What Do You Have To Show For It

By krishnasmercy on February 25, 2026 • ( 0 )

“Of what use are wealth, comforts and pleasures, home, wives, and sons if one is not able to see Shri Rama?” (Valmiki Ramayana, Ayodhya Kand, 48.7)

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किं नु तेषां गृहैः कार्यं किं दारै: किं धनेन वा
पुत्रैर्वा किं सुखैर्वापि ये न पश्यन्ति राघवम्

kiṃ nu teṣāṃ gṛhaiḥ kāryaṃ kiṃ dārai: kiṃ dhanena vā
putrairvā kiṃ sukhairvāpi ye na paśyanti rāghavam

“Listen, I get it that we should not be overly attached to the temporary. That makes sense as a general rule, even outside of practicing spiritual life. It makes sense because nothing will be fixed. You have these professional athletes crying after learning of a trade to a new team. They grew too attached. They should have realized that the game they play is a business. Because of failure to adequately prepare, they have a difficult time dealing with the transition.

“In that sense, you could say the science of self-realization is for dealing with the many transitions. Actually, the transitions are a constant, it seems. From boyhood to youth to old age, the body always changes. The individual inside remains the same. That individual should be acutely aware of what is happening. Perception alone can be their guide towards transcendence. Nature is subtly urging them in the direction of detachment.”

देहिनो ऽस्मिन् यथा देहे
कौमारं यौवनं जरा
तथा देहान्तर-प्राप्तिर्
धीरस् तत्र न मुह्यति

dehino ‘smin yathā dehe
kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
tathā dehāntara-prāptir
dhīras tatra na muhyati

“As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 2.13)

“There is just one problem, as I see it. You hear so much about the pitfalls of family life. There is that discussion of Puranjana in Bhagavata Purana, how being too attached to the externals makes you vulnerable to taking birth as a woman in the next life. There are the hard knots of sense gratification, as His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada refers to it. Will that not make a person callous towards their fellow man? Towards their fellow species, in fact. I like to make the joke that real religion begins once you put down the hatchet that you were going to use to kill that innocent animal, the one that only moments prior kindly provided you milk, cream, and butter.

“I see people using the teachings of the Vaishnavas to treat people poorly, especially dependents. They have no issue abandoning their children. They leave the wives to suffer, to manage everything on their own. The fathers are absent, and they are supposedly advanced because of this abrupt dismissal of responsibility. Isn’t there the risk of sin in that? Do you see what I am saying? If you keep characterizing family life as negative, why would anyone strive to be good at it? They would use the pursuit of detachment as their insulation from responsibility, thus leaving everything in shambles.”

That is certainly one extreme, in the potential of destinations. The Vaishnava will make the distinction that the purpose of the teaching is not to follow the way of the impersonalists, who tag everything as neti neti, which means “not this, not that.” Otherwise, there would only be one way to success, which is through renunciation.

The idea is to carry a healthy skepticism of the interaction. Maintain a distance, at least in consciousness. There is the other extreme to consider, which is actually the impetus for the instruction. If a person is too attached to their family, they will one day have to take stock of the situation. They will ask themselves the question, “Just what am I left with”.

“Everyone comes to this material world attracted to sense gratification, and the hard knot of sense gratification is the attraction between male and female. By this attraction, one becomes overly attached to the material world in terms of griha-kshetra-suta-apta-vitta—that is, home, land, children, friends, money and so forth. Thus one becomes entangled in the bodily conception of ‘I’ and ‘mine.’” (Shrila Prabhupada, Shrimad Bhagavatam, 4.29.85 Purport)

I worked so hard to maintain my home. I spent every weekend maintaining the land. I sacrificed everything for my children. One day, I have to leave that home. The land is not really used for anything; no one stops by to visit. The children leave home and act as if they have no parents. They are busy in their own ways. Just what was all that work for? I found a way to pass the time, but there is indeed a hard knot of attachment. The spiritual science says that the conceptions carry over, that the lingering attachment triggers another birth, in the next iteration within the material realm.

यं यं वापि स्मरन् भावं
त्यजत्य् अन्ते कलेवरम्
तं तम् एवैति कौन्तेय
सदा तद्-भाव-भावितः

yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ
tyajaty ante kalevaram
taṁ tam evaiti kaunteya
sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitaḥ

“Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, that state he will attain without fail.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 8.6)

We might be surprised to learn that the recommendation for detachment from family life was once harshly presented to husbands, by their own wives. This was an emotional response to the complacency that the women of the households observed. Why were not the husbands eager to follow the prince of Ayodhya into the forest? Why were they anchored to the temporary, when that attachment was preventing them from seeing the beloved eldest son of King Dasharatha?

This is the proper understanding, in fact. While home, family, wives, and children have the potential to create a hard knot of sense gratification, there is also the opportunity for release through the linking in consciousness with the Supreme Lord. This is known as yoga. The recommendation from the teachers within the line of instruction of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is yukta-vairagya. If something can assist in advancing the purification of consciousness, then even when there is supposed indulgence, yukta, the spirit of renunciation, vairagya, remains.