KC & Women 

By Vraja Kisor Das (108)

Now here you asked about women. A devotee of Krishna sees him or herself as 
a servant of everyone. Everyone. So how could a devotee see someone as being 
inferior??? Noway. trinad api sunicena, taror api sahisnuna, amanina manadena,
kirtaniya sada harih. We devotees must cultivate the mood of being humble and 
seeing everyone as worthy of our respect. Man, woman, ant, it doesn't matter.

Another Vedic verse: yas tu sarvani bhutani, atmany evanupasyanti... This verse
is one that we just made into a new 108 song. It means that a Krishna conscious
person sees that everyone is a part and parcel of Krishna, and that Krishna is 
in everyone's heart. Therefore a devotee never sees or treats anyone in 
a derrogatory way.

The reason why I am quoting Sanskrit is so that you understand that I am not 
making this up in my head : it is authentic. Another verse, you will find it 
in the Bhagavad Gita (5.18): vidya vinnaya sampanne, brahmani gavi hastini... 
A Krishna conscious person sees the soul within everyone, and therefore sees 
everyone equally (Equal Vision) regardless of the differences in their bodies.

If you study Vedic women you will find that they were extremely powerful and 
self-satisfied human beings. A Krishna conscious lady is very very powerful 
and self-situated. She is exemplary. 

Today, women are bewildered and treated in such a way that they are very 
confused and have become very week and easily exploited by men. This is so 
insideous and unfortunate.

If you have specific questions about this subject, please always feel welcome 
to ask me about them.

One thing it this: Although we are not the body, the body is not meaningless. 
It is true that you are not the body, but if you went into the forest without 
clothes, and never ate or drank anything again, and became a living skeleton.

Do you think you could do it? I know I couldn't. Although we are not these 
bodies, we are connected to the body. We identify with it. This is unfortunate 
for us, but it's a fact we have to honestly deal with.

So although we are not the body, we still have the body, and we have to deal 
with it. The body affects us. As we gradually advance and make genuine progress 
in spiritual realization, the body will affect us less and less. And things like
gender will become more and more meaningless. But depending on how much we are 
not free from identifying with the body, we do need to take at least a bit of 
care in feeding it, maintaining it, living with it healthfully, etc.

The relationship between men and women is the metal with which the bars of 
illusion are cast. It is not a fact that we like to hear, neither do I like to
hear it: but it's true nonetheless. So we do need to pay a little bit of 
attention to how we interact between the genders, especially when we are still
affected by bodily demands.

Vedic culture is set up in such a way to ensure mutual respect, and therefore 
there are guidelines of social behavior for the purpose of the spiritual sanity
of society at large. Today, society doesn't care about respecting each other, 
and therefore they don't want any regulations on how they relate to each other.
They want to relate in whichever way is convenient for their sense of enjoyment
at the present moment. Vedic people, though, love each other deeply. They are 
concerned that they maintain repect for each other. And therefore there is 
some consideration of social behavior in terms of the body.

The more one is Krishna conscious, though, the less important these regulations
are. We perceive Vedic culture as demeaning towards woman because we view it 
through the spectacles of our own value-system. The modern culture has 
indocrinated us with a one-way value system. I mean to say that there is one 
ideal of "success," and everyone is judged by how they measure up to that one 
ideal.

Black people become like white businessmen to be sucsessful. Women take 
the roles previously had by men, and count it as success... If you are a doctor 
or a lawyer, you are "sucsessful." If you have a swimming pool, etc. etc.

There is one ideal of "success" and everyone must mold to it. Vedic culture, 
as you know better than I, is not like that at all. It truely values people 
"for who they are." The Vedic culture values the role of the man very highly. 
And the Vedic culture similarly values the role of the woman very highly. 

The Vedic woman plays a traditional role - but this is misinterpreted by 
the modern audience as inferior, or unsuccessful. This in and of itself is 
sexism. It is tantamount to saying that if a woman can not live like a man, 
she is not living up to her potential, she is unsucsessful. The Vedic culture 
is not sexist and therefore, the women play traditional feminine roles, and are
respected for that. The womans role is respected.

There is more to be said about this, but I'll stop here and see if you have 
some questions with which you'd like to direct our conversation on the topic.
What is the outlook of Krishna consciousness towards women, and why is it 
deemed sexist by so many people?

Vraja Kishor das         
