The fall of Jaya and Vijaya after being cursed by the four Kumaras is a very significant event in the Srimad Bhagavatam. Great part of the narration covers topics directly or indirectly connected with this event, like the pregnancy of Diti in the evening, the fight of Lord Varaha against Hiranyaksa, the pastimes of Prahlada Maharaja and Lord Nrshinhadeva, the advent of Lord Rama and so on. This is also possibly one of the most difficult-to-understand passages of the Srimad Bhagavatam.

The saga starts with the visit of the four Kumaras to Vaikunta. The chronology is that the meeting of Jaya and Vijaya with the four Kumaras happened at the end of the 5th Manvantara, and their first birth happened during the 6th Manvantara when the conditions for their birth (Diti violating the regulative principles and begetting children at the prohibited time) appeared.

This was in turn after the pastimes connected with the sons of Daksa being delivered by Narada Muni. After cursing Narada Muni, Daksa engaged in begetting daughters (whom he knew Narada would not try to liberate) and fulfilled his work of populating the universe through them. Diti was one of these daughters, and she became the mother of Hiranyaksa and Hiranyakashipu.

The second birth of Jaya and Vijaya (as Ravana and Kumbakarna) happened earlier in the current Manvantara (the 7th), while their third birth as Sisupala and Dantavakra happened recently when Krsna was present on our planet.

One of the difficulties one may have in the spiritual path is sexual desire. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is the main cause of most of the problems our movement faced over the years, without even speaking about the personal problems it can cause. Sexual desire when misapplied can lead to illicit affairs, divorces, bad marriages, fall-downs of leaders, and so on.

Unfortunately, sexual desire is not something easy to control. This is the manifestation of the most basic instinct of the soul to enjoy the material nature. From all our anarthas and material contaminations, this is one of the last to go away. We can see that even in the early days of our movement, when devotees were very determined in the spiritual path and very surrendered to Srila Prabhupada, still many would fall into illicit relationships, would divorce and remarry, etc. Srila Prabhupada once commented that devotees could easily follow three of the principles, but had trouble with this last one.

Is there any easy way to control sexual desire, or we all will have to wait until we become pure devotees?

Two dangerous misunderstandings we may have in spiritual life are to expect all devotees to be perfect, and to demand that all devotees are perfect. Why is it so?

If we expect all devotees to be perfect, we may blindly follow and trust everyone without proper discrimination. This makes one vulnerable to being exploited by people of dubious character, as well as by devotees who may have good intentions but may lack the common sense and experience necessary to properly engage others. A person hurt or betrayed like this will have a problem trusting others in the future, which may provoke a pendulum effect, leading to the other extreme (devotees are all bad, etc.) which in turn can easily lead one to stop his or her spiritual practice. We can see that there are many who don’t associate with devotees anymore because of bad experiences they had at some point in the past.

Another problem we may face is to demand that all devotees are perfect. While the first problem comes from ingenuity or naiveness, the second comes from pride. One thinks that he is very advanced and thus expects that others will fit into idealized roles. When he sees that devotees don’t fit into the stereotypes he created, he starts to criticize and eventually leaves.

It’s well known that Prabhupada allowed ladies to live in temples and be trained in spiritual principles, just like the men. Just as single, celibate men living in the temples were called “brahmacaris”, the single celibate ladies were called “brahmacarinis”. They practiced spiritual life under the same basic rules as the males and usually entered family life after a few years of practice, just like most men do.

It’s not clear if establishing the brahmacarini asrama was part of Srila Prabhupada’s original plan to establish Krsna Consciousness in the West, or if it was an adjustment born out of the necessity of giving shelter to the ladies who started coming to his movement, but it is a fact that he did it.

Nowadays, however, many argue that there is no such thing as a brahmacarini asrama in Vedic tradition. They argue that with few exceptions, all ladies get married when they attain a suitable age and that women were generally not allowed to live in temples, nor are encouraged to become renunciants.

The participation of Krsna in the battle of Kuruksetra is a confusing point to many. Some question how God can become personally involved in a fratricidal war, or argue that Krsna was wrong or not merciful in telling Arjuna to fight in the war. They completely miss the point.

The war of Kuruksetra was going to happen not exactly because of the intervention of Krsna, but because of the previous actions of Duryodhana and his group. Yudhisthira was the rightful heir to the throne and also the most pious and qualified to rule, but Duryodhana was trying to usurp the throne, first by cheating the Pandavas and forcing them to go into exile, and later by flatly refusing to give the kingdom back.

There were many attempts to settle the situation by peaceful means by just dividing the kingdom. Krsna personally went to offer a peace settlement to Duryodhana, proposing that he would give just five villages for the Pandavas to rule, but he flatly refused with the famous statement that he would not spare even the land where a pin could be fixed. Due to the refusal of Duryodhana to come to a settlement, the war became inevitable. In other words, Duryodhana and his group planted, and now they were about to reap the fruits of their actions, as conducted by ordinary cause and effect.

Aswathama is one of the popular characters of the Mahabharata. The curse he received from Krsna tends to capture people’s imagination and many wonder if he is still roaming around today. For some, he is just a vain villain, who killed innocent children, while for others he is a great hero. However, if we hear the opinion of the scriptures, his character is much more nuanced.

Aswathama was born as the son of Dronacarya after he and his wife performed penances for many years. Just like Dronacarya was originally a Brahmana but later became a Ksatriya, Aswattama is also a Brahmana who was acting like a Ksatriya. Not only was he born with a natural jewel in his head, that gave him powers to resist hunger, thirst, and other difficulties, giving him the power to execute great austerities, but he was also blessed to live “eternally”, until the end of creation, just like Parasurama, Vyasa and other great sages.

However, although being such an exalted personality, Aswattama committed a sequence of grave crimes, starting with the killing of the five teenage sons of the Pandavas during their sleep as a way to revenge for the death of his father. For this, Arjuna chased him, which led Aswattama to throw a Brahmastra to try to save himself, even though he didn’t know how to retract the weapon. This created an extremely dangerous situation because unless the weapon is timely retracted, the explosion of a Brahmastra can expand unlimitedly and destroy the whole universe. This catastrophe could be avoided only because Arjuna was able to neutralize the explosion by throwing his own Brahmastra and then simultaneously retracting both weapons.

Every year we see a number of messages reminding us that Christmas is not in the Vaishnava calendar. The interesting fact is that it was not originally in the Christian calendar either.

Originally, what we now call Christmas was a traditional holiday in the Roman empire, called Dies solis invicti nati (The birthday of the invincible sun), which as one can guess, was a pagan festival dedicated to the sun. That was a day when people used to feast and exchange gifts. Due to the festival’s popularity, earlier Christians thought it wise to merge the date into their faith, choosing it as the date of the birth of Jesus (since the exact date is unknown), instead of trying to suppress it. People still exchanged presents, and so on, but now the date was related to the birth of Jesus Christ.

As Vaishnavas, we face a similar choice. Christmas is extremely popular in Western cultures, and most devotees see the need to observe it to some extent due to social or familial connections. Even if one doesn’t care much about Christmas, he may end up putting presents under the tree because of his parents, nephews, etc. To try to suppress Christmas can also be a problem for the children in our movement since it’s hard for them to see everyone else getting presents while they don’t get any. Therefore, although devotees in renounced life may see Christmas as just another nonsense, devotees in family life may have valid reasons to observe it to a certain extent.

Some think that Prabhupada didn’t want us to study anything apart from his books. However, when we carefully study different passages from Srila Prabhupada, we see that this is not the case. Prabhupada mentioned on different occasions that he wanted us to study important Vaishnava books, like the Jaiva Dharma, Brhad Bhagavatamrta, the Sat-Sandarbhas, and so on. However, he was also very concerned with devotees studying these books at the right time and with the proper mentality, after getting a good understanding of Vaishnava philosophy from his own books.

Recently we spoke about the process of obtaining the correct conclusions from the scripture that Srila Jiva Goswami gives in his Sat Sandarbhas. Studying the scriptures without the guidance of a spiritual master is more or less useless because one will just become confused and will more probably than not reach the wrong conclusions. The general principle is that one should not only study the scriptures under the guidance of a qualified spiritual master but also study one book at a time, being sure of getting the correct understanding before moving to the next book. That’s different from what most of us do nowadays, when we not only study independently but jump from one book to the other, just like one scrolls through his feed on social media.