In the past, I wrote a few articles about living in Mayapur. Today I wanted to speak a little about the disadvantages of doing so. Yes, as in other choices, there are some positives and also some negatives.
When we live in a materialistic city like New York or Moscow, it’s quite easy to understand the difference between material and spiritual. Going to different programs in the temple, chanting our japa, studying the scriptures, and other devotional activities can be considered spiritual, while most of the other things around us are just understood as part of the material world. In a sense, this division is not bad, since it can help us to focus on the spiritual things, seeing them as a shelter against all the materialistic craziness we have around us. Such a situation forces us to clearly see the difference between material and spiritual and this clear difference can work as a catalyst that makes us more interested in spiritual life. There are of course many disadvantages to this lifestyle, but on the other hand, we can see that there is this small advantage.
When we go to live in a holy place like Vrindavana and Mayapur, however, this difference between material and spiritual is not so clear. Most of the people we deal with on a daily basis are devotees, people who worship Krsna, wear kunti-mala, use tilaka, etc. The problem is that, just like in the big city, not all of these people act in very exemplary ways. Unsurprisingly, the three material modes are still working, despite the tilaka and the kunti-mala, leading to all kinds of far-from-ideal symptoms. I found it’s still much better than in other places, but if one is operating under the assumption that all devotees are saints, this may be a rude awakening. These are the types of things one will not notice much in a short visit but become more noticeable when one stays longer.
There are several mistaken concepts in the modern concept of family life, and of course, many of these ideas also affect devotees, since like it or not we are coming from general society and still share a lot of values and beliefs with it.
The first mistake is to assume that happiness in family life is related to sex. People get into family life in search of happiness, and sex may be considered part of it, but one may be surprised at how little pleasure there really is in sex life. Sex life is used by material nature as a type of carrot hanging in front of our heads. Since the carrot is fixed, and is moving alongside us, we never reach it. We thus work based on expectations that are never fully realized.
The reality is that happiness in family life is not very much connected with sex life (which actually causes more problems than it solves) but with raising children, which allows one to fulfill the need for strong bonds and relationships most of us have. The idea that children should be avoided actually contributes to making people unhappy and serves as an obstacle for them developing their true potential in spiritual life. Odd as it may seem, family life is a great school where we can learn a lot about what Krsna explains in the Bhagavad-Gita. Some already graduated from this school in previous lives and are now ready to progress to renounced life, but most of us can learn a lot from it, and one of the lessons is how to put sex life into the right context.
Basing relationships into sex life creates other problems, such as infidelity, since once a person realizes that the illusory sexual satisfaction he or she is looking for is not available in the marriage, he or she will start looking around for other partners, leading to the cycle of divorces, re-marriages, scandals, and extra-conjugal affairs we became used to.
Some say that Srila Prabhupada taught just the ABCD in his books, but that’s not what I find when I read them. Instead, what I find is a very ingenious presentation of a philosophy that is extraordinarily complex, but that Srila Prabhupada is able to express in relatively simple words, without however shying away from all the esoteric details.
This sentence I just wrote may sound like a contradiction. How can someone write in a simple way, but at the same time convey all the details? Normally these two ideas are exclusive. Or we explain something in a simple way, omitting details, or we explain all the details, but risk making the presentation incomprehensible. Indeed, this is generally true for ordinary authors, but sometimes a great genius is capable of offering explanations that are simple, but at the same time contain a surprising volume of detail, that can be progressively understood as one’s comprehension of the subject increases.
During our youth, we are usually strongly influenced by the mode of passion. We want to change the world, fight injustice, make society better, or simply change things to our liking. Youths are a transforming force in any society, which can lead to positive or negative changes, depending on how it’s directed.
When Prabhupada came to the West, the youth was very much dissatisfied with the materialistic culture of their parents, which led to the counterculture and the hippie movement. Srila Prabhupada expertly directed this transforming force and used it to create the Krsna Conscious movement, which brought some very positive changes to society. Suddenly, instead of just breaking social norms and looking for an escape through intoxication, young people started to reform themselves and enthusiastically transform society by broadcasting Krsna Consciousness through book distribution and other means. In this example, we can see how the same force when properly directed can lead to a completely different result.
This same tendency can be noticed today but in the other direction. The younger generation in our movement has the same transforming force, they are dissatisfied with the status quo and want change. However, in many cases, this energy is not being properly used. As a result, some go outside, and just join the materialistic society, while others become a destructive force inside our movement, trying to destroy what is in place without having a clear idea of what to build instead.
In the past, I wrote a few articles about the origin of the soul, according to the way Prabhupada explains it in different passages. However, although Srila Prabhupada explains this topic in a quite detailed way in different places, at the same time he cautioned us about the danger and ultimate uselessness of discussing it. Why is that?
Imagine a crazy person who thinks he is Napoleon. The crazy man looks at you and asks: “How did I become Napoleon?” This is a question that has no sane answer because it starts from a false premise. He was never Napoleon and will never be, but somehow, in his insanity, he thinks he is the great emperor, and starting from this false premise he asks how it happened and how can he go back to his original self. This is a question that comes from insanity, and it is impossible to answer it. The only way to answer it is to somehow convince him that he never became Napoleon in the first place. As soon as he understands it, it will be easy for him to understand everything.
Similarly, in this material world, we live in an insane condition, thinking that we are separated from Krsna. There is nothing that is not an energy of Krsna. Everything is inside Krsna and He is everywhere. Srila Prabhupada explains that both the internal energy and the material energy are in reality not different because both come from Krsna. The energy is in nature not different, what makes it material is that we try to separate it from Krsna. When something is connected with Krsna it is considered spiritual (just like a temple, a deity, or Prasadam), while things that we consider separated from Krsna are material. Again, the energy is not different, but our consciousness makes it act in one way or the other.
For a pure devotee, like Arjuna, there is no difference between the material world and the spiritual world, since both are places where Krsna executes his pastimes. Srila Prabhupada mentions that Arjuna is always following Krsna in His different incarnations in the different material universes, and therefore Arjuna technically never goes back to Godhead. However, at the same time, he is considered a Nitya-Siddha, an eternally liberated soul, not different from eternal associates like Uddhava. This is because Arjuna is always with Krsna, and therefore for him, there is no material world.
What we call “Maya” is not the material world, but the energy of Krsna that allows us to fall into illusion and forget Him. That’s the energy that allows us to fall asleep, so to speak. As Srila Prabhupada makes clear in His purports, the soul is an eternal servant of Krsna. We are eternally connected with Krsna in a bond of love. This love for Krsna is eternally present in the soul and can’t be ever broken. That’s our true ego, who we really are. There is no possibility of us becoming anything else.
There is no chemical process that can convert gold into plastic or some other material. A golden ring will be always gold, no matter what we do. We may cover the ring with plastic and say that it is a plastic ring, but as soon as the plastic covering is removed, we see that the gold is still there. Actually, the ring never became plastic, although it was artificially covered by a layer of plastic. Its real nature as gold was still there the whole time, it never changed.
Similarly, we may temporarily forget about our true nature and become false enjoyers of this material world, but this is a temporary condition, an artificial imposition. As soon as the artificial contamination is removed and our original Krsna Consciousness is awakened, we understand that we actually never left Krsna’s company.
Srila Prabhupada explains this condition by making an analogy with someone sleeping. When we sleep we never leave our bed, but our consciousness goes somewhere else and we see so many imaginary situations. We may dream that we are Napoleon, and inside our dream, we may not remember that we ever were anything else, but as soon as we wake up we understand that in reality we never left our bed, and the idea of being Napoleon and fighting in Europe was just part of a dream. The question is thus not about understanding how did we become Napoleon, but about how to wake up from the dream. As soon as we are awakened, everything becomes clear.
Similarly, we are always with Krsna. In fact, we are with Krsna right now. He is even present as Paramatma inside our hearts to remind us of this. The only thing that prevents us from understanding this and associating with Him are the different material coverings we currently have, including the false ego, mind, intelligence, senses, and physical body. By chanting the holy names and serving Krsna and His devotees these coverings slack and we gradually can see ourselves in our original identity as eternal servants of Krsna.
The question of “How did I fall into the material world” or “How did I become separated from Krsna” is thus part of the material trap, because it starts from the illusory conception that we are separated from Krsna, or that we are now something else apart from eternal servants of Krsna. Starting from a false principle, these questions are similar to the crazy man asking how did he become Napoleon. They are thus impossible to answer. The more we become absorbed in such questions the more it reinforces the material illusion.
We can practically see that devotees who become too absorbed in this question usually end up concluding that the soul is not an eternal servant of Krsna, coming to the conclusion that the soul comes from the impersonal Brahmajoti or some other position where there is no propensity for service, which is precisely the wrong answer. In this way, this philosophical pursuit ends up just reinforcing their material conditioning and making their spiritual journey harder.
On the other hand, devotees who instead follow Prabhupada’s advice of avoiding the misleading question and instead study his books starting from the simple point that we are eternal servants of Krsna (a point that he reinforces every three or four paragraphs, literally) usually have no doubts in this regard.
Are there bad devotees? Indeed we can find some very critical, judgmental, and sometimes even dishonest people among us. Are there good atheists? Surely some are nice and good-natured persons, some are open and non-judgmental, and many can be actually quite supportive and loyal friends.
Are all devotees bad? Surely not. Many devotees are saints. Are all atheists good? Of course not. Many atheists can be quite cruel. Hitler was an atheist and he murdered 6 million Jews in concentration camps, including women, old persons, and children. Stalin was an atheist, just like Mao Tse Tung, and they were also responsible for the killing of millions of people.
Some atheists are quite pious and good-natured, but they represent the top of the pyramid. If we go similarly higher on the pyramid of devotees and religionists, we will find true saints, like our previous Acaryas, persons like Saint Francis, and so on. In other words, the top atheist can be a quite nice and pious person, but the best devotee is a true saint. If we could choose between living with the pious atheist or with the saint, it would be surely more beneficial to live with the saint.
Devotees fighting in wars is unfortunately becoming a relevant topic, as wars are spreading around the world and involving countries where devotees are present. Wars involve very strong sentiments, and such sentiments often cloud our vision. When our vision is clouded we can easily confuse Adharma and Dharma, and perform sinful activities, thinking we are doing good.
In the Vedas we read about many wars fought in the name of Dharma, starting with the battle of Kuruksetra, where the Kshatriyas who defended Dharma grouped around the Pandavas to fight the Adharmic forces led by Duryodhana. There are also other very famous battles, like Lord Rama fighting against Ravana, or many instances where demigods fought with demons to prevent them from taking the universe and advancing their exploitative agenda.
In this way, the concept of Dharmic wars is very much present in the Vedas. There were Dharmic wars in the past, and many devotees fought in them, going from pure devotees, like Arjuna and Hanuman to devotees still dealing with material desires, such as ordinary demigods. More than that, Krsna Himself took part in many of these wars, upholding his words in the Bhagavad-Gita, of Him descending whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice and a predominant rise of irreligion.
However, when we try to transport the idea of Dharmic war to the current context, we face lots of problems.
Nowadays, the word “exclusive” is usually taken as a positive adjective. An “exclusive restaurant” is a place where you can find important people, “an exclusive seat” is a comfortable premium seat on a plane, and so on. However, the word “exclusive” has also a negative connotation, which is to exclude people who don’t fit into a certain standard or stereotype. In this sense, an “exclusive restaurant” becomes a place where people who don’t belong to a certain group or have a certain level of income are discriminated against, and an “exclusive seat” is a place where not everyone can sit. On the opposite spectrum, we have the word “inclusive” which means a place where everyone is welcome.
In the past, we used to sometimes have a more exclusive mentality in our movement. We would set certain standards and would reject people who would not fit into these stereotypes. The problem is that few would be able to properly follow everything, and this would frequently create an unhealthy situation, where people would have a double life, trying to keep appearances when with other devotees but behaving differently when otherwise. Another problem is that many interested persons would often abandon Krsna Consciousness because they would not be able to follow the demanded standards. This led to a decline of our movement in many areas, as the enthusiasm of the first generation gradually waned.
One of the main topics of the Bhagavad-Gita is the discussion regarding the difference between work and renunciation. We tend to think that renunciation means to stop working and go to the forest or to some holy place to peacefully chant, but Krsna alerts us that one can do so only when he is free from desires. As long as the mind is disturbed by desires, such desires will pull us back to material activity.
One who tries to externally renounce but at the same time remains attached to different plans and desires in reality just cheats himself and falls from this platform of false renunciation later. At the beginning of the Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna wanted to become a jnani, abandoning his duties and going to the forest, but Krsna explained the danger of this approach. The senses are so strong that they can carry away the intelligence of even a great sage, what to say about someone who still has material desires? Krsna thus alerted to the dangers of artificial renunciation and explained the superiority of Buddhi-Yoga, which is a combination of detached work, knowledge, and devotion.
Ordinarily, the paths of Karma (material work) and Jnana (cultivation of knowledge, meditation, and renunciation) are recommended according to one’s level. One who is still attached is recommended to perform karma, while one who is sufficiently purified and detached may opt to renounce work. The path to follow thus depends on one’s qualifications and purity of heart. In chapter two (2.47), Krsna says “karmany evadikaras te”, stating that Arjuna’s level on the Yoga ladder was not renunciation, but action.
Is marriage bad for spiritual life? If we study the scriptures, especially Srimad Bhagavatam, we can find many passages speaking negatively about family life, and recommending renounced life as a better path for the ones who are serious about self-realization. Taking this into consideration, would it not be better to just skip the idea altogether and instead use the time for improving our spiritual practice and go back to Godhead sooner, instead of getting bogged down in family life?
This question has two sides.
One side is that one who is genuinely renounced, bringing experience and renunciation from past lives, may do better if he skips married life since he will be able to use properly his time to cultivate his spiritual practice. This is, in general, the path recommended scriptures for spiritually advanced transcendentalists.
However, one who is not on this platform will have a hard time controlling his mind. Not only he will be forced to spend much of his energy just repressing his nature, but will probably end up developing an unhealthy relationship with the opposite sex. This will not only be a hazard to his mental health but will also undermine his spiritual practice since he will be spending most of his energy just repressing his mind and senses. People in this situation can end up developing many different mental issues and not advancing very swiftly trying to follow a renounced life. Because in this case one is not fixed, there is also a great danger of falling down at any moment.
