(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 02 May 2013, Radhadesh, Belgium, Venu-gita Talk)
In the material world, you need to make people responsible. Prabhupada followed that system where he appointed people to take care of and be responsible for something. He put people in charge of things and that created a lot of friction because there are many people who do not like it when someone is in charge. In principle, they do not want anyone in charge.
I do not like it so much for people to be in charge of me. I am also a bit of a rebel and if someone comes around and tells me what I have to do… if you try to tell me, “You must go there, you cannot sit there Kadamba Kanana Swami.” I would go like, “And why not?” That would be my first reaction.
But if someone asked me very nicely, “Would you please sit somewhere else? We have been trying to keep this grass green for the last six months and we have been sitting on our knees trying to do so and now it is getting destroyed. So could you please sit…” I would say, “Okay.”
So when you are in charge, you are going to get people who are going to be against you, even if you have not done anything wrong. One day, long ago, I was the temple commander in Vrndavan and suddenly someone came flying out the door of a room and with a French accent goes, “You think you are a big chief. You think you are really something. I tell you, you are nothing!”
I just like… I never met the guy in my life and I just felt like, “What? What was that?” And I was sitting downstairs a little later, thinking about it… I think he was the personified reactions of all the offences I have made to the devotees; I think so! He just came out of nowhere. I just thought, “My God, you know. So, what to do. You cannot take these things so serious.”
Obviously, senior devotees should tell us whether we should do the service or not. But we should try and satisfy people as much as possible and such things, we should not let it emotionally affect us so deeply.