By Urmila Devi Dasi
October 29, 2011 — Celibacy is such an important part of Vedic education that the Sanskrit word for student is brahmacari (“celibate”). The pressure to give up celibacy begins, of course, in adolescence, the most dangerous age and often the turning point of one’s life.
Young adults need guidance before and during the teenage years to recognize and follow the right path. Celibacy trains adolescents for self-restraint, whether they stay single or get married. It develops their inner strength, self-control, and good character. It also fosters good health and a fine memory.
Without celibacy we can never realize that we are spirit soul, distinct from the body. Sex reinforces the illusion that we are these bodies. Sexual attraction and its extensions in family and society are the main knots that bind us to material identification. Vedic education aims to free the child from these knots so the adolescent can act on the spiritual plane.
Children, of course, have no knowledge of sex. How do we train them to value celibacy before they reach puberty? By association and environment. Modern educators know well how children’s early impressions influence their later moral behavior. And these educators are passing on their decadent moral values to our children. For example, the New York City public school board recently introduced textbooks in the first grade that show families with two “mommies” or two “daddies,” to get children used to homosexuality.
And schools aren’t the only place kids learn to think well of illicit sex. Role models such as those on television, on radio, and in politics keep reinforcing the message. Parents add to the negative influence by using contraceptives or cheating on their marriage vows.
The result, of course, is that children enter adolescence with attitudes that lead them away from self-realization, or even civilized life. The illicit sex that results from years of indoctrination leads to chaos. Yet the very educators and politicians who promote illicit sex to children talk on about fatherless families and unwanted kids who turn to crime and drugs.
To be trained in celibacy, our young students should live with people who take pleasure in Krsna consciousness. Our first task is to shield our children from materialistic influences and surround them with positive, transcendental life. That’s the only way to get them ready to face their transition into adulthood. But childhood training isn’t enough.
Prabhupada told us we must carefully guide our children during their teens. Then surely they will come out first-class Krsna conscious devotees. We should be like a commanding officer who not only trains his solders but also serves with them on the battlefield. Traditionally, a spiritually guided society helped young people with good association, vocational training, and marriage.
Our teenagers need to train and study with Krsna conscious friends and teachers. Otherwise, Prabhupada once said, if from twelve to fifteen years of age they go to an ordinary school, by bad company they become rotten. It is sad to see this happen to a child who had strong childhood training and could have become a first-class human being. Despite the best training and the best company, most teenagers want to associate with the opposite sex.
Therefore, Vedic culture prescribes early marriage, on religious principles. That kind of marriage makes the mind peaceful and receptive to spiritual instruction.
Parents must help their sons and daughters find suitable marriage partners, except for children who are going to stay happy in lifelong celibacy. Parents should understand that adolescents have only three choices in sexual morality: celibacy, marriage, or immorality. Because of the danger in a society where boys and girls mix freely, marriage should be encouraged. We sometimes mistakenly think that an “arranged” marriage means that the parents force a twelve-year-old girl to marry a thirty-year-old man—and they meet for the first time at the wedding.
Prabhupada gives us a different picture. He tells us of a gradual process, usually spanning several years. The parents look for a suitable partner for their child, taking into account that the boy and girl should be equal in character, qualities, social position, and renunciation.
The parents judge the match through their own observations, by asking others, and through astrology. The wishes of the boy and girl are also important. Once the families and the boy and girl agree, a period of occasional, supervised association begins.
It’s as if the parents introduce their child to a suitable mate and then chaperone formal “dates” to prepare the children for marriage. When the children are old enough to marry, the girl may still spend long regular visits at her parents’ home so she may gradually get used to being a wife. An extended family makes this easier by helping the new couple in their duties and relationship. This time-tested process can be easily followed today.
The girl engaged to a suitable boy doesn’t have to advertise herself to find a man. And the boy knows he can’t marry until he becomes responsible. He is therefore motivated to mature into a conscientious man of good character. Built on the early training in renunciation, their marriage will be dedicated to Krsna, fulfilling our hope for their future.
Dearest Ma; Are there any kind of statistics you can demonstrate as to how many of your teen students are celibate? Can you show scientifically that any of the current Gurukula teachers effectively transmit the messages of the Bhagavata, and become of perfect celibate character? Is there evidence-based demonstrartion of the effectiveness of the GBC gurkula programs, as opposed to producing neurotics who cannot succeed in either world ? I think the last generation of gurukulis had enough of the celibacy of the GBC society ! Neither were they very well prepared for life as householders earning for their families. I just dont see the current GBC Its-a-con operating in anything approaching reality, and that is concerning. Are they being taught that gooroos fall down and that Srila Prabhupada is dead and gone, irrelevant now, and we must listen to the corporate prancing children usurping Srila Prabhupada’s vyasasana, instead? Or are they educated enough to see through that whole sham? We wouldn’t want to be associated with any slaughterhouses.
When I was a young lad, I did not do what I wanted to do. I wanted to run free, to be part of the trees and the grass and the rivers and birds. I knew instinctively who I was. I wanted that natural happiness, to live free of unwanted imposing structures not of my designs. Instead, I trusted them. They soon made me sit in a small desk in school, for hour after hour, with my hands folded in front of me, to learn.
I had in my innocence found that when I just relaxed and let myself, just, “Be”, I felt ecstasy ! , or at least a broad sense of well being, like a molecular-level happy tingling sensation, all over and in me! When I spoke of this to significant others, the adults, they didn’t know what to say, or acted like it was a child’s imagination and ignored me, and so I soon learned not to trust or expose my inner self. I became bricked, in the wall.
When at age 7, I cried horrified tears at the sudden realization that my parents would eventually grow old and die! My mother and father could only tell me that, “That is life, son. We must all eventually die.” Oh, most reassuring! Thus began my unsettlement, and come to think, the cause of the downfall of empires.
I learned to turn away from simple satisfactions towards the passion of acquisition and competition. I eventually more-or-less fit into the environment, just as the consciousness of the jiva extends out to the parameters of any given body and field of activities, or ksetra, which the “ksetra-jna” or knower -of-the-field, the jiva-soul, spark of Godhead, inhabits,
as if “…on a machine made of material energies.” ( Bhagavad Gita As It Is, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada )
Gnostic and Kabbalistic texts say, “As above, so below”, Sri Isopanisad says, “ isavasyam idam sarvam… “, – so it is widely understood by theistic mystics that Lord Krsna expands into every nook and corner, IS every nook and corner. Yet he is aloof from all this, being atmarama, or self-satisfied. But whereas He is in full knowledge, the jivas which emanate from Him, are dependent upon Him, except in their stupified mayic dreams! These bound non-different complete units are free when in their Krsna-intended spiritually charged state, but are subject to be illusioned by the grander energy of goddess Maya in their artificially seperated-from-Krsna state, called embodied material existence. Mayadevi is not a conditioned soul, but an enlightened dear devotee of Lord Vishnu, Mother of Sri Ganesha, and wife of Lord Siva We can be overcome by her immense intelligence and potencies, or we can be released by God’s Grace.
Meanwhile, back inside the embodied me, Johnny Cash’s records, which I had played since age 4, had linked with a new inner resentment. Angst unnamed arose amid all that forced enculturation into demon-crazy. Alienated remembrances of my lost inner emotional intelligence, which had been bound and tamed by social pressures, lay just beneath the surface. Like that old Folsom prisoner; I could identify at a root level with this image. I was the prisoner, yearning for his lost freedom. Music to me began to mean a chance to break out of the too-restrictive cage of my adopted social behaviors, a hope for freedom, a return to something better!
When 60’s rock came along, the enlivened sound, which I could so identify with, started to re-energize the Johnny Cash inner me. Not to my awareness of the mechanism, at the time, but now I can look back and understand better. Rock was a transformation of the country/blues of my instinctive inner Cash, to the wider circle of knowledge and activities of the Cultural Revolution of the Peace Generation.
These inner actions ultimately effected and transformed a whole cohort of world-wide society, and in due course actualized my own renewed sense of identity. Our generation acted out a return from the oppression of our deepest human and spiritual nature. Our fathers had embraced homogenous and rigid social stuctures, which involved blatantly capitalist and Darwinistic paradigms of thought. During times of war and economic difficulties, these rascist and sectarian organizations were considered necessary for survival and capital advancement. Now, we could see that this way of thinking strangled individualism and freedom of thought and expression.
But we broke the molds, renewed our ideals! We wanted it right! We rose to the occasion, spontaneously launched a bloodless revolution!
By His arrangements, Srila Prabhupada brought the perfected path to us timely; the sankirtana movement of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, and Bhagavad Gita AS IT IS. This was what we had waited for all our lives, what we were set-up for, to do what we must do in Srila Prabhupada’s service. “jivera svarupa haya; nityera krsnadasa!” ( the eternal soul is the eternal devotee of Krsna ) We were re-born! In degrees of our fortune, the inner self again became the outer, as well. Haribol, prabhus.
We could never begin to repay Srila Prabhupada, who appeared to fulfill the destiny and ambitions of a whole generation of young idealists in America. He truly saved us from the prisons within and without. No one else did it, He alone! He and his Inner Guide. They accomplished this deliverance over the entire planet, saving billions! of people. Other preachers now merely ride through, in his dust, through the train tunnel which he punched through the mountainside of global Maya. No one can do this unless they are more powerful than she; only the Supreme Being and his pure devotee could do this inconceivable thing, Srila Prabhupada, our guiding father, the unstoppable power and mercy, our great conquering Vaisnava General.
We his many disciples have experienced Vaisnava salvation at his hands.
That is why HDG 108 A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada’s disciples will never run out of steam, will never just be quiet, will never just sit back and allow SP’s mission and followers to fall into foolishness, will never compromise in following Srila Prabhupada and his original teachings As They Are, will never agree to anybody’s brainwash program, and ultimately, will never die.
Jumping ahead now, to the current context;
The joyous unfolding and deepening of character which Srila Prabhupada had enacted in us, by dint of his order to serve Lord Sri Krsna, suddenly is assaulted by the unbelievable! The pure intended structure of association of Srila Prabhupada’s disciples suddenly largely ceases to exist, externally!
The purity, love, and mutual purpose, which formed the inner all-attractive body of Iskcon, are tainted by some who thought they could out-think even the master. Srila Prabhupada is now partially replaced by some Precocious Jesuses, and instead of service, with cooperation and preaching, there is too much grandstanding by greedy Usurpers for paisa, power, position, property, —–.
Let us tell the truth; Our father’s house is ransacked.
Open istagosthis are gone, fear and reticence have entered, the new-age GBC sanctioned cults of personality blindly rule. Everyone has an opinion, and none are the same. In some places, Prabhupada’s orders and also his disciples are shamelessly belittled or ousted by cadres of cultists in control….
But in the long term, they are not the controllers.
Externally, the buildings are still there, the Deities rest peacefully inside. Radha’s kitchen is still there, there are even devotees and kirtana. But, Maya’s joke!; this temple association structure of bricks has been re-inhabited by a prehistoric breed of persons ! It is now again more like the slaughterhouse school, where we once were made to sit for hours and hours,
in quiet little No-Talking! rows
with our hands folded,
to learn.