By HH Mahanidhi swami   

A devotee is so absorbed himself in his own bhajana, in worshipping the Lord, in trying to execute the orders of the spiritual master, he does not really have time (and he shouldn’t have) to waste his time trying to pass judgment, or passing judgment by measuring someone else and saying – “He is big”, “He is small”, talking about others.

Because a devotee is always supposed to be talking about Krsna - always talking about Lord Caitanya, pastimes, nama, rupa, guna, lila, talking about the service. What other devotees are doing, if they are doing something nice, may be you can glorify them, if they are actually doing something significant. And the only time this concept of judgment is really employed is when we are deciding who to associate with.

Who we are going to associate with, then we have to exercise some discrimination which is the function of intelligence, that one choose to associate with those more advanced themselves, to hear from them and learn from them. And make friends with those that are on a similar platform and those that are lower than us, less fortunate than we are, we try to make them fortunate by preaching.

So there we have three-tiered not exactly judgment but a three-tiered discrimination - 
1.    Reaching for the higher association, 
2.    Extending ourselves to those lower than us and 
3.    On the same plane, associating with our friends.

So that requires some selection. We must make some selection. But in one sense, in terms of amanina, humility of a devotee at the level of nistha, devotee at the level of nistha is trnad api sunicena. He is ‘amani’. He does not want any respect for himself but he is ‘manadah’, he gives respect to others. So he is always respecting everyone and not that- “Oh he is big, he is small.” He is not belittling anyone, because he sees that everyone is doing the best they can. Everyone is trying their best. Everyone is engaged. Krsna Says in Bhagavad-gita, ‘Everyone is following My Path in all respects’.

So a devotee tries to see the same way as Krsna - Okay I have this tolerance. There is no need for me to judge. It’s not anukula for bhakti. It’s not favorable for bhakti for me to spend time judging high or low, big or small. I do my service. I absorb myself in my bhajana and then when I have to make selection, I make selection in these three ways search for those who are more advanced than I am, they can increase my faith, increase my determination, increase my surrender and then make friends with those not only on similar level…

What does it mean - similar level? We make friends with those that are interested in the same things we are interested in the same things we are interested in, in terms of Krsna Consciousness. For example, we may see some devotees, we think that are on the same level as us but they may be interested in doing Govardhana parikrama everyday. That’s their interest in bhakti. They like to do.

So they may be same age and may be initiated by the same guru around the same time and they are really into this Govardhana parikrama everyday and may be that’s their service. And we are not so much interested in that, we’d rather learn slokas or read sastras. So we should find someone that likes to learn slokas and read sastras. That’s what it means by associating with those that are like-minded and similar, not only of the same jati, sajatiya snigdha, associate with those that are same, they are Gaudiya Vaisnavas and we can share our ideas together and make friends.

We make friends in terms of how we can serve together and help each other. If someone is totally into memorizing slokas every second and we can’t remember that very well then that won’t be very good association for us because we will be lost. We won’t feel encouragement. We will feel discouraged. That’s for friendships.

And of course, preaching is obvious those that are unfortunate, lacking Krsna consciousness or trying to come up. Then we can try to compassionately help them. But otherwise that’s the selection based on Krsna consciousness. Right? Discrimination, selection but otherwise judging - high-low, this that. He is a big sannyasi. He is Russian devotee, He is Indian devotee. This type of duality, this is dvandva. This type of duality is not beneficial.

Because it usually ends up offensive. How can you really see who is big or small? It’s very difficult. Because we usually all kinds of artificial criterion to decide who is big or small.

“Do you know he is GBC? He is BBT? He is very big devotee.”

Oh, if you have these service posts that means you are big devotee. Not necessarily, may be some devotees working in the temple cooking milk sweets, he much be a much more advanced devotee. So it’s not position that makes elevation in bhakti. Its attachment and love for Krsna. So sometimes we get involved like that.

“Oh, he is big devotee because he has all these titles.” 
“Oh he is small devotee, he is only making milk sweets for the Deities.”

But he may be sleeping one hour, two hours a day and absorbed in Krsna katha day and night. I remember some devotees in New Vrndavan. They had memorized the entire Caitanya Bhagvata, entire Caitanya Caritamrta and all day long, they would just speak from that book, day and night, sleep four hours a day. And they were so-called ‘Nobody’, but in the community, everyone really appreciated their association because they always heard about Lord Caitanya whenever they spoke, it was nothing but Lord Caitanya.