The phrase, “The world is a drama of women and gold” (or more accurately, “lust and greed”), is a central teaching of Sri Ramakrishna used to describe the primary impediments to spiritual life. The concept is also sometimes attributed to Ramana Maharshi in a similar context.
Sri Ramakrishna’s Teaching
The original Bengali phrase used by Sri Ramakrishna was Kamini-Kanchana.
- Kamini (woman/sex) symbolizes lust or desire for sense enjoyments. When addressing male devotees, he used “woman,” and when addressing female devotees, he used “man,” in both cases meaning sexual desire.
- Kanchana (gold) symbolizes greed or attachment to wealth and possessions. He famously demonstrated this detachment by throwing rupees and clay into the Ganges, saying, “Rupee is clay and clay is rupee”.
According to Ramakrishna, attachment to these two things constitutes samsara (the world) and maya (illusion), which prevents one from seeing or thinking of God. He taught that giving up attachment to “woman and gold” is the true renunciation required for spiritual realization.
Ramana Maharshi’s View
Ramana Maharshi, a prominent sage of the Advaita Vedanta tradition, also remarked on this concept, seeing the world as a “drama of woman and gold”. In the context of his teachings, the phrase relates to the second noble truth of Buddhism and the Hindu concept of artha and kama (worldly pursuits and desires) as cravings that bind individuals to the cycle of existence.
For both sages, the phrase was a powerful metaphor for the universal human attachment to sensuality and materialism that distracts from the ultimate goal of self-realization or God-realization.
Know Thyself 