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Family man (Books)

Srimad-Bhagavatam

SB Canto 2

SB 2.1.16, Purport:

The system of the sanātana-dharma institution is so made that the follower is trained for the better next life without any chance that the human life will be spoiled. The holy places all over the world are meant for the residential purposes of retired persons getting ready for a better next life. Intelligent persons must go there at the end of life, and for that matter, after fifty years of age, to live a life of spiritual regeneration for the sake of being freed from family attachment, which is considered to be the shackle of material life. One is recommended to quit home just to get rid of material attachment because one who sticks to family life until death cannot get rid of material attachment and as long as one is materially attached one cannot understand spiritual freedom. One should not, however, become self-complacent simply by leaving home or by creating another home at the holy place, either lawfully or unlawfully. Many persons leave home and go to such holy places, but due to bad association, again become family men by illicit connection with the opposite sex. The illusory energy of matter is so strong that one is apt to be under such illusion at every stage of life, even after quitting one's happy home. Therefore, it is essential that one practice self-control by celibacy without the least desire for sex indulgence. For a man desiring to improve the condition of his existence, sex indulgence is considered suicidal, or even worse. Therefore, to live apart from family life means to become self-controlled in regard to all sense desires, especially sex desires. The method is that one should have a duly sanctified sitting place made of straw, deerskin and carpet, and thus sitting on it one should chant the holy name of the Lord without offense, as prescribed above. The whole process is to drag the mind from material engagements and fix it on the lotus feet of the Lord. This simple process alone will help one advance to the highest stage of spiritual success.

SB 2.3.14, Purport:

Bhagavad-gītā is also part of the Mahābhārata, and it is full of the Lord's instruction for the less intelligent class of men. Some less intelligent men say that Bhagavad-gītā is not meant for householders, but such foolish men forget that Bhagavad-gītā was explained to Arjuna, a gṛhastha (family man), and spoken by the Lord in His role as a gṛhastha. So Bhagavad-gītā, although containing the high philosophy of the Vedic wisdom, is for the beginners in the transcendental science, and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is for graduates and postgraduates in the transcendental science.

SB Canto 3

SB 3.12.5, Purport:

sThe four sons of Brahmā, the Kumāras, declined to become family men even on the request of their great father, Brahmā. Those who are serious about gaining release from material bondage should not be entangled in the false relationship of family bondage. People may ask how the Kumāras could refuse the orders of Brahmā, who was their father and above all the creator of the universe.

SB 3.12.5, Purport:

"Anyone who has completely given up all worldly relationships and has taken absolute shelter of the lotus feet of the Lord, who gives us salvation and who alone is fit to be taken shelter of, is no longer a debtor or servant of anyone, including the demigods, forefathers, sages, other living entities, relatives, and members of human society." Thus there was nothing wrong in the acts of the Kumāras when they refused their great father's request that they become family men.

SB 3.14.19, Purport:

By the Vedic injunction, the wife is accepted as the better half of a man's body because she is supposed to be responsible for discharging half of the duties of the husband. A family man has a responsibility to perform five kinds of sacrifices, called pañca-yajña, in order to get relief from all kinds of unavoidable sinful reaction incurred in the course of his affairs. When a man becomes qualitatively like the cats and dogs, he forgets his duties in cultivating spiritual values, and thus he accepts his wife as a sense gratificatory agency.

SB 3.30.10, Purport:

Although an attached family man is always engaged in getting money by hook or by crook for the maintenance of his family, he cannot enjoy more than what he could consume even without such criminal activities. A man who eats eight ounces of foodstuffs may have to maintain a big family and earn money by any means to support that family, but he himself is not offered more than what he can eat, and sometimes he eats the remnants that are left after his family members are fed. Even by earning money by unfair means, he cannot enjoy life for himself. That is called the covering illusion of māyā.

SB 3.30.14, Translation:

The foolish family man does not become averse to family life although he is maintained by those whom he once maintained. Deformed by the influence of old age, he prepares himself to meet ultimate death.

SB 3.30.15, Purport:

If a man leaves home and dies without his family's knowing, that is considered to be a glorious death. But an attached family man wants his family members to carry him in a great procession even after his death, and although he will not be able to see how the procession goes, he still desires that his body be taken gorgeously in procession. Thus he is happy without even knowing where he has to go when he leaves his body for the next life.

SB 3.30.33, Purport:

The same is applicable to a kṣatriya or to a vaiśya. It is especially mentioned that the means of livelihood of those who are trying to advance in Kṛṣṇa consciousness must be very fair and uncomplicated. Here it is mentioned that he who earns his livelihood by unfair means (kevalena) is sent to the darkest hellish region. Otherwise, if one maintains his family by prescribed methods and honest means, there is no objection to one's being a family man.

SB Canto 5

SB 5.1.12, Purport:

Viṣayān, material affairs, should be accepted without attachment. and everything should be dovetailed with the service of the Lord. That is real intelligence (manīṣā). Becoming a family man or king in the material world is not harmful if one accepts everything for Kṛṣṇa's service. That necessitates clear intelligence. Māyāvādī philosophers say, brahma satyaṁ jagan mithyā: this material world is false, and only the Absolute Truth is real. However, an intelligent devotee in the line of Lord Brahmā and the great sage Nārada—or, in other words, in the Brahma-sampradāya—does not consider this world false.

SB Canto 6

SB 6.14.12, Purport:

Gṛhastha life does not mean having a wife and no children. Cāṇakya Paṇḍita says, putra-hīnaṁ gṛhaṁ śūnyam: if a family man has no son, his home is no better than a desert. The King was certainly most unhappy that he could not get a son, and this is why he had married so many times. Kṣatriyas especially are allowed to marry more than one wife, and this King did so. Nonetheless, he had no issue.

SB 6.16.5, Purport:

It is our practical experience in this material world that the same person who is one's friend today becomes one's enemy tomorrow. Our relationships as friends or enemies, family men or outsiders, are actually the results of our different dealings. Citraketu Mahārāja was lamenting for his son, who was now dead, but he could have considered the situation otherwise. "This living entity," he could have thought, "was my enemy in my last life, and now, having appeared as my son, he is prematurely leaving just to give me pain and agony."

SB Cantos 10.14 to 12 (Translations Only)

SB 10.20.37, Translation:

The fish swimming in the increasingly shallow water did not at all understand that the water was diminishing, just as foolish family men cannot see how the time they have left to live is diminishing with every passing day.

SB 10.60.59, Translation:

The almighty Lord Hari, preceptor of all the worlds, similarly behaved like a conventional householder in the palaces of His other queens, performing the religious duties of a family man.

Sri Caitanya-caritamrta

CC Adi-lila

CC Adi 10.91, Purport:

The forefathers of Śrīla Raghunātha dāsa Gosvāmī were all Vaiṣṇavas and were very rich men. His spiritual master at home was Yadunandana Ācārya. Although Raghunātha dāsa was a family man, he had no attachment for his estate and wife. Seeing his tendency to leave home, his father and uncle engaged special bodyguards to watch over him, but nevertheless he managed to escape their vigilance and went away to Jagannātha Purī to meet Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. This incident took place in the year 1439 Śakābda (A.D. 1517).

CC Madhya-lila

CC Madhya 5.22, Translation:

“You are a most aristocratic family man, well educated and very rich. I am not at all aristocratic, and I am without a decent education and have no wealth.

Other Books by Srila Prabhupada

Teachings of Lord Caitanya

Teachings of Lord Caitanya, Chapter 17:

Lord Caitanya remained a householder until His twenty-fourth year, and in the twenty-fifth year of His life, He accepted the renounced order. After accepting the renounced order (sannyāsa), He attracted many other sannyāsīs. When He had been spreading the saṅkīrtana movement as a family man, many Māyāvādī sannyāsīs did not take His movement very seriously, but after the Lord accepted the sannyāsa order of life, He delivered speculative students, atheists and those who are attached to fruitive activities and unnecessary criticism.

Nectar of Devotion

Nectar of Devotion Preface:

Bhakti means "devotional service." Every service has some attractive feature which drives the servitor progressively on and on. Every one of us within this world is perpetually engaged in some sort of service, and the impetus for such service is the pleasure we derive from it. Driven by affection for his wife and children, a family man works day and night. A philanthropist works in the same way for love of the greater family, and a nationalist for the cause of his country and countrymen.

Nectar of Devotion Preface:

A living entity cannot steadily remain either in sense enjoyment or in renunciation. Change is going on perpetually, and we cannot be happy in either state, because of our eternal constitutional position. Sense gratification does not endure for long, and it is therefore called capala-sukha, or flickering happiness. For example, an ordinary family man who works very hard day and night and is successful in giving comforts to the members of his family thereby relishes a kind of mellow, but his whole advancement of material happiness immediately terminates along with his body as soon as his life is over.

Renunciation Through Wisdom

Renunciation Through Wisdom Introduction:

When Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote these essays, he was a family man playing the part of an insignificant devotee in the Gauḍīya Maṭha, the Kṛṣṇa consciousness society founded by his spiritual master, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura. Yet despite the humble position Śrīla Prabhupāda was taking at the time, his writings mark him unmistakably as a pure devotee.

Light of the Bhagavata

Light of the Bhagavata 32, Purport:

As long as one is attached to the so-called responsibilities of family burdens, he is always full of cares and anxieties about meeting his family expenses. The four orders of social life, as designed in the varṇāśrama system, are very scientific and cooperative. In student life one is taught the primary principles of the human form of life. One who enters the householder's life can execute the duties of a family man because he has already been trained for this job in the brahmacarya-āśrama. And after fifty years of age the householder retires from family life and prepares for the life of sannyāsa.

Light of the Bhagavata 34, Purport:

Foolish politicians are too attached to family life. A big politician means a big family man. An ordinary family man is attached to his limited family of wife and children, but big politicians extend the same family feeling to a wider circle and thus become encumbered by false prestige, honor, and self-interest. The politician never retires from politics, even if he has enjoyed many covetable posts, like those of minister or president. The older he is, the more he is attached to his false prestige.

Light of the Bhagavata 34, Purport:

Even at the fag end of his life he thinks that everything will be spoiled without him. He is so foolish that he does not see that many other politicians who thought like him have come and gone, with no gain or loss for want of them. These family men, big and small, are like the small fish in the pools of water that gradually dry up in the autumn. They are foolish because they think that their attachment to their family, even at the end of their lives, will be able to protect them from the cruel hands of death.

Sri Isopanisad

Sri Isopanisad 2, Purport:

An ordinary man works for his own sense enjoyment, and when this principle of sense enjoyment is extended to include his society, nation or humanity in general, it assumes various attractive names such as altruism, socialism, communism, nationalism and humanitarianism. These "isms" are certainly very attractive forms of karma-bandhana (karmic bondage), but the Vedic instruction of Śrī Īśopaniṣad is that if one actually wants to live for any of the above "isms," he should make them God-centered. There is no harm in becoming a family man, or an altruist, a socialist, a communist, a nationalist or a humanitarian, provided that one executes his activities in relation with īśāvāsya, the God-centered conception.

Page Title:Family man (Books)
Compiler:Visnu Murti, Gopinath
Created:30 of Dec, 2011
Totals by Section:BG=0, SB=14, CC=2, OB=8, Lec=0, Con=0, Let=0
No. of Quotes:24