The Puffed-up Brahmanas Spurn the Boys

ancient_paztriot · June 28, 2004

SB 10.23.9

The brahmanas heard this supplication from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, yet they refused to pay heed. Indeed, they were full of petty desires and entangled in elaborate rituals. Though presuming themselves advanced in Vedic learning, they were actually inexperienced fools.

PURPORT

These childish brahmanas were full of petty desires, such as the desire to attain to material heaven, and therefore they could not recognize the golden transcendental opportunity offered them by the arrival of Krsna’s personal boyfriends. Presently, throughout the world, people are madly pursuing material advancement and thus cannot hear the message of the Supreme Lord Krsna that is being broadcast through the missionary activities of the Krsna consciousness movement. Times have hardly changed, and proud, materialistic priests are still prevalent on the earth.

SB 10.23.10-11

Although the ingredients of sacrificial performance—the place, time, particular paraphernalia, mantras, rituals, priests, fires, demigods, performer, offering and the as yet unseen beneficial results—are all simply aspects of His opulences, the brahmanas saw Lord Krsna as an ordinary human because of their perverted intelligence. They failed to recognize that He is the Supreme Absolute Truth, the directly manifest Personality of Godhead, whom the material senses cannot ordinarily perceive. Thus bewildered by their false identification with the mortal body, they did not show Him proper respect.

PURPORT

The ritualistic brahmanas could not understand why the sacrificial food should be offered to Lord Krsna, whom they considered an ordinary human being. Just as a person with rose-colored glasses sees the entire world as rose-colored, a conditioned soul with mundane vision sees even God Himself as mundane and thus loses the opportunity to go back home, back to Godhead.

stonehearted · June 28, 2004

Ah, their loss.

Sometimes a big brain just gets in the way.

ancient_paztriot · June 28, 2004

SB 10.23.39

Taking note of their wives’ pure, transcendental devotion for Lord Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and seeing their own lack of devotion, the brahmanas felt most sorrowful and began to condemn themselves.

SB 10.23.40

[The brahmanas said:] To hell with our threefold birth, our vow of celibacy and our extensive learning! To hell with our aristocratic background and our expertise in the rituals of sacrifice! These are all condemned because we were inimical to the transcendental Personality of Godhead.

PURPORT

As explained in the definitions above, the words tri-vrd janma, or “threefold birth,” refer to 1) physical birth, 2) brahminical initiation and 3) initiation into the performance of Vedic sacrifice. Everything is useless if one is ignorant of the Absolute Truth, the Supreme Lord Krsna.

SB 10.23.41

The illusory potency of the Supreme Lord certainly bewilders even the great mystics, what to speak of us. As brahmanas we are supposed to be the spiritual masters of all classes of men, yet we have been bewildered about our own real interest.

SB 10.23.42

Superficially, the husbands, fathers, fathers-in-law and so on were the ladies’ gurus, or teachers. Yet the women had become perfect in Krsna consciousness, whereas the men had fallen into the darkness of Ignorance.

According to Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura, upon returning home the ladies showed transcendental ecstatic symptoms, such as trembling of the body, shedding of tears, standing of the bodily hairs on end, discoloration of the complexion, crying out “O pleasure of my life, O Krsna!” with faltering words, and so forth.

Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti goes on to state that while one may object that it is not fitting for a woman to love anyone other than her husband, here the husbands themselves point out that they are gurus only in imitation of the Supreme Lord, who is jagad-guru, the universal teacher and spiritual master. The husbands noted that the women, having perfected their transcendental attachment for Krsna, did not have even a trace of attachment left for home, husband, children and so forth. Therefore from that day on the husbands accepted those ladies as their worshipable spiritual masters and no longer thought of them as their wives or property.

SB 10.23.43-44

These women have never undergone the purificatory rites of the twice-born classes, nor have they lived as brahmacaris in the asrama of a spiritual master, nor have they executed austerities, speculated on the nature of the self, followed the formalities of cleanliness or engaged in pious rituals. Nevertheless, they have firm devotion for Lord Krsna, whose glories are chanted by the exalted hymns of the Vedas and who is the supreme master of all masters of mystic power. We, on the other hand, have no such devotion for the Lord, although we have executed all these processes.

PURPORT

According to srila sridhara Svami, the husbands were not aware that their wives had occasionally associated with residents of Vrndavana, such as the flower ladies, and had heard about the beauty and qualities of Krsna. The brahmanas were astonished at their wives’ loving devotion for Lord Krsna, not realizing that this devotion had developed as a result of hearing and chanting about the Lord in the association of His pure devotees.

SB 10.23.45

Indeed, infatuated as we are with our household affairs, we have deviated completely from the real aim of our life. But now just see how the Lord, through the words of these simple cowherd boys, has reminded us of the ultimate destination of all true transcendentalists.