(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 04 March 2017, United Kingdom, Pandava Sena Event – The Real Adventure)
Question: You mentioned that you did not agree with your father who said that life is a compromise. Sometimes it is not always clear what is a compromise and what is not. What is a compromise and what is not a compromise?
Yes, it may not be clear always. But in my talk, I kind of emphasised that the essence is that we should keep on striving for the ideal. It does not mean that in life we just stubbornly go in one direction and nothing can stop us.
Sometimes we may have to make adjustments in our plans but we do not adjust our ideal. Our ideal is still: To be become pure devotees, pure followers of Krsna and Prabhupada. That we will never give up for anything. I had to temporarily leave Vrindavan although I wanted to stay there for the rest of my life. It broke my heart but what to do, I had to!
One may say, “C’mon, you should have not compromised. You should have just relied on Krsna. He would have protected you.” Yeah, but also I had to use my brain and say, “Let things cool down for a while,” which I did. So one should NOT compromise one’s commitment to pure devotional service.