The Krishna consciousness movement represents a milenary culture. During the time, numerous cultural aspects have been forming. Some of them are primary, some other are secondary. It’d interesting to understand which one is part of a category and which one is in the other.
Women keep their hair loose and nicely combed because they want to appear beautiful and so attract the attention of men. It is not a secondary aspect in our culture that married women should not do so. High class ladies do not want to attract lusty men.
It is also considered not good to appear before the devotees or in the temple with untied hair.
There are other reasons, referred to the flow of bodily energies which I may discuss some other time.
In Vedic times “public women” kept their hair in that way and had their part on the side, while chaste ladies would comb their hair and had their part in the middle of the head.
It is obvious that there are principles much more important of how ladies keep their hair, however when we speak about “secondary principles” we do not mean superfluous. If they were useless sages and Acaryas wouldn’t have wasted their time teaching and writing about them.
Everything is formative and helps getting better. The more primary and secondary principles we can respect and the more we advance in spiritual life.
It is the task of the spiritual master to decide which one of these is important to observe today, in our time and circumstances, and which ones could be disregarded.
Tying hairs for ladies, especially if married, should not be disregarded.
Also gentlemen devotees should keep a sikha and shave beard and moustaches. Beard are kept by renounciant for austerities, not to appear more masculine. This also should not be disregarded.
– Manonatha Dasa (ACBSP)
5 june 2019
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