Exploitation

Today HH Devamrita Swami gave the morning Bhagavatam class here in ISKCON Toronto. Maharaja was speaking from a verse talking about Jada Bharata and how his brothers exploited his nature. Maharaja brought out many wonderful points throughout his class but as always, for each individual person a certain something always stands out.

For me, in this case, the point of exploitation stood out. Maharaja spoke of how even when devotees are doing service, the tendency to exploit can creep out. We may see someone else is more "successful" than we are in their service and so we may belittle and impede their service.

Maharaja brought out several points as to why this happens. First of all who are we to judge what "success" actually is? It is up to Krsna to judge whether our service is successful and Krsna specifically defines what it is that makes it successful. It is the attitude, not the results. The results are a bonus but that is entirely up to Krsna, the only thing that we are in control of is our attitude in executing that service- with humility and completely relying on the mercy of Guru and Krsna.

Maharaja also said that this exploitation occurs when we see that someone else's results, and we feel that it takes away from what we could do. Maharaja brought up an interesting point in this regard saying that we are actually limiting Krsna by thinking in this way. We are indirectly saying that "I can only be successful if I get the same kind of result as that other person." We are not giving Krsna enough credit that first of all, once again, he is in charge of the result and secondly, we are being so narrow minded that we are only measuring results from one perspective. Krsna, being all knowing and so broadminded, can give results that we could never even dream of.

These points were so powerful. So simple yet powerful. We should simply focus on our attitude and not the result and secondly, let's not limit Krsna by our narrow vision.