Sahyadri Sri Krishna Balarama Ksetra (SSKBK) near the town of Hebri, in the District of Udupi, South Karnatakam hosted the Varnasrama College. What follows are a series of reports with photos about the 15 day courses given by various Faculty and overseen by HG Hari Kirtan das, Coordinator of the Varnasrama College.
Daily Discussions
Every day we held philosophical discussions on various subjects: 1) understanding Varnasrama, 2) Bhagavad-gita Overview and 3) Upadesamrita Overview. For such discussions, we allocated around two and half hours every day. The serene setup in SSKBK helped us to effectively conduct these discussions.
Philosophy of Varnasrama Dharma
The students were able to satirically understand the concepts of Varnasrama as explained in Bhagavad-gita, Srimad-Bhagavatam and Caitanya Caritamrta. We also analyzed different types of Varnasrama like Asuric, samanya, and Daiva. We also discussed the duties of different varnas and asramas
Development of Varnasrama Dharma
We then studied the keys elements for effectively developing Varnasrama communities, namely education and training, food production, farms and cow care. We then discussed various other components of developing Varnasrama communities. This included a detailed history of the degrading Varnasrama culture up to now.
Economics in Varnasrama drew a lot of interest among the students. Finally, we discussed Srila Prabhupada’s blue print to establish Varnasrama dharma. We also introduced the action plans and strategies developed by IDVM-India to establish Daiva Varnasrama systematically.
We discussed in the overview study of Bhagavad-gita and Upadesamrita the two forms or aspects of sanatana dharma, namely Varnasrama and Bhagavata dharmas.
Students proposed that we bring up the whole subject discussed into book form for future reference.
Prepared by Hari Kirtan das, Coordinator for Varnasrama College, January 15th to 31st, 2018
