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Madhusudani Radha devi dasi writes:

"While it is true that having a job in this world is temporary, that doesn’t make it any less useful during this temporary life. Most devotees have families to support, rent to pay, and food to buy. Unless a devotee is planning on remaining a temple devotee his whole life or unless he is independently wealthy, he needs to obtain an education or learn a trade. Or does Dr S Arnold really want to see more devotees living off social welfare or scamming tourists in urban settings?"

According to my experience there is nothing less useless for earning money and to support a family than a university degree. Spiritually and materially it is simply wasted time. Both my wife and I have spent several years at universities and I am advising all of my children not to commit the same mistake.

If we want our children to be successful in this world, they should be trained in independent thinking, resourcefulness, patience, enthusiasm, self-awareness, imagination, conscience, self-confidence, genuine and caring service attitude, and the like. And all of that is simply a byproduct of genuine spiritual training. If we can train our children to become eager and enthusiastic to serve, whether by preaching, doing business, or working as a carpenter, success will automatically follow. Why create more tail-waving dogs?

Trained in the qualities mentioned above, he or she will be successful even while being blind and dumb.

If one wants to be a carpenter, he or she should learn from one. If one wants to become a businessman or businesswomen, this is quite simple to learn by apprenticeship, provided that the candidate is enthusiastic and in possession of a clear vision of his future. (How does he get that?)

To learn the art of a certain profession is really the least of all problems in this connection. It shouldn’t be a problem at all.

And: If one wants to become a technician and therefore has to attend university, what can be done? But this is not for earning money. This is mainly, as Dr. Arnold states, for "temporary material pursuits, pride, worldly recognition, and personal sense gratification." More or less, it’s simply ugra karma.

To sum up: It is surely desirable for a person to learn a trade, if he or she wants to found a family and is not able to survive by doing some direct preaching work (i.e. the Internet offers a lot of opportunities to do that), but...

Why should one enter the temples of ignorance of modern society (universities) and risk spoiling and wasting his life, just to learn to earn some money? This is really absurd. Money is lying on the street, and if one is a little smart (and that is definitely not attained by a university degree), he or she will find beneficial ways to collect it.

Your servant
Jagannidhi das

© CHAKRA 11 August 2002