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Ārya-samāj means one who knows his duty, how to do it in proper time.
Ārya-samāj means one who knows his duty, how to do it in proper time.
Lecture on SB 6.1.12 -- Honolulu, May 13, 1976:
So Kṛṣṇa, when found Arjuna, that he was in the battlefield and Kṛṣṇa Himself is guiding him and becoming the chariot driver, and He saw that "Arjuna is declining to fight?" He became surprised. So He chastised him, kutas te kaśmalam idaṁ viṣame samupasthitam anārya-juṣṭam. Aryan, ārya, ārya. "So this is not for a gentleman, business. You are behaving like non-Aryans." Non-Aryan. So this is the difference between culture and nonculture, that... There is a Bengali proverb that one girl was to dance on the stage. So in Indian civilization the girls or the woman, they cover their head with..., from superiors. So nāste vase guntala(?). She has gone to dance on the stage, and she is pulling on the veil. "Now, where is the opportunity of here to become a household wife? You have come to dance." So similarly, Arjuna was chastised that "You have come to fight, and now you are becoming very nonviolent, atheist..., er, theist. What is...? So this is anārya. You have to do your duty in proper place." That is Aryanism. That is ārya. Ārya-samāj means one who knows his duty, how to do it in proper time. So kṣatriya, his duty is to fight, to defend from the hands of the enemy. So he was declining to fight, so He chastised him, "Non-Aryans. You are not Aryan.
So here Śukadeva Gosvāmī says, "My dear king, if a diseased person eats the pure, uncontaminated food prescribed by a physician, he is gradually cured, and the infection of disease can no longer touch him. Similarly, if one follows the regulative principles of knowledge, he gradually progresses towards liberation from material contamination." This is the translation of the... Nāśnataḥ pathyam. Pathyam. Pathyam means good foodstuff, not "Anything I can eat." That is the business of the hogs and dogs. Just like hogs have no discrimination. Anything, up to stool you give him: it will eat. That is not human civilization. Although it is the law of nature that ahastāni sahastānām. Vegetables or animals who has no hand... Just like ordinary animals, they have got four legs, no hand. So these four-legged animals is the food for the two-legged animals. Ahastāni sahastānām. Uncivilized men means two-legged animals. They are animals, but two-legged. There are four-legged animals; there are two-legged. Ahastāni sahastānām apadāni catuṣ-padām: "And living entities who have no legs, just like the vegetables, grass, plants, trees..." They have no legs. They cannot move, but they are living entities. They are food for catuṣ-padām, for the animals who have got four legs. Ahastāni sahastānām apadāni catuṣ-padām, phalgūni mahatāṁ tatra: "And the weak is food for the strong." Phalgūni... Jīvo jīvasya jīvanam. This is the law of nature, that one life is meant for maintaining another life. That is going on. So sometimes they put forward this argument that "You are also eating vegetables. They have got life. Why you object that nonvegetarians who are eating four legged animals...?" No. We are not going to infringe to the laws of nature. That is not our business. You can eat four-legged animals because you are also animal. But when we speak of civilized animals... Civilized is not animal. That is human being. So long one is not civilized, he is animal. And the civilization begins when one understands that he is not this body. That is the beginning of civilization. Yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke (SB 10.84.13). So long one is in ignorance, the bodily concept of life, he is animal. When one knows that "I am not this body; I am... Ahaṁ brahmāsmi," then civilization begins.
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