(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 3 March 2013, Vrndavan, India, Srimad Bhagavatam 4.27.10)
In general, we have to give credit to people. Only senior vaisnavas, who take the responsibility for the spiritual life of others, they have to be judgmental.
Srila Prabhupada used to say, “It is my duty to find faults.” But one can find fault as a duty, if one can give credit first. If you can first give credit, “Actually this is such a nice person. This is a wonderful devotee. That is such a great service.” Then we say, “But he could improve a little bit on this, improve a little bit on that.” That is for the mature vaisnava to say who is taking charge of others and tries sincerely to help them to serve Krsna better.
Okay, then sometimes, it seems that the senior vaisnavas are judgmental but actually they’re not because these are just little things. Little things that can be perfected. A new person has weak faith, so a new person has the tendency to look at vaisnavas with doubt in his heart and therefore he pulls his microscope out of his pocket, and puts it on the heart of the vaisnava, to see if he can find some imperfections. And that tendency is there but the mature vaisnava is very generous and he says, “Yes, there maybe some faults but it doesn’t matter because there are so many credits. Because even if there are some faults, Krsna will overlook it if there are so many credits.”
So one has to try to look at a person like how Krsna looks at the person. I often say, when I speak about the first offence – not to blaspheme the devotees – that when you are looking at the devotee, see Krsna standing behind that devotee and smiling while looking at the devotee. Then you say something nice about that devotee and Krsna is still smiling. But then you say, “I think this guy is …” And you see Krsna’s expression changes!
So in this way, just think about it that Krsna is looking – standing right behind, smiling upon his devotee, “He has done nice service for me. How can I forget it.’ Krsna looks at it like that – he has done such nice service. Krsna does not say, “Oh, he has some greed in his heart!”
Like that it helps. Anyway, we are all trying. It’s difficult. My mother used to tell the story about two princesses. When one used to open her mouth, roses came out but when the other one opened her mouth, frogs would jump out. In our case, we try to have only roses come out but sometimes, the inadvertent frog just jumps out! What to do!? It’s difficult but practise makes perfect.
