4 Regs - or 5 principles: marriage v sanctified companionship

[Guest guest]

A disciple of a Western gaudiya Vaisnava guru (the guru took sannyasa from Srila Prabhupada but is now outside of ISKCON) says that instead of the usual "4 regs", his initiation vows were: "showing kindness to other living entities, not taking intoxication, to have an honest livelihood, to have one’s urge for physical and emotional companionship sanctified, and not to hoard money."

 

Regarding the "physical and emotional companionship element", this looks fine for those contemplating marriage, but how can a sannyasi “sanctify” his urge for physical and emotional companionship with women, or even with a particular woman?

 

If the answer is that sannyasis should just avoid the association of women, then what should he do if he is a now celibate but his sexual orientation is/was homosexual: should he avoid association with men more than with women?

[Guest guest]

The fifth rule (not to hoard money) was often part of GV rule book. Prabhupada dropped it early on (Jhansi), perhaps because it is quite ambiguous or because it is hard to create a large organisation without large sums of money.

[mahak]

means one is through being slave to senses, gives up go-das life in favor of go-swami. He associates with no one, is not attracted to forms but spirit. A true go-swami has no taste for any type of orientation. If one who is a sanyassi is agitated in the association of women or men, the agitation itself is the full disqualification, and the sanyassi position is fraud regardless of any previous attractions. sanyassi means the attraction is gone. The standard is in nectar of instruction.

 

mahak