Question: In today’s class, you mentioned about pratista and devotees must always be humble to serve guru and Krsna. Question is that in spite of knowing these attitudes of being humble and tolerant, devotees, especially in leadership, find difficulty to follow. Kindly please tell us how to be humble and tolerant in all situations?

Jayapataka Swami: This is a great mystery! How will one be always humble even when they have great position? So that is why we think that, if we have position, it is because of the mercy of guru and Krsna, and we have to use this authority or position we have in Their service, not to enjoy. And in this service attitude, we can please the Lord. This is the secret of devotional service. From outside it may look like the person is enjoying, but actually his desire is to please his guru and Krsna. And so in this way he can overcome all the obstacles. Just like from a distance you see a man and woman coming up and embracing each other. You think how they are doing this in public? When you come close you see the lady is old and the lady is embracing her son who she is meeting after a long time!  There is nothing wrong with that. Mother embracing her son, meeting after a long time, but from a distance one has some other impression. So like that, we may think from a distance one thing, but when we analyze how they are doing, then it may be completely different. So in our own consciousness, we have to be very careful. Like sometimes, a disciple asked Srila Prabhupada, ‘what you are praying to the deity?’ Now we don’t actually have the right to ask our guru what he is praying! Srila Prabhupada looked at the devotee and said, ‘I am praying that I don’t fall down!’ Whether he was really praying that or just to educate the disciple, he said that. Any way what we can learn from that is, how we should pray to the deity in our position, that we don’t fall down and we don’t get influenced by the labha and puja. We remain humble and when somebody gives us advice we take that in a humble state.
26-JULY-2019 CHENNAI, INDIA