One point that is very well discussed in Prabhupada’s books (and Vaishnava literature in general) are three categories of devotees. We all know the three categories and are very quick to use them to bash each other.

The first-class devotee is the one who develops love for Krsna. Because in this stage one loses interest in material activities, one becomes peaceful and thus can fully concentrate on chanting and developing his personal relationship with Krsna. However, many devotees on this platform decide to preach and help others, and these are actually the best of all.

The second-class devotees are devotees who become free from material association and learn to properly behave towards the Lord, other devotees, the innocent, and the envious. On this platform, one becomes gradually knowledgeable in the scriptures, and as a result, he can help others to advance in Krsna Consciousness. By doing that one increases his own realization and progress further.

These two classes of devotees are more or less fine on their own. They don’t need much help to progress further in spiritual life. Rather, they are the ones who help others.

For most of us, however, the most relevant is the third category, because that’s where most of us are.

The third-class devotees are still attached to material association and struggling with material desires. That’s us. For us, apart from the basic process of hearing and chanting, deity worship in the temple according to the rules and regulations is strongly recommended. If a devotee can go regularly to the temple and be involved in the services there he or she can gradually advance.

That’s quite simple to understand, but often extremely difficult to implement in practice.

The problem is that most temples are situated in big cities. That’s wonderful from the point of view of attracting new people, but it creates serious hardships for devotees trying to keep themselves engaged in the temple since living in big cities is very expensive. We have thus many devotees who live close to the temple but can’t attend most of the programs because they are too busy working to maintain themselves, devotees who live very far, and thus also come regularly, as well as families where the husband works very hard and rarely come, and only the wife has some free time to be engaged in the temple (or vice-versa). There is of course also the option of being a brahmacary or brahmacarini and just living in the temple, but this is not easy for most.

A second option is far away communities, where devotees try to follow the idea of simple living high-thinking. There are still a few of them around. The difficulty is that not everyone nowadays is capable of adjusting to a simple life, and remote places often lack good internet connectivity, which severely limits what one can do online. This combination of factors is also not suitable for many.

In order to be viable, communities also need schools for the children, which is traditionally a point of great difficulty in our movement. Without a school, communities become basically inviable, since couples need to move elsewhere to provide an education to their children.

There are a few options of communities that although relatively well-connected in terms of internet connection and services are still relatively affordable to live in, like Mayapur, for example. If one has the skills to find a moderately well-paid online job, one can live comfortably there and still find time to be involved in spiritual activities. However, not everyone can adapt to moving into a different country (dealing with visas, and other difficulties), and not everyone is capable of finding a relatively decent online job. This results in many split families, where the wife lives with the children in the community, but the husband has to stay away most of the year working to provide for them. Children growing up without fathers are also hardly viable.

In this way, most devotees just struggle in life, without being able to find a stable situation where they can peacefully develop their devotional service.

So, what is the solution?

In the short term, there is no solution, we will have to struggle. The long-term solution would be to gradually build new communities, finding places on the outskirts of the cities where there is a reliable internet connection and other basic amenities, but where land is still cheap, and it’s possible to get land for building a temple and making plots for devotees interested in building their houses, and some land can be reserved to build apartments that can be later sold or rented, as well as schools and other facilities.

Such projects are not easy to start, build, or maintain, but without something like that, we will have to continue having to choose the less bad of several problematic solutions.

For more austere devotees, simple-living, high-thinking projects centered in agriculture and far away from the cities are still best, of course, but these are also not very easy to implement.