The eighth offense to the holy name is, “To consider the chanting of Hare Krsna to be one of the auspicious ritualistic activities offered in the Vedas as fruitive activities, karma-kanda.” We have said this many times but what does it mean. There are different meanings that we can draw from it but the main meaning that I draw from it is:  A karma-kanda ritual is a material activity, a Vedic ritual which fixes our material situation. So when you do a karma-kanda ritual then you expect auspiciousness, “Now all my problems are gone. The brahmana came to my house and he did this yagna so now all will be fine!”

But chanting the holy name is a transcendental process and it has a different purpose. Its purpose is not to fix our material life! The purpose of chanting is to please Krsna and attract his mercy… and that mercy of Krsna may or may not fix our material life. You may say, “I am a devotee, how could this happen! How could this calamity happen to me?” and just give up chanting. This process is not meant to fix our material life; it is meant to take us back to Krsna and back to devotional service to him.

South Africa is a dangerous country because there is a lot of violence and there were some devotees who were murdered. I remember one program when someone asked, “How could this happen to a devotee? Isn’t Krsna protecting his devotee?” and one of the sannyasis present said, “No, Krsna is always protecting his devotee but Krsna may or may not protect the body but he will always protect the soul!”

In this way, Krsna consciousness is different from karma-kanda and is not going to fix our material problems, so we should not fall into that illusion.

Source:https://www.kksblog.com/2016/10/the-eight-offense-to-the-holy-name/

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