Study a Verse

• The previous narration concerning the shell bracelets of the young girl demonstrates that even saintly persons engaged in ordinary yoga processes should remain alone to avoid conflict or disturbance.
• From this example we learn that a saintly person should not associate with ordinary materialistic people.
• In other words, one should accept an honest occupation and regulate his sex life, either by giving it up entirely as a brahmacārī or sannyāsī or by living as a married householder.

The purport's own sentences, chosen from the purport as its central points. Read the full purport on Vedabase to see them in place.

Grief and dependence → Detachment. The temporary world becomes a source of spiritual instruction.

Chapters 7–9 of Canto 11: The avadhuta's twenty-four teachers. An editorial reading of the story's mood, not the text itself. See the emotional arc

Chapter 9: Detachment from All that Is Material

From the chapter summary, the lines nearest this verse:

The avadhūta brāhmaṇa learned from the serpent that a sage should wander alone, should not have any fixed residence should be always careful and grave, should not reveal his movements, should take assistance from no one and should speak little. The instruction obtained from the spider, who spins his web from his mouth and then withdraws it, is that the Supreme Personality of Godhead similarly creates from out of Himself the whole universe and then winds it up into Himself.