Also, satay hit the nail on the head when he mentioned the huge karmic burden that brahmins have in learning and teaching the veda.
In Hinduism, it's not exactly the case that "rank has its privileges." The "higher" up one goes on the varNa ladder, the greater is the responsibility, the greater are the expectations by society, and the greater are the consequences for failing to carry out one's prescribed duties.
In viShNu purANa, sage vyAsa states that in kali-yuga, it is the women and the shUdra-s who have the greatest advantage in going after mokSha, since their duties are simpler and do not have the exacting requirements of those required of brahmin males. For example, brahmins have to rise before sunrise, chant their sandhya prayers, study shruti, follow all kinds of vrata-s etc, and if they fail to do those things, they are incurring sinful reactions by their failure. It's quite accurate to say that the deck is actually stacked *against* brahmins, especially in this day and age.
The central problem of explaining these things to Westerners, in my observation, is that the latter are completely fixated on an "equal opportunity" kind of mentality. If one group is not allowed to study veda, they see it as "discrimination." In their view, everyone should be able to do whatever he or she wants.
This kind of thinking is alien to the traditional Hindu mindset. Traditional Hindus saw their jAti-varNa as synonymous with the community to which they belonged, and the more educated among them correctly saw their prescribed duties not as an imposition, but as the particular service to bhagavAn that is assigned to them. When you are given the opportunity to serve The Lord of the universe, and told that this is the service by which He will be pleased, you do not whine that someone else's service is better and that you want that, instead. This kind of mentality is not bhagavAn-centered, it is self-centered.
There are many statements in shAstra to effect that brahmins are very dear to Lord Krishna. There are also statements to the effect that Lord Krishna is very attracted to the simple bhakti of the women of Vraja or the prayers of the damsels dwelling in Dwaaraka, preferring their praises over the Vedic mantras of the brahmins. How everyone can simultaneously be Sri Krishna's favorite is something that can only be appreciated when one first understands the conventions of the varNa system. It makes it that much sweeter when one sees The Lord of the Universe chasing after a simple, uneducated, but highly devoted soul who happens to be of "low" varNa.
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