How Can We Help?

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Question: You have told us that Prabhupada said that one of the three things we can pray for unconditionally is friendship with devotees. What is the value of that friendship if those people hurt and disappoint us? Then also when the time of death comes, guru and Krsna are our only shelter, we cannot have any other attachments even to friends isn’t it?

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Jayapataka Swami: I don’t know that I said that these are the only three things you can pray for, and one of them is having devotee friends. We should be friendly and respectful to devotees. We shouldn’t commit offences to devotees because those offences are like mad elephants, they can ruin our devotional garden. So Lord Caitanya told us we should offer respect to others and don’t expect any respect for ourselves. So it seems like you are expecting that your so called devotee friends will gratify your ego and if they don’t do that, you reject them. This is what Lord Caitanya advises us we should not do. We should offer respect to everybody – amani mana dena-but we should not expect any respect for ourselves and then you will never be let down. Ha! So some people don’t like me in devotional service, they criticize me and so on, but I don’t feel bad about them, I don’t get preoccupied; rather I wish them all success in their spiritual life. So I want to please guru and Krsna and their opinion is what is important to me. Someone may like or may not like me, but I wish well for everybody. So Lord Nityananda, He was hit on the head by Madai, blood was flowing. He said that ‘just because you have caused Me to bleed, does that mean I won’t give you love of Godhead?’ So what to speak of someone who makes some unfavorable comments on us. Nitai was hit on the head and bleeding and still He gave love of Godhead! He pleaded for Madai! Such is the mercy of Lord Nitai Gaur. If someone is treating us harshly, that is to remind us that this material world is not a good place to stay so we thank them. If everybody was nice to us, then we may think that this material world was a nice world. Thank you for giving us firsthand understanding that this world stinks! and we want to be in a place of pure love of Krsna. Now most devotees should be on that platform. Srila Prabhupada said that Krsna consciousness is like a hospital. In a hospital you have doctors, nurses and sick people, lot of sick patients. In the Krsna consciousness movement some people are sick and they are treated by doctors and nurses. So we don’t expect everybody to be healthy and some people are still sick. And the guru is like a doctor, senior devotees are like doctors, interns, and they are all working to deliver people. Some people will be of very good association, so we should try to take that association. Some people may not be of such good association, so we are friendly, but we may not associate with them.
19-JULY-2019 CHENNAI, INDIA