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.

Devotees often disagree on different philosophical points, and of course, when disagreements appear, the different parties try to settle the disputes by researching passages from the scriptures. The problem is that almost always such discussions are inconclusive. There are a multitude of passages in the scriptures that can be used to support different points of view, and texts can always be misinterpreted. A small grammar misunderstanding can often completely invert the meaning of a specific verse.

This is nothing new. Our acaryas also had to deal with such discussions. The fact is that except for the Buddhists, everyone in India traditionally debates based on the Vedas. Everyone, from the Mayavadis to the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, uses different passages from the Vedas to sustain whatever philosophy they propound. There are personalists, impersonalists, worshipers of Lord Shiva or Shakti, worshippers of different demigods, and even atheists, and everyone has different viewpoints based on different passages from the scriptures. Different passages from the Vedas can be used to maintain that Krsna is God, that Vishnu is God, that God is ultimately impersonal, that there is no God and matter organizes by itself, that there is a God but he is subordinate to Karma, that everyone is God, that Shiva is God and so on.

Since all these different philosophical systems can be sustained with passages from the Vedas, how can we find the truth? Srila Jiva Goswami went to great lengths in discussing this pint in his Sat-Sandarbhas. As well known, these are six books that he wrote based on verses left by Srila Gopala Bhatta Goswami. Srila Jiva Goswami found the incomplete manuscripts and decided to complete the work, by carefully going through it, organizing the different ideas, rewriting parts that were lost, expanding different arguments, adding additional references, and so on. In this way, the Sat-Sandarbhas are a joint work of these two exalted acaryas. As Sri Jiva wrote:

Although Srila Prabhupada described devotee communities as the future of our movement, this is an area where we are somehow lagging. There are a few successful communities around the world, but in most cases, our communities are not exactly the most eloquent examples of prosperity. Often there are just a few dozen families struggling to make ends meet, or communities that work as tourist spots. We are somehow still a little far from the ideal of sustainable communities that Prabhupada was speaking about.

The idea of sustainable communities goes in the direction of something else that is important in spiritual life, that is stability. This is something important when we speak about developing the mode of goodness that is so important for our spiritual development. As long as we are dependent on the regular society for our basic maintenance, we will be intrinsically connected with all the crises it goes through. If on the other hand, we can produce the basics and just trade on the surpluses, our existence becomes much more stable. This is especially important when we speak about the long term.

One of the reasons for this lack of development in our communities is that although we have a good amount of Brahmanas, as well as good-natured devotees willing to work, we historically have a lack of good managers (Ksatriyas) and especially of pious Vaisyas.

In Teachings of Lord Caitanya (chapter 21), Srila Prabhupada says: “When one takes to this process of transcendental devotional service leading to love of Godhead, he relishes his relationship with Kṛṣṇa directly, and from this reciprocation of relishing transcendental dealings with Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa gradually becomes a personal associate of the devotee. Then the devotee eternally enjoys blissful life. Therefore the purpose of the Vedānta-sūtra is to reestablish the living entity’s lost relationship with the Supreme Lord Kṛṣṇa, to describe the execution of devotional service, and to enable one to ultimately achieve the highest goal of life, love of Godhead. The Vedānta-sūtra describes these three principles of transcendental life and nothing more.”

Here Prabhupada uses words like “reestablish” and “lost relationship” to describe the relationship with the soul with Krsna. Everyone agrees that the relationship with the soul with Krsna is eternal in the sense that when the soul attains love for Krsna, he doesn’t come back to this material world, as Krsna Himself describes in the Bhagavad-Gita, but Prabhupada goes a step beyond that, claiming that the relationship of the soul with Krsna is eternal not only in the sense of a hypothetical future but eternal in the full sense, meaning also the past. Taking the term in this sense, he uses the word ” lost” to indicate that although this eternal relationship is currently forgotten, it existed in the past, and will be “reestablished” as soon as we again agree to serve Krsna.

This ” lost” relationship of the soul with Krsna is very directly described in Srimad Bhagavatam 4.28.52-55, where Krsna Himself (in the form of the Supersoul) takes the form of a Brahmana and speaks to King Puranjana in his next life as the daughter of King Vidarbha:

The Vedas give great importance to the syllable oṁ, which is considered the sound representation of the Lord. All the Vedic mantras start with oṁ, and this is actually what gives them value. As Prabhupada mentions, “the Vedic mantras or hymns have transcendental value because they are prefixed by the syllable oṁ” (TLC 20). The syllable oṁ is so important that it has even His own symbol in the Devanagari alphabet, ॐ. By the way, Srila Prabhupada insists on referring to oṁ as “He”, not only using the personal pronoun, but with an uppercase H, indicating that it is not an ordinary sound, but a direct incarnation of the Supreme. Just as Krsna comes as Lord Nrshinha, Varaha, etc. He also appears in this world in the form of the sacred syllable oṁ.

Being the sound incarnation of the Lord, the omkara is just like a deity of the Lord. Just like we perform ceremonies in front of the deity, or in the presence of the fire (in a fire ceremony), the same functions can be performed by just pronouncing the omkara. In Srimad Bhagavatam (9.20.16), for example, it is described how Mahārāja Duṣmanta married Śakuntalā in the forest by just pronouncing the omkara. It’s described that this process is also practiced by the Gandharvas in the celestial planets. By pronouncing the omkara, one invokes the Supreme Lord to sanctify the marriage, just like when one performs a fire sacrifice.