“Varņāśrama-dharma Is External” Is It?

Śri Caitanya Mahäprabhu’s famous statement that varņāśrama- dharma is external (eho bāhya)[A] should be understood contextually, especially considering that sästra recommends, and Vaisnava acaryas uphold, that aspiring devotees should act according to varņāśrama norms at least until they have attained the perfected stage.”[B]

Śrila Prabhupāda explained:

Eho bähya. Caitanya Mahāprabhu was interested only on the spiritual platform. He rejected the material side. Our position is different. We are trying to implement Krsna consciousness in everything. And Caitanya Mahaprabhu personally took sannyasa. He rejected completely material. Nişkiñcana. But we are not going to be nişkiñcana. We are trying to cement the troubled position of the Bhagavad-gitä. We are not rejecting the whole society. Caitanya Mahäprabhu rejected everything: eho bãhya. Rejected meaning “I do not take much interest in this.” Bāhya: “It is external.” He was simply interested in the internal, the spiritual. But our duty is that we shall arrange the external affairs all so nicely that one day they will come to the spiritual platform very easily, paving the way. And Caitanya Mahäprabhu, personality like that, they have nothing to do with this material world. But we are preaching. Therefore we must pave the situation in such a way that gradually they will be promoted to the spiritual plane.[C]

“External” does not mean unnecessary. It means “extrinsic to the essence,” or that which is not required for those who are in full Krsna consciousness. External activities are unavoidable for persons who are outside the spiritual realm, and varņāśrama- dharma offers guidance regarding how to act in this external world to persons who wish to leave it and return to the spiritual abode. Analogously, a hospital patient must undergo therapy: by accepting a course of blood transfusions, enemas, surgeries, x-rays, and so forth, he should become sufficiently fit to be discharged and return to healthy society, after which he no longer has any need for medical treatment. Similarly, persons who are outside the spiritual world but want to get inside must perform activities within this material world, and they should do so according to varnāśrama-dharma.”

It must be iterated that devotees who stress Srila Prabhupāda’s order to establish varnāśrama-dharma are fully aware that it is neither the goal of life nor the best means to attain that goal (especially in this Kali-yuga, when chanting of the holy names is the yuga-dharma and varņāśrama-dharma cannot be followed very punctiliously). Still, “even if there is some temporary disturbance in the execution of the varnāśrama- dharma principles, they can be revived at any moment.”[D] To the degree that it can be instituted, varnāśrama-dharma is needed for devotees, and actually for the entire world, if at all sanity is to be restored within it.[E]

---

[A] Cc 2.8.59. [B] See SB 3.29.15, 11.20,9 [C] Conversation, 14 Feb 1977 [D] SB 5.19, Summary [E] See also: “Varnasrama and Bhakti,” p.229

 

Source: Book: “Mothers & Master” Page 17-19