Gita 17.10 Food in ignorance isn’t nourishing satisfying or appealing.mp3

Transcript

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not disease, thank you bhojanam tamasapriyam yatayamam that which has been cooked for a long time so that its essence has been lost katarasam krishna said earlier when he talked about food in the mood of goodness now he is talking about food in the mood of ignorance and he states bhojanam tamasapriyam tamasa is for the people in the mood of ignorance priyam is that which is near to them so he says this food is yatayamam if you cook it and keep it for a long time before we eat it, so that it is no longer healthy, no longer is it aesthetic katarasam its juiciness, its flavor is gone pootiparishitam jayat pootiparishitam, that which is smelling uchishtam apichamedhyam uchishtam refers to that which has already been eaten by someone and left chamidhyam, that which is untouchable, its impure which is not meant to be eaten bhojanatamasapriyam so we discussed how food is meant to provide nutrition and satisfaction and that is what food in the mood of goodness provides food in the mood of passion it provides some stimulation but eventually it leads to poor health and it leads even to distress food in the mood of ignorance actually does not even look good or feel good to the senses also krishna will talk about how the nature of pleasure is towards the last part of this section and from 18.37 to 39 he talks about the three modes of material nature and therein he he states that the mood of ignorance is characterized by illusion from beginning to end agrechanubandhecha sukham mohanam atmana nidralasya pramadottam tattamasamudartham so from beginning to end it is simply delusion now put another way that in the mood of goodness there is proper perception of material and spiritual realities in the mood of passion there is perception only of material reality and in the mood of ignorance there is no proper perception even of material reality there is only fragmental perception of material reality so another way of putting it material reality can also be gross and subtle but when you use the word material in a conversational sense we usually refer to sensory to the world that is perceived as attractive by the senses that is what we call as the materialistic world so attractive means seductive in a captivating and degrading sense so some things are not pleasing even to the senses and still people are sometimes attracted to them so something which is considered to be art which is just chaotic there is practically no pattern in it sometimes it may appear as if a dog put its tail in a paint box and then rub that tail against a canvas and some pattern emerged by that and that pattern is considered to be art so basically when something is not even materially pleasing to the senses or to speak of being spiritually uplifting to them and yet one is attracted to them that is characteristic of the mode of ignorance so of course there has to be something attractive otherwise people will not get attracted but it is such a deluded perception so here it is mentioned that the food has lost its juiciness the food has become putrid and decomposed the food is smelling bad and yet somebody is attracted to that food now some people may be scavengers who may eat this kind of food because they don’t have any alternative but people who have alternatives and people who choose this kind of food that is unfortunate it’s unfortunate it’s tragic it’s just total delusion because the soul is by nature means that the soul seeks pleasure but the soul’s consciousness can become so misdirected so totally misdirected the soul can pleasure seek pleasure in things that cause it pain even at the material level what to speak of at the spiritual level for example in tamoguna some people get hooked to cutting themselves cutting themselves means that they somehow get a knife or some other object and they just cut themselves and in the pain that they experience by cutting themselves they feel some stimulation now their body may get scarred and the scars may be irremovable and yet they cut and now there are different kinds of addictions the addiction to cutting is horrendous at least when people become addicted to alcohol or drugs at that time it’s poison but it’s relatively slow acting poison and it gives them a feeling of high in the intermediate however with respect to cutting it is difficult to imagine where is the pleasure the pleasure is not there at all but just the stimulation that is there that’s what matters if you say look at one characteristic of the mode of ignorance that is destruction so in the mode of ignorance one gets a perverse pleasure in destroying in passion also it’s characterized by violence but in passion one wants to win in passion people want domination but in ignorance people just want to destroy now that destructive streak can be drawn outwards towards other people or things outside of us but that destructive streak can also be driven inwards where it makes people attack themselves and hurt themselves so at an extreme this could be manifested as suicide in some countries suicide itself is so celebrated that some people go out of their way to elaborately commit suicide in a way that will be newsworthy and they say die, go with a bang so that is what is being characteristic of the mode of ignorance and Krishna is saying people who take food which is not even materially pleasing not to speak of materially, not eventually immediately also it’s not actually pleasing something is foul smelling, something is lost its juiciness something has become putrid or decomposed yet people take it so that is characteristic of the mode of ignorance and here again instead of going into specific foods and trying to classify them this is food in the mode of ignorance this is food in the mode of goodness we are focusing on underlying psychological patterns of functioning that make people think in particular ways and thereby they act and thus they let themselves be deluded so the mode of ignorance is characterized by some kind of perverse pleasure that is actually speaking neither materially nor spiritually pleasing and that’s what is manifested in food when people get hooked to food which has no attractiveness at all thank you