by trustworthy behavior, so when we do our current services responsibly then we will be able to do more services we will be entrusted with more services in the future, but at the same time the devotee should always have the desire to help others in whatever way is possible, so one way we can always help others is by prayer even if we don’t have any capacity to practically help, we can always pray for others and that desire to help is the sign of our Krishna consciousness and the diligence in helping in whatever is our jurisdiction right now that is a sign of our humility and intelligence in practicing Krishna consciousness, thank you Hare Krishna