When we are in very restrictive situation how much should should we fight to increase our influence?

This is an AI-generated transcript and it might not be fully accurate:

Yeah. So, if we are in a situation where we are very restricted, how much should we push against the situations and try to expand our Kshetra? Yeah. Now, I can tell some principles.

Ultimately, each one of us has to make our decision. The first is, what is in the past? That we accepted that it’s Krishna’s plan. That wherever we are, that we can’t change the past.

Now, we can accept it with a sense of resignation or frustration. Oh, I should have done like that. I should have taken this job.

I should have done this, not done, answered this question this way. But no, that we may have taken a wrong turn. But even through that wrong turn, Krishna can bring out some good.

So, come to, we cannot practice bhakti effectively unless we come to peace with our past. If we are constantly resenting our past, oh, this person mistreated me like this. I made a mess of my life like this.

You know, that is, okay, yes, maybe we may feel I should have come to bhakti much earlier when I was younger. Why did I take so much time? No. It’s good to think like that.

But don’t think that Krishna’s plan is not working. Maybe we had to go through some experiences so that we evolved to a particular level of consciousness where we could take a break. We don’t know that.

So, don’t resent the past. Come to peace with the past. That is very important.

My mother helped me to do that with respect to my polio. When I was one, I was given a defective vaccine, a polio vaccine. It was kept in the fridge, which is temperature had got up and germs had decreased.

So, when I got the vaccine, I got polio because of that, instead of preventing polio. Now, I don’t remember that. But overall, I don’t remember ever feeling much resentful about my polio.

Yes, I need crutches for walking. But for me, my crutches are like my glasses. I can’t see very well without glasses.

But it’s no big deal. Put on the glasses and move on with life. Pick up crutches and move on with life.

And one reason I don’t have that resentment is one thing my mother said when I was about two and a half or three. She didn’t tell it to me. She told it to a distant relative who had come to visit and that person was, she was consoling my mother saying it’s so sad your son got polio.

And my mother said, whatever he lacks physically, God will provide him intellectually. So now, the point is that we may or may not have had somebody to remind us like that, pointed like that. But we have to come to peace with our past.

That whatever has happened, no matter how bad, Krishna’s plan is working. Now that brings us, we come to peace with our past. Not a resentful peace because I can’t change it so I accept it.

No, however it was, Krishna will work through it. Krishna will bring some good out of it. I don’t know how it will be.

So that is a, it is a graceful peace rather than a after that when it comes to our present. So in general, we are all meant to endeavor. Tiger or a lion, the king is a powerful animal, but that does not mean a deer is going to come in its mouth.

That actually we attain success only by endeavor. So we are all meant to endeavor. But so the present, we could say, is the domain of endeavor for us.

Now how much do we endeavor? The letter of instruction talks about atyahara and prayasa. The Gita also says, yukta ahara viharasya. So endeavor, we are all meant to endeavor in life.

Arjuna endeavored. He had archery talent, but he practiced his archery tirelessly. That’s important.

But the endeavor should not be disproportionate. What does disproportionate mean? That endeavoring, we all act in various areas. So for example, we have our family, we have our job, we have our health, we have our spirituality, we have our bhakti.

So now the endeavor in one area should not become so consuming that it pulls us out of all other areas. That say, in my job I am not growing and I want to grow. But I become so consumed with my job that people become workaholics.

And sometimes the word workaholic is used in a positive sense. It’s not actually positive. It’s almost like an intoxication.

The work becomes the only identity of the person. They neglect their family, they neglect their health, and they may succeed professionally, but they will be just completely lonely. So we need to endeavor in every area of life.

But the endeavor in one area should not pull us out of all the other areas of life. Say, if one relationship is not working for us, maybe a friend or a relative or a significant other is, it’s not working. Now, say the husband and wife have a problem.

Yes, they have to deal with that. But that does not mean they take it out on their child. You know, this, I want to fix this and I will try to fix this.

But that does not mean that I will not be available for my child or I will not be available for my other roles. So that understanding that endeavor in one area is certain times, one particular area may require more endeavor. No doubt, if you have a big deadline in our company, then we have to work more.

We have to neglect some other areas. That’s okay. But if every day somebody else says I have to work for 16 hours, 18 hours or something like that, that’s not a sustainable way of functioning.

So we have to endeavor to fix things in our various areas. But so disproportionate endeavor means that it is disruptive or destructive of other areas in life. So don’t endeavor to that extent.

Krishna says dharma aviruddho bhuteshu kamosmi. Now kama is sometimes translated as sex, that is sex desire. But kama also means ambition.

So we all can have ambition, but ambition should not go against dharma. There are ethical boundaries, there are boundaries of morality and responsibility. In pursuing ambition in one area, we do not violate boundaries.

We all want our children to do well in school. And say a child is not doing very well and one day the child comes back and says that, hey mummy, I came first in class. Wonderful, how did you do that? I wanted to please you, so I did it.

How wonderful, how did you do that? I hacked my teacher’s computer, I got the whole paper and I got full marks. That is not the way I wanted you to come first. So with ambition, the kama should not go against dharma.

So that is the second practice.