Which varna do doctors belong to?

I have heard some devotees say that they belong to the shudra varna because they deal with the body, a material thing.

Transcript

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yes question which varna do doctors belong to I have heard that doctors are said to belong to the shudra varna because they deal with the body answer not necessarily in the Mahabharata its clearly mentioned that when Bhishma Pitamah was injured and then the brahmins certain brahmins came to treat him with herbs and mantras and potions so he waved them away and he told Duryodhana please give charity to these worthy brahmanas respectable brahmins and send them off because I will no longer take any treatment now my time in the world is nearing an end and I will die performing austerities so essentially those who are coming to treat him Bhishma treats them as brahmanas as respectable as knowledgeable of mantras and as worthy of charity so these characteristics definitely do not define a shudra now sometimes there are some devotees who may say that certain professions are vaisyas are shudra professions the important point however is that some devotees may say that anybody who takes a salary from someone is a shudra now in one sense that is true but even among kshatriyas not all kshatriyas have big big lands and not all kshatriyas all those who are fighting in the war not all of them are having all the opulence that marks a kshatriya that’s for the kings and the generals and the other people who are really big in the kingdom but the average soldier is often a paid soldier the average soldier cannot take taxes the whole system if everybody is taking taxes and paying it to somebody higher in the hierarchy it would become endlessly complicated so yes there was kshatriyastic taxes but there are those who fight in the war who are also paid soldiers so now then Bhagavatam also talks about it in 7th canto when Prahlad Maharaj says that there are people who do trade in dangerous fields and there who become mercenaries and those who do this sort of activities for the greed of money for the sake of money so the point is that even those who fight wars they are also considered to be people may fight wars even for the sake of money and are they kshatriyas or are they shudras we can’t go into a hair splitting analysis they are fighting a war so we can say they are kshatriyas they are taking the salaries of their shudras but within the war they are respected as having the courage to fight a war so we shouldn’t get into this hair splitting analysis of which Varuna a particular person belongs to we should focus on how best can that be used for serving Krishna actually Prabhupada also pragmatic like this in his classes on Janmaishwara Shruta Shri Bhi Kunti Maharani’s prayers 1.8.26 27 when he is talking about those verses so he explains addressing an American audience and he says all of you have got a high birth America is the most prosperous country in the world and you are fortunate to be born in America now if somebody was a rigid stickler for Vedic conventions that person would say that birth in America is a Mleccha birth and that is a low class birth that is not a fortunate birth but then Shri Prabhupada recognized today’s social cultural reality and today’s social cultural reality Americans are considered to be world leaders and he utilized that he said if you Americans take to Krishna Consciousness the whole world will take to Krishna Consciousness so therefore Shri Prabhupada considered that in today’s social cultural reality that is considered to be a high birth and then how can that high birth be used in Krishna’s service he said yes you Americans are world leaders so you take up Krishna Consciousness the same way we see today doctors are considered quite respectable in society people go to doctors when they are in need and if doctors while offering treatment for the body they also offer treatment for the mind and the heart by taking or talking about Krishna then people are often quite in a submissive mood to hear there are many doctors say the doctors at Bhaktivant hospital in Mumbai and other places they are able to do significant amount of outreach through just being competent doctors and adding some spiritual element in their counseling to their patients so the point is that rather than going into a hair splitting analysis of which varna a particular profession belongs to we should focus on how best that profession can be used in Krishna’s service and not bother too much about the varna now certainly we should never if somebody is a doctor and we tell that oh you are a shudra that is definitely not the way to do any kind of outreach and as far as ourselves we are concerned if that helps us to develop a feeling of humility then we can think that way but if that makes us unnecessarily feel mortified and makes us feel disheartened then that is not good because ultimately whatever profession we are doing we have to do it competently and to do it competently we have to have some basic feeling of the worth of the profession and when we understand that doctors also make a significant contribution in terms of taking care of the health of the people now we could say the doctors are dealing with the body and in that sense they are shudras that is just one way of looking at it, it is today’s medicine that dehumanizes patients because today’s medicine has no spiritual component to it medical science when you consider the soul but spiritual health is increasingly becoming a part of today’s medicine and especially say for treatments which involve palliative care in terminal diseases many doctors and many hospices especially take into consideration the faith of the patient and then provide guidance accordingly so the point is that you know if the doctors start seeing the patients not just as bodies but as human beings as persons and ultimately as spiritual beings then they are dealing with people if they are dealing with people that is shudras are definitely not dealing with people so in general it is said that brahmanas deal with thoughts and ideas and concepts kshatriyas manage people kshatriyas deal with people the vaisyas deal with animals and the shudras deal with things but it is also again a broad categorization because everybody has to deal with people everybody has relationship but the focus we are talking about over here so if the doctors start seeing their patients not just as not just as things as shudras would do but they start seeing them as people then certainly they are not in any way like shudras at that time they see them as spiritual beings and as as people who have been put in there whom Krishna has arranged to come to them so that along with treating their body they can also give them spiritual ideas then their own thought process and their own conduct can be brahmanical so rather than going into a hair splitting analysis of which varna a particular profession belongs to we focus on how best we can use how best we can serve Krishna in that varna and then how we can have our disposition and our action favorable to serving Krishna according to that profession that is what as devotees we should focus on thank you so if somebody is