Mind Your Own Business - Prema Dharma

The danger of curiosity and calculation.

By Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj

The disease is there, and the cure desirable. It is not for the patient to go into the details of how the disease comes into the body. That is for the doctor, or a medical student, not the patient. The patient practically wants relief. Relief is his question: how can he get relief? That is the important necessity in him. So, jnane prayasam udapasya: don’t try to know the whole mystery of the Infinite’s mysterious power. You have no right to enter into all the details of that. If you did, then you would be another infinite, but that is an impossibility. You are finite, but you want to measure the whole of the Infinite? Absurd. Don’t go to crush your brain against a mountain. Try for your immediate relief, the cure for your disease. That is your business. Jnane prayasam udapasya namanta eva: submit to the Infinite and try to have your own quota. Mind that. Mind your own business. Don’t go to interfere with others in their affairs. In this way, Srimad Bhagavatam directs us, “Mind your own business. How you can get the best benefit within the whole of the Infinite, that is your business.”

Jnana-sunya-bhakti: just as you are to eliminate your energy for exploitation, so you are to eliminate your curiosity to know everything. That is also an anartha, undesirable. It is your enemy in the course of your search for the real goal. The tendency to exploit and the tendency to know are both your enemies.

You may hesitate, “How can I let loose all the energy I have accumulated here? How can I get rid of it? With so much endeavour, I have acquired some energy. Why should I leave it behind?” Because you are going to drown in the water with those energies! Leave your gold coins behind, and then you can swim easily. Heavy gold coins will take you down. Leave them, and you will be light; you will be able to swim across the river of this world. Energy, so long acquired—leave it.

Curiosity, the tendency to know everything, is a subtle burden to you. Leave it! Mind your own business and surrender. Curiosity is an enemy of surrender. Curiosity to know this thing and that thing—many things—is an enemy to the principle of surrender.

He will look after you. He is infinite, and He is all-good. With curiosity, with knowledge, we want to calculate to see whether we are being given anything less, to see whether we are being deceived, to see whether there is any possibly that we may be deceived in the plane that we are going to enter. So, we want to know. We can’t put faith in the environment.

This is the mentality of the atheists. They cannot tolerate surrender. Eliminate them. It is faithlessness, suspicion. They do not learn to believe in the environment. They are skeptics. Eliminate them! Skeptics are not fit to live here. Skeptics should be eliminated. The plane of surrender is not a plane for the skeptic to live. Like spies from the lower area, they try to enter. They should be eliminated. Only the candid, the faithful, the optimistic, will be given entrance, admission, into the plane of surrender. No one can deceive them. By nature, deception is foreign to them. They do not like the company of anyone with skepticism in their heart: “That man is searching with some doubt. We should not have such company here. The spy of maya is trying to enter. He wants to measure everything and then accept. That man is undesirable in this soil.”

Do you follow?

Simplicity makes us confident. Surrender to the whole soil. Only surrender is accepted there. We do not want people who come to calculate and exact their gain here. They should not live here or enter here. They want to calculate from their own selfish viewpoint for their selfish ends. You can give more. Suppose you are cheated, then you will think “I am fortunate.” Are you prepared for that? If you are cheated by anyone there, then you should consider, “I am blessed; I am fortunate enough.”