These are quoted from the Srila Prabhupada's purports of the Srimad Bhagavatam.Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 4, Chapter 25 Text 41"A man is always famous for his aggression toward a beautiful woman, and such aggression is sometimes considered rape. Although rape is not legally allowed, it is a fact that a woman likes a man who is very expert at rape."Srimad Bhagavatam Canto 4, Chapter 25 Text 42"As soon as a woman attains the age of puberty, she immediately becomes very much agitated by sexual desire. It is therefore the duty of the father to get his daughter married before she attains puberty. Otherwise she will be very much mortified by not having a husband."NOTE: I AM IN NO WAY TRYING TO DEFAME HIS GRACE. These are his words. What do you make of them?
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Peace & good will twords all,
I know old customs differ as much as
the prensabals that leed us to our diffrent destinations & states of personal experience & accual transcendent evolution in the eternal truth that is our own personal eternal existence beside God! ?
So yes it is important what others think but indaviduals we eternally are so who wouldn't try to think & deside for Self " See hearts not faces" choosing friendship s!* ?
OK.... yes, words are really important and using words properly really matter. Fortunately the human race has made some moral progress, and SP was a big part by allowing women in the movement and he got in trouble with his godbrothres over it.
Even in the not too distant past, the "rule of thumb" common expression comes from the idea that it is only illegal to beat your wife if the rod is skinnier than your thumb.
So words like 'slave" and "rape" need to be updated in my view.
I do not stand by these statements.... also the female brain is not 4 per cent smaller than mans... in fact the dividing wall in the brain between the emotional and logical parts of the brain is thicker on women so they can more easily go from emotional to logical while thinking.
There is no room for these statements, especially in 2018, and if Sp was here, I would bring it up to him. :-)
Bharat - please get off my back. You have been rude and insulting to me here. I have every right to be here. I have donated more than enough to Iskcon for the right to be here, and I am friends with many movement leaders. If you have a problem with me then please take it up on a personal chat. Thnx :-)
P.S The devil's advocate line was only to help you in getting the answer, which you FAILED to do. I will accept any answer from the Vedas as true as long as it is in context. That is if you still remember or even understand the question...
I am reposting some of the other devotees comments from a google group below which might be of help.
Dear Rao gaaru,
Hare Krishna!
Please accept my humble obeisances.
All glories to Srila Gurudeva.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Your question is a very important one. For decades this question has caused turmoil and trip-ups, many heated arguments and discussions, and much anxiety. Many asked Srila Prabhupada questions about this and Srila Prabhupada intelligently answered this question in many different ways. The key is that Srila Prabhupada and his disciples chose to keep this statement unchanged, because to a truly introspective reader, this question begs us to go deeper into the knowledge of Srimad Bhagavat Gita.
I can openly confess that this particular statement, when I read it first about 15 years ago, almost caused me to stop reading the Bhagavad Gita As It Is and put it away as a bigoted male chauvinistic piece of literature. I am glad I continued reading repeatedly, because clearly I saw that understanding that statement whilst in bodily consciousness is impossible.
Many rascals have insulted, blasphemed and painted Srila Prabhupada as a misogynist, as a male chauvinist, etc., on the strength of improper understanding of such statements. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Srila Prabhupada respects every woman more than most women respect themselves.
It is to be understood carefully what Srila Prabhupada means by looking at the broader context and Srila Prabhupada's own behavior towards women.
Just for context, I am pasting the entire verse, translation and purport...
----start----
Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Bhagavad-gītā As It Is 1.40
adharmābhibhavāt kṛṣṇa
praduṣyanti kula-striyaḥ
strīṣu duṣṭāsu vārṣṇeya
jāyate varṇa-sańkaraḥ
SYNONYMS
adharma — irreligion; abhibhavāt — having become predominant; kṛṣṇa — O Kṛṣṇa; praduṣyanti — become polluted; kula-striyaḥ — family ladies; strīṣu — by the womanhood; duṣṭāsu — being so polluted; vārṣṇeya — O descendant of Vṛṣṇi; jāyate — comes into being; varṇa-sańkaraḥ — unwanted progeny.
TRANSLATION
When irreligion is prominent in the family, O Kṛṣṇa, the women of the family become polluted, and from the degradation of womanhood, O descendant of Vṛṣṇi, comes unwanted progeny.
PURPORT
Good population in human society is the basic principle for peace, prosperity and spiritual progress in life. The varṇāśrama religion's principles were so designed that the good population would prevail in society for the general spiritual progress of state and community. Such population depends on the chastity and faithfulness of its womanhood. As children are very prone to be misled, women are similarly very prone to degradation. Therefore, both children and women require protection by the elder members of the family. By being engaged in various religious practices, women will not be misled into adultery. According to Cāṇakya Paṇḍita, women are generally not very intelligent and therefore not trustworthy. So the different family traditions of religious activities should always engage them, and thus their chastity and devotion will give birth to a good population eligible for participating in the varṇāśrama system. On the failure of such varṇāśrama-dharma, naturally the women become free to act and mix with men, and thus adultery is indulged in at the risk of unwanted population. Irresponsible men also provoke adultery in society, and thus unwanted children flood the human race at the risk of war and pestilence.
------end-----
To understand this, we should understand what is the meaning of respect... respect means not taking for granted. Respect means cherishing and serving someone, not exploiting them. Respect means being in spiritual consciousness for ourselves and treating everyone else as spirit soul first and foremost.
How to understand this? Note that Arjuna is making the case and using the example of the social consequences of women left without protection from honorable gentlemen. The warriors assembled on the battlefield of Kurukshetra are all brothers, sons, fathers, and protectors of women, being Kshatriyas. Arjuna knows that most of them will be killed in the battle. This means that the women, girls, ladies being protected from degradation by these slain warriors will now be open for exploitation by jackal-like men.
Let us look at the society around us. Most women are indeed without proper protection. They are forced to work for a living, they are left to fend for themselves and children by unscrupulous men, and they are encouraged to be "fashionable/independent/strong/attractive" etc., which all promotes in the end the effect in society which can be understood as direct or indirect prostitution... This is being encouraged by those men who want to have access to many prostitutes. The woman who has been convinced by some men (and other women previously convinced) to strip off her clothes and pose for a picture on a billboard used to sell something is actually an exploited woman. The woman who has been encouraged to engage in all sorts of activities classified as "culture", "art" and "entertainment", is actually exploited. A woman who is "sexually emancipated" means a woman who has been convinced that to behave wantonly is freedom, freedom for who? Freedom for any man to hunt her down like an animal. And for a man who specializes as a woman hunter it is easy to hunt down an unprotected woman.
Whose fault is it? Is it the women's fault? Should we just blame them for all the problems? NO! Srila Prabhupada is actually saying that it is not their fault. Women are very softhearted by nature. They are very kind, loving, and nurturing. They are also very trusting. It is for this reason that men find it so easy to take advantage of women. When a man wants sex, he just finds a woman he is attracted to and wins her trust with flattery, gifts, sweet words, and promises. When his lust is satiated, he just finds an excuse to move on to the next woman. It is exactly due to this trusting nature that a woman is considered to be untrustworthy, because of her kindhearted nature, a woman sometimes does not know who is to be trusted and who is not to be trusted. A woman is, in this regard, very much innocent and childlike. In this regard, a woman is treated as "not intelligent" because she cannot detect that the nonsense man only wants to gratify his senses, not actually care for her. She mistakes his effort to be a genuine love for her as a person. But she is repeatedly disappointed, first by her father, who does not train her up properly to detect this nature, then by her husband who simply uses her as a prostitute and maidservant, and then by her children who simply take service from her without giving her the love and respect she deserves.
It is time for the men of this world to be ashamed of their inability to do their duty... the reason society is the way it is, is because the men are useless weak fools who don't have the courage or the strength to actually protect the women they are responsible for. This is the decent men I am talking about. The majority of men are dirty lustful men, classified by Srila Prabhupada with polite words as "irresponsible men" above in the purport, actually in the category of dogs, as they are simply woman hunters.
But lest we think this is the natural order, let us turn to the scriptures and Srila Prabhupada.
Consider the cosmic administration of Krishna. Who is in charge of the department of defense? Durga Devi or Kali devi. Who is in charge of education? Saraswati Devi. Who is in charge of finance? Lakshmi devi. Who are in charge of good food, fine speech, beauty, and happiness? The various goddesses of fortune. Does a person give charge of something important and responsible to someone who is unintelligent and untrustworthy?
No, Durga Devi is "mama maayaa duratyayaa" (BG 7.14), she is loved and respected by Krishna and also greatly appreciated. Can you see His love for her? He claims ownership of her "mama", mine, but He lovingly recognizes her service to Him.
In fact, all the goddesses of fortune are highly intelligent and highly trustworthy.
What about Srila Prabhupada? Does he think women are unintelligent? Would a spiritual master give initiation to a person he considers unworthy of initiation? No! Srila Prabhupada gave women so many respectable positions, and he treated them with great love and respect. Ask any female disciple of Srila Prabhupada who is in devotional service what was his behavior towards women.
What is common between the goddesses of fortune and all the exalted Vaishnavis? They are in spiritual consciousness, Krishna consciousness. In other words, a person in Krishna consciousness is intelligent and trustworthy, but not a person in material consciousness.
And this is the key to understanding this statement... a person who considers herself to be a woman, that person is unintelligent. A person who considers that a person in a woman's body to be actually woman (for sense gratification), is also unintelligent. A person who does not know that one has been a woman, man, cat, dog, tree, worm, etc., is also unintelligent. A person who identifies with one's own body or another's body and indulges in sense gratification as a result, is unintelligent. So, lack of intelligence can be the symptom of an ignorant man or woman equally.
But in Krishna consciousness a woman is not treated as an object of sense gratification. She is devi, a goddess of fortune. She is mother. She is highly respected. A person who treats a woman properly as the energy of Krishna is intelligent, and a woman who knows herself as a part-and-parcel of Krishna is intelligent and trustworthy, provided she remains in her spiritual consciousness.
I hope that helps. Please others feel free to add as much information as possible to help everyone understand this statement of Srila Prabhupada properly and uproot the demon of doubt from the hearts and minds of anyone who reads this.
I am leaving this discussion. But before I go, I have to say this. I have been personally involved with a woman who was repeatedly raped, much of it as a child. She loved Krishna and somehow worshipping Krishna was her only comfort as she faced violence and abuse at a tender age. She saw it all, felt it all and chanted. If you talk of a decent life for her and others, is it poisonous? Anyway I have my answers.
If you talk of a decent life for her and others, is it poisonous?
No, What is poisonous is disrespecting divine words of Srila Prabhupada(here And here) based on bodily conceptions such as feminism. If there are questions, then they could be asked rationally, logically, philosophically. But slandering Krsna conscious movement and acarya out of misplaced emotions in feminism, without understanding the philosophy properly isn't appropriate.
Replies
I know old customs differ as much as
the prensabals that leed us to our diffrent destinations & states of personal experience & accual transcendent evolution in the eternal truth that is our own personal eternal existence beside God! ?
So yes it is important what others think but indaviduals we eternally are so who wouldn't try to think & deside for Self " See hearts not faces" choosing friendship s!* ?
OK.... yes, words are really important and using words properly really matter. Fortunately the human race has made some moral progress, and SP was a big part by allowing women in the movement and he got in trouble with his godbrothres over it.
Even in the not too distant past, the "rule of thumb" common expression comes from the idea that it is only illegal to beat your wife if the rod is skinnier than your thumb.
So words like 'slave" and "rape" need to be updated in my view.
I do not stand by these statements.... also the female brain is not 4 per cent smaller than mans... in fact the dividing wall in the brain between the emotional and logical parts of the brain is thicker on women so they can more easily go from emotional to logical while thinking.
There is no room for these statements, especially in 2018, and if Sp was here, I would bring it up to him. :-)
Hare Krsna
As suggested please create a group for devil's advocate
Teach people the principles of Krsna consciousness
Then play devils advocate to test people.
Hare Krsna
Bharat - please get off my back. You have been rude and insulting to me here. I have every right to be here. I have donated more than enough to Iskcon for the right to be here, and I am friends with many movement leaders. If you have a problem with me then please take it up on a personal chat. Thnx :-)
P.S The devil's advocate line was only to help you in getting the answer, which you FAILED to do. I will accept any answer from the Vedas as true as long as it is in context. That is if you still remember or even understand the question...
Hare Krsna
As suggested please create a group for devil's advocate
Then within the group give people a chance to answer the questions of devil's advocates.
Hare Krsna
Following
I am reposting some of the other devotees comments from a google group below which might be of help.
Dear Rao gaaru,
Hare Krishna!
Please accept my humble obeisances.
All glories to Srila Gurudeva.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Your question is a very important one. For decades this question has caused turmoil and trip-ups, many heated arguments and discussions, and much anxiety. Many asked Srila Prabhupada questions about this and Srila Prabhupada intelligently answered this question in many different ways. The key is that Srila Prabhupada and his disciples chose to keep this statement unchanged, because to a truly introspective reader, this question begs us to go deeper into the knowledge of Srimad Bhagavat Gita.
I can openly confess that this particular statement, when I read it first about 15 years ago, almost caused me to stop reading the Bhagavad Gita As It Is and put it away as a bigoted male chauvinistic piece of literature. I am glad I continued reading repeatedly, because clearly I saw that understanding that statement whilst in bodily consciousness is impossible.
Many rascals have insulted, blasphemed and painted Srila Prabhupada as a misogynist, as a male chauvinist, etc., on the strength of improper understanding of such statements. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Srila Prabhupada respects every woman more than most women respect themselves.
It is to be understood carefully what Srila Prabhupada means by looking at the broader context and Srila Prabhupada's own behavior towards women.
Just for context, I am pasting the entire verse, translation and purport...
----start----
Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Bhagavad-gītā As It Is 1.40
adharmābhibhavāt kṛṣṇa
praduṣyanti kula-striyaḥ
strīṣu duṣṭāsu vārṣṇeya
jāyate varṇa-sańkaraḥ
SYNONYMS
adharma — irreligion; abhibhavāt — having become predominant; kṛṣṇa — O Kṛṣṇa; praduṣyanti — become polluted; kula-striyaḥ — family ladies; strīṣu — by the womanhood; duṣṭāsu — being so polluted; vārṣṇeya — O descendant of Vṛṣṇi; jāyate — comes into being; varṇa-sańkaraḥ — unwanted progeny.
TRANSLATION
When irreligion is prominent in the family, O Kṛṣṇa, the women of the family become polluted, and from the degradation of womanhood, O descendant of Vṛṣṇi, comes unwanted progeny.
PURPORT
Good population in human society is the basic principle for peace, prosperity and spiritual progress in life. The varṇāśrama religion's principles were so designed that the good population would prevail in society for the general spiritual progress of state and community. Such population depends on the chastity and faithfulness of its womanhood. As children are very prone to be misled, women are similarly very prone to degradation. Therefore, both children and women require protection by the elder members of the family. By being engaged in various religious practices, women will not be misled into adultery. According to Cāṇakya Paṇḍita, women are generally not very intelligent and therefore not trustworthy. So the different family traditions of religious activities should always engage them, and thus their chastity and devotion will give birth to a good population eligible for participating in the varṇāśrama system. On the failure of such varṇāśrama-dharma, naturally the women become free to act and mix with men, and thus adultery is indulged in at the risk of unwanted population. Irresponsible men also provoke adultery in society, and thus unwanted children flood the human race at the risk of war and pestilence.
------end-----
To understand this, we should understand what is the meaning of respect... respect means not taking for granted. Respect means cherishing and serving someone, not exploiting them. Respect means being in spiritual consciousness for ourselves and treating everyone else as spirit soul first and foremost.
How to understand this? Note that Arjuna is making the case and using the example of the social consequences of women left without protection from honorable gentlemen. The warriors assembled on the battlefield of Kurukshetra are all brothers, sons, fathers, and protectors of women, being Kshatriyas. Arjuna knows that most of them will be killed in the battle. This means that the women, girls, ladies being protected from degradation by these slain warriors will now be open for exploitation by jackal-like men.
Let us look at the society around us. Most women are indeed without proper protection. They are forced to work for a living, they are left to fend for themselves and children by unscrupulous men, and they are encouraged to be "fashionable/independent/strong/attractive" etc., which all promotes in the end the effect in society which can be understood as direct or indirect prostitution... This is being encouraged by those men who want to have access to many prostitutes. The woman who has been convinced by some men (and other women previously convinced) to strip off her clothes and pose for a picture on a billboard used to sell something is actually an exploited woman. The woman who has been encouraged to engage in all sorts of activities classified as "culture", "art" and "entertainment", is actually exploited. A woman who is "sexually emancipated" means a woman who has been convinced that to behave wantonly is freedom, freedom for who? Freedom for any man to hunt her down like an animal. And for a man who specializes as a woman hunter it is easy to hunt down an unprotected woman.
Whose fault is it? Is it the women's fault? Should we just blame them for all the problems? NO! Srila Prabhupada is actually saying that it is not their fault. Women are very softhearted by nature. They are very kind, loving, and nurturing. They are also very trusting. It is for this reason that men find it so easy to take advantage of women. When a man wants sex, he just finds a woman he is attracted to and wins her trust with flattery, gifts, sweet words, and promises. When his lust is satiated, he just finds an excuse to move on to the next woman. It is exactly due to this trusting nature that a woman is considered to be untrustworthy, because of her kindhearted nature, a woman sometimes does not know who is to be trusted and who is not to be trusted. A woman is, in this regard, very much innocent and childlike. In this regard, a woman is treated as "not intelligent" because she cannot detect that the nonsense man only wants to gratify his senses, not actually care for her. She mistakes his effort to be a genuine love for her as a person. But she is repeatedly disappointed, first by her father, who does not train her up properly to detect this nature, then by her husband who simply uses her as a prostitute and maidservant, and then by her children who simply take service from her without giving her the love and respect she deserves.
It is time for the men of this world to be ashamed of their inability to do their duty... the reason society is the way it is, is because the men are useless weak fools who don't have the courage or the strength to actually protect the women they are responsible for. This is the decent men I am talking about. The majority of men are dirty lustful men, classified by Srila Prabhupada with polite words as "irresponsible men" above in the purport, actually in the category of dogs, as they are simply woman hunters.
But lest we think this is the natural order, let us turn to the scriptures and Srila Prabhupada.
Consider the cosmic administration of Krishna. Who is in charge of the department of defense? Durga Devi or Kali devi. Who is in charge of education? Saraswati Devi. Who is in charge of finance? Lakshmi devi. Who are in charge of good food, fine speech, beauty, and happiness? The various goddesses of fortune. Does a person give charge of something important and responsible to someone who is unintelligent and untrustworthy?
No, Durga Devi is "mama maayaa duratyayaa" (BG 7.14), she is loved and respected by Krishna and also greatly appreciated. Can you see His love for her? He claims ownership of her "mama", mine, but He lovingly recognizes her service to Him.
In fact, all the goddesses of fortune are highly intelligent and highly trustworthy.
What about Srila Prabhupada? Does he think women are unintelligent? Would a spiritual master give initiation to a person he considers unworthy of initiation? No! Srila Prabhupada gave women so many respectable positions, and he treated them with great love and respect. Ask any female disciple of Srila Prabhupada who is in devotional service what was his behavior towards women.
What is common between the goddesses of fortune and all the exalted Vaishnavis? They are in spiritual consciousness, Krishna consciousness. In other words, a person in Krishna consciousness is intelligent and trustworthy, but not a person in material consciousness.
And this is the key to understanding this statement... a person who considers herself to be a woman, that person is unintelligent. A person who considers that a person in a woman's body to be actually woman (for sense gratification), is also unintelligent. A person who does not know that one has been a woman, man, cat, dog, tree, worm, etc., is also unintelligent. A person who identifies with one's own body or another's body and indulges in sense gratification as a result, is unintelligent. So, lack of intelligence can be the symptom of an ignorant man or woman equally.
But in Krishna consciousness a woman is not treated as an object of sense gratification. She is devi, a goddess of fortune. She is mother. She is highly respected. A person who treats a woman properly as the energy of Krishna is intelligent, and a woman who knows herself as a part-and-parcel of Krishna is intelligent and trustworthy, provided she remains in her spiritual consciousness.
I hope that helps. Please others feel free to add as much information as possible to help everyone understand this statement of Srila Prabhupada properly and uproot the demon of doubt from the hearts and minds of anyone who reads this.
Sincerely,
Mahabhagavat Das
Hare Krsna
Thank you for understanding.
If you talk of a decent life for her and others, is it poisonous?
No, What is poisonous is disrespecting divine words of Srila Prabhupada(here And here) based on bodily conceptions such as feminism. If there are questions, then they could be asked rationally, logically, philosophically. But slandering Krsna conscious movement and acarya out of misplaced emotions in feminism, without understanding the philosophy properly isn't appropriate.
Hare Krsna
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