How do we understand harsh scriptural statements about certain classes of people as found in Bhagavatam 6.18.42

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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How do we understand especially harsh statements about women as found in say the Bhagavatam 6, 18, 42? Answer, the basic principle is that everything that is present in scripture is not necessarily the teaching of scripture. Scripture contains narratives, stories by different characters and these characters themselves have different motivations and they speak according to their motivations, their conceptions and their experiences or rather their analysis or their understandings of their experiences. So, for example, in the attack and kill Vishnu, then if they destroy the brahmanical sacrifices on the earth, then they stop all the brahmanical sacrifices and the gods will weaken and then die and then ultimately if this whole system of human-cosmic, human-terrestrial-celestial cooperation is checked, then ultimately even the, even Vishnu may die.
Now, this is not at all the teaching of the Bhagavatam. It is quite clear that Vishnu is immortal. So, just as when a demon is speaking, it is clear for us to understand, it is easy for us to understand that this is simply the demon speaking one’s own opinion and that is not necessarily a scriptural teaching.
So, similarly, in this particular pastime, when Kashyap Muni is speaking, it is his experience and his thoughts based on the experience that he is speaking. That doesn’t necessarily mean that that is the truth for all time and all places. Now, we might ourselves, for example, when we are frustrated, we might make a generic statement about certain class of people.
Say, if we are let down or cheated or betrayed by someone, then we might say, oh, you know, people from this part of the world or this particular social group, they are always like this. Now, that may not be at all true, but it is just at that stage, we could say our frustration speaking. So, similarly, when we see such statements in scripture, we need to understand that they are not necessarily the teaching of scripture.
They are the teaching of the thoughts of one particular person who is in that character. So, here what has happened is that Kashyap Muni has been misled by Diti’s allurements and he has ended up uniting with her at an inappropriate time and although he didn’t want to, but when she allured him, he somehow couldn’t say no and he ended up doing what he shouldn’t have done. So, thus what happened over there was that he is expressing his frustration and if we see it that way, we don’t.
So, we might generalize from our experience and he is generalizing from his experience. If what he is saying is an absolute statement, then why would scripture itself have statements or depictions of women also who are great devotees? There is Kunti, there is Draupadi and so at that particular point, if we see his context, he feels that it was by her sweet words and by her actions she allured him and he is feeling frustrated because of that. So, he is generalizing from his experience and he is making a statement.
So, is that a teaching of scripture? No, that is his personal statement, his personal expression and now sometimes some devotees may present that this is what the Bhagavatam says, but we have to understand that that is not the most mature understanding of scripture. So, in scripture there are certain things which are descriptive and certain things which are prescriptive. So, for example, in the Bhagavatam, in the Chaitanya Charita Amrit, there is a description of how Haridas Thakur was not allowed into the Jagannath temple and now is that something which Chaitanya Mahaprabhu recommends or is that something which we also accept that this is how things should be? No, that is a descriptive statement about the state of affairs at that time but that is not how it is meant to be all the time.
So, similarly, the scripture is giving a description here of what Kashyap Muni said at that particular time. So, descriptions of the statements by particular characters in the scripture are themselves not considered to be absolute truths. Let us look at the context.
In fact, if we go further even the absolute truth may not be speaking an absolute truth at all times. When Krishna speaks the Karmamamsa philosophy, his purpose is simply to annoy and anger Indra and get him down from the position of arrogance that he has assumed. So, what is going on over there is, the absolute truth may speak something which is not the absolute truth and how do we know that? That is the context.
So, it is not the teaching of scripture that if we do duties there is no need for any intervention of any cosmic agencies. If we do our duties then the results are automatically going to come. No, we do our duty that is important but along with that there has to be sanctioned by higher agencies and then we get the results.
So, context is critical in comprehending content. So, everything in scripture is not the teaching of scripture. What is descriptive in scripture is not prescriptive and what is spoken by the absolute truth even that may not be an absolute truth if the context indicates otherwise.
Thank you. How do we make use of the principle