Varna

So the conversation starts off like this.

Chetanya Mahaprabhu asks, what is the ultimate goal of life? And the answer is, he says, follow the Varna Ashramas.

And offer all that you are doing to the Lord.

He says, first follow whatever duty you have got to do in that stage of life.

He says, that is also external.

Go one step higher.

And then he says, Now you started off with the Varnashramas, but you go beyond the Varnashramas.

Forget all dharmas that bind you.

I think there's four or five different castes, is that right?

Yeah, there are four, uh, uh, it, it's called Varna.

But yeah, you can call, call it...

So castes can be multiple, but there are four types of varnas.

So this is how the different Jatis came out by this mixture.

And Kshatriya can have, but first wife must belong to one's own Varna.

Because the son who will be born from that, he is the one who will become.

There is a lot of calculation.

If the son is born from this wife, then how much, what are their rights? They don't have equal rights.

So the only one who is belonging to the Varna then has the right.

They are the ones who do the samskaras and everything.

So we heard that the Parjanya, right? Nand Maharaj, his father was Parjanya and his father's name was? No, no, Sursayan was Vasudev's father.

So, Sri Krishna is speaking about the Vanashram Dharma by which one can attain Bhakti.

So, he first described how in the beginning of creation there was only one Varna, there was no variety.

Everybody was Krit, Kritya, perfected being, they were called Hamsa.

And

then, in the Treta, the Varnashram system came from the body of Virat, Purusha, the Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Sudra, Brahmacharya, one Grihasta, one Prastha, and Sannyas.

Four Varna, four Ashram.

They came out.

And their characteristics are, as you said, Janmabhoomanu Sarani.

But before we get into what it looks like in action for you, are there any misconceptions about Hinduism that you think are particularly important to address?

Yeah, it's about Varnas, the caste system.

There's a lot of misconceptions about that.

And I actually had the occasion to clarify that and understand that when I was working on social transformation.

is for the deity use exclusively.

I was just reading this morning in a compilation called Speaking on Varnashrama, And Srila Prabhupada was in the Paris farm in 1976.

And the temple president is saying, we're growing chickpeas, we're growing the flowers in your vase, we also grow.

And Srila Prabhupada said that something that you can buy in the market is 100 times better if you can grow it yourself.

But it doesn't...

You know, people have tried to explain because how to explain then if this is all an illusion and the only reality is Brahman, how to explain? Then there is the other problem which comes up.

So Sri Aurobindo has explained this.

We had reached that point where the Ishvara and Shakti, they are one, the passive and the dynamic side of Brahm- of one reality.

So this is the other one.

"For if all other experiences of the individual consciousness in the universe are illusions, then what guarantee is there that its spiritual experiences are not illusions? Including even its absorbed self-experience of the supreme self, which is connected to us as unreal, which is conceded to us as unreal, unreally real.

But if cosmos is untrue, our experience of the cosmic consciousness of the universal self, of Brahman as all these things or as the self of all these beings, the one in all, o-one of its terms of an illusion on a constitution of Maya.

This term, the cosmic term, has to crumble." So ultimately, you will go to that point where you say even the experience of the self.

A nobleman, but not a king.

The Brahmins of the region, and especially the Orthodox ones in Varanasi, considered Shivaji a Shudra, the lowest of the four Varnas.

And according to the ancient laws, a Shudra had no right to perform a Vedic coronation.

So when he wanted to be crowned, he ran into a wall of ritual purity.