How to deal with hurdles to Responsibilities?

Sowmya Gopal
Chinmaya Mission Niagara
3 min readMay 13, 2017

A question from a sadhaka….
This is about accepting things in life as Prasad from God, for instance, relationships, other things etc..
I was wondering — what if there are people who are obstructing what you believe are our responsibilities — what do we do in this case?
For instance, at your work, there are people that are obstructing your sincere belief in what your responsibilities are.In family life, your spouse is obstructing you fulfilling your responsibilities — for instance, obstructing your responsibilities to your kids/other members of the family etc, or obstructing your work responsibilities..
My question is — how do we deal if these happen? It looks like we will not be able to fulfill all of our responsibilities and have to give up something.. I understand that this could happen if a person is incorrectly assuming responsibilities that really are not his/hers — but let us assume that is not the case.

Acharya ji answered this question in the CommUnity call on 5/11.
Acharya Response:
1. My first point to this question is talk to the person/persons, who are obstructing your responsibilities — maybe they don’t know that. At a gross level, sometimes we are driving and we are day dreaming and we’re going too slow, correct? Until someone comes and honks at you or flashes you - it’s like that person talking to you-“Wake up!”. And then you drive the speed limit etc. So over communicate.
2. One should be sincere with their responsibilities and one should work harder and harder and harder so that the people that are trying to obstruct your responsibilities cannot obstruct your responsibilities. Such as, in Canada there are floods all over the place right now so they keep so they keep putting in 250 thousand sand bags, 1 million sand bags, you know on these rivers. The more sandbags they put there, that river has to flow where it has to flow. So work harder.
We see that with rivers, we see that with athletics. You can’t stop Lebron James right? He just wipes people out that are a few pounds less than him. You cannot stop that! Work harder. This is a point that is universal. Work harder, work smarter.
I meet so many people who are working at an optimal level when it comes to how hard they work and how smart they work. Agreed? All of us can work harder and smarter. That means you have to invest in yourself, isn’t it? You have to be aware of your potential your responsibilities.
3. You do have to, if these first two points didn’t help, you DO have to hold on even more tightly to dharma. Which means you will need to let go of adharma and letting go doesn’t mean you escape from your work, you get divorced and all of that — it means you’re not as shaken by the comments of people at work, by your family etc.
Please do note that when it comes to such a point, you should change your job, you should change your relationships, you should change your country (jokingly said!). So that’s what I would share in regards to balancing dharma and adharma and you take examples of Prince Arjuna. Arjuna just worked harder and you see dharma prevailed. You take Vidhura, he couldn’t work harder, so he left, he chose depart. Pray, Lead, Engage, Accept, he chose Depart. Both personalities are different, both follow dharma in their own way.

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