How is internal cleanliness a bodily austerity?

From Rambhadara Priya Prabhu:
Prabhupada mentions internal cleanliness in Gita 17.14 purport while discussing austerity of the body.

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna Question from Rambhadra Piyapuram This is based on Bhagavad Gita 17.14 When talking about austerities of the body, one of which is cleanliness, Sri Prabhupada mentions external and internal cleanliness. Now, internal cleanliness is normally done through chanting of the Hare Krishna Mahamantra.
So, why would this be considered as a bodily austerity? Answer Sri Prabhupada does not specifically state over here that he is referring to chanting Hare Krishna as a means of internal cleanliness. So, usually the words external and internal they generally refer to from the point of view of reference, what is outside us and what is inside us. But, in that sense, it is valid to say that external refers to external bodily cleanliness and internal refers to chanting of Hare Krishna Mahamantra.
But, in this particular context, because Sri Prabhupada does not necessarily state specifically that he is referring to internal as chanting Hare Krishna, external can also refer to things. Now, austerity of the body is also that we physically move around and clean things around us. We keep our room clean, we keep our house clean and in that way we participate, we make sure that we also do some physical austerity in terms of keeping ourselves clean.
And from the world’s point of view, there is appearance and there is substance also. So, just like, nowadays people instead of taking bath, they often just put a lot of perfumes on their body, put, try to cover up the uncleanliness and the smelliness of the body by putting a lot of personal care items. So, although they are not internally clean, they exude a sense of cleanliness by their, by external appearance.
So, we could say internal cleanliness also applies to actually cleaning the body and not to just appearing clean. Just like with respect to a room, instead of actually organizing things and keeping properly all of them in some place, sometimes when a guest is coming, people just take all unclean things and dump and push them all maybe under a bed and have a cloth hanging around from the bed so that things appear clean although they are not clean. So, similarly, it may well appear that sometimes, it may well be that people appear to be very clean and attractive at the level of the body, but they are not actually clean.
They are just putting up stuff by which they look clean. So, internal cleanliness would also, in that sense, also refer to not just using externals to give an illusion of cleanliness but to actually cleaning oneself properly. And further, Ishwara Prabhupada does not always in his purpose stick to a technical limits within his purpose.
That means, that Ishwara Prabhupada often gives us much greater a far broader message than what is specifically given in that verse. That is his compassion. Just as we know at many places that Krishna is simply talking about Karma Yoga but Prabhupada explains how the essential message of the Bhagavad Gita is Bhakti Yoga.
And in this way, he compassionately gives us the essential message practically in every purport. So, in that sense also, if we say that internal cleanliness refers to actually cleaning oneself internally in terms of removing the anarthas, then we can say that actually Prabhupada is not restricting the word shauca to its specific application in this particular verse in 17.40 but he is expanding the verse, expanding the ambit of the word to also include inner cleanliness and that is not invalid because shauca is related with the word shuchi and Krishna uses the word shuchi earlier in the Bhagavad Gita in 6.41 to refer to people who are clean. shuchi naam shrimatam yehe yogo bhrashto vijayate, shuchi naam shrimatam yehe the deviated yogis are born in the houses of the saintly people of the shuchi naam, the brahminical families which refers to people who are actually pure, clean internally, who have pure lifestyle and who have pure heart so shuchi naam can also refer to those who have clean, pure lifestyle and that means also includes clean habits which also refers to clean disposition so we could take this meaning because Prabhupada is not specific in his purport in referring to what internal cleanliness refers to so we could refer to internal cleanliness as actual cleanliness of the body and not just an appearance of glossiness as is done through perfumes and things like that or we can say that Prabhupada is going beyond the technical specific application of the words as it applies in this context and he is giving a broad, out of his compassion he is giving a broader application and he is using the word shuchi in the broader sense of external and internal cleanliness thank you so when