After completing one's education as a brahmacārī in this way, one should give dakṣiṇā, an offering of gratitude, to one's guru, and then one may leave for home and accept the next āśrama-the gṛhastha-āśrama-or else one may continue in the brahmacarya-āśrama without adulteration. The duties for the gṛhastha-āśrama and brahmacarya-āśrama, as well as the duties for sannyāsīs, are prescribed in the śāstras. A gṛhastha is not meant to enjoy sex life without restriction. Indeed, the whole purpose of Vedic life is to become free from sexual indulgence. All the āśramas are recognized for spiritual progress, and therefore although the gṛhastha-āśrama gives a kind of license for sex life for a certain time, it does not allow unrestricted sex life. Therefore, in gṛhastha life also, there is no illicit sex. A gṛhastha should not accept a woman for sexual enjoyment. Wasting semen is also illicit sex. After the gṛhastha-āśrama is another āśrama, known as vānaprastha, which is midway between gṛhastha and sannyāsa. A person in the vānaprastha order is restricted in eating food grains and forbidden to eat fruits that have not ripened on the tree. Nor should he cook food with fire, although he is allowed to eat caru, grains that have been offered in a sacrificial fire. He may also eat fruits and grains that have grown naturally. Living in a thatched cottage, the vānaprastha should endure all kinds of heat and cold. He should not cut his nails or hair, and he should give up cleaning his body and teeth. He should wear tree bark, accept a daṇḍa, and practice life in the forest, taking a vow to live there for twelve years, eight years, four years, two years or at least one year. At last, when because of old age he can no longer perform the activities of a vānaprastha, he should gradually stop everything and in this way give up his body.
Tree bark
Expressions researched:
"banana-tree bark"
|"bark covering the tree"
|"bark of Arjuna tree"
|"bark of a tree"
|"bark of banana trees"
|"bark of plantain trees"
|"bark of tree"
|"bark of trees"
|"tree bark"
|"tree is covered by three types of bark"
|"tree leaves and bark"
|"tree's bark"
Bhagavad-gita As It Is
BG Chapters 7 - 12
After the student studies the Vedas under the master for some time—at least from from age five to twenty—he may become a man of perfect character. Study of the Vedas is not meant for the recreation of armchair speculators, but for the formation of character. After this training, the brahmacārī is allowed to enter into household life and marry. When he is a householder, he has to perform many sacrifices so that he may achieve further enlightenment. He must also give charity according to the country, time and candidate, discriminating among charity in goodness, in passion and in ignorance, as described in Bhagavad-gītā. Then after retiring from household life, upon accepting the order of vānaprastha, he undergoes severe penances—living in forests, dressing with tree bark, not shaving, etc. By carrying out the orders of brahmacarya, householder life, vānaprastha and finally sannyāsa, one becomes elevated to the perfectional stage of life. Some are then elevated to the heavenly kingdoms, and when they become even more advanced they are liberated in the spiritual sky, either in the impersonal brahmajyoti or in the Vaikuṇṭha planets or Kṛṣṇaloka. This is the path outlined by Vedic literatures.
Srimad-Bhagavatam
SB Canto 7
The vānaprastha should wear matted locks of hair on his head and let his body hair, nails and moustache grow. He should not cleanse his body of dirt. He should keep a waterpot, deerskin and rod, wear the bark of a tree as a covering, and use garments colored like fire.
SB Canto 9
Upon reaching Ayodhyā, Lord Rāmacandra heard that in His absence His brother Bharata was eating barley cooked in the urine of a cow, covering His body with the bark of trees, wearing matted locks of hair, and lying on a mattress of kuśa. The most merciful Lord very much lamented this.
SB Canto 10.1 to 10.13
The body (the total body and the individual body are of the same composition) may figuratively be called "the original tree." From this tree, which fully depends on the ground of material nature, come two kinds of fruit—the enjoyment of happiness and the suffering of distress. The cause of the tree, forming its three roots, is association with the three modes of material nature—goodness, passion and ignorance. The fruits of bodily happiness have four tastes—religiosity, economic development, sense gratification and liberation—which are experienced through five senses for acquiring knowledge in the midst of six circumstances: lamentation, illusion, old age, death, hunger and thirst. The seven layers of bark covering the tree are skin, blood, muscle, fat, bone, marrow and semen, and the eight branches of the tree are the five gross and three subtle elements—earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego. The tree of the body has nine hollows—the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, the mouth, the rectum and the genitals—and ten leaves, the ten airs passing through the body. In this tree of the body there are two birds: one is the individual soul, and the other is the Supersoul.
Among the cowherd boys, some placed their lunch on flowers, some on leaves, fruits, or bunches of leaves, some actually in their baskets, some on the bark of trees and some on rocks. This is what the children imagined to be their plates as they ate their lunch.
SB Cantos 10.14 to 12 (Translations Only)
One should practice meditation by constantly seeing oneself to be an eternal cognizant spirit soul and seeing the Lord to be the absolute controller of everything. To increase one's meditation, one should live in a secluded place and give up false attachment to one's home and household paraphernalia. Giving up the decorations of the temporary material body, one should dress himself with scraps of cloth found in rejected places, or with the bark of trees. In this way one should learn to be satisfied in any material situation.
In Satya-yuga the Lord is white and four-armed, has matted locks and wears a garment of tree bark. He carries a black deerskin, a sacred thread, prayer beads and the rod and waterpot of a brahmacārī.
This tree of material existence has two seeds, hundreds of roots, three lower trunks and five upper trunks. It produces five flavors and has eleven branches and a nest made by two birds. The tree is covered by three types of bark, gives two fruits and extends up to the sun. Those lusty after material enjoyment and dedicated to family life enjoy one of the tree's fruits, and swanlike men in the renounced order of life enjoy the other fruit. One who with the help of the bona fide spiritual masters can understand this tree to be a manifestation of the potency of the one Supreme Truth appearing in many forms actually knows the meaning of the Vedic literature.
Having adopted the vānaprastha order of life, one should arrange one's sustenance by eating uncontaminated bulbs, roots and fruits that grow in the forest. One may dress oneself with tree bark, grass, leaves or animal skins.
Sri Caitanya-caritamrta
CC Adi-lila
The twenty-ninth branch was Śrīdhara, a trader in banana-tree bark. He was a very dear servant of the Lord. On many occasions, the Lord played jokes on him.
Śrīdhara was a poor brāhmaṇa who made a living by selling banana-tree bark to be made into cups. Most probably he had a banana-tree garden and collected the leaves, skin and pulp of the banana trees to sell daily in the market. He spent fifty percent of his income to worship the Ganges, and the balance he used for his subsistence. When Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu started His civil disobedience movement in defiance of the Kazi, Śrīdhara danced in jubilation. The Lord used to drink water from his water jug. Śrīdhara presented a squash to Śacīdevī to cook before Lord Caitanya took sannyāsa. Every year he went to see Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu at Jagannātha Purī. According to Kavi-karṇapūra, Śrīdhara was a cowherd boy of Vṛndāvana whose name was Kusumāsava. In his Gaura-gaṇoddeśa-dīpikā (133) it is stated:
- kholā-vecātayā khyātaḥ paṇḍitaḥ śrīdharo dvijaḥ
- āsīd vraje hāsya-karo yo nāmnā kusumāsavaḥ
“The cowherd boy known as Kusumāsava in kṛṣṇa-līlā later became Kholāvecā Śrīdhara during Caitanya Mahāprabhu's līlā at Navadvīpa.”
CC Madhya-lila
Brahmānanda Bhāratī belonged to the Śaṅkara-sampradāya. (The title Bhāratī indicates a member of one of that sampradāya's ten classes of sannyāsīs.) It is customary for a person who has renounced the world to cover his body with a deerskin or the bark of a tree. This is enjoined by the Manu-saṁhitā. But if a sannyāsī who has renounced the world simply wears a deerskin and does not spiritually advance, he is bewildered by false prestige. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu did not like to see Brahmānanda Bhāratī wearing a deerskin.
There were a number of pots made of the bark of banana trees and the leaves of the keyā plant. These pots were filled with various cooked vegetables and placed on all sides of the leaf.
“"In Satya-yuga the Lord appeared in a body colored white, with four arms and matted hair. He wore tree bark and bore a black antelope skin. He wore a sacred thread and a garland of rudrākṣa beads. He carried a rod and a waterpot, and He was a brahmacārī.""
CC Antya-lila
He had cooked fine rice, mixed it with ghee and piled it high on a banana leaf. There were also varieties of vegetables, placed all around in pots made of banana tree bark.
Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura gives the following summary of the Thirteenth Chapter in his Amṛta-pravāha-bhāṣya. Thinking Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu was uncomfortable sleeping on bark of plantain trees, Jagadānanda made a pillow and quilt for Him. The Lord, however, did not accept them. Then Svarūpa Dāmodara Gosvāmī made another pillow and quilt from finely shredded plantain leaves, and after strongly objecting, the Lord accepted them. With the permission of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, Jagadānanda Paṇḍita went to Vṛndāvana, where he discussed many devotional subjects with Sanātana Gosvāmī. There was also a discussion about Mukunda Sarasvatī’s garment. When Jagadānanda returned to Jagannātha Purī, he presented Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu with some gifts from Sanātana Gosvāmī, and the incident of the pīlu fruit took place.
Because He was very thin, when He lay down to rest on the dry bark of plantain trees, it caused Him pain in His bones.
Jhaḍu Ṭhākura's wife then took the mangoes from their covering of banana tree leaves and bark and offered them to Jhaḍu Ṭhākura, who began to suck and eat them.
Other Books by Srila Prabhupada
Krsna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead
On hearing this proposal from Kṛṣṇa, all the boys became very glad and said, "Certainly, let us all sit down here to take our lunch." They then let loose the calves to eat the soft grass. Sitting down on the ground and keeping Kṛṣṇa in the center, they began to open their lunch boxes brought from home. Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa was seated in the center of the circle, and all the boys kept their faces toward Him. They ate and constantly enjoyed seeing the Lord face to face. Kṛṣṇa appeared to be the whorl of a lotus flower, and the boys surrounding Him appeared to be its different petals. The boys collected flowers, leaves of flowers and the bark of trees and placed their lunch on them, as well as in their boxes, and thus they began to eat their lunch, keeping company with Kṛṣṇa. While taking lunch, each boy began to manifest different kinds of relations with Kṛṣṇa, and they enjoyed each other's company with joking words. While Lord Kṛṣṇa was thus enjoying lunch with His friends, His flute was pushed within the belt of His cloth on His right side, and His bugle and cane were pushed in on the left-hand side of His cloth. In his left palm He was holding a lump of food prepared with yogurt, butter, rice and pieces of fruit salad, which could be seen through His petallike finger-joints. The Supreme Personality of Godhead, who accepts the results of all great sacrifices, was laughing and joking, enjoying lunch with His friends in Vṛndāvana. And thus the scene was being observed by the demigods from heaven. As for the boys, they were simply enjoying transcendental bliss in the company of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Conversations and Morning Walks
1972 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: Well vegetarians are not animals. (laughter) In India, you'll still you'll find ninety-percent of the population, they're vegetarians, strictly. Always vegetarians. They're quite healthy, they're working. Therefore vegetarians are human beings. Vegetables, that food is meant for human beings. That is natural. For a human being to become nonvegetarian is unnatural. And to become vegetarian, that is natural. Just like our teeth, it is meant for cutting vegetables, fruit, not meat. You will find cutting by these teeth, meat, it will be difficult. But you take any vegetable, any fruit, you can immediately cut. Our medical laws says that anything eatable which you cannot cut with the teeth and smash it properly, it will not be digested. So fruits and vegetables you can properly cut even raw, not to speak of cooked. Raw vegetables and raw fruits, you can cut with these teeth and smash it and you swallow, it will be nicely digested. You get all food value. But you cannot do in that way, raw meat. It is not possible. You cannot take raw meat or bite one animal and take some flesh out of it. You cannot. But animal can do that. They are made for that purpose. But that is natural. If you take your natural food, if you live naturally, if you fulfill your natural desires, then it is natural. And as soon as you go against these things, that is unnatural. So if you give up your natural tendency as human being and take artificially the way of life of an animal, that is not natural. In human society the..., however uncivilized human being, there is the process of covering this private part. Even in jungle they cover with the bark of tree. Why? That is the human being. But an animal in the jungle, they do not care. They can go, the same jungle—I don't speak of the city life—even in jungle life, the aborigines, still they have got some cover. Now they are becoming naked, natural life, nudism. Huh? That John Lennon, there is a picture in his sitting room, standing naked. This is madness. That is not natural life. If you go against your natural life, that is madness. Just like a madman walks on the street naked. So these are... So our mission is to advise everyone, educate everyone to become exactly like human being. That you can become by understanding God. The books, educational institutions, are meant for human being, for knowledge. All the books all over the world, they are not meant for cats and dogs. They are meant for human beings. The schools, colleges and universities, institutions, they are meant for human being, not for the cats and dogs. So we must take advantage of these books, institution, knowledge, teachers. That is real human life. Just like your guitar.
| Page Title: | Tree bark |
| Compiler: | Visnu Murti, Serene |
| Created: | 20 of Mar, 2012 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=1, SB=9, CC=8, OB=1, Lec=0, Con=1, Let=0 |
| No. of Quotes: | 20 |