Category:Mundaners
Theme Analysis
Śrīla Prabhupāda uses the term "mundaner" to describe the conditioned soul who is absorbed in the temporary material atmosphere. He characterizes the mundaner as having four inherent defects: mistakes, illusion, cheating propensities, and imperfect senses. A defining trait of the mundaner is the false egoism of considering himself the doer and enjoyer of activities, while in reality, he is being kicked by the modes of material nature. This delusion leads him to imitate Kṛṣṇa or seek to lord it over material nature, resulting in perpetual frustration and bondage.
Because their vision is limited to the material horizon, mundaners are unable to conceive of the spiritual sky or the transcendental pastimes of the Lord. They frequently misunderstand Kṛṣṇa's dealings with the gopīs as mundane sex life. However, Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that the mission of the Bhagavad-gītā is specifically to "turn the face" of these mundaners toward the service of the Absolute Truth. Learned devotees are advised to tactfully engage mundaners in Kṛṣṇa consciousness without disturbing their minds or inducing premature renunciation.
- The False Enjoyer: Mundaners falsely think themselves to be independent doers and enjoyers, but they are actually puppets of the material modes.
- Blind to Spirit: They cannot imagine the spiritual sky or understand transcendental rasa, often confusing divine love with mundane lust.
- Hidden by Yogamāyā: Kṛṣṇa reserves the right not to expose Himself to the envious; He remains covered from the view of mundaners.
- The Proselytizing Method: The purpose of the Bhagavad-gītā is to redirect the attention of the mundaner from self-service to Kṛṣṇa's service.
- Tactful Engagement: Advanced devotees do not disturb the mundaners but engage them in karma-yoga so they can gradually purify their existence.
- Explore a synthesized essence of this category in the following Vanipedia article: Turning the Face of Mundaners.
Subcategories
This category has only the following subcategory.
Pages in category "Mundaners"
The following 52 pages are in this category, out of 52 total.
A
- A mundaner is surely unable to realize how there can be so much transcendental happiness in the service of the Personality of Godhead
- A mundaner should not unnecessarily intrude into affairs of transcendence and thereby displease the Lord. One must always be on guard against this sort of devotional anomaly
- A person of the mundane world is infected with four defects. A mundaner 1) is sure to commit mistakes, 2) is invariably illusioned, 3) has the tendency to cheat others and 4) is limited by imperfect senses. BG 1972 Introduction
F
- Foolish mundaners actually envy Sri Krsna and deride Him as one who is like other mundaners. The truth about Sri Krsna does not easily enter into the perverted brain of such mundaners infected with the empiric approach to philosophy
- For the pure devotees like Vidura, the topics of both the mundaners and the mental speculators are useless in all respects. Thus Vidura requested Maitreya to talk of the essence only, the talks of Krsna, and nothing else
H
- He (Krsna) says that the foolish mundaner considers himself the author or doer of all his activities by a sense dictated by his false egoism, without knowing that it is the modes of nature that lead him to do everything in all his engagements
- He (the transcendentalist) remains always separate from the mundaners, even though his material senses such as the hands, legs, eyes, and so on are engaged in temporary material activities
I
- I am very much pleased by your (Brahma's) description of Me (Visnu) in terms of My transcendental qualities, which appear mundane to the mundaners. I grant you all benedictions in your desire to glorify all the planets by your activities
- Illusioned mundaners cannot understand the transcendental and reciprocal relationship between the Lord and His devotees, and therefore they want to lord it over material nature or cynically merge with the Absolute
- In contrast with the ordinary living entity, those who are transcendentalists are really learned. Such transcendentalists do not perform any work in the manner of the common mundaner
- In the material world, the word mahatma is understood in different ways by different religionists. Mundaners also come up with their different angles of vision
- Influenced by an envious temperament and dissatisfied because of an attitude of sense gratification, mundaners criticize a real acarya. In fact, however, a bona fide acarya is nondifferent from the Personality of Godhead
O
- Only the foolish mundaners misunderstand Him, unaware of His eternal form of knowledge and bliss, which is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gita and Upanisads
- Ordinarily, the mundaners cannot easily understand their eternal relationship with Krsna. Instead, they themselves have posed as Krsna, under the false inducement of the illusory energy. This false position of supreme enjoyer gives them much trouble
S
- Since the Supreme Personality of Godhead is absolute, He reserves the right of not being exposed to the mundaners. He can be known by one absolute process, and the relative process of sense perception cannot reach Him ever
- Sometimes Krsna consciousness appears like a type of madness to mundane people, just as the activities of mundaners are considered a form of madness by Krsna conscious men
- Srila Jiva Gosvami has cautioned mundaners to abstain from such conceptions - material body is perfect and deeming oneself a sakhi
- Srila Sukadeva Gosvami describes the Bhagavatam from its very beginning and not whimsically to satisfy the mundaner who has very little knowledge in transcendental science
T
- The foolish mundaner cannot understand that he is under the spell of Lord Krsna's illusory energy, Maya-devi, who has made the mundaner bound to do as she desires. Consequently, the foolish mundaner enjoys only the temporary results
- The foolish mundaner enjoys only the temporary results of his activities - fleeting mundane happiness or distress - and undergoes a severe penalty of servitude dictated by the modes of nature
- The foolish mundaners are unable to come to an awareness of the immeasurable difficulties that confront them in pursuance of their foolish mundane activities
- The foolish mundaners would have been left perpetually in the darkness of foolish activities if Krsna, the PG or Marshal Arjuna, had not kindly taken the trouble of initiating the process of karma-yoga by the direct method of personal example
- The gopis prayed to Katyayani to grant them Krsna as their husband, whereas mundaners visit the temple of Katyayani to receive some material profit. That is the difference between a Vaisnava's visit and a nondevotee's visit
- The gopis saw the plants, creepers and forest trees loaded with fruits and flowers and ready to serve Krsna. In this way they immediately remembered their worshipable Krsna. They did not simply see plants, creepers and trees the way a mundaner sees them
- The gopis saw the plants, creepers and trees loaded with fruits and flowers and ready to serve Krsna. In this way they immediately remembered their worshipable Lord Sri Krsna. They did not simply see plants, creepers and trees the way a mundaner sees them
- The immeasurable spiritual sky is full of spiritual planets, named Vaikunthas, far beyond the material sky. The mundaners have insufficient information of even the mundane sky, so what can they think of the spiritual sky?
- The learned and liberated souls who are eternal servitors of Krsna sometimes remain in the midst of ordinary activities, just to attract the foolish mundaners to the process of karma-yoga
- The learned karma-yogis tactfully engage such foolish mundaners in the respective works for which they have special attachments - but in relation with Krsna - without disturbing them in their general activities
- The Lord Himself appears before the mundaners to bestow upon them the highest form of spiritual realization and also personally relish its essence
- The mundaners are always far, far away from Him-Krsna
- The mundaners are more or less captivated by the unlimited expansion of the rays of the Lord, but the devotees are concerned more with His personal form, from which everything is emanating
- The mundaners are mostly worshipers of Durga-devi, the external energy of Krsna, but they do not know that Durga-devi is but the shadow energy of the Lord. Behind her astonishing display of material workings is the direction of the Lord
- The proselytizing method of "Bhagavad-gita" is to turn the face of all mundaners towards the transcendental service of the Absolute Personality of Godhead Sri Krishna which process can only save the mundaners from all calamities past present and future
- The proselytizing method of Bhagavad-gita is to turn the face of all mundaners towards the transcendental service of the Absolute Personality of Godhead, Sri Krishna
- The serious student of the rasa should receive the message of Bhagavatam in the chain of disciplic succession from Srila Sukadeva Gosvami, who describes the Bhagavatam from its very beginning and not whimsically to satisfy the mundaner
- The so-called historians calculate the Puranas to be only a few hundred years old, but factually the Puranas existed from time immemorial, before all historical calculations by the mundaners and speculative philosophers
- The statements of creation explained by Sukadeva Gosvami are not at all, as the mundaners suggest, theoretical, but are perfectly correct. One who hears these messages and tries to assimilate them gets perfect information of the material creation
- There is no need to eradicate politics, economics, sociology, etc., which are mundane to the mundaners
- These austerities accepted by such rigid mundaners are, after all, aimed merely at material sense gratification, and therefore these austerities are useless in the transcendental sense
- They (the foolish mundaners) may bewilder themselves by the conception of lordship over their various actions, they are always being driven under the direction of the modes of nature - that is the considered verdict of Krsna, the PG, in the Bhagavad-gita
- This false position of supreme enjoyer gives them (mundaners) much trouble as they search for lordship over the powers of nature, but still these mundaners cannot give up the spirit of lording it over
U
- Under a false pretense of "enjoyer" dictated by the illusory energy, they (mundaners) think themselves to be really enjoying
- Unless one takes his lessons from Krsna or His bona fide representative, one must inevitably misunderstand the import of karma-yoga, as do the ordinary mundaners who often advertise themselves as karma-yoga experts
W
- When mundaners pretend to give up the enjoying spirit, under the pressure of disappointment and frustration, they usually take shelter of pseudo renunciation, with an even greater spirit of enjoyment
- Without understanding the primacy of karma-yoga, the foolish mundaners indulge in unrestricted material activities resulting in bondage; their very work keeps them in the material existence of births and deaths perpetually