Exploring Varnashrama College

38. WHAT WE LEARNED from What Went Wrong at the Farm

Part One: We Must Teach Truthfulness

It was a dynamic that happens over and over in Iskcon. Things were not as we had been told, not as we had expected from our first visit to the farm and from many phone conversations. Ideas and hopes were presented as works in progress when they weren’t at all yet. Information was selective or slanted or exaggerated so as to appear different from the reality.

We suspected some uncertainty but we came anyway. Chalk it up to our own attraction to Michigan, or to the strength of our desire to work on development of farm community, or even to Krishna’s perfect yet mysterious plan. We experienced the difficulties and ended up here in Montague, in my mother’s house and tilling ground out behind her house, and in so doing we have also been to a Hare Krishna program at a Hindu temple near Grand Rapids and have committed to doing the program every month, and also we hope to start a Bhagavad Gita class for regular Americans in the area. There is much preaching to be done in this area and it could very well be the case that Krishna led us here. We will see as things progress.

All that being said, it is still true that the state of the farm was misrepresented to us in such a way that we came and found no legal facility for us to live there, among other disappointments. I have seen and experienced many such things in Iskcon over the years but usually what happens is just a lot of complaining and tolerating and some sarcastic joking. This time was different because of the drastic nature of the situation: we actually ended up homeless for a time. It made me think from a new angle, of how this habit in the movement is actually intolerable.

Much earlier in this blog I wrote that the temples are already doing the job of teaching brahminical knowledge but that we needed varnashrama colleges to teach the other varnas and teach the brahmanas how to teach the others. But now I began to think that may not be so. Are we properly teaching the real qualities of brahmanas?

In Bhagavad-Gita 18.42 the qualities of a brahmana are listed, and among them is honesty. And if someone says “I am not a brahmana, I am a ksatriya,” or a vaisya, or a sudra, there is still no excuse, because in Caitanya Caritamrta, Madhya 22.78-80, where Lord Caitanya is teaching Sanatana Goswami the 26 qualities of a devotee, truthfulness is among those qualities.

There are two aspects of truthfulness. One is to know the that the Supreme Absolute Truth is Krishna Himself, that we are not these bodies but eternal spirit souls meant to serve Krishna, and that Krishna explained all of this in Bhagavad-Gita, and not only to know this but to give this truth to others, too. In this sense, all devotees are truthful. At least in my experience, it is rare for a devotee to be less than truthful in this way.

The other aspect of truthfulness, however, is too often a different story in Iskcon. In this aspect, one presents things as they are, one values one’s own spoken word, one does not slant the facts in such a way as to manipulate others.

How did it come about that the movement that presents the highest spiritual truth to the world is also known for being less than truthful? Millions of Prabhupada’s books have been distributed all around the world, spreading knowledge of spiritual truth, yet there are horror stories about the change-ups (tricking people into giving a larger donation than they thought they were giving) and lies about what the money was going for (“Five dollars feeds a kid for a week” is one standard I used to hear, and also various false claims about detoxification centers and orphanages and other nice benefits for the poor, which the devotees rationalized were true because we had temples). Feeling “transcendental” to ordinary laws of morality, some devotees have perfected methods of cheating, almost stealing, and this has been tolerated by some in leadership positions if it gets more money to run the temples. I have heard that if a devotee is applying for a grant, he or she has to disguise the fact that it is a Hare Krishna project or else there will be no grant – a practice which obviously only adds to the negative image the public has.

And what about inside, how do the devotees treat one another? Sometimes it is a bait-and-switch thing, where an unsuspecting devotee is fed stories to inspire him or her, or promises are made, and then the service turns out to be different or the promises are not kept. I have heard the statement that “a temple president will tell you anything,” and I have watched, over the years, and, sadly, have seen some truth to that sentence. And temple presidents are not different in kind from all the rest of the devotees in the movement, since they were trained the same as everyone else.

How has it become so easy for devotees to be less than honest? It is not the ancient Vaishnava culture that is to blame, but it does seem that we now have a sort of culture-within-a-culture, a culture of little dishonesties.

One factor may be that most of the early devotees were formerly hippies. The hippy world was in itself a culture of drugs and illicit sex, and sinful activities do not breed honesty. Some of the hippy slang made its way into the movement (“he was so mad, he was really fried,” “don’t space out,” “wow, that’s really far out”) and so did some of the hippy mentality. Another factor may be the sudden rather heady sense of freedom, of being liberated from materialism, but taking it too far as liberation from ordinary rules of behavior.

Similarly heady was the excitement of saving souls, of engaging them in devotional service by any means. I don’t know whether it was Prabhupada who coined the phrase “transcendental trickery,” or perhaps it was his enthusiastic, former-hippy disciples, but that concept really caught on. Too much. It practically became the modus operandi of the whole movement.

“Transcendental trickery” is used to get a conditioned soul to taste devotional service for the first time. A soul in this world does not desire to begin devotional service because that is an unknown thing, so a book distributor devotee may say, “Are you from Seattle?” and when the person says “yes” the devotee says “Good! Then I can show you one, too.” And the person feels qualified to look at the book, when actually the devotee will say exactly the same thing if he says “no.” That is transcendental trickery, yes, but that should be the extent of it, because from then on, the devotee presents the Bhagavad Gita on its own merit. (Book distribution was not always this honest, sad to say, and the fact that so many devotees did participate in book distribution in the old days when less honest methods were commonly used may be another factor in the habit of dishonesty.) Or a devotee may get someone to accept some prasadam in the form of normal American cookies and not mention that it was offered to Krishna. No matter, there is benefit for the recipient. Or a devotee may drop something and allow a stranger to help – in the hope that it will count as devotional service for that person to have helped a devotee. But this transcendental trickery is only good for the first time, it is not good as a standard way to relate to the public or as a way to manage surrendered devotees!

The habit of over-using transcendental trickery is a sign of immaturity in the movement. It was a short cut to the controls. And now when I think really hard about it, I do not remember very much stress on honesty or truthfulness being spoken. We are all too used to this short cut, either as victims or as perpetrators. We need to take a good long look at it, and we need to begin to change.

We need to begin to truly teach truthfulness. We need to talk about it a lot, like we do about sense control or about paying attention to our japa. Talk starts the process of thinking, feeling, and willing, which in turn starts the process of actual activity. We as a movement need to honestly examine our habit of little dishonesties. It isn’t cute, it is dishonest. It is lying.

Truthfulness doesn’t happen automatically. It is taught. Christians teach it very well; why can’t we?

I was putting off writing this blog. Perhaps it is offensive, or will be perceived as such. I don’t want to publish a criticism of devotees. But if there is dishonesty, how does it help if we avoid admitting it? How do we begin to change it if we don’t look at it square in the face? Are we afraid that struggling temples will have even less money, even fewer workers if we institute real honesty? But if we rely on short cut methods to keep things going, is it really worth it in the long run?

We must teach truthfulness. We must be truthful. We must be compassionate toward devotees who have been caught up in this little inside culture of little dishonesties – we should not condemn anyone – but we must demand nothing less than truthfulness of ourselves and of others.

blog What Went Wrong at the Farm

Things were going along, Krsnasraya and I were working in the fields and dealing with camping in a tent, and we were just beginning to have serious discussions with some of the others who are involved, questioning how the farm situation was set up, when one morning three men drove into the driveway, got out of the car, and walked toward us, clipboards in hand, like the Inquisition.

Something told me it was time to become uneasy, and that hunch was confirmed when one of the men began by saying, “I’m from the health department, and he is from the sanitation department, and he is from the building safety and inspection department, and we have received some complaints…”

It turned out that township zoning laws did not allow long term camping (we had been assured that it was all checked out and ok) and did not allow more than two people unrelated to the property owner. Krsnasraya and I plus Christina who also stays there made it three. And of course there was the tent, fully visible from the road in the daytime and as obvious as a downed flying saucer at night with the light on inside lighting up the whole thing, not just windows like a house, making it glow beautifully in the dark empty expanse of hayfield and pasture. And the sanitation issue making it all worse, because it was true that there was no arrangement for sanitation. We had been told there was a proper outhouse of some sort being set up, but had arrived to find that not only was it not a proper one but it wasn’t even done yet. We had our portable toilet, but it had to be emptied and the only way available had been to secretly bury the contents in the lane that went out into the hayfield. We didn’t like that in the first place, and now we felt like criminals.

They gave us two weeks to move, and ordered an immediate solution to the sanitation issue. It took days to get the head of the project to finally purchase a holding tank that could be taken to an RV dumping station, but finally he did it. And at the end of two weeks no solution had been made to our camping situation, so we had to simply break camp and store it all in the barn, and make space in our van for sleeping. With the head of the project, we had looked into getting an apartment, or a free apartment in Detroit in his house, or a camping spot in a state park campground, but all of those solutions cost too much money either in gas (driving to and from Detroit) or rent. The money was offered to us in a dreamy idealistic way but it didn’t exist in the farm account, so what was the use of offering it? So we ended up sleeping in our van at a truck stop which fortunately was only a few miles away at the highway. It was free, and legal. We did that for I think a little over a week, and came back each morning to the farm to bathe with bucket and wash cloth in the van and cook breakfast on our Coleman stove which was put away in the barn each night.

All this time we were trying to continue working the farm and also to make some money by taking produce to farmer’s markets, but the only ones we made it into were not good and we made little more than enough to break even. We’d have circled endlessly between the truck stop and the farm and the farmer’s markets if I didn’t get some help from my family, who sent us money for a uhaul trailer and invited us to go and stay there, in my hometown of Montague, Michigan. At first my sister offered a spot for free in the campground she and her husband are setting up, and then it was decided we would go and live in my mother’s house and help her. So that is where we are now.

My family, especially my mother, rescued us, and we are very grateful.

We were glad to leave the farm. Everything was going wrong there, the weeds were burying the vegetables and the bulls were not getting their training, and it was all out of control, and we did not want to be part of it. And too much dishonesty in the form of false advertising. But it was sad to leave the beautiful land and the beautiful vegetables, and the bulls. It was sad to leave Christina there to deal with the craziness of it all alone.

Anyway we are now safely situated in an actual house, and everyone is getting along, and we are planning to do a fall garden in the cleared space out back under the power lines and also to grow microgreens for sale to local restaurants. It is my hometown, and is a small town to boot, but it has a real health food store and they even seem to be open to the idea of our offering Bhagavad Gita classes there, and my mother’s land is land in the family and is paid for, a real bonus and almost a necessity for new farmers, so perhaps we are beginning a new phase of life.

So that is what went wrong at the farm and what happened to us. Next blog I will attempt to analyze what we learned from what went wrong at the farm.

Things were going along, Krsnasraya and I were working in the fields and dealing with camping in a tent, and we were just beginning to have serious discussions with some of the others who are involved, questioning how the farm situation was set up, when one morning three men drove into the driveway, got out of the car, and walked toward us, clipboards in hand, like the Inquisition.

Something told me it was time to become uneasy, and that hunch was confirmed when one of the men began by saying, “I’m from the health department, and he is from the sanitation department, and he is from the building safety and inspection department, and we have received some complaints…”

It turned out that township zoning laws did not allow long term camping (we had been assured that it was all checked out and ok) and did not allow more than two people unrelated to the property owner. Krsnasraya and I plus Christina who also stays there made it three. And of course there was the tent, fully visible from the road in the daytime and as obvious as a downed flying saucer at night with the light on inside lighting up the whole thing, not just windows like a house, making it glow beautifully in the dark empty expanse of hayfield and pasture. And the sanitation issue making it all worse, because it was true that there was no arrangement for sanitation. We had been told there was a proper outhouse of some sort being set up, but had arrived to find that not only was it not a proper one but it wasn’t even done yet. We had our portable toilet, but it had to be emptied and the only way available had been to secretly bury the contents in the lane that went out into the hayfield. We didn’t like that in the first place, and now we felt like criminals.

They gave us two weeks to move, and ordered an immediate solution to the sanitation issue. It took days to get the head of the project to finally purchase a holding tank that could be taken to an RV dumping station, but finally he did it. And at the end of two weeks no solution had been made to our camping situation, so we had to simply break camp and store it all in the barn, and make space in our van for sleeping. With the head of the project, we had looked into getting an apartment, or a free apartment in Detroit in his house, or a camping spot in a state park campground, but all of those solutions cost too much money either in gas (driving to and from Detroit) or rent. The money was offered to us in a dreamy idealistic way but it didn’t exist in the farm account, so what was the use of offering it? So we ended up sleeping in our van at a truck stop which fortunately was only a few miles away at the highway. It was free, and legal. We did that for I think a little over a week, and came back each morning to the farm to bathe with bucket and wash cloth in the van and cook breakfast on our Coleman stove which was put away in the barn each night.

All this time we were trying to continue working the farm and also to make some money by taking produce to farmer’s markets, but the only ones we made it into were not good and we made little more than enough to break even. We’d have circled endlessly between the truck stop and the farm and the farmer’s markets if I didn’t get some help from my family, who sent us money for a uhaul trailer and invited us to go and stay there, in my hometown of Montague, Michigan. At first my sister offered a spot for free in the campground she and her husband are setting up, and then it was decided we would go and live in my mother’s house and help her. So that is where we are now.

My family, especially my mother, rescued us, and we are very grateful.

We were glad to leave the farm. Everything was going wrong there, the weeds were burying the vegetables and the bulls were not getting their training, and it was all out of control, and we did not want to be part of it. And too much dishonesty in the form of false advertising. But it was sad to leave the beautiful land and the beautiful vegetables, and the bulls. It was sad to leave Christina there to deal with the craziness of it all alone.

Anyway we are now safely situated in an actual house, and everyone is getting along, and we are planning to do a fall garden in the cleared space out back under the power lines and also to grow microgreens for sale to local restaurants. It is my hometown, and is a small town to boot, but it has a real health food store and they even seem to be open to the idea of our offering Bhagavad Gita classes there, and my mother’s land is land in the family and is paid for, a real bonus and almost a necessity for new farmers, so perhaps we are beginning a new phase of life.

So that is what went wrong at the farm and what happened to us. Next blog I will attempt to analyze what we learned from what went wrong at the farm.

We arrived at Vedic Village in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, a little more than two weeks ago.  I think.  It is getting harder to remember just when we arrived.  

It is beautiful here.  Mental images of what the farm would be like, and what it would be like finally working in the peaceful fields sustained my as we packed and travelled, and the reality is just like those images!  It was hard to believe at first that we had arrived because it looked just like my mental images. Wide skies, wide open fields, sun and wind, birds, hayfields, pastures, lush vegetables.  And here I am, working in the good earth of the fields getting muddy hands and feet and knees.

We are living in a cottage tent, with our shower/changing tent nearby and a little tent for kitchen storage next to us, in a corner of the pasture that has been sectioned off for camping space.  This camping situation has been a source of adventure in itself, however.  It is wonderful to be close to nature and wake up surrounded by birdsong, but being surrounded by curious bovines is a different thing.  The fence wasn’t electric yet!  It was supposed to be but they weren’t done yet, and cows are curious and test boundaries.  Actually not cows, two western breed steers, a brown one and a white one, and two half grown zebu bulls, odd shaped beings with round foreheads and real humps and short upright necks and sloping behinds more like donkeys than straight-backed western cows. And the most unearthly lovely eyes.  They are cinnamon brown in color.  Anyway, they would come up to the wire fence and jingle it and push on it, a little more each time.  I tried pushing on them, no dice.  Christina who also stays here to help out gave me an ox whip to scare them with.  They’d back off six feet, then come back.  ”We’re back.  What will you do this time?”  When I tried actually stinging them with the whip they got mad.  The brown steer jumped up and down in a tantrum, and the two young bulls breathed heavily at me.  That did it, I announced: “electric fence by tomorrow or I’m outa here!”  Krsnasraya found the necessary parts here and there around the farm and set to it and the electric fence manifested.  What a relief, now they fear the fence and don’t come to lean on the wire at the tent!

Another way tent living gets you close to nature is weather.  I remember thinking how Michigan has less tornadoes so it will be nice…  Two days after we arrived severe storms were forecast with possible tornadoes.  Great.  We sat in the tent and rode out the storm.  You haven’t lived until you sit in a tent in a violent windstorm (no, not a tornado, fortunately) and have to shout over the roar of the rain drumming on the top and watch the sides convulsing wildly and billowing in at you and the frame whipping from side to side.

Next time the severe storms came, we got up in the night as we heard the continuous thunder in the distance and moved our treasures (my paintings and the computer mostly) to the one strong dry barn for safety, and chairs, and sat out the storm there.  We left the art there in a safe place for storage. Then a couple days later, AGAIN the storms were forecast,  and I placed all my books into black plastic trash bags for safety in the tent.  Once again we brought the computer and this time also our beds and the portable toilet too, to the barn and slept there.  The storm came and the wind blew and next morning we found the tent frame damaged.  It still works though. Now the weather is calm we are back in it. Actually it is very nice in the tent (in good weather.)

Moving stuff in the middle of the night as a severe storm approaches offers a wonderful view of lightning forking and snaking across the sky and down to earth.

There was so much rain that the creek in the hayfield flooded and turned into a strong river that went over the two track road that crosses over it.

All that is just about living here.  There is the farm work too.  Lots of planting still awaited us, and weeding. The farm is understaffed.  Volunteers come, mostly but not all devotees, but it is not enough.  There is so much to do it is confusing, to me at least as I am just learning. And then there was the first day of the CSA (community supported agriculture) delivery, and none of us really knew how we should do it! We stumbled around the garden and tried washing the lettuce, not washing it, putting it in plastic bags, and finally not putting it in plastic bags.  We use large plastic storage bins that are supposed to be returned to us for the next delivery. It is a lot to learn, and I’d say we are all amateurs, although not without gardening experience among us.  I am able to do only about three hours of work most days, and just living by camping takes up time too.  It’s an interesting experience…

I will probably go more into the details of the farming itself as time goes on.

I haven’t written for a long time because we passed through a long period of uncertainty of where we were going next. But now that period is over.

It was clearly time to go somewhere.  Our residence here at this little wooded property on the small lake was temporary, and we have been acutely aware of that all along. Krsnasraya and I have no direct contact with the owners, and rumors were coming at intervals: the property is disputed in a court case between the two owners, or a foreign company will buy it, or it will remain undisturbed for years, or it costs an astronomical amount monthly, etc.

We had a plan to move to the New Talavan Iskcon farm in Mississippi, but delayed the move to finish our Master Gardening course here in Georgia.  We did finish. We learned about soil and botany and climates and vegetables and fruits, and also grass and ornamentals, insects and diseases and fertilizer and compost and even about working with kids.   I would recommend it.  It is inexpensive and full of general knowledge that applies to organic or otherwise, and an opportunity to connect with all kinds of good resources. The Master Gardener course is offered by the County Extension Service, which every county in the US has.  That means that wherever you are, there is good help nearby as you begin to learn how to grow things.

Even though they are connected to big agribusiness and tend a little to promote the chemicals used in so-called conventional farming, the staff at the County Extension are actually more “with it” about organics than the course itself was, since they are working with universities and are therefore closer to the cutting edge.  They are very approachable and ready to help. But for the course they obviously had to resort to some old timers to fill out the class schedule, so you had teachers saying things like, “They used to have a real good insecticide called such and such, but unfortunately they took it off the market.” And you are sitting there thinking, “Thank God they took it off the market!”  It required a little tolerance to sit through such talk, but it was overall very worth while.

So, now all that stands between us and the full title “Master Gardener” is 50 volunteer hours from each of us.  But we will now be heading north and will have to transfer our class credit to Michigan.

Michigan?  How did that come about?  We were all set to move to Mississippi. 

Well, halfway through our course, Krsnasraya happened to decide to call the new devotee farm we had heard about in Michigan called Vedic Village, just to check it out. It turned out to be headed by an old friend of mine, Adiraja das, from my first two years in the movement in Detroit.  As we spoke on the phone, we all found a meeting of minds, as we were all in exciting stages of learning and all inspired by Prabhupada’s instructions to form varnashrama colleges and self sufficient farm communities.  

We went up to visit, crowding our trip between a Thursday class and the next Tuesday class. We arrived in time to help transplant baby seedlings into larger trays; production was under way, even though it was much earlier in the spring in Michigan than it was in Georgia.  To make a long story short, we decided we wanted to help Adiraja’s project instead of going to Mississippi.

Too bad for the loss of opportunity to work with the very nice devotees of New Talavan in Mississippi, and so long to the year-round growing season, but we can’t be everywhere, and it seemed like we’d be more effective in Michigan.  Plus it is a better learning opportunity.   Vedic Village is single-mindedly focused on farming at this time, and tackling a wide variety of crops, plus it is only two or three hours away from Tiller’s International, a school for natural farming methods located near Kalamazoo, founded by a Peace Corps worker and attended by many Peace Corps volunteers to add valuable material to their training. Krsnasraya hopes to attend a class there on ox training.

But having made this decision, we entered an intense time of uncertainty.  It would cost too much to haul our 35 foot trailer up there, so should we leave it here on this property where nothing ever happens, or should we tow it to New Talavan and then go north for the summer (the NT devotees had offered to help tow it with their truck so it would be less expensive) – but if we did that, would that be nice of us? Would we really want to come back down if Vedic Village really took off? What if we left our trailer in NT and couldn’t get back to it?  We also thought of camping in a tent at Vedic Village, but then for a while it looked like there would not be a place to camp. (This year Adiraja is renting only 7 acres of the 80 that make up the whole farm. The land contract for the whole farm starts in Jan next year.)

Then it came: definitive word that the property we have been living on is in foreclosure!!! So no more idea of leaving the trailer here; it has to go somewhere.  And soon. But where? Things became intense. We called New Talavan again, and called Adiraga again.  

This time Adiraja was able to report that he had worked out something with the landowner, and there would be a designated campsite for volunteers.  He also told us there were apartments available in Detroit, one of them being in his house, that would be there in the winter, so we wouldn’t necessarily have to come back down south for the winter at all.

When we finally decided to sell the trailer, it was with great relief.  The trailer, which had served us so well for a year and a half, had become a burden.  We needed to travel light, shed some stuff instead of dragging it around, and be more free to be portable again whenever it came time to move.

So: we have sold the trailer.  We have the deposit, and they are coming Wed afternoon to get it.  We will test our new tent for a few days while we finalize our sorting and packing, and will leave next week after memorial day pulling a Uhaul trailer with all our stuff in it.  That means downsizing!

So we are busy beavers now.  Or, more like compost worms, chewing our way through piles of accumulated STUFF like piles of garbage, turning it slowly and relentlessly into nice neat boxes like nice neat worm castings.

And I have to get back at it! More news about our move when I get the next chance to write.

Sometimes devotees react to the idea of roles in varnashrama with fear: “But what about individuality? Everybody isn’t the same!” And sometimes it is fear of authority. ISKCON went through a lot of bad times. There was gross mismanagement, there was abuse, and there were unqualified leaders, and memories are still scarred from the experience. These days, most devotees are actually working very hard on being or becoming trustworthy, but still there is fear of entrusting ourselves to one another.

A realization

I have found one very quick way to access this fear. Just begin to discuss the role of women in varnashrama, especially in traditional terms, even the terms that Prabhupada used. I am about to embark on such an undertaking anyway, in this blog. I want to share a personal realization that helped me get more clarity on varnashrama.

For several years, until just recently when I had this realization, I was dealing with a vague sort of sadness about my devotional service. I used to give class, I would think, I used to teach courses and lead kirtans even, and now where has it gone? It had been a great victory for me to learn to do those things, but how did I again lose it all? I was inside the movement, and now I am not, I thought – doesn’t Krishna want my service? It was very confusing to me, and nothing really made it feel all the way better, even though I was still actively trying to do things related to Krishna and devotees would tell me that I was still doing devotional service.

Well, Krishna gave me the clue recently; hence, my realization.

It happened this way: A handful of us were gathered at the temple having prasadam after a very nice Harinama, and we were talking, answering questions for a newer devotee among us. I was talking, too, but in between when I was listening to the others I thought, “Here is everything. Harinama, devotee association, speaking the philosophy, everything I wanted, yet I still do not feel better. What ails me? What it is really that is lacking?”

I have often found that if you find your way to the right question, Krishna gives the answer right away, usually within six hours. (Yes, I have seen it to be that precise.) This time it was almost immediate, because suddenly in walked one of my students from the days when I gave classes and courses. This particular student had been with me for the longest, I believe, and is the one who still asks me questions. He immediately greeted me, smiling happily, and I immediately did feel better, greeting him and also smiling happily.

I knew the answer so suddenly it brought tears! No one knew what was wrong with me. In fact, it didn’t look exactly like anything was wrong because I was laughing too, but it took a little while to put it into words.

You see, I used to be a mother to a family. My students were my family, and I was happy when I was teaching them. I called it “preaching” and didn’t call it “being a mother” and therefore the correct diagnosis of my mysterious sadness had eluded me for years. You might ask, what happened to my family? The usual, of course: everybody grew up, in a sense, and went different ways. That is normal, but remember my diagnosis was off. It was a case of empty nest syndrome, no more.

With the correct diagnosis, my sadness evaporated and life felt lighter and simpler, all by itself.

Insight on varnashrama

Personal realization leads to philosophy, and this year’s topic is varnashrama. Therefore in my mind the next step was to look more deeply at the role of women in varnashrama. Prabhupada had given the instruction that a man should see a woman as mother, not even as sister, and no matter her age or status, unless of course she is his own wife. And a woman should see a man as her son unless he is her husband. In this way, Prabhupada said, there would be respect of the highest sort between the sexes.

Now maybe it is a bit of a jump to go from my motherly feelings to women being respected as mother, because motherly feelings are not identical with respect. But the two do have a natural relationship, and thus I began to think more deeply about women in varnashrama.

It is all very interesting, or challenging, because when Prabhupada gave his instructions for varnashrama college, he gave four categories of work (the varnas) for the men, and said the colleges would be for the men only, and really he only gave one category for the women, which basically was wife and mother and homemaker. Immediately we have a problem. Men don’t have to be identical but women do? What is this? But, Prabhupada is a pure devotee. He is the acharya, and he spoke truth. We never say he was wrong. So now what?

For practical application, we see that Prabhupada actually allowed the women to do whatever the men did. In fact he was revolutionary that way, because the tradition in India is more restrictive. He also pointed out that we are not our bodies, so women in the movement are devotees, not women. And he also allowed and encouraged individuality in all his disciples.

Yet he also gave general instructions based on bodily differences including sex.

Thinking deeply, it seems that standard or stereotyped roles in varnashrama are not really stereotypes at all but prototypes, prototypes of basic dynamics for the species. Only the fossilized caste system makes them stereotypes. These prototypes follow biology; that is, women give birth and nurse, so they are usually smaller than men to take care of little beings, and, having small children in their arms, they cannot fight as well, so the men, who are bigger usually, do the main protecting. To keep the whole thing together, there must be a psycho/social dynamic that works, so women are “submissive” (actually cooperative with the men) and the men feel like men and are inspired to do the protecting.

This is the prototype, and from it all (healthy) variations and exceptions branch out. If the results are good, it is healthy, but when the results are bad, it is unhealthy. Opinions vary on how to define this health, but we all know pretty much when something is unhealthy. And like in anything else, there are basic principles to learn first for a foundation, and then the variations and exceptions can be explored quite safely and competently.

Women come in varna-type varieties, the same as men, and the proof is that it is said to be important to consider the varna of each for a good match in marriage. What I am now suggesting is that, due to the subtleties of the prototype, the principle is that a man’s dharma, or duty, is primarily to work in a varna, which is his best way of being a good father, while a woman’s dharma, or duty, is primarily to be mother, even if she works in a varna. Prototype follows biology. It is better to be a mother while protected in a marriage, hence the duty to be a good wife.

Now I am not saying that everybody has to jump up and conform. Everyone is not married; everyone is not happily married; everyone is not given children, and some women are better at working while some men are better with children. All women don’t feel motherly. Etc. What I am saying is that if we all at least surrender enough to the Vedic concept, which Prabhupada brought to us, that we accept the logic of the basic prototype and understand the dynamics, we will understand many things much better. In fact, we are very likely to understand ourselves much better, whether we are “typical’ or “atypical” as individuals.

Understanding duty

Not only that, but we will be better equipped to understand duty. The idea of duty is uncomfortable to Americans at least. It might restrict our hard-won freedoms! Could be dangerous. Yet we study the Bhagavad-Gita, in which Arjuna did not want to do his duty. If Krishna had explained everything to Arjuna previous to the war, Arjuna would have concluded on the day of the battle that this was an exception to the rule. Surely it did not apply to killing one’s own relatives when one did not even feel like doing so! But Krishna chose the moment of launching the battle to throw the veil of illusion over Arjuna’s eyes so that he would begin to ask the questions, and down through the centuries we could benefit from the answers..

Many times so-called freedoms look better than duty, when really it is about sense gratification, with disastrous results. A Native American man named Red Elk said, “In America we are so proud of our Bill of Rights, but instead of a Bill of Rights they should have put in a Bill of Responsibilities.” As a nation we have done great damage to the earth by enjoying our rights with no thought of tomorrow, and now we see that we will have to suffer, and there is no bill of rights that can ward off the suffering.

True duty is actually the path to true freedom. We do not understand the varnashrama principle, which is based on duty. This is what we have to begin to learn about, and is the real reason for varnashrama colleges.