Stri dharma in Krsna Consciousness

 Polygamy for karmis not devotees  Letter to Karandhara -- Bombay 9 January, 1973:  According to our Vedic process, polygamy is allowed. For example, Krsna married 16,000 wives, Arjuna married 3 or 4 wives, Krsna's father Vasudeva, married 16 or 18 wives, like that. So according to the Vedic system polygamy is not prohibited. But it is not a farce also. Every wife must be provided for sufficiently. Krsna married 16,000 wives, but each wife was provided a palace and He was personally present at each palace. It does not meant to marry many wives and maintain none of them. If anyone is able to keep more than one wife and give them all comforts of life, there is no objection for having more than one wife. But if he creates trouble by marrying, he should not marry even one wife, this is my judgment. Now you can do the needful, taking into consideration the circumstances of the laws of your country, the customs of your people, the reputation of our society, the example which wi...

  Regarding your wish to be married with a Krsna conscious family, that is nice. You will have your nice, fixed-up wife, and you will be happy working hard for Krsna together. I never discourage marriage, providing it is for Krsna’s service and not for simply sex life. It is always meant for a higher purpose. In God’s creation there is male and female even in the spiritual world and there is purpose for such creation. This purpose is so that male and female may join together, not for sex-life, but to glorify the Lord. From Srimad-Bhagavatam we learn that in Vaikuntha the women are much more   beautiful in their figure, smiling, dressing, etc., but the men and women there are so much attracted by the chanting of Hare Krsna that they do not get any sex impulse even by intimate mingling. Here also we sometimes get very good example, because when our nice boys and girls are dancing together in chanting Hare Krsna at least for that time they forget all about the sex impulse. This i...

 Çré Bhaktivinoda Öhäkura has expressed the purpose of marriage in the following words: “One should not enter marriage for the purpose of begetting children or to worship the forefathers. Rather, one should think, ‘I accept this maidservant of Kåñëa so that we may be able to assist each other in the service of Kåñëa.’ This attitude is favorable to bhakti.” Consequently, those who marry without a desire for children can actually be true gåhastha Vaiñëavas. When a man truly regards his wife as a maidservant of Kåñëa, there is no scope for regarding her as an object of his own pleasure; instead his mood will be one of adoration. It is a fact that there are statements that sanction the desire for children, such as puträrthe kriyate bhäryä: “A wife is accepted for the purpose of having children,” but the implication here is that one should desire to beget servants of Kåñëa, and not ordinary mundane children. The word putra (son) is derived from the word put, which refers to a particular...