What do the concepts of purity and taste mean practically?

From Pancha Pandava Pr:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you very much. So, what exactly is the meaning of purity and the meaning of pastry? Purity essentially means that whatever is original, natural for the soul, that is our state.
So, whatever apart from that is there is unnatural for the soul. In that sense, it is impure. It’s like we have water that is pure and water that is impure.
So, water in natural state is pure. So, for the soul, its natural condition is to love and serve Krishna, and to have a flood of desires for loving and serving Krishna in various ways. And these are the original, natural, pure desires of the soul.
Apart from this, whatever desires are there are impure. So, when the desires are grossly sinful, then they are extremely impure. So, the desires which are impelled by lust, anger, greed, envy, pride, and illusion, which force us to act in sinful ways, or at least push us to act, we can always counter-push according to our determination.
But they push us to act in the wrong direction. These are impurities. So, essentially, there is purity and there is purification.
So, purity is a state and purification is the process to attain that state. So, we all want to attain purity. And for attaining purity, we have to undergo purification.
So, purification involves two aspects. One is that we make our personal choice of pure desires, and we make the choice of rejecting impure desires. So, when temptations come, every time some material desire comes and we reject it, and a devotional desire comes and we accept it, we are choosing purity.
And in that, by choosing purity, we become purified. But along with choosing purity, purity is also a gift of grace. Krishna talks about this in 2.64 in the Bhagavad Gita.
So, here the word prasad… Actually, Prabhupada translates it as mercy. The previous Acharyas, like Srinath Sri Thakur and Vrindavan Devotee, they translate it as purity. So, what they are telling is that we have certain attractions and aversions.
If we keep them under control, we don’t let them control us, and we follow scriptural regulations. So, when we regulate our interactions with material things based on scriptures, and don’t let them be guided only by our attachments and our aversions, then by this process, we will attain purity. So, Krishna is telling something more.
One is that we choose purity by choosing pure desires and rejecting impure desires. But over a period of time, when Krishna’s mercy descends, then when we become purified, then the impure desires themselves start going away. That means the impure desires no longer tempt us.
So, all of us have that experience. Say, we might have been eating meat earlier. But meat creates no temptation in our hearts now because we have become purified of that desire.
So, at our level, purity is our goal and purification is the process. And purification involves two things. One is we continuously choose pure desires, and second is we await Krishna’s mercy by which the temptations for the impure desires will go away and they will no longer trouble us only.
So, till that happens, till that time, we have to keep rejecting the impure desires even when they keep prompting and tempting us. Now, generally, in material life, taste refers to the sense of tongue by which we taste things. But Srila Prabhupada uses the word higher taste as a general inclination for happiness for our entire being, not just our tongue, but our eyes, our ears, our mind, our heart, everything.
So, basically, taste means, when we say that I have a taste for something, that means that is where I find happiness. So, in material life, different people have different tastes. That is what they find delicious.
Some people have a taste for cricket, some people have a taste for video games, some people have a taste for collecting butterflies or whatever. But all these tastes have nothing to do with the soul. They are all related with the body.
And things connect with the body. And because the body is temporary, all these are temporary. So, to the absolute taste, Bhaktiksanth Sindhu explains that taste means that which refers to our connection of happiness with Krishna.
So, at the pure spiritual level, everything about Krishna uses happiness, especially everything that is connected with our service to Krishna. And even when apparently there is unhappiness, as when Krishna goes away from Radharani, he leaves Vrindavan and goes away, then apparently everything about Krishna seems to give misery to Radharani. But actually, even in that misery, there is intensified remembrance of Krishna, and so there is happiness.
So, taste for Krishna means whatever aspect of Krishna that gives us happiness. At the pure level, everything about Krishna will give us happiness. At our transitional level, we have to find out what it is that gives us happiness in Krishna consciousness and focus on that.
So, to some extent, this is selfish, because we are thinking of what gives us happiness and not what gives Krishna happiness. But gradually, by doing that activity which gives us happiness, but which is within the jurisdiction of Krishna consciousness, our purification results. And by that, our taste for Krishna, all activities of Krishna consciousness will gradually develop.
That means, we have certain prescribed activities which we do. We chant our rounds, we have class, we read scripture, we take darshan. Not all of these may give us taste, but we do them as a duty.
But within these, some of them may give us special taste. And they are the activities in which we can absorb ourselves in Krishna at our stage. And as we absorb ourselves in Krishna, through the activities that give us pleasure, over a period of time, this purifies us.
And when we become purified, then we naturally want to serve Krishna and give pleasure to Krishna. So, in the initial stage, taste means that which gives us pleasure. So, when we say we are getting taste in the holy name, that means we feel happy while chanting the holy name.
But in a more advanced level, when we say to get a taste for the holy name, it is said that Haridas Thakur chanted Krishna’s names for Krishna’s pleasure. So, he had a taste for giving Krishna pleasure. So, when we give happiness to Krishna naturally, we also get happiness.
So, in this way, there are four levels. First is we have taste in material activities. We want to regulate and gradually eliminate them, or at least connect them with Krishna as it is possible, if we can’t eliminate them.
But within devotional activities, we may have one or two activities that give us taste. That means that give us happiness. So, although this is selfish, at least it is selfishness within the jurisdiction of Krishna consciousness.
And by doing those activities more, gradually we get a taste for spiritual happiness in general. And we become purified as we advance. Then we start getting a taste, not for just doing those activities that give us happiness.
So, then the third stage is whatever Krishna wants us to do, we do that and we get happiness in that. So, we get a taste for giving Krishna happiness and rejoicing happiness that comes as a result of that. At the highest level, we may get taste in everything connected with Krishna, even if at an external level, that seems to give us unhappiness.
The gopis want to forget Krishna because Krishna has left them and gone away. But even in that agony, they are experiencing great ecstasy. These are the levels of progressions of taste.