Tag: school

Does an Employer take the Employee’s Karma?

A devotee grapples with the weighty concerns of karma and how it burdens employers through their employees’ actions. His anxiety reflects a larger existential dilemma: can sincere devotion offset the negative karma from associates who resist spiritual growth? Replies from spiritual leaders emphasize that true surrender to Krishna liberates one from such burdens. However, they also underscore personal accountability in leadership roles, balancing professionalism and compassion. Ultimately, the discourse reveals a timeless struggle: navigating spiritual principles in the cutthroat world of business while striving to uplift those around you.

Bhakta Sunil, 29 September 2014

Hare Krishna

Please accept my humble obeisances

All Glories to Srila Prabhupada

Prabhu ji I have few doubts

a) How much percentage of karma does employer take of each of his or her employee

b) If employer is sincerely practising Krishna Consciousness , though not at the place of work with employee ( not with employee , but on own ) then karma from employee to employer is reduced or nullified?

I am a bit worried because we have two employees at shop. I tried many times to directly or indirectly share Krishna Consciousness with them.

Sometimes they paid attention , but one of the employee returned the book which I gave and I am not sure if they practice God Consciousness.

At times I have noticed them behaving rudely or not giving due respect to customers. So I am worried if we have to take their karma.

I have put Prabhupada’s books and photos at place of work and often played kirtana at place of work

your insignificant servant,

Bhakta Sunil

Srivatsa Das, 03 October 2014

Dear Bhakta Sunil

Please accept my humble obeisances

All glories to Srila Gurudeva 

The employer, if he is surrendered to Lord Krishna, he need not worry about karma, or law of nature or destiny and all such complications, since Krishna has already declared that His devotee never perishes.  And also in BG 18.66, Krishna tells, “Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Do not fear.”  We will be free from fear up to the extent we have faith in the Spiritual master and Krishna.  So it is very important to develop faith in them. 

We cannot force anybody including our children to lead Krishna Conscious life unless they are attracted themselves to Krishna Consciousness.  Everybody has been given the required free will to surrender to Krishna and they are supposed to use it for that purpose and unfortunately, they can even misuse it also by not surrendering to the Lord.

Regarding the rude behaviour, it can be due to many reasons.  In this material world, a lot of people are frustrated due to many miseries, that could be one of the reason for their rude behaviour.  But, in most of the cases, the problems can be solved just by hearing their worries patiently at suitable location.  We need not talk in many cases, but sometimes we need to encourage them to talk. Just hear their worries patiently and attentively.  Most of the times, they themselves will arrive at the solution and thank us too !!! or they will ask for some suggestion, then, at that time we can give some suggestions that can help them to lead a Krishna Conscious life.  Sometimes, we may have to correct ourselves too based on their input, so we should be prepared for some adjustments.  This is one way of solving the issue.

Sincerely,

Srivatsa Das

Bhakta Sunil, 04 October  2014

Thank you Srivatsa Prabhu

Superb answer!

your insignificant servant,

Bhakta Sunil

Gusti Nyoman Ambara, 04 October 2014

Hare Krishna!

Dear Sunil Prabhu

Please accept my humble obeisances,

All glories to Srila Gurudeva and  Srimati Gurumataji,

All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

I have no qualification at all to share my opinion with you, but I would humbly try to do it as per my capacity.

Srivatsa Prabhu have nicely given the explanation upon your doubts. It is true that if we are fully surrender to the Lord, we do not have to worry about karma and such things anymore. Always try to focus in making the Lord happy by executing our prescribed duties at our best and offered the result to Him no matter what it is. Then there will be no more anxiousness.

You also nicely show the symptom of a devotee by having compassion on your employees and try to share Krishna-consciousness to them. Indeed, it is the most important thing. I think you have correctly tried to do it by putting some Prabupada’s book and playing some kirtans at the place of work, because hearing (sravanam) is the most potent way for us to open our consciousness to Krishna. I myself also have proved this method.  My mother started to chant Mahamantra on beads about a year ago. She told me that she was inspired to do so soon after she heard it played in my car stereo during our 8-hours journey from Bali to Surabaya.

If those things still do not work with your employees, I suggest you to give another try by using prasadam. It is also a powerful way to share Krishna-consciousness to the whole world. You can make some prasadam in the form of candies or sweets and put some of them at the place of work, so that your employees can have and taste them. You will gradually see the effect and surely you will no longer have any worries. Thank you very much.

your insignificant servant,

Gusti Nyoman Ambara

Bhakta Sunil, 06 October 2014

Dear Gusti Prabhu

Hare Krishna 

Please accept my humble obeisances

All Glories to Srila Prabhupada

Thank you very much. Your answer is great!

Prabhu ji , I now understand that karma of one’s employee would not act for one who is practising Consciousness

Gusti Prabhu ki Jaya!

Your insignificant servant,

Bhakta Sunil

Tirtharaja Dasa, 07 10 2014

Hare Krishna Prabhu,

My take is from a different angle and might not be absolute but good for debate.

It is said that anybody in a position of leadership attracts both positive and negative karma in proportion to position held.

In a business situation if you are the chief executive then there definitely be a degree of karmic reaction just as much as the spiritual master who accepts a disciple has accruing karma until the disciple is liberated so in similar positions of leadership especially in situations where as devotees we are DE-facto spiritual masters, then there is definitely some accruing karma.

That’s why a devotee will not mind what position or circumstances he has in life but will always serve Lord Hari unconditionally.

Regards,

your Lowly Servant,

Tirtharaja Dasa.

Mahabhagavat Das SDA, 08 October 2014

Dear Bhakta Sunil,

Hare Krishna!

All these perspectives are wonderful. What I was feeling I was unable to articulate, until I read Tirtharaja Prabhu’s masterful writing. His response is befitting a senior devotee in our movement.

What I was thinking is that all those people we interact with, either as family members, community, relatives, colleagues from school, college, or work, we are already karmically bound with them. We have taken birth in similar circumstances just to enjoy or suffer collective karmas, and also repay various karmic debts. But this is a never-ending cycle… in this lifetime, we have some set of karmic debts to pay, in another cycle, it is some other set.

So, while it is true that as long as we are on the material platform, we are exchanging karmic debts, as long as we can leverage our present circumstances to drive devotional service, the situation cannot be rectified.

On a professional level, your staff need to get good training, good pay,  etc., and in the worst case, if there is no progress or improvement, they would need to be fired, let go, etc. If I pay someone for a kilo of good vegetables and the person gives me only rotten vegetables, would I continue to pay that person? So inspite of giving good training, good pay, etc., if someone is not doing what I need done, then why should I continue to pay that person? Another example, ISKCON is building the Temple of Vedic Planetarium, the world’s biggest temple, we are taking full care that the engineers are qualified, the architects are qualified, the laborers are also fully qualified, the concrete is high quality, steel is perfect, etc. Of course, even though the workers are receiving payment, they are still getting the benefit of rendering devotional service.

In ISKCON Toronto, we are working on some school projects – the administrators, teachers, etc., need to be devotees, BUT they also must be professionally qualified in their specific field and be professionally competent… you could consider that, maybe there are professionally competent devotees who can also be your employees?

However, devotee or not, in the best case, even if your staff might not know or express interest in devotional service, if they are perfectly professional, and they facilitate your involvement in devotional service, they will also get some “ajnata sukrti”, or credit obtained by performing devotional service unknowingly.

Of course, you don’t expect that we will tell you how to run your business, right? You please take all these perspectives and do what is best for Krishna consciousness.

Sincerely,

Mahabhagavat Das

Bhakta Sunil, 18 October 2014

Thank you  Tirtharaja Prabhu and Mahabhagavat Prabhu for discerning the conversation even further

I had heard in Bhagavatam lecture , that king collects karma from citizens and similarly for employers from employees

Thus I asked here to clarify

After reading  Tirtharaja Prabhu and Mahabhagavat Prabhu’s reply , it further clarified what I understood in the lecture and what to do in such a situation

Tirtharaja Prabhu and Mahabhagavat Prabhu ki Jaya!

your insignificant servant,

Bhakta Sunil

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The standard of education

We wake up to horrible headlines every day. People in leadership roles, people who are “highly educated” act in terrible ways.

We come up with band-aid solutions every day, whack-a-mole style. But have we examined the root cause of the problems we face in our world?

Could there be a problem with our education system?

What does it mean to be “educated”? What is the standard of education? What is the bar? How do we know if someone is educated or not?

I was shocked and disgusted to see news like this in the media…

  • Bengaluru student raped, blackmailed by college professors; three arrested
  • Former professor charged with raping multiple victims from El Salvador
  • Two women say Stanford and UC Berkeley professors raped them
  • UP professor booked for raping female students
  • Muslim Schoolteacher rapes and marries 12-year old student
  • Mumbai Teacher Gave Student Anti-Anxiety Meds, Sexually Assaulted Him

How is it that teachers and professors did this to their own students?

We are very proud of our education system in the modern world.

We gush about our kindergarten, primary, secondary, tertiary education… about Montessori and Waldorf, and other types of education.

We talk about degrees, undergraduate, graduate, PhDs.

We talk about vocational training, we laud the trades.

And yet, on a daily basis, we see scandals in the world around us. They occur in the corporate world, the medical profession, business, and government…

There are many band-aid solutions floating around, but do we know the real cause?

Our education system is a failure

Why do I say that?

Because education is meant to produce cultured individuals of high character. Someone objects that this is a subjective thing. Who can define what is a “cultured” individual with “high character”?

That is yet another failure of our education system. We don’t even know what the definition of simple things is.

The definition of “well educated” has been known for millions of years.

If someone does not trust the pedigree of Vedic culture, there is more recent definition. More than 1,500 years ago, the great thinker Chanakya Pandit wrote:

mātṛvat para-dāreṣu
para-dravyeṣu loṣṭravat
ātmavat sarva-bhūteṣu
yaḥ paśyati sa paṇḍitaḥ

“One who considers another’s wife as his mother, another’s possessions as a lump of dirt and treats all other living beings as he would himself, is considered to be learned.”

quoted by Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/9/10/27/

But there is hardly such a person trained by the modern education system… And if you can actually find such a person, that is in spite of their education. It is not because of their education.

We don’t teach such things in our education system. What do we teach?

We teach how to compete, how to defeat, how to win at any cost. We teach how to beg, borrow, or steal. We teach how to be passionate or ignorant, but never how to be “good”. We simply teach people how to make a dollar, or a rupee, or a pound or euro. That is not education!

Education means to raise a student above their low class impulses, to be good in the face of temptation! But it is impossible for our education system today to do any better.

The very definition of “goodness” is unknown in the modern world!

Here are a few definitions of “goodness” from the Vedic scriptures…

  • nitya–sattva–sthaḥ — in a pure state of spiritual existence BG 2.45
  • ūrdhvaṁ gacchanti sattva-sthā – Those situated in the mode of goodness gradually go upward to the higher planets BG 14.18
  • sattva–saṁśuddhiḥ — purification of one’s existence BG 16.1
  • sāttvika – that which increases the duration of life, purify one’s existence and give strength, health, happiness and satisfaction BG 17.8
  • na dveṣṭy akuśalaṁ karma kuśale nānuṣajjate
    tyāgī sattva-samāviṣṭo medhāvī chinna-saṁśayaḥ

The intelligent renouncer situated in the mode of goodness, neither hateful of inauspicious work nor attached to auspicious work, has no doubts about work. BG 18.10

There are many many wonderful definitions of what it means to be “good” in Vedic literature. When we look at the few definitions of “goodness” above, we see that our education system does not touch these at all:

  1. Spirituality
  2. Understanding of the evolution of the qualities of life
  3. Purification of our very existence
  4. Renunciation, Contentment, etc.

As a result, no matter how educated someone is, they inevitably indulge in this:

  1. Look upon other women (or men) as objects of their own gratification
  2. Covet others’ wealth and try to make it their own
  3. Emphasize and amplify the differences between others and oneself, treat others differently from how one would like to be treated

There is plenty of evidence to support the above claims.

Do you not see how things are in this world? Everyone is searching after one sexual experience after another… constantly, in real life, in the media, on social media, on the Internet… our society has become a cesspool of illicit sexual indulgence.

The men do not see other women as mothers. Nor do the women hold themselves in high enough regard to act and behave as mothers should. In fact, there is hardly any understanding of the exalted nature of mothers in our world! Some women, even elderly women, balk at being called “mother”, preferring to remain sex objects or identify with other designations.

With wealth, it is a free-for-all, “finders keepers losers weepers” goes the saying taught to tiny tots these days! No one sees others’ possessions as good as worthless. They are constantly envious of what others have, and how to take it from them, by hook or by crook. This goes all the way from individuals to corporations to countries!

And almost everyone treats everyone else differently from how they would like to be treated… There is widespread harassment, racism, sexism, ageism, nationalism, ableism, classism, and so much more.

The education sytem does not teach that we are all spirit souls, equal spiritually!

So, dear reader, our education system has failed.

We need to bring it back to this standard of education.

“One who considers another’s wife as his mother, another’s possessions as a lump of dirt and treats all other living beings as he would himself, is considered to be learned.”

All teachers, lecturers, instructors, professors, and other educators who can’t uphold this principle must be educated. They must reach the right standard before being trusted to educate anyone.

Until then, the education system will stay broken… and we will continually experience fresh horrors from the “products” of this demonic education system we push.

Anyone who can’t uphold the above principles must be seen as uneducated. They should not be given any position of leadership in any part of society.

Most of the modern leaders, including are uneducated, unfortunately. This includes this representative sample of those who lead our society today.

  • Teachers
  • Professors
  • Politicians
  • Business leaders
  • Government leaders
  • Scientists
  • Researchers
  • Doctors
  • Military Leaders
  • Engineers
  • Architects
  • Judges
  • Lawyers
  • Police Officers
  • Accountants
  • IT Professionals
  • Corporate Leaders
  • Social Workers
  • Economists
  • Religious Leaders

Can we wake up to the real standard of education?