VMA 1.52 :: Be indifferent to all other duties: go to Vrindavan!
na vedājñā-bhaṅge kuru bhayam aye nāpi vacanaṁ
gurūṇāṁ manyethāḥ praviśa nahi loka-vyavahṛtau |
kuṭumbādye dīne drava na kṛpayā no bhava sito’
sakṛt snehair vṛndāvanam anu haṭhān niḥsara sakhe ||
My friend!Commentary
Don’t be afraid to break the commands of the Vedas.
Neither should you heed the words of your elders.
And don’t enter into customary, worldly behavior.
Don’t melt with compassion when you see
your family and friends in dire straights.
Quickly, depart from the material world
and enter Vrindavan with redoubled affection. (VMA 1.52)
A friend of mine recently said to me that the Vaishnava can be the cruelest of all people. It seemed like a strong statement, and it shocked me somewhat, as I had been trying to understand the concept of prema for a long time, and the idea that a devotee who knows prema could ever be cruel seemed strange.
What is love? I have always tried to see love as being the strongest characteristic and goal of the Lord's devotees. The Lord himself is the manifestation of love, especially when incarnate as the Divine Couple. And yet, as we saw in our discussion of the previous verse, when one learns to discriminate, in other words to recognize the hierarchy of values in human life, one is placed under a moral imperative based on those hierarchies. And that can lead to what looks to limited vision like cruelty, or at the very least, indifference.
The Gītā itself is a series of instructions to Arjuna who was horrified that he would have to kill his own family members. Krishna instructed him to abandon his attachments to relationships based on identification with the body. He told him not to be a weakling, a coward, implying that his love was nothing more than limiting attachment preventing him from seeing his higher duty and purpose in serving God's will.
Even though there can be merit to worldly love in softening the heart and prompting one to do good, there are always higher values that need to be understood and can only be understood when the material attachments are seen for what they are. Hannah Arendt's famous phrase, "the banality of evil" is a reference to the kind of external adherence to duty in blissful ignorance, the following of authority in a way that neglects individual consideration of the higher moral law. Arjuna wanted to submit to the moral principles of his society and religion, based in love of his family and teachers, without being aware of the highest, objective morality, which is in God.
Similarly, the gopis are also symbolic of transcending the relative morality, not on the basis of intellectual understanding, but through intuitive understanding and aesthetic attraction. But even they were "cruel" in their abandonment of their household and family relations to follow Krishna. When Krishna challenged them, the gopis argued,
yat paty-apatya-suhṛdām anuvṛttir aṅga
strīṇāṁ svadharma iti dharma-vidā tvayoktam|
astv evam etad upadeśapade tvayīśe
preṣṭho bhavāṁs tanubhṛtāṁ kila bandhur ātmā ||
So whatever duties we have to friends, lovers and even to our Self, are given us by God, and thus we must see the presence of God in our duties toward them. In fact, the scripture says to worship one's parents, one's teacher and one's guests as though they were God (mātṛdevo bhava, pitṛdevo bhava, ācāryadevo bhava, atithidevo bhava, Taittiriya Upanishad 1.10.2). But the real teaching is not that they are independent gods, but that God manifests himself to us in those forms, presents us with opportunities to learn and serve through them, and that by understanding our roles in these relations we receive God's grace through them.
But at the same time the scripture tells us that sometimes we must progress beyond these roles and examine the manifestations of grace objectively, against a higher standard of morality, as Arjuna was obliged to in the Gītā, as were the gopis when they heard Krishna's flute.
gurur na sa syāt svajano na sa syāt
pitā na sa syāj jananī na sā syāt
daivaṁ na tat syān na patiś ca sa syān
na mocayed yaḥ samupetamṛtyum
The meaning here is that these gurus and so on fulfill their divine role to the extent that they embody the absolute standard of moral perfection or religious duty.
Now here Prabodhananda Saraswati is saying that residence in Vrindavan represents the highest religious duty, trumping all others. For those who are genuine adhikaris, who are qualified by the desire to attain pure love for and service to Radha and Krishna, all other duties must be cast aside to fulfill that purpose.
This is a difficult principle to understand, even more difficult to put into practice, and it is often misunderstood and its implications lost, but this is the founding principle of rasika Vaishnavism. [See VMA 1.30]
Vrindavan is the nexus of the material and spiritual worlds. Without the presence of those absolutely renounced souls who enter the inner world of Vrindavan, its meaning for those who live in the outer world cannot be understood. Absolute Love in that world is reflected into this one through their absolute commitment to the vision of the nitya Vrindavan. How can we see God in fathers, mothers, lovers and wives, teachers and guests, if we have not seen their example of absolute commitment to love?
VMA 1.51 : The intelligence of recognizing Vrindavan
VMA 1.50 : “Do you know the secret of defeating death?”
VMA 1.49 : Even while in Vrindavan, you wander about in externals!
VMA 1.48 : Never leave Vrindavan
VMA 1.47 : What can Vrindavan give you?
VMA 1.46 : Vrindavan: The ripe fulfillment of Krishna prema
VMA 1.45 :: Vrindavan, worshiped by munis, gods and divine beings
VMA 1.43 :: Those who die in Vrindavan are the greatest Vaishnavas
VMA 1.42 :: The Abode of the King of Rasa
Comments
O I once told my yoga guru, Baba Hari das, "People say you are so sweet, but to me you are a stone-cold killer." He laughed and laughed, responding, "Sometimes I am."