3 Hideouts Of Lust Gita 3.40

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

So, Krishna in this section of the Bhagavad Gita is giving us a real, you could say, a real description of a real war. There's a real war going on inside us and now you see how the sections go on. 36th text is the, what's the enemy? What's the thing that forces us to do wrong? 37th text was the identity of the enemy.

38th was the reach of the enemy, the reaches, the three layers of covering that everyone is covered by it. And 39th was in one sense, the gravity of the enemy. Gravity means it talks about how it's an eternal enemy, it is like a fire, it is insatiable.

So, it is very sobering. Now, you could say this is the gravity or also you can call this as the strategy of the enemy. How does the enemy act? By covering our intelligence.

And the 40th verse is now the hideouts, the location of the enemy. From where does this attack us? And then that, and from 41 to 43, the last part will be the strategies for dealing with the enemy. So, how the enemy attacks us once we understand that, then how do we count, how do we defend ourselves, how do we counter attack? So, Krishna says it's located in three places.

The hideouts of the self-destructive enemy of karma, they are three. The senses, the mind and the intelligence. Indriyani Mano Buddhed.

Now, if we consider the self. Now, the self has, this really doesn't look like a self, but excuse me for my poor diagram. This is the senses, this is the body.

The body has senses. Now, then we have the soul and the soul has these two tools which it processes the world. There is the mind, which is the feeling faculty, the intelligence is the reasoning faculty.

The mind is associated with desiring and the intelligence is associated with the reasoning. And then we have the outer world where there might be multiple tempting sense objects. So, if all these are the sense objects, it's interesting and very revealing that Krishna is not saying that the lust is situated here in the sense objects.

So, lust, where is it situated? What Krishna is saying is, it's here, not here. Normally the idea is, say generally, if somebody wants to, say in some countries they want to have prohibition where alcohol is banned. Now, the idea is that these alcohol bars, at ends of iniquity, you just shut them down.

Now, prohibition has not worked much. All that happens is people drink liquor underground. Similarly, with respect to, if you consider specific sexuality, sometimes the way people dress.

So, that is in the Vedic traditions. Some people misrepresent the Vedic tradition also and say that, you know, women are Maya. But Krishna is saying clearly that lust is not situated in the sense objects.

It is, lust is not situated in the object, it is situated in the subject. Subject means the person who is perceiving. Now, of course, these can be triggers, but the trigger doesn't shoot the bullet.

It is somebody who presses the trigger and that's when the bullet gets shot. The word trigger, you know, you trigger me. If you say something like that, your words trigger me, those actions trigger me.

And quite often the idea is that whoever triggered is considered responsible, is blamed. But Krishna is saying no, that it is inside us that lust is situated. And therefore, most of the solution that Krishna will give will be on inner work.

And sometimes, for example, when there is any kind of, there is this horrible tendency sometimes to blame the victim. So, if somebody is, say, abused or violated by someone else and then often, or at least sometimes, what happens is you must have done something to send some signals to him. You must have been cheap, you must have been available.

And that's why that person did that. Now, of course, with the Me Too movement, things are changing and it's the, everything is on the other side. I won't go into the Me Too movement right now.

But the point is that Krishna is saying there is no such thing as blaming the victim. That when somebody gets triggered by lust, you cannot blame the other person for triggering you. Now, of course, that's not the whole story.

But the key point, the next verse will give some nuancing points over here. But here, categorically, Krishna is stating that it is within us that this desire is there. So, if somebody is an alcoholic or a drug addict, they can't blame the drug cartel or the alcohol bars.

And once you start blaming, where do we stop? And there are people who are foodaholics. Now, what do we do? Do we stop all food distribution, food serving units? We might be able to stop bars and drugs, but we can't stop food. So, ultimately, we can't stop the food supply.

We will stop this food supply. We will decide who is going to decide which food supply is to be stopped. So, basically, the onus, the responsibility has to be on the individual.

That's one key point over here when he is stating that these are situated inside us, not outside us. I take responsibility. How do I take responsibility? That naturally is by setting boundaries.

I need to set my own boundaries. And that's what Krishna will tell in the next verse. But here, the point is that it is our problem and therefore it is we who have to take responsibility to solve the problem.

Now, does that mean that the world has nothing to do with it? Does the world not need to change? That we'll discuss in the next verse. But the primary responsibility is ours. Now, having said this, it's interesting what Krishna says, the locations of lust, the hideouts.

Now, senses, mind and intelligence. This list, there are many striking points about it. First of all is Krishna is saying the soul is not affected by lust.

Maybe I should not cross it out because that seems as if it's wrong. Soul is unaffected. The soul is not contaminated.

Sometimes we use the word fallen soul, elevated soul, well, an impure soul, great soul. That's a somewhat non-literal usage. The soul is always pure.

Even the soul of a person who is outlier demoniac, a person who is a sadist, a person who is a sociopath, their souls are also pure. But around the soul, the conditionings can be very, very dark. So, now Krishna is giving a list from, he could say, outside in.

He's saying the senses. Indriyani Mano Buddhi. Now, what does it mean that the senses have lust within them, that lust is located in the senses? What it means is that, say, when lust is there in, for example, the eyes, the senses become restless.

The senses become like, you know, there are these heat-seeking radars. These are seeking sensory heat. That means what in common parts are hot sense objects.

So, the senses start searching for that. So, the eyes start feeling restless. There's a craving if something attractive is not seen.

The tongue starts almost itching if we don't give some delicious food to it. So, at a basic level, the tongue starts salivating whenever we are hungry or whenever we say something delicious. But beyond that, when there is craving, the point is that the senses start becoming restless.

The senses start becoming agitated. So, that indicates that lust is situated even in the senses also. So, now, then after that, the mind.

What does it mean it's situated in the mind? That it's not only in the senses. The mind is wildly, you could say, restlessly. Let's put a little more description over here.

The senses are restlessly roaming and looking, okay, where is something attractive? Now, the mind is wildly imagining. So, now, when we say the mind is wildly imagining, what that means is that we may see a particular sense object right in front of us. We may see some food item.

We may see some good-looking person. Somebody might see a bottle of alcohol. That itself may be attractive.

But what makes it irresistible is the imagining of the mind. Oh, you know, if I eat this, I'll enjoy it. If I don't eat this, I'll be missing so much.

How can I tolerate not having this? And that's how the mind's imagining makes it worse. To some extent, the senses, you could say, they need external objects to be triggered, to be agitated or triggered, you could say. The mind can be triggered by sensory inputs.

The imagination can start by sensory inputs or it can also start by past memories. So, that's why sometimes there may be nothing in front of someone and still, you know, nothing tempting. But still, the mind is filled with temptations and the mind starts craving more and more and more.

And that way, the person just becomes wild. Their mind is so restless, they just can't do anything at all because of the restlessness of the mind. And then beyond that, it's interesting, the intelligence is also included here among the hideouts of lust.

Normally, we would consider our intelligence to be the tool to overcome, to fight, to counter whenever the temptations come in. No, I'm not going to do this. So, how is the intelligence contaminated? The intelligence gets contaminated by rationalizing.

So, here it is cunningly. Now, when we rationalize, basically what it means is, we have discussed this earlier, when we rationalize, basically, we tell rational lies. We justify even if it is not justifiable.

So, first we convince ourselves and then we convince others. For example, an alcoholic is trying to recover from alcoholism and then they say that, so we may rationalize to ourselves. So, they go to a party and everybody is drinking and they think one drink won't matter.

But the problem is, just one drink doesn't stay one drink. One drink only leads to two and to three and to four. Now, does it always lead like that? Maybe it does not.

But for somebody who's trying to recover from alcoholism, the danger is very much there. So, when the intelligence is contaminated, instead of resisting the attacks that are coming from outside, we start justifying the attacks. So, instead of defending, instead of defending the soul, the intelligence starts defending the invaders who have come to drag the soul away.

If you consider, say, this is a fortress and there is a guard over here. Now, some assailants, some invaders are coming in. The intelligence is like the guard.

The guard should be stopping the invaders from coming in. But if the invaders have corrupted the guard, then the guard lets the invaders in or at least when the invaders come in, it's not a big problem. They're not bad guys.

You don't have to do anything. If they steal a little money, we have so much money, what's the big deal? Let them do it. So, in this way, when the intelligence gets contaminated, then it's almost the last stage.

At that stage, not a person is sure to fall. In the previous series in 2.62 to 63, Krishna talked about the trajectory of fall down. We discussed how somebody contemplates and from the contemplation that person goes down towards fall.

There he says the last thing is when intelligence falls, the soul falls. Buddhi Nashad Pranashyati. So, the intelligence getting corrupted is an extremely dangerous thing.

Now, to others also we may justify that actually there's nothing wrong in this. I'm just doing, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing anything wrong over here.

So, say a husband promises his wife I will stop smoking. And then one day the wife comes to the husband's room and says, smoke, she has spilled smoke over here. Hey, you're smoking? Oh, actually this room was very cold.

I was making it warm for you. Now, he's certainly not smoking for that purpose. But, a person comes up with arguments like that.

So, now if you consider these three, when lust occupies the senses, they become restless and they start roaming, seeking pleasure. When lust occupies the mind, it starts imagining more and more. And when lust occupies the intelligence, then it starts rationalizing.

And it's cunning, but this cunningness, it is not just to fool others. We also fool ourselves and we hurt ourselves by that. But these are the three places from which lust attacks us.

Now, one last point I'll make before we conclude this, that the senses, mind and intelligence, let's put it another way. Okay. So, if I consider this way here.

So, the soul is here. The first door, like this, these are the senses, then is the mind and then is the intelligence. So, if you consider our body to be like a fort, in a fortress, then generally speaking, these three, the senses, mind and intelligence, are meant to be our defenders.

Generally, for example, if some terrible sound comes around us, we just close our ears, you know, because the sound is too violent for us. Or if some terrible scene is happening, mothers may close the eyes of the children. We don't want to see something like that.

So, in one sense, something which is very bad, we close our sensory doorways. But the sensory doorways can be corrupted by lust. Similarly, the mind can be corrupted by lust and the intelligence can be corrupted by lust.

And these three are basically our knowledge acquiring faculties. And when they are corrupted, it is disastrous. It's like, recently when there was a terrible attack on Israel.

So, basically what had happened was, for some reason, their intelligence just became dysfunction. Their intelligence was more than military intelligence. The military intelligence was dysfunctional.

And then the Hamas terrorists were coming in and breaking havoc. And Israel didn't even come to know about it for a long time. So, similarly for us, when these defenders, they are somehow compromised, then we end up doing terrible things, things that hurt us.

As well as others. And we don't even realize this is happening. These knowledge faculties, when they're corrupted, this is what Krishna was talking about, our knowledge gets covered.

That means we don't see things properly. When we see a bottle of alcohol, we think, oh, there's so much enjoyment, go high. After there's a hangover, there's so much trouble after that.

We don't see that at all. So, we need to recognize that these, it's like we already, if a country knows that their intelligence is corrupted, the country knows its military intelligence is corrupted, then they will be on extra lookout. Because, okay, where is the leak? Where is the corruption? There will be extra vigilance will be required.

Because it's not just the enemies from outside who we have to watch out for. It's that there are enemies inside, you know, there are, you could say all these three are our domestic traitors. Now, of course, there's no evidence in the case of Israel that any of the Israeli soldiers are corrupted and that's how the Hamas came inside.

But it happens sometimes that the opposing invading army has corrupted the defenders. So, these are, we all have our domestic traitors. Our senses and mind and intelligence, they all can betray us.

They can take us towards the things that are harmful for us and that's why it's vital for us to always be careful. We eat some food, it's enjoyable initially. Afterwards, the essential enjoyment always has this law of diminishing returns.

But it's not that simple. It's diminishing returns, but sometimes in between, there's a little spike somewhere. So, it is this unpredictability.

Say, if somebody is just surfing on social media, you're watching one Insta-reel after another, after another, or one photo, one photo, one video, another video, and then after some time, you just get bored. But if you want it, yeah, maybe something interesting will be there. Now, if all of them were vapid, you'll get totally bored.

But in between, if one thing that comes up good, maybe 50 were boring, but one came up good. We already spent 50 minutes, we got something one minute good, but then we think, oh, maybe something more will come, something more will come. So, like that, the nature of lust is that it never makes us, it makes us frustrated, but never hopelessly frustrated.

It frustrates us, it makes us frustrated. Oh, I didn't get anything, I didn't get anything, I didn't get anything, but next time I'll get, next time I'll get. And that idea that next time I'll get, when the senses see something new, the mind imagines something new, it is meant for the intelligence to stop, hey, no, there's nothing here, just stop it, it's not worth it.

But if the intelligence is corrupted, yeah, just one more, things will be good now. And that's how we get trapped. So, whether we, if the intelligence is corrupted, it's very difficult for a person to be saved.

So, we focus on only one verse today, 3.40, it's an important verse. So, first I did a summary of the section, then we talked about the inner war and the strategy for the inner war that is being described. So, inner war out, you could say inner war contours, who is fighting, what is the strategy? Strategy is that they're covering our intelligence.

And then we focus on 37, the 40th verse, which was the hideouts. The hideouts are three hideouts of the self-destruction of karma, the senses, the mind, and the intelligence. And the key point over here is they are all associated with the self, not the object.

There's no blaming of the object to be entertained in the philosophy of the Vedas. Then we discussed how these three, they corrupt our knowledge acquiring faculty, corrupt our knowledge acquisition, basically. These three are knowledge providers for us, how we can't see things properly.

Senses, they become wild, they become restlessly roaming. Then the mind becomes wildly imagining. Even if there may be a trigger, there may not be a trigger, but the mind starts imagining.

And the intelligence starts cunningly, sinisterly rationalizing. And in this way, we tend to become trapped. So, these three are knowledge acquiring faculties.

And when these three, it goes with this greater penetration, greater infiltration, you can say, greater infiltration and greater danger for us. So, knowing that there is such a, these are, these three, you could say, knowing that these are like domestic domestic traitors within us, they are traitors within us, we need to be vigilant. How to protect ourselves, that will be discussed in the next session.

Thank you. Hare Krishna.