20260223 Question-and-Answer Session

Jayapataka Swami: Any questions?

Question: In gṛhastha life when the husband and wife sometimes misbehave with each other, do their sins count?

Jayapataka Swami: What does that mean? They have sex? In the fifth canto it says that the activities between the husband and wife, if that involves sex, that is considered as brahmacarya. At the same time, ideally when one wants pure devotional service then you have regulated sex. But it is not sinful in any case. There was one man who was visiting a prostitute. He came before Śrīla Prabhupāda. Śrīla Prabhupāda told him that, “You are married, why are you going to a prostitute? That is sinful! Having a relation with your wife is not sinful.” But then he said, “Oh, my wife is only for children, procreation! But I need more! So I go to the prostitute.” Śrīla Prabhupāda said that, “If you have sex with your wife, that is not sinful. But if you have sex with a prostitute that is sinful!”

Question: I see that many disciples after taking initiation, they keep their initiation beads away in fear of losing them and then continue to chant on the clicker. Is that okay?

Jayapataka Swami: So, I mean there are some situations in which using a counting machine is allowed. But I don’t think one of them is the fear of losing my japa beads. We should be careful not to lose our japa beads. Śrīla Prabhupāda was saying how he initiates a person, not the beads! And if you lose the beads, you can also replace it with another one. My right hand is semi-paralyzed so I use a counting machine. As I am not able to use my right hand. Like this, there are different reasons. But the fear of losing your japa beads, that is a weak idea!

If you have a personal question, write to me. I get over a thousand mails a month and I am very happy to answer personal questions. But here, there are hundreds of devotees and we want to ask questions which are basically philosophical. Right?

Question: How do we practically apply in our today life, we are not the body, we are the spirit soul, living without bodily concepts of life?

Jayapataka Swami: You know, we want to serve Kṛṣṇa. We don’t want to serve our body. We don’t want to be go-dāsa, we want to be go-svāmī, controller of the senses. If you think you are the body, then naturally you think serving the body, serving the senses is the goal of your life. But if you are the ātmā within the body, then you will want to use the body in Kṛṣṇa’s service. Not that you want to serve the body. Just like you have a car or vehicle, you don’t neglect it, you clean it, you oil it, you put gas in it. So like that, we don’t think we are the body, but that doesn’t mean we neglect the body. Śrīla Prabhupāda said the first thing is health, then chanting, then service, then reading! So if we don’t have good health, we cannot chant, we cannot serve, we cannot read! So, we don’t neglect our body but we don’t identify that we are the body. Just like you don’t think that I am this car, I am Toyota, Mercedes of Hyundai, so we use the car to take us places. So we use the body to do different devotional services. So we have to eat, we have to sleep, we have to do all the things to keep the body healthy!

Alright!

I give you all my blessings. Kṛṣṇe matir astu!