What is the position of women in a spiritual culture?

Question: Can you please explain the position of women in Vedic culture? There are so many terrible vestiges of that culture like sati and dowry. What should be the position of women in a spiritual culture in today’s culture?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
and in a spiritual society? There seem to have been a lot of exploitation of women in the form of sati and dowry and restriction of opportunities. And how does all this apply also to women who are devotees and are practising so that they can become spiritually advanced? Answer, the Vedic culture can be totally misunderstood if it is seen out of the context of Vedic philosophy. Every culture grows out of values.
And if those values are not taken into consideration, then the culture can seem very repressive. For example, for a culture that thrives exclusively on materialism and even hedonism, then matrimonial chastity is seen to be a burden. It is seen to be a restriction to freedom.
Or to speak of that, even going further, drinking and smoking, which are clearly having detrimental health consequences, what to speak of further karmic consequences, are also seen as objects of enjoyment, as sources of enjoyment, because one doesn’t know of any higher enjoyment. So the basic point to understand is that we have to first recognise the values before judging the culture. So in the Vedic culture, the fundamental value is for spiritual advancement, and that value is based on understanding of the philosophy that we are not the body, we are the soul.
So the philosophical understanding leads to values, social values, and that leads to culture. So if we just evaluate the culture without understanding the underlying values and the foundational philosophy, it may appear that the position of women was negative in Vedic culture. So once we understand that we are not the body, we are the soul, then the next step is that because soul is eternal and body is temporary, spiritual happiness is eternal whereas material happiness is temporary.
Therefore an intelligent person should strive for spiritual happiness. How best can one strive for spiritual happiness? That will vary according to the kind of body one has. The Vedic culture doesn’t say that we have to negate or reject the body.
We have to utilise the body in the best possible way so that we can do our social responsibilities and also make spiritual advancement so that we ultimately realise that we are not the body. So one of the greatest obstacles to spiritual advancement, to realisation that I am not the body, I am the soul, is the temptation for sex and the sexual attraction at large because there’s no other factor that perpetuates our bodily identification and infatuates us with bodily desires than sex and that is why the sexual temptation is seen negatively in the Vedic culture because it distracts and obstructs one. It distracts and obstructs one from experiencing the higher lasting spiritual happiness.
So once we philosophically understand that the goal of life is spiritual happiness and that is so for everyone, for men, women, children, aged people, everyone, then the values that come is to have a social culture that facilitates the development of spiritual advancement and that minimises the distractions for the spiritual advancement. So in general when we use the word culture, we generally understand that it refers to an environment that facilitates a particular way of development. In biology we may use the word yeast culture or bacteria culture.
What that means is that we create a biochemical environment where yeast and bacteria can grow. So similarly a spiritual culture is that which enables spiritual aspect of human beings to grow. A human culture is that which enables the human aspect of people to grow.
Now the modern culture with its explicit and implicit glamorisation of materialism doesn’t actually lead to the growth of spiritual spirituality or even humanity for that matter. Why not even humanity? Because when all the propaganda is for material enjoyment centred around sex, then this brings out the worst within us, not the best within us. It means all of us have a lower side which can be considered demoniac, to be selfish, to be exploitative, to grab and to control and to dominate others.
And we have a divine side, a higher side, which is to serve, to cooperate, to sacrifice, to assist. So to make a contribution rather than to be contributive, rather than to be exploitative. So there is a perpetual battle between us, between this higher and the lower side.
And Vedic culture arranges society in a way that there is greater facility for the nobler side of the human personality to come out. In the modern society, especially the materialistic versions of modern society, actually there is all facility and all temptations readily made available and in fact bombarded to bring out the lower side. Like there are advertisements also which say, discover the beast within you.
So the beast is there and why do we need to discover it? If we discover the beast within us, then we will have to become a beast in the future. We will take a beastly body to fulfil those bestial desires. So by having women depicted primarily as sex symbols, it brings out the worst within man.
It brings out the most bestial animalistic desires where there is no sanctity of vision in man, where he doesn’t see women as mothers. Women can be seen for their maternal aspect or for their sexual aspect. So the Vedic culture, as Janaki Pandit would say, matravat paradari shu, see every woman other than one’s own wife as a mother.
But modern culture sees women exclusively for their sexual aspect and in fact this goes so far that there were perverted geniuses, intellectuals like Sigmund Freud, who saw the sexual aspect even in their mothers. And they went so far as to say that actually everybody has those perverse passions, that everybody, all humanity has sexual attraction towards their mother. And this is suppressed because of social culture.
And because of that, it leads to so many problems. Now this whole idea called as Oedipus complex and Viagra complex has no basis in evidence or in science. But Freud portrayed it as science and it got generalised.
And Freud still haunts psychology today. But the focus is that modern culture sees women primarily as sexual objects. Of course, the sexual aspect is there to the human personality and that is not to be denied, but that has to be carefully utilised, not exploited.
So not only does the excessive glamorisation of the sexual impulse and the depiction of women as sex objects lead to the bestial desires awakening within men, but it actually leads to the awakening of seductive desires even in women. So, lust if not controlled transmogrifies. Transmogrifies means to transform in a very negative and unfortunate way.
It transmogrifies men into monsters and women into witches. It transmogrifies men into lusty beasts who are out to exploit and dominate and violate women. And it transmogrifies women into seductresses who are looking for every opportunity to make a man fall prey to their charms.
So this is not a criticism of either of men or women. Now whose problem is it if men get attracted to women? Is it a man’s problem that a man should control himself? Or is it a woman’s problem that she should not let herself be portrayed as a sex object? It is everybody’s problem. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that, In this material world, lust is the enemy of everybody.
Lust, Krishna calls as the enemy of the world itself. So, it is a problem for everybody and it is a problem that has to be solved by everybody. So, in the Srimad Bhagavatam, Narada Muni in the seventh canto, in his teachings, compares men to butter and women to fire.
So, whenever butter comes close to fire, it melts. So, this analogy is given for a specific purpose. That analogy is given to indicate that there should be minimisation of the contact between men and women.
Why? Because otherwise there are undesirable and even catastrophic consequences. So, when there is unrestricted mixing between men and women, there is a sense of titillation and excitement and pleasure for both men and women. Because the sexual desires and fantasies are tickled.
But the nature of lust is that it tends to go out of control. It is very difficult that once the sexual impulse is triggered to keep it within limits. And that is why the Vedic culture has the system of marriage to keep, to not deny the sexual impulse, to not repress it, but to regulate it within the limits of dharma.
And it is not only Vedic culture. It is all of human society that had this. So, but when beyond the boundary of marriage, there is unrestricted and frivolous mixing between men and women and that leads to agitation of mind for both.
So, in order to minimise the agitation, the Vedic culture portrays women and men in a particular way. It portrays those men as heroic who are able to restrict the attraction to women. That means, in order to avoid the butter melting with the fire, by contact with the fire, that butter which stays as far away from the fire as possible is considered to be the best butter.
So, that is why the renunciates, the sannyasis and brahmacharis are respected in the world. Not everybody will renounce the world. Not everybody can renounce the world and become a renunciate, brahmachari or sannyasi.
But if one understands that regulating the sexual impulse is the desired standard, that will help to advance in spiritual life. Then that leads to other human beings, other men also controlling their sexual impulses as much as possible. And similarly, that fire which keeps itself as much covered as possible so that it does not end in the butter, that fire is considered to be the best.
That means, a woman who does not exhibit her sexual charms but conceals them and portrays her motherly side, her maternal side rather than her sexual side, that is considered to be the best. So, the fire that doesn’t melt the butter is considered the best fire. The butter that doesn’t go to any other fire is considered the best butter.
So, in Vedic culture, women are valued for their chastity and for their maternity. In modern culture, women are valued, actually they are not valued, they are glamorised for their sexuality and rather than being valued, they are used. They are used as long as they have some sexual appeal.
And that is why women who live only for their sexual appeal find their life becoming empty and meaningless and nightmarish when the sexual appeal goes away as it inevitably happens with the ageing of the body. So, with this overall understanding that the sexual identification leads to provocation of one’s lower desires and it incriminates one in sinful activities that will lead to suffering and especially it totally distracts one from spiritual advancement, Vedic culture organises society in a way that will facilitate spiritual advancement while also taking care of social duties. So, that’s why women are recommended to be chaste and men are recommended to be self-controlled.
So, the ideal for men is the one who is self-controlled as much as possible. Ideal for women is the one who is as chaste and as focussing on maternity rather than sexuality as possible. Now, coming to specific aspects, how does all this relate with modern society? Every culture has its own negotiables and non-negotiables.
So, if we want to practise spiritual life and if you want to make spiritual advancement, then self-discipline, self-mastery, the control of the sexual impulse is a non-negotiable that has to be done and how women can practically be engaged in society that has to vary according to time, place, circumstance. If you look at Srila Prabhupada, Srila Prabhupada strongly recommended that women always be protected either by the husband or the father or the son but at the same time he engaged his disciples, even female disciples in productive services according to their talents and abilities. He never discriminated against women and none of his women disciples ever felt that they were being minimised just because they had female bodies.
Srila Prabhupada saw beyond the body to the soul and saw how the soul’s spiritual potential could be best kindled by engagement in devotional service. Because he was so spiritually advanced and because he was so beyond the bodily conception, so even when he talked about the need for having some minimum separation between men and women, that was not ever seen as anything to do against women as such because he was speaking from the platform of compassion. However, if this whole principle that women need to be protected is not implemented by men who are sufficiently spiritually advanced but it is by men who are themselves prone to succumb to their lower sides, then unfortunately that exploit that what is meant to protection can become exploitation.
So that is what has at times unfortunately happened in Vedic culture. So if we look at Sati and Dauri, Sati originally was meant to be entirely voluntary and it was considered glorious. The whole idea is that both the husband and wife understand that we are not the body we are the soul.
Body has to fall sometime or the other. So if the husband dies, the wife because she had tried her life long to serve her husband and by that service she has developed a deep relationship with her husband. She feels that life without her husband is intolerable and in fact she feels that the fire of the funeral is preferable to the fire of separation from the husband.
Now we may find it difficult to even conceive such a level of family affection and attraction although in our modern society we talk about love so often. In Vedic culture people may not talk about love. Husband and wife may not give red roses to each other but their love was expressed through commitment.
So at that time if a woman is serving a man, a husband who is on the path of Dharma and then she leaves her body at that time along with him then she attains the destination that he has attained and this way she also gets elevated. So we have examples in the Vedic culture that when Lord Krishna departed and when Rukmini Devi she also entered Sati and in fact when Pandu Maharaj departed both Madhuri and Kunti were practically arguing with each other because both of them wanted to go Sati. So they considered it a privilege but then Madhuri said that I am young and I am not so experienced and I will not be able to take care of our children and that is our duty.
So please you are mature and experienced, you stay and you take care of the children and let me go with Pandu and Kunti reluctantly agreed. So again as I said that we may not even be able to understand this aspect of the culture because the values and the philosophy that underlie it are not understandable to us but of course those who do not understand the value and philosophy if they try to either condemn it or implement it in both ways they will make a mess out of it. So if they condemn it as it happened when especially the European and British conquerors came to India and they conquered India and when they saw the whole concept of Sati they sent out reports of horror to the West.
Now if you see the West is not so innocent the West also has its ghastly tradition of witch-hunting. Now if a man had if a man would make accusation against his wife of being unchaste and very little evidence would be required for that once that is done then either the witch would be stoned to death by beating or the witch would have or the woman who was considered to be a witch because she was unchaste was either stoned to death or she was burned alive. So witch-burning in fact even when according to the biblical tradition that when Jesus’ mother Mary she was still a virgin and still she became a mother and in fact she was haunted at that time by the thought of being hunted down and stoned to death like a witch.
So the West also has a very regrettable tradition of abusing and exploiting women and so the point here is that when the overall society becomes more and more materialistic then when the man when the husband passes away at that time the in-laws family feels that the woman is just a burden and they want to do away with her and then Sati has been terribly misused but that misuse was a complete perversion of its original purpose and even in the Vedic culture it was never forced Sati was never forced for example we still have to see that when the Mahabharata Vichitravirya passed away, Satyavati she continued to live on she did not go Sati because there were royal duties to be performed and nobody forced her to go. So the point again is that if we don’t understand the philosophy and we don’t understand the values that come from that philosophy if we just look at the cultures then superficially we can condemn it and as happened by the Western people and superficially we can implement it as it happens when women are forced to go Sati and in both cases it is a distortion so what is needed is not the condemnation or rejection of the culture but what is needed is that we go deep down to understand the philosophy to understand the values and then see how those that philosophy and those values can be implemented in society today. Same principle applies to dowry in the Vedic culture according to Manu Samhita the normally property as an inheritance goes to the sons not the daughters but then children daughters have their own wealth yes the daughters would have their own wealth and that would be what be passed on in the ladies of the family so the mother would give whatever she had received as her dowry to her daughter when she would go in marriage and that would be considered to be her property and later on when her daughter would get married that would be passed on to her and in fact the dowry was considered to be the property not of the husband or the husband’s family but of the who had come as the bride so it was in one sense her financial security arrangement now again when the whole principle of spiritual advancement as the purpose of life is lost then dowry has been transmogrified into a money-making business where the amount of money that is given is made as a precondition for marriage so this is again an undesirable and entirely against the original purpose a perversion of the original culture so as of now in modern society how what is what should or what is the position of women what is is unfortunately yes women have their talents and they have made made their own contributions in modern society and often the career woman is the glamorised role model of the woman right now but it is also a sad fact that it is very difficult for a woman to maintain her maternal responsibilities if she focusses excessively on her career and a man can do the earning but a man cannot really take care of the children and neither can a babysitter take care of the children so to consider them that a woman should only be a mother and a homemaker does that restrict the opportunity for a woman not necessarily women can still have their talents and their abilities and they can utilise them they can study scripture they can there are so many feminine arts and there are so many feminine skills which they can learn and they can become expert in them there’s cooking they’re dancing there is singing and there are so many feminine skills which they are surely given full facility to develop but the whole idea the problem with modern society is is a is a unidimensional definition of success when materialism becomes the role of life then material enjoyment and material possession becomes the definition of success so to have a big career and to have a big position in society and to have people bow down to or salute to a person or to salute a person that is the definition of success within a materialistic society and actually materialistic society does not although everybody wants to portray that I am special I am special but it actually removes all specialness from a person and it makes everybody conform to its own standards so modern society gives a unidimensional definition of success for everyone whether a person is a man or a woman what is the success you have to go out and make a big career and get position and fame and power and that is success but that is that doesn’t take into account the differences between man and woman and when a woman can be her full person in her own right why does a woman have to be a copycat of a man or why does a woman have to accept the definition of success that a man has therefore a man to build a career and to go out and struggle and slug it out in an office it’s a tough life one has to fight so much and for a man to do that why should why does a woman have to take all that trouble now we may feel why not life is meant for challenges yes life is meant for challenges but there are worthwhile challenges and there are counterproductive or unproductive challenges not everything that is challenging is worthwhile so unfortunately because of excessive materialism and because of excessive glamorisation of materialistic success now all of us tend to sacrifice what is best for us to for the sake of what is most glamorised that is why we see the same thing if engineering and medicine are the glamorised careers that even when young people have talents for arts or writing or other fields just feel that they are missing something and they go into they go into engineering and medicine and spoil their and lead a miserable life because they’re not cut out for that so similarly by nature’s arrangement women have an indispensable role to play as mothers it is an unsubstitutable role and in western society where most women resent the idea of just being mothers and they want to have their own careers the fallout is that the children get neglected several surveys have shown how among children who grow up addicted or who grow up into juvenile delinquency into teenage criminality the single common denominator is the lack of mother’s love at home so you know women by trying to do by accepting this unidimensional definition of success offered by modern society they try to do what men do and it’s not that they can’t succeed they may succeed but at what cost though they often have to undergo and troubles of sexual molestation at office or other at other places they have to have the whole struggle of managing both a career and a family and often because the career side is more glamorised so the family side gets neglected and the children especially grow up unloved and it leads to many complications and a whole generation in the future can get unfortunately grow up unloved and so get perverted all this is not to say that women should not have a career as a blanket statement the important point which we are making is that we have to understand the philosophy and the values that underlie Vedic culture and how those philosophy that philosophy in those values hold true even today now how that should be applied in today’s society will vary according time place and circumstance the Taliban in Afghanistan it made a mandate rule that no woman should work and that led to disaster because due to the war there were so many families in which they were no earning men and only women were earning and the families practically were on the verge of starving and the Taliban was told this they just said a responsibility that Allah will provide for everyone and this is a monstrous perversion of original spiritual principle this is blind insensitive and unintelligent application of a originally valid principle so yes God will provide but God has not only provided with the nature for our necessities but God has also given the responsibility of providing the necessities of the citizens to the leaders of society and that is why kings are there that is why the political leaders so this sort of implementation of so as I said in the Western society there is no understanding of spirituality and that is why the whole idea of that woman should be restrained that there should be some separation between men and women that women should be valued not for their sexuality but for their maternity that is not understood at all and that has led to exploitation of women its own way there is so much molestation and abuse and violation of women that happens but as I said if you don’t understand the spiritual foundation philosophical foundation even if we reject the culture we make mess out of it and even if we implement the culture as the Taliban is trying to do they make a mess out of it so therefore we have to individually assess our situation and see how the original spiritual philosophy spiritual principles hold true even today and how there is philosophy and values can be best practised in modern society.
Shila Prabhupada in this connection was very pragmatic you know he saw that a Western those women were born Western culture they had their they had been born and brought up in a culture where they would go out and do things just like men would and he engaged them accordingly now that doesn’t mean that that has to be the role model for every woman who comes to Krishna consciousness no a woman can and find it suitable and likeable for them to play the primary role of mothers in society that is what is best and that is what they should do but based on their own talents their own ambitions their own social situations these cannot be neglected or suppressed so how they can be applied and implemented that will have to be decided based on individual discretion and coupled with guidance from senior devotees those who are experienced in spiritual life the point again is not to exploit or minimise women but the point is to facilitate spiritual advancement for both men and women so to conclude sometimes it happens that even in the devotee community if the philosophical foundation is not properly understood then the protection of women can transmogrify into into minimisation of into their minimisation and to the disrespect for them Vedic culture never recommends disrespect and Samhita says that that house where women are honoured that is the house where God’s reside so that is is surely a distortion of Vedic culture and that has to be understood to be a distortion and we should not throw the baby out with the basket and reject the whole Vedic philosophy just because of the distortions of the Vedic culture that we have seen rather we need to go to deep within understand the philosophy and see how it can be implemented in our life