Why crave for the pleasures that make you a slave
[Reflection at Gainesville, USA]
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Why crave for the sense pleasures that make you a slave? Our desire is our greatest power.
It is by the power of desire that we have achieved anything. In fact, any human being has achieved anything. Whether it is climbing Mount Everest or whether it is becoming a champion athlete or it is making a major technological innovation or even if it is making extraordinary spiritual advancement by going deep into our innermost nature.
All this requires our desire as the starting point. When desire becomes very strong, it is often called as craving. And we all have certain things that we crave for.
They may be positive or negative. They may be constructive or waste or even destructive. But we have our cravings.
Alcoholics may crave for alcohol. Now, desire is a power that can make us powerless. It is the great irony of desire.
By the power of desire, a person who is in a physical jail may find a way to somehow get out of the jail to either ingeniously dig an escape way and flee or determinately reform one’s behavior and get released early. This is the power of desire. But when we desire something unworthy, for example, when we desire something which is temporary, which is degrading, for example, somebody starts desiring drugs, then it is the power of the desire that takes them there and that power actually becomes more and more powerful as the desire moves into craving and then into addiction.
So, when a person becomes addict, they can overcome enormous obstacles to somehow or the other find a way to fulfill that desire. But this fulfilling obstacles is not constructive, it is destructive. Not having money is a major obstacle.
And normally people may try to work very hard, try many ways to get a job and then earn the money. But when a person becomes an alcoholic or a drug addict, then they overcome this obstacle by simply stealing, robbing, plundering. So, essentially desire overcomes the obstacle of poverty through robbery.
And if somebody is gardening, the desire may make that person injure that other person, even kill that person. Krishna talks about this, how with the desire for wealth people may kill each other. In 16.14 and 15, Krishna talks about this.
So, it makes desire, when it becomes addictive, makes one very powerful in terms of overcoming the obstacles to get the object of addiction. But actually this is not power, fullness, it is powerlessness. Because if there is a moment, such people realize that what they are doing is terrible.
What they are becoming is terrible. Yet, they just can’t give it up. They may resolve to give up their desires, but they just can’t.
And in this way, they end up bound. So, Krishna says in 16.11, चिन्तामः परिमेन्याम्च प्रिल्यान्तामः पाशितः कामोः पभोकः परमाः एतावधिति निष्चितः आशाः पाशिषतैर्बद्धः 16.12 he says, आशाः पाशिषतैर्बद्धः A person becomes bound by hundreds and thousands of desires which become like shackles. An addict is basically a slave.
Similarly, when we become addicts, we become enslaved by our desires. So, why should we crave for that which will make us a slave? Instead, we should desire those things which will elevate us. The most empowering and elevating object is Krishna, the all-attractive supreme whose parts we are eternally.
When we learn to devote ourselves to Him through the sincere practice of bhakti, then our desire becomes the source, the energy, the fuel for our elevation and liberation. And this redirection of our desire from worldly objects, the source of all worldly objects to Krishna is brought about by the process of bhakti yoga. So, whatever little desire we have right now, if we use that to practice bhakti, that will elevate us slowly but surely till our desires will no longer make us slaves but will actually free us for a life of eternal love and joy with our all-attractive Lord.