By Gangamata Dasi

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According to the Vedic system, the women should always be protected in all aspects of life; as a young girl she is protected by her father, as a wife by her husband and as a widow by her sons. In this way, as soon as a girl reaches the age of 14-16 years, she immediately gets married and thus no young lady remains unmarried. However, Srila Prabhupada established the Ashram of Brahmacarinas, considering that at the present time one cannot strictly follow the Vedic culture. He said: "Even though it does not exist any system of brahmacarinas in India, our conception of brahmacarina is given in Krishna consciousness, because here in your country the boys and the girls mix very freely, and in order to circumscribe this mixing a little, we think that the single women should stay separated."

In the same way, the formality to accept the order of renunciation has, by socio-religious considerations, been largely reserved for men only, and - as we announced before - also because the women always should be protected. However, these considerations are no longer so relevant, since the circumstances have come to change and the women no longer are so protected as before. Therefore there is not any reason to refuse to accept sannyasi for women anymore; and particularly, being aware that heart of the order of Vaisnava Sannyas is to renounce material life and embrace the service of Sri Krishna. And this, of course, is something which is open for men as well as for women.

Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu took the renounced order of life for the love of preaching. At that time the sannyasis were respected in the Indian society, so Mahaprabhu took advantage of this in order to call attention to His message. Similarly Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Thakur instituted the Vaisnava sannyas order in his spiritual lineage about a century ago. Among other reasons, he did this to attract dignity to the Gaudiya disciplic lineage in the eyes of the masses, who, due to the influence of Advaitism and brahmanasmarta, mixed up the formal order of sannyas with the spiritual advance, and thought that one has to be born in a brahmin family to get the order of sannyas to obtain the liberation. And even though we in this time have not been able to avoid this tendency to equalize acceptance of the formal order of sannyas with the spiritual advance, which has been the reason why many devotees aspire the order merely for the formality instead of understanding the substance of the very order, we cannot deny that nowadays we need much more guidance from those devotees who are spiritually advanced, but from both men and women who have renounced the material world and inspire us with their example.

In this case, our Guru Maharaj and our Gurudeva Atulananda, with their Vrinda mission, give us this marvellous opportunity, accepting with open arms all Mothers who aspire to lead a life of renunciation from the material world and rendering service to Sri Guru and the Vaisnavas. Surely our beloved Srila Prabhupada feels very pleased with this consideration, because - as it was shown before in relation with the brahmacarina ashramas - he made changes as the circumstances changed, reverting his positions of certain topics from time to time, as any reasonable person would do. Because of all of this, especially we, the mothers, are infinitely grateful to our divine guardians to invite us to this unparalleled refuge. The Ashram of Renounced Mothers, ki! Jay!

Srila Prabhupada, ki! Jay! Srila Guru Maharaj and Gurudeva Atulananda, ki! Jay!

Ganga g dasi Radha Dasyam Visnupriya Asram of Medellín Jay Radhe Radhe!!!