Eating Bananas and Looking at Women in Saris (06/04/02)

Eating Bananas and Looking at Women in Saris (06/04/02)

M___ Dāsa,

Hare Kṛṣṇa.

We welcome any sincere Iskcon devotees to attend our programs if they want to hear, but we do not go to Iskcon. This was the instruction of Śrīla Śrīdhara Mahārāja and we have been following that for many years.

If there is an invitation from the senior-most leaders of Iskcon for us to attend something at Iskcon, we sometimes consider attending. For example, we have attended functions in the past at Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma Temple and Prabhupāda’s samādhi in Vṛndāvana, and also at Māyāpura, but that was a very rare ocassion.

We are a small society and we certainly cannot offer anyone a ‘social life,’ but a ‘social life’ is not a required element for becoming a pure devotee of Kṛṣṇa. In fact, this so-called ‘social life’ is more of a disturbance than a help to our devotional service.

As Gaura Kiśora Dāsa Bābājī once said, “They go to Ratha-Yātrā to eat bananas and look at women in saris.”

‘Social life’ means ‘Hellish life’.

I hope you are well.

With Affection,

Swami B.G. Narasiṅgha