Prostitutes were present in Dwarka the abode of pure devotees – how to understand?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, how do we understand that it is possible to live in Dwaraka? And now there are two different things going on over here. The first is that the Bhakti literature is very specific or very unabashed in describing the inclusiveness of Bhakti.
That means anybody from any background can practice Bhakti. That inclusiveness is there. There is a verse that even those who are no more, 9.33 in the Bhagavad Gita that even those who are no more, Aisha, Shudra, even they can practice Bhakti.
Kirat, Narada, Kunti, Kulakarsha. All kinds of people from all backgrounds can practice Bhakti. So, the inclusiveness of Bhakti is often unabashedly talked about in the Bhakti literature.
And if you see the moon of that particular section when Krishna is coming and when Krishna is coming to Dwaraka after a long time everyone is a practitioner. And Prabhupada says that one can even be a prostitute. But if one is a devotee of the Lord, that is important.
So, this means that the devotion is so inclusive that nobody is left out. That is the important thing that is stressed over. We should, whenever scripture speaks something we have to focus on what that scripture is promising.
Otherwise, we may miss out on the main point that is given. The main point is that actually Bhakti is so inclusive that even people who are of a profession that is normally considered to be literate even they can practice Bhakti. And this is how all attractive Krishna is, this is how accommodating Bhakti is.
That is the thrust. If you see, the point of that section is not to give a description of say, of the social cross-section of any particular race. Bhagavat is a spiritual book.
While conveying that spiritual thrust there is this description also that is given. So, the thrust is on how everyone is attracted to Krishna. Even prostitutes are attracted to Krishna.
So, having said that first point, the second point to understand is that the word prostitute itself can have many different meanings. So, sometimes a woman who does not have a husband, she may be, she is not under the shelter of her husband. Sometimes, say women who were artists, they would dance in public during celebrations and festivals.
But they, it would not be that culture women would do that. There would be women who would do that. So, in the Vedic culture, there were women who were called Devi Dasis.
Devi Dasis, now some of the people, some of them in the westernized media they are depicted as prostitutes and say that temples were like places where all these Devi Dasis were there and it was a place of prostitution. That’s completely wrong. There were some women who were born to be completely devoted to God.
And then they would come to the temple and they would dance for the pleasure of the Lord. They would be devoted to the Lord. So, now they were, by some people, because they were not under the protection of someone, they would be called as prostitutes.
That means specifically women who were devoted to God. But also there were artists. So, the word prostitute can have many different meanings.
It does not necessarily have to mean a woman who drains her body for money. So, specifically what that word means, that particular word means, there can be different meanings of that. Thirdly, even if we say that actually prostitutes refer to women who were doing a business with their bodies.
Still, the point remains that even a place like Dwarka, isn’t it a place where Krishna is there? That there are pure devotees there? Yes, there are pure devotees, but when the spiritual manifests at the material level, then there is only a complex interaction that happens. When the spiritual manifests at the material level, then in the ultimate sense, there is, it’s all a leela of the Lord. But in the intermediate sense, sometimes there are some things which are right, some things which are wrong.
It’s like Dwarkas, they are all pure devotees of Krishna. But at the same time, they all got into a drunken brawl and they fought with each other and they killed each other. That’s how the whole thing ends over there.
So there is a deeper explanation for that. Krishna wanted things to end in that way so that he could delude the demons. That is called as Asura Mohan Leela.
To delude the demons, Krishna sometimes acts in such a way which can lead people to come to counter-devotional conclusions. But the important thing is that in the ultimate sense, everything that happens in the Lord’s immediate circle, that is transcendental. But in the immediate sense, that can be right or wrong.
Yudhishthir is gambling properly. It’s wrong. But then through Yudhishthir’s gambling properly, at the pastime of Krishna coming to the rescue of his devotees, that is a natural thing.
So his decision from a moral point of view is wrong. If you don’t see it from the ultimate perspective, is Krishna orchestrated at all? So that he could demonstrate everything. So like that, when we say at one level, the devotees in Ayodhya, the people in the Devasi, let’s just call initially the Ramayana, they were so heartbroken.
They all wanted to come out with Ram. And Ram had to actually trip them. That night when they were sleeping, Ram woke up early in the morning and he left them a shawl.
Otherwise they would have all come with him. They were so devoted to him that they were ready to give up. They were ready to take up with Ram the sentence of himself.
But then yet, some of those, they ended up criticizing him. And they were criticizing him so much that Ram had to be separated from Sita. So, when we have the, when the Lord resides in this world, in a particular place, in a particular context, it’s not necessary that everybody in that setting is a creation.
So, everybody will not be as he goes to be means that that there is a there is a Dharmic, there will be principle of Dharma. But the principle of Dharma also vary for everyone. About the king’s discretion, no, they are expected to be subordinate to Sita.
That is the principle activity of Dharma for them. But along with that, they have royal opulence. They often have polygamy.
They have many things. And sometimes they might unite with their maidservants also. But the idea was to be Christians.
And they got Vidura. And Gandhari is pregnant for a long time. They got Vidura for maidservant.
But then that maidservant will also be pregnant. So, the parameter of Dharma, Dharma is a principle which regulates. But the circumference of what comprises Dharma, that varies for different people.
So, that varies for different people means, the principle of Dharma at a material level for Ramana are different from that for Kshatriyas. And they are different from that for that for Sindhras. So, as Nirmal Bhai says, that at one level, there are people who are going to have unwarranted, who have excessive sensual desires.
And for such people, within the, now, they, rather than they contaminate society, the culture of human society, there is a necessity to provide for them. So, that means that the principle of Dharma is not monolithic. It’s like concentric circles.
If you’re not fit in this level, you’re fit in this level. If you’re not fit in this level, you’re fit in this level. But still within some kind of regulation.
So, that means, if at all we have to argue that the word prostitute there refers to women who were engaged in prostitution, then also we understand that this could have been a part of the Lord’s plan. Because when the Lord demonstrated in the center of this world, not all associates all the time act in the mode of trans-manifestation. He’s only demonstrating how the people that the principles of there may be people who are devoted to the Lord, but still that devotion doesn’t necessarily lead to renunciation.
There is devotion. But devotion does not necessarily immediately lead to attachment and make that relationship. So, even those people are accommodated.
Many of them, there will be Dharmic, but that Dharma doesn’t mean that they will live life like monastics. They’ve been living in a open milieu. As long as they had the intention for devotion, as long as they were protecting Dharma, they had the different degrees of license to do good work.
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