The Philosophy of Gurukula

By studying the lives of great devotees, we learn that they started devotional service from the earliest age. Our spiritual master, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, gives credit to his father for encouraging him from childhood to practice devotional service in his play. The Vedic histories also cite the same training in the life of great devotees such as Maharaja Pariksit, who used to imitate worship of the temple Deity in his own childish play at home. Maharaja Pariksit later became king of the entire world and leader of the most successful God conscious monarchy in history. Prahlada Maharaja is another great devotee of Lord Krsna who lived long ago and was trained in the devotional principles from the earliest age. When he was only five years old he used to tell his fellow classmates, "My dear friends, now is the time to learn what Krsna consciousness is, while we are still very young." Whenever the teacher left the room for recess, he would speak in this way.

At first Prahlada's young friends told him: "Leave us alone. We are only five years old; let us play. When we are older we will take the time to learn about Krsna consciousness." Prahlada, however, spoke with great compassion to the young boys and girls. "My dear friends," he said, "we must take to Krsna consciousness without delay." Prahlada explained that the life span of a human being is at most one hundred years, and it is calculated that the first twenty years are wasted in the games and sports of youth, the last twenty years in rest and retirement in a state of greater or lesser infirmity, and the middle twenty years, in which the sex urge is strong, in raising and maintaining a family. Thus sixty years are spent without self-realization. How much time is left to find the real value of life and begin eternal loving service to Krsna?

With this consideration in mind, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada has asked his disciples to reintroduce the original Vedic system of Gurukula. It is described in the Vedic literatures that children living in a God conscious society would go to the home of the spiritual master at five years of age. Even if the children were of a very aristocratic home, they would submit themselves to the spiritual master as menial servants to perform service for him and receive spiritual instruction. It is described that a young student would rise early, spend all day receiving knowledge and training from the spiritual master, and in the evening he would eat a little rice and then go to sleep. He would think such life great fun because he was serving Krsna. Nowadays, children are spoiled at a very early age; they miss the real point of life because they are mistakenly taught that to please the senses is the all in all. Thus they take to a kind of pampered animalism for the rest of their days, working in order to maintain a high standard of eating, sleeping, sex and defense, and they become useless men who are unable to perform real service for humanity.

At Gurukula, however, children are carefully guided to appreciate that serving Krsna is fun. One of the basic requirements of real spiritual life is to learn how to control the senses. Bodily pleasure is flickering and intoxicating, and one cannot actually enjoy it because of its momentary nature. One who can come to understand the philosophy of the self as spirit soul will never leave it in favor of a whimsical life of unrestricted sense gratification. In his book Beyond Birth and Death, Srila Prabhupada has written, "We have to understand that if we want to continue the artificial enjoyment of the body we will not be able to obtain our position of eternal enjoyment." Therefore Gurukula works to give realization that the purpose of life is to serve Krsna and to gain freedom from the shackles of material life.

After being trained in Krsna consciousness a man can marry and enter household life and yet not fall prey to unrestricted sense gratification. Materialistic householders live simply to work hard and spend money for family maintenance, sex and comfortable sleep at night. Thus they ruin their lives in the darkness of ignorance. But if one learns about the real meaning of life by hearing from the spiritual master at Gurukula, he can enter any occupation in the material world and not be materially implicated. In fact, unless one understands the real meaning of life, he cannot be successful as a citizen, as a family man or in any other sphere of life. Therefore the philosophy of Gurukula is a prime necessity for the present day.