Householder Life in New Dvārakā

According to the strict rules of most genuine yoga systems, including hatha-yoga, jnana-yoga and sahkhya-yoga, women are not allowed to participate, and men must renounce all family ties. But bhakti-yoga, Krsna consciousness, is so powerful in its purification that its full benefits are available to renounced celibates and to married men and women as well.

"The Vedic scriptures," Srila Prabhupada explains, "describe two kinds of householders: grhasthas and grhamedhis. A grhastha is a married man who lives with wife and children, but transcendentally-to realize the Supreme Truth. Grhamedhis, however, live only for their families and friends; they are envious of others. Please do not be a grhamedhi." Disregarding spiritual culture, grhamedhis spend their days either making money or spending it, and their nights they spend sleeping or enjoying sex. They depend upon their families, friends, communities and nations, not realizing that these are armies of fallible soldiers who cannot protect them from death. Thus the grhamedhis, in the final issue, are failures, because they die without realizing the ultimate goal of life.

A Krsna conscious householder is a grhastha who lives for transcendental progress, not for envious competition with others for artificial opulence. Most of New Dvaraka's married couples live in comfortable apartments in four nearby buildings owned by the Society, but their lives revolve as much around the temple as around their homes, for the center of their lives is Krsna. Since marriage affords a less austere, physically more comfortable existence than the life of a brahmacari, some devotees find it easier to make Krsna conscious progress in marriage than in brahmacari life. In return for the pleasures of being a householder, a married man takes the responsibility for both the spiritual welfare and material comfort of his family. Thus New Dvaraka's householders all work at paying jobs-some within the New Dvaraka community, others outside. Generally the men who work outside give half of their income to supporting the temple's programs.

In Krsna consciousness, husband and wife assist each other in serving Krsna, and they raise children in bhakti-yoga. Susarma dasi, a married girl at New Dvaraka, says, "Our children, five years old and two years old, are automatically learning spiritual principles, and this is one big thing that drew us here. We were trying to do meditation and yoga, and it always had to be when the children were asleep. We couldn't include them in it. But even a child can chant Hare Krsna."

"This is a practical spiritual community," comments Umapati dasa, a 36-year-old householder who has settled in New Dvaraka with his wife, Ilavati, and who works as a computer programmer for New Dvaraka's Spiritual Sky Scented Products Company. "Regardless of one's occupation or social position, anyone can engage in Krsna consciousness and achieve the highest perfection of life."