In the Srimad Bhagavatam (10.10.15) is mentioned: “A poverty-stricken man must automatically undergo austerities and penances because he does not have the wealth to possess anything. Thus his false prestige is vanquished. Always in need of food, shelter and clothing, he must be satisfied with what is obtained by the mercy of providence. Undergoing such compulsory austerities is good for him because this purifies him and completely frees him from false ego.”

In his purport, Srila Prabhupada reinforces this point, mentioning that “A saintly person voluntarily accepts a state of poverty just to become free from material false prestige. Many great kings left their princely standard of living and went to the forest to practice austerity according to Vedic culture, just to become purified. But if one who cannot voluntarily accept such austerity is put into a situation of poverty, he automatically must practice austerity.”

From this verse and purport we can take two interesting points:

1- Austerity is important (or even necessary) for advancing in spiritual life.
2- If we don’t accept austerities voluntarily, we will end having to accept forced hardships by the influence of the material nature.

Due to the laws of Karma and other influences, no one can go thought the material existence without experiencing hardships. People experience different types of pains, hardships and discomfort. A celebrity may not have to suffer with the bites of mosquitoes and other insects like a poor person living in a village, but may have to deal with the continuous gossips and cruel statements from people in social medias, which can be even more disturbing. A rich person will not experience scarcity of food, but still he may have to experience hunger due to diets, anorexia, or digestive problems, and so on. We face different types of difficulties in life, and some difficulties can be considered worse than others, but we all get our share.

Materialistic people suffer due to their past actions, under the influence of Karma, but as devotees we are supposed to be under the protection of Krsna. Thus, when we face difficulties, we may question: why Krsna is making me go through this? Did I committed some offense? I’m not being a good devotee? Krsna doesn’t love me?

When we go to India, we often see devotees not eating grains on the appearance days of incarnations of Krsna, just like we do on Ekadasis. A festival with some simple prasadam made without grains may sound very strange for one who is used to seeing huge feasts on Janmashtami and other special days, but older disciples of Srila Prabhupada indeed mention that they were instructed by Srila Prabhupada to observe the main festivals in a way that is considerably different from what we do today.

In the early days, devotees would observe Janmashtami by organizing a festival during the day, with kirtanas and other activities, then reading the Krsna Book until late at night, taking some very small prasadam at midnight to break the fast, and then fasting again on the next morning for the Vyasa-Puja of Srila Prabhupada, with the main prasadam being served after midday. A similar arrangement was done for Gaura Purnima.

Offerings would be cooked on the Janmashtami day, but the prasadam would be conserved and honored on the next day.

Over time, the practice gradually changed and nowadays we often have festivals where the Prasadam is distributed in the mid-afternoon. One may discuss what should be done or not according to different considerations, but here I’m just raising the idea that things changed over time.

In this connection, there is a letter from Srila Prabhupada from 12/03/1968, where he gives instructions on this point:

Years ago, when our lives radically changed overnight because of the pandemic, people started questioning themselves about when things would go back to “normal”. However, we rarely stop to think what “normal” means in the first place.

Sometimes we think that to be “normal” means to be just like everyone else. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s when our movement had its first boom in North America and Europe, thousands of people started becoming devotees and would suddenly stop eating meat, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, and so on. They would even start dressing in a different way. People would think that they were not normal. However, what is normal? If a sane person goes to live in a psychiatric house, he would be considered strange, because he would be different from all the crazy patients.

If one is practicing yoga and does an inverted head pose, he will suddenly see everything upside down. He will see everyone walking on the ceiling. However, this is just because he is in an unnatural situation. As soon as he comes back to his feet he will see that everyone was “normal” the whole time. It was just him that was seeing things upside down due to the position of his body. If there was someone “anormal” it was him.

Similarly, the original condition of the soul is different from what we consider “normal” in this world, a concept that changes according to time and place. You can just imagine the reaction of people to a person dressed in the same fashion people would dress a few centuries ago; they would not consider him or her “normal”. Similarly, most people nowadays eat meat, drink, or sometimes even smoke, habits that would be strongly condemned in Vedic societies from past ages. Nowadays, on the opposite, because most people do these things, people who want to live a pure life are considered “strange”. Our idea of “normal” thus changes over time according to what is in fashion.

However, there is a concept of “normal” that is eternal and doesn’t depend on the seasonalities of this world. This concept is discussed by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura in his book “Jaiva Dharma”.

Frequently we become angry at people for things they do or fail to do. We disagree with their opinions and dislike their personalities. This usually applies not for general people, but also to other devotees. Even if a devotee performs some valuable service or shows some good qualities, we may still dislike him or her because of what we perceive as negative traits.

The first thing we may consider is that what we perceive as faults may not really be faults, since we tend to judge people according to our own values and according to what we expect from them. If our own values are mistaken we may think others are mistaken in their judgment, when actually the problem starts with us. Similarly, if we have unrealistic or unfair expectations, we may feel betrayed when a person fails to fulfill them, even if it’s not really their fault.

On the other hand, people may really do wrong things, show bad qualities, and be mistaken in their judgment. Even devotees whom we consider advanced may often do shocking things, to say nothing about regular people. What to do about that?

A point we may consider in such situations is the difference between one’s eternal nature as a soul and the conditioned nature we exhibit during conditioned life.