Wedding Lecture

Radha-Krishna Love Is Model For Purified Marriage

📅 July 22, 1968 📍 Montreal ⏱ 22 min
Marriage purifies lust into love when directed toward Krishna consciousness and producing Krishna-conscious children.
Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca

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] Prabhupāda: This last verse... It is not last. It is the third of Brahma-sūtra, Brahma-saṁhitā. Ālola-candraka-lasad-vanamālya-vaṁśī-ratnaṅgadaṁ praṇaya-keli-kalā-vilāsam [Bs. 5.31]. This verse...

There are about one hundred verses in the Brahma-saṁhitā, and this verse, I think, about thirty-eighth verse... So description of Govinda, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The picture is here. So Govinda is not impersonal.

And it is distinctly stated here that ālola-candraka-lasad-vanamālya-vaṁśī [Bs. 5.31]: [I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, round whose neck is swinging a garland of flowers beautified with the moon-locket, whose two hands are adorned with the flute and jeweled ornaments, who always revels in pastimes of love, whose graceful threefold-bending form of Śyāmasundara is eternally manifest.] "The Lord is decorated with flower garland, and He has got a flute in His hand." And praṇaya-keli-kalā-vilāsam: "And He is engaged in transcendental, conjugal love, Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa." So this love which is in our experience within this material world, man and woman, it is not unnatural. It is in God also there. And the Brahma-sūtra, Vedānta-sūtra, in the beginning says that "Who is Brahman, the Supreme Person, or the Absolute Truth?" Athāto brahma jijñāsā, questioning "What is that Absolute Truth?" The answer is janmādy asya yataḥ [SB 1.1.1]: [O my Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa, son of Vasudeva, O all-pervading Personality of Godhead, I offer my respectful obeisances unto You. I meditate upon Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa because He is the Absolute Truth and the primeval cause of all causes of the creation, sustenance and destruction of the manifested universes. He is directly and indirectly conscious of all manifestations, and He is independent because there is no other cause beyond Him. It is He only who first imparted the Vedic knowledge unto the heart of Brahmājī, the original living being. By Him even the great sages and demigods are placed into illusion, as one is bewildered by the illusory representations of water seen in fire, or land seen on water. Only because of Him do the material universes, temporarily manifested by the reactions of the three modes of nature, appear factual, although they are unreal. I therefore meditate upon Him, Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, who is eternally existent in the transcendental abode, which is forever free from the illusory representations of the material world. I meditate upon Him, for He is the Absolute Truth.] "The Absolute Truth is that from whom everything emanates." Very simple definition. That means the fountainhead of everything, the source of everything. Therefore here in this material world we see that the attraction for man and woman, woman's attraction for man, man's attraction for woman, is so prominent. Not only in human society, but in other than: animal society, cat society, dog society, bird society, there is always the attraction, man and woman, or male and female.

Why? The answer is in the Vedānta-sūtra, janmādy asya yataḥ [SB 1.1.1]: because it is there in the Absolute Truth. Without being present in the Absolute Truth, how it can be manifested in the relative truth? This world is called relative world. It is not absolute.

Relative. Difference, two, duality. We cannot understand a man without knowing a woman. We cannot understand father without understanding a son or a mother.

Relativity. But in the absolute world, everything is one. So this love between male and female, conjugal love, we Vaiṣṇava philosophers... Because everyone, according to Vedic system, everyone has to follow the Vedānta-sūtra. There are two section of philosophers in India, approved; not, I mean to say, manufactured philosopher, mental speculators, but actually those who are counted valuable.

There are two classes of philosophers, namely the impersonalist and personalist. The Vaiṣṇava, they accept that the Absolute Truth is person, and the Māyāvādī philosophers, they say the Absolute Truth is impersonal. That is the difference. Otherwise their process of other paraphernalia, execution of understanding, is almost the same. Now our Vaiṣṇava philosopher's argument is that how the Absolute Truth can be impersonal?

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