Question : In the loving association of devotees, I am very slowly developing an “unmotivated” love for the wonderful devotees. But somehow I am also simultaneously realizing, that there is a lot of impersonal attitude towards others who are not devotees of Krishna.
I am being indifferent towards helping them, especially when I require my own school work to be placed second, and this is causing me a lot of heaviness in my heart. I would love to see them also as part and parcels of Krishna. But like before, when my own personal/professional work comes before situations that require my helping a non-devotee, I hesitate to help. (When I mean non-devotees, I mean those who are not in Krishna consciousness. I myself am not a devotee so I don’t know how to address others).
In connection to this, I read an article on Inquires into absolute.
“ Digest 00283 ” and the related meditation # 10.
I could so understand digest 00283, especially part 2 was very simple. But meditation 10 has disturbed me, because it says we need not express love to every one. How can I who myself am worldly minded, not love some one because they are not devotees. Then who will love me? Reading this has some how disturbed me for 2 reasons.
1) I am unable to understand what is meant by worldly minded people. Because I am one of them. So how can I differentiate someone else.
2) It is written in meditation 10, that we should care for non-devotees but not love them. How can I care and not love, isn’t caring a subset of loving?
Can I apply the ‘love and trust’ policy to every one. It makes life very simple. Can I just please try to render unmotivated help to every one, whether it’s a devotee or not. Because when I start trying to differentiate who is a devotee and who is not, I don’t feel comfortable. I don’t think I am doing it in the right way.
I may not have put the point across appropriately, but in simple words,
I think I am having an impersonal attitude already, and I have misinterpreted meditation 10 as a support to my indifference towards people. Please forgive me and kindly let me know what is it that I am missing?
Answer by Romapada Swami:
An underlying concern you have expressed is that you want to selflessly help others, putting aside personal considerations, and particularly you are concerned for developing such an attitude towards non-devotees. It is a noble aspiration, but recognizing your inability to live up to it is disappointing to you. I will address this point in the latter part.
You are also feeling confused in this respect by the instructions to avoid affectionate dealings with non-devotees. A more fundamental concern is that you feel uncomfortable, and unclear as well, in discriminating who should be considered a non-devotee or worldly minded person.
Proper discrimination is, however, very precious and essential — for protecting oneself and also for effectively showing love and care to others.
‘Love and trust everyone’, although a laudable goal, is not so simple as it may sound. Highly spiritually advanced devotees are able to see everyone equally in relation to Krishna — it is the qualification of an uttama adhikari. They can expertly apply the love and trust principle towards all kinds of living entities — we can think of Srila Prabhupada’s wonderful example in extending incomparable love and exhibiting child-like innocence in dealing with all sorts of people — but even such great souls did not abandon discrimination. As an extreme example to illustrate the principle, consider even Vibheesana, who did deeply love and care for his brother, abandoned Ravana when he was set on his destructive course. Lord Caitanya Himself showed extreme reluctance to associate with Maharaja Prataparudra to set the right example for us. All the more so, in the beginning stages it is very crucial to get training in how to appropriately interact with different grades of persons, and that includes the ability to clearly recognize their position. It would be injurious to artificially reach for the uttama-adhikari consciousness in the beginning stages.
Imagine a child who is taught the importance of being kind and respectful to everyone, but is not taught any discrimination — that could prove very dangerous. Even in seemingly harmless interactions, children can pick up unhealthy habits from others or become confused about their own values when proper discrimination is not taught.
Particularly in our present mixed social setup, we commonly hear much propaganda aimed at generating sympathy and even iconizing all sorts of questionable characters. By such misdirected sympathy or a false notion of ‘universal love’ without clear discrimination, or by associating with those who have such hazy conceptions, we can end up condoning and even pick up and proliferate their wrong values.
Similarly, you may want to sincerely serve and please someone, but how will you satisfy their desires if they are not aligned with Krishna’s interest? In the course of trying to love and help non-devotee friends, you may end up having to participate in their sense-gratification or even inappropriate habits, either out of ignorance or out of fear of hurting their sentiments, in the absence of clear understanding of how to interact with and help them spiritually. Apart from being unable to truly help them, we will spoil our own bhakti too. Thus, while it is very important to learn to be broad-minded and accomodating towards all, it is equally if not more important to be discriminating.
Unmotivated help to all — yes. But how that help is to be rendered will vary depending on the recepient, and proper judgment is necessary.
As we learn in the Bhagavad-gita, a learned person sees with equal vision a brahmana, a cow, a dog or a dog-eater — he treats them all equally but his manner of treatment is not identical with all these entities. One may treat a dog or tiger or even a thief with compassion, and even with a certain respect as a spirit soul; but it would not be identical to the way one would respect a qualified brahmana and seek his association. Trying to homogenously love a thief and a devotee on an equal level would be artificial and impractical; it would not benefit the thief, and it would actually be an insult to the spiritually more qualified brahmana.
Likewise, our interactions with different classes of people and even different classes of devotees also must essentially be different. This is an important aspect of training to progress from the neophyte to the madhyama stage of spiritual advancement. You must have heard the description of a madhyama-adhikari from Srimad-Bhagavatam (11.2.46) in this way:
ishvare tad-adhinesu
balisesu dvisatsu ca
prema-maitri-krpopeksha
yah karoti sa madhyamah
“The madhyama-adhikari is a devotee who worships the Supreme Personality of Godhead as the highest object of love, makes friends with the Lord’s devotees, is merciful to the ignorant and avoids those who are envious by nature.” The characteristic of the madhyama stage is the ability to appropriately deal with different grades of living entities.
Whereas neophyte devotees are characteristically unable to make proper distinctions — they respect the Deities of Krishna as worshipable, but they may not realize the value of the devotees. Or they often make mistakes in properly evaluating different grades of devotees. They may sometimes offer great honor and veneration upon a devotee who is not very pure or realized, and conversely they may overlook a very pure vaishnava as ordinary, and so on. Therefore, in order to guide us, Srila Rupa Goswami has given us guidelines in how to properly evaluate and respect different grades of living entities. I request you to please study carefully Verse 5 of Nectar of Instruction in this connection.
In essence, from superiors we seek help; with peers we make friendship and share our gifts and realizations; to juniors, subordinates, and the innocent and helpless we give help; and we stay away from the crooked and envious — all in service to Krsna. The important point to consider is that Krishna is the ultimate enjoyer in all these different ways we interact and relate with others. When we keep Krishna’s pleasure in the center, it becomes very simple to properly distinguish and appropriately respect different classes of people.
Part of your difficulty in making the right discrimination is tied to your self-conception — should you consider yourself a devotee or a worldly-minded person? Out of genuine humility or even an honest self-appraisal, you may hesitate to consider yourself a dedicated devotee. Indeed the position of a devotee or a vaishnava is not ordinary; it takes a very highly evolved and deeply devoted soul to be a vaishnava. Yet, you should consider yourself an aspiring devotee or vaishnava. If you consider yourself always as being a materialist or a non-devotee, then there is very little scope to get rid of the residual materialistic or non-devotional tendencies that are left in you. Originally or constitutionally, every soul is a devoted servant of Krishna, and you are actively striving to reinstate yourself to that original condition. Such a person is very different from the description of those who are deliberately or mindlessly pursuing sense-gratification or an atheistic mode of life.
Another concern for you is that if you were to not have a loving disposition towards non-devotees, then it makes you feel insecure: by the same token perhaps you will also not be loved by other devotees! ‘Then who will love me?’ you have asked.
You can put this worry to rest, because vaishnavas are like an ocean of compassion even to the most fallen. ‘sri guru karuna sindhu adhama janara bandhu’.
In the previous digest, we discussed the example of persons with infectious disease — a patient who is just recovering is recommended to stay in thoroughly disinfected surroundings and is advised not to mix intimately with infected persons or surroundings. But that does not mean that compassionate doctors will not continue to go out and treat other infected patients.
You yourself are not forbidden to show compassion to the non-devotees, either. Showing compassion and reposing affection are altogether different. As one becomes increasingly strong in one’s devotional consciousness, one can and should proportionately extend their association towards the ‘worldly-minded’, *without becoming affected by their ways.* But even then, you would be cautious not to ‘take’ their association intimately, but would deal with them only to bring them closer to Krishna and His devotees. I hope you see the difference between the two positions.
You are concerned of becoming indifferent, cold or condescending towards non-devotees in the process of learning to discriminate; this is the other end of the spectrum and should be avoided also. The proper way is, as you have indicated, to practice seeing them as parts and parcels of Krishna, acknowledging their present disposition towards Krishna, and dealing appropriately. The proper way is to cultivate feelings of compassion — through the eyes of scripture — which means compassion for their forgetfulness of their relationship with God and the consequent miseries and illusion they are entangled in. Thus, you will be able to show care and concern for them from the spiritual platform, without becoming entangled in material affection towards them.
By proper practice and cultivation of devotional service, in the association of mature, compassionate vaishnavas, rest assured that you will learn this right balance.
With regard to your specific difficulty in not being able to extend to your colleagues over your personal work: take measured steps, in a regulate manner, within your means. Try to stretch yourself a little beyond your comfort level, rather than attempting to make an enormous sacrifice and then snapping back. And always be sure to maintain a spiritual conception while extending such help to them, not independently but ‘on behalf of Guru and Krishna’. Seeing your genuine desire and earnest effort to please Him, Krishna will give you increased capacity as well as intelligence to help others.
I hope this eases your concerns and gives you greater clarity. Hare Krishna!
