By Visakha Devi Dasi
In appointing Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leaders of the Church of England have made an exemplary statement. They have seen past Bishop Sarah’s bodily identification (a woman!) to her extraordinary personal merit.
One of Sri Krsna’s first teachings to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-gita is that we are not the body we temporarily inhabit; rather, we are spiritual beings, part and parcel of God. Thus a key indicator of spiritually advanced persons is that they see themselves and others as spiritual beings (which is their actual identity) rather than as belonging to a certain gender, nationality, religion, race, species and so forth (which is their transitory housing). The Bhagavad-gita famously declares,
vidyā-vinaya-sampanne
brāhmaṇe gavi hastini
śuni caiva śva-pāke ca
paṇḍitāḥ sama-darśinaḥ
“The humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcaste]” (Gita 5.18).
Read more: https://iskconnews.org/opinion-seeing-spirit-not-gender-in-the-church-of-englands-new-leader/
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