Srimad Bhagavatam 7.13.26 by HG Chaitanya Charan Prabhu 16 Dec 2024

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So thank you very much. day. Welcome to the call.
Hare Krishna Meeta Gandavika Mataji. My humble obeisances to you and all the devotees. This is Krishnakumari Devi.
Hare Krishna Krishnakumari Mataji. Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Thank you so much Mataji for joining every day, giving your attention. Welcome to the call Mataji. Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna Meeta Gandavika Mataji. Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
This is Shyamagauri Devidashi. Hare Krishna Shyamagauri Mataji. Please accept my humble obeisances.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Thank you so much Mataji for joining and giving your attention. All glories to your wonderful services.
Welcome to the call. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna Meeta Gandavika Mataji.
Please accept my humble obeisances unto you and all of the devotees present here. All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Guru Maharaj. This is Eka Radhika Leela Devidashi.
Hare Krishna Eka Radhika Leela Mataji. Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Thank you so much Mataji for joining every day, chanting so beautifully. Welcome to the call. Hare Krishna Meeta Gandavika Mataji.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Guru Maharaj. Please accept my humble obeisances. My humble obeisances to all assembled devotees.
This is Shyama Devidashi from Bharatimur, India. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna Parampavani Shyama Mataji.
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Thank you Mataji for joining every day, chanting so beautifully.
Welcome to the call Mataji. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna Meeta Gandavika Mataji.
Please accept my humble obeisances. My humble obeisances to all the assembled devotees. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
All glories to Sri Guru and Gauranga. This is Sundarangi Radha Mataji. Please accept my humble obeisances.
Hare Krishna Sundarangi Radha Mataji. Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Thank you Mataji for joining and giving your association. Welcome to the call. Hare Krishna.
Is there anybody would like to introduce themselves? Please go ahead. Hare Krishna Mataji. Please accept my humble obeisances.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada. This is Mithra Vinda Mamta Mahadevi Dasi from Charlotte. Hare Krishna Mithra Vinda Mataji.
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. Thank you for announcing your name Mataji.
You join and you be quiet in the call. Thank you for announcing. Hare Krishna.
Welcome to the call. Hare Krishna everyone. Welcome to Bhakti Sangha conference call.
Today we are very fortunate to have His Grace Chaitanya Charan Prabhuji to enlighten us on the topic of Srimad Bhagavatam 7th Canto, 13th chapter, 26th verse. Before I hand over the call to Prabhuji, I request Parambhavani Sharma Mataji please to take over from here and give a brief introduction. Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna dear Mataji. Thank you so much for the opportunity of this seva. Dear devotees, our today’s speaker His Grace Chaitanya Charan Prabhuji is a monk, mentor and spiritual author.
He has been educated in electronics and telecommunications engineering from the Government College of Engineering Pune. He subsequently served as a software engineer in a prominent multinational software corporation, seeing the prevalent problems of stress, depression, addiction and overall misdirection all due to a lack of spirituality. He felt inspired to dedicate his life to the cause of sharing the spiritual wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita.
He travels all over the world from Australia to America, giving talks on spiritual subjects in universities such as Princeton and Cambridge and companies such as Intel and Microsoft. Prabhuji is the author of world’s only Gita daily feature wherein he writes daily 300 words inspirational reflection on a verse from the Bhagavad Gita. As of now, he has written over 1700 Gita meditations that are posted in on www.gitadaily.com and are read through daily feeds by thousands from all over the world.
The content is also available through his Gita daily app. He also answers questions by seekers on his site www.thespiritualscientist.com where his over 3500 audio answers and several hundred articles are available. Also, dear devotees, if you so desire, please register for the book launch and the signing event for Prabhuji’s recent most publication Gita for the CEO on 21st December, the Saturday.
So here is a very brief introduction of Prabhuji and humble and insignificant effort to serve him and the devotees. Over to you, dear Mataji. Thank you for the brief introduction.
Very grateful to you. Yeah, Hare Krishna Mataji. We have to read verse.
Okay. Okay, Mataji. Indulekha Mataji.
Hare Krishna. So Indulekha Mataji will read the verse and the poppet for us. Thank you, Mataji.
Hare Krishna. Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya. Reading from Srimad Bhagavatam, Chapter 7, Canto 7, Chapter 13, Text 26.
Tatrapidam patinam ca sukhayanya panutaye karmani kurvatam drishtva nivrto smiviparyayam. Translation and poppet by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada ki Jai.
In this human form of life, men and women unite for the essential pleasure of sex, but by actual experience, we have observed that none of them are happy. Therefore, seeing the contrary results, I have stopped taking part in materialistic activities. But as stated by Prahlad Maharaj, Man and woman both seek sexual enjoyment and when they are united by the ritualistic ceremony of marriage, they are happy for some time.
But finally there is dissension and thus there are so many cases of separation and divorce. Although every man and woman is actually eager to enjoy life through sexual unity, the result is disunity and distress. Marriage is recommended to give men and women a concession for restricted sex life, which is also recommended in Bhagavad Gita by the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Dharma virudho bhuteshu kamosmi. Sex life not against the principles of religion is Krishna. Every living entity is always eager to enjoy sex life because materialistic life consists of eating, sleeping, sex and fear.
In animal life, eating, sleeping, sexual enjoyment and fear cannot be regulated. But for human society, the plan is that although men, like animals, must be allowed to eat, sleep, enjoy sex and take protection from fear, they must be regulated. The Vedic plan for eating recommends that one takes yajna shishta or prasada, food offered to Krishna.
Yajna shishta shina santo muchyate sarvakil bhishe. The devotees of the Lord are released from all kinds of sins because they eat food that is offered first for sacrifice. Bhagavad Gita 3.13. In material life, one commits sinful activities, especially in eating.
Because of sinful activities, only one is condemned by nature’s law to accept another body, which is imposed as punishment. Sex and eating are essential and therefore they are offered to human society under Vedic restrictions. So that according to the Vedic injunctions, people may eat, sleep, enjoy sex, be protected from fearful life and gradually be elevated and liberated from the punishment of material existence.
Thus, the Vedic injunctions for marriage offers a concession to human society. The idea being that man and woman united in a ritualistic marriage ceremony should help one another advance in spiritual life. Unfortunately, especially in this age, men and women unite for unrestricted sexual enjoyment.
Thus, they are victimised, being obliged to take rebirth in the form of animals to fulfil their animalistic propensities. The Vedic injunctions therefore warn, one should not enjoy sex life like dogs and like hogs and eat everything, even to the limit of A human being should eat prasada offered to the deity and should enjoy sex life according to the Vedic injunctions. He should engage himself in the business of Krishna consciousness.
He should save himself from the fearful condition of material existence and he should sleep only to recover from fatigue due to working hard. The learned Brahmana said that since everything is misused by fruitive workers, he had retired from all fruitive activities. Go host for the both the devices.
Yes, we we already did that Babaji. Thank you. I don’t see that.
Babaji, is it by your name itself? I have given access. Yes, Babaji. Okay.
Can you see two devices over there? Yes, Babaji. On your name, we can see two devices. Okay.
You are the host now. Can all of you hear me clearly? Yes, Babaji. We can hear you.
I am grateful to be here with all of you today. And in this particular verse, one of the key themes, the Shrimad Bhagavatam is being discussed. And among these themes, often the focus is on understanding the nature of the purpose of human life and how that purpose is to be achieved.
Sorry, my screen is getting disconnected over here. Here, the Prabhupada talks about how people seek pleasure to sensuality, to gender and sexuality in particular, and how that disappoints them, that frustrates them. And he talks about how life is meant for a higher purpose.
So, I talk about broadly the topic of sexuality and spirituality. I’ll talk about it in three parts. So, I’ll talk about why sex, why spirituality, and how together, can they go together, if they go together, how do they go together.
So, let’s discuss these three points one by one. Now, in general, most people don’t suddenly wake up and turn towards scripture to learn. They learn from their parents, they learn from their observation, they learn from other people, they read books, and eventually they may come towards sacred books.
So now, biologically speaking, if we consider the purpose of sex, at one level, at a functional level, we can say the purpose is reproductive. Now, of course, there is pleasure also. So, these two, sometimes we put them as recreation and creation.
So, recreation is enjoyment, procreation is forgetting children. Now, these two are naturally, in one sense, there. We could say that in the past.
Now, from a biological perspective, this is vital. Without it, there will be no survival of the species. So, not only our dynasty would die out, our own entire humanity would die out.
And this is an increasing concern in the world, especially the western world. In the past, the fear was overpopulation. You come to India, we feel there are so many people over here.
But this is the past fear. Now, the current fear, especially in the western world, is depopulation. That people are not having children.
Now, that doesn’t mean they’re not having sex. They’re just not having children, and they’re artificially separating the people. But we’re not going to go to sociological reason for that.
The point is that this is vital. In the western world, there is a fear that the only way the western economy and western society will continue is by immigration. But those who immigrate, if they don’t integrate into society, then the western world will no longer be a western world.
It may become a replica of the place from where those immigrants are coming. And that could be a matter of concern. But let’s consider these two purposes, that there is pleasure and there is procreation.
Now, when you look at a pendulum, you make it into only pleasure. Then what happens? Then the procreation comes in the way. Because what happens is, if I only want pleasure, then there’s going to be procreation, and people are worried, they will try birth control, they will do various things.
They try to get rid of procreation. And that leads to a whole huge industry now. Now, it is so ironic in one sense in today’s society.
Ironic is, there are people in anxiety, some people in anxiety, they don’t want progeny. They want to unite physically for the sake of pleasure, but they don’t want progeny. And there are other people in anxiety, who can’t get progeny.
Infertility is becoming a huge problem. I guess paying professions in the medical sphere right now is the whole fertility industry. Some people are calling it the fertility industrial complex now.
So the idea is that some people may seek procreation. Now, we will see that nowadays, only procreation is the purpose. And some of you may be aware that there are not only various kinds of IVF and others, which may be necessary in particular situations, but there are also these egg banks and spawning banks that are kept.
So where women want to pursue a career in their youth, and when they’re 45, 50, when they’re established in their career, then the eggs which are saved in the banks provided by the companies where they’re working, and those eggs will be harvested with some man’s egg that their husband or their partner or some other viable egg So what is happening is sometimes people are using technology to bring about what they call as birth control. They’re using technology to, now it is that not that they don’t want sexual pleasure over there, but the point is that the body is no longer able to procreate. They try to procreate in some way or the other.
So now, Prabhupada in his first quote mentioned that that one is meant to enjoy according to the principles of dharma, that so pleasure and procreation both can go together. Now when you talk about pleasure also, there are different degrees of pleasures, and we’ll talk about that shortly. But at a basic level, we could say that the purpose of sex is procreation and pleasure.
Now, which is more clearly in today’s world, the pursuit of pleasure is much, much more. However, now let’s look at it from the perspective of procreation, specifically human procreation. Among all species in the world that we know of, it is human babies who need the most care.
Without such care, human babies won’t survive. Now, cat babies, kittens need care, dog babies, puppets, puppies need care, but they don’t need that much care. Human babies need an enormous amount of care and they need care not just for a few months, but for several years.
The parenting is probably among the most important human responsibilities, and every religious tradition talks about the importance of parents in shaping the character of children. So even if we put aside shaping the character, just the biological survival itself, when there’s a newborn baby, it is not even a 24 by 7 work. It is a 24 by 7 work for often more than one person, but they need a huge amount of care.
And that’s why, especially among, biologically among mammals, there is this whole phenomenon, what they call as, there is procreation. But along with procreation, there has to be pair bonding. Pair bonding means what? The male and the female both need to unite, not just at a physical level, but also in the form of, procreation can happen from a physical union.
But for pair bonding, there has to be a relational bond, relational union. You need to form a relationship by which both of them, they unite in taking care of the progeny. In the Western world, and even in India, there are many places that are single parents.
Many times it’s single mothers, sometimes it’s single fathers. It’s an extremely difficult task for one parent to take care of children. So pair bonding is very important.
Many times people ask, what is the need for marriage? When one need for marriage is, it is only marriage that animals don’t get married, why do we humans need to get married? So do we want to make animals the standard of how we live? Even if we want to, biology does not listen to that. The way biology is arranged, human babies need far more care. And that care is possible when there is a committed relationship.
And in many ways, as marriage, as the institution goes down, then what happens is naturally, creation goes down. And procreation goes down, then a whole sort of depopulation happens and many other problems start coming up. So from the perspective of biology itself, the pair bonding is important.
And now whenever there is a pair bonding, in the West, there was around the 1940s, and it went on for quite some time, when Prabhupada came to America, that was the peak of that situation, that was called the sexual revolution. And in that sexual revolution came the idea that we should have free love. Free love was basically a euphemism for free sex.
And religion has put old-fashioned bonds on us to restrict us from enjoyment. But actually free love is an oxymoron. To say the word free love, that is like saying somebody is a brilliant fool.
Why? Because love, in essence, is a bond. And when we say it’s a bond, that itself creates restriction. When a man and a woman, if there is real love, they form a bond, and that means there is commitment, and they don’t see other people.
So here, see the euphemism for many more things. So the idea is that free love is an impossibility. Love can be given freely, but if there has to be a loving relationship, then that loving relationship has a bond.
So now that bond is formalised through marriage. So without this, the problem would be that there would be just, even from a biological perspective, if there is no commitment to taking care of children, which requires the kids, then there will be no children. Our children will be uncared for.
And these are the two problems sociologically in the West. Sociological problems in the West are twofold. One is that there is depopulation, which is now becoming more and more alarming.
And Japan and other countries are, it’s a very alarming situation. China is also an alarming situation, but China is because of a different reason. They forcibly tried to have one child by fiat.
Now they’re trying to change it. But the other is that uncared for children. And when the children are uncared for, then what happens is they become delinquents.
They get into bad habits. They hurt themselves. They hurt others.
And that is, they become self-destructive. They even become destructive. So many of these school shooters that are there in America, it’s tragic.
Some people say guns are to blame. However, it’s more of a mental health issue and poor parenting issues and many other issues that are involved in it. But the point is, this is a serious problem.
So leave alone the spiritual perspective, if we consider the purpose of sex itself, if it is procreation, then that is definitely one purpose. If procreation is there, there has to be a certain level of commitment in the relationship. And that commitment is possible only when there is a certain level of regulation.
And so, even from a biological perspective, there has to be regulation of the sexual urge. Now, when we talk about pleasure, and the pleasure can be at different levels. There is a physical pleasure.
Physical pleasure is that when the sexual urge, that the hormones that are secreted, and that brings some pleasure. Now, higher than that is what you can say the emotional pleasure. Now, emotional pleasure, you can call it also the relational pleasure.
So life is tough. And we may have many friends, we may live in a large community. But if there is a close bond with one person, that can be a great help.
And for many people, that may be an indispensable need. Now, there can also be spiritual pleasure. And this is where we move towards spirituality at the second point.
But the current situation is that if you consider this physical and emotional pleasures, even we put aside the physical, spiritual pleasure right now. So what happens is in the pleasure associated with sex. So if somebody wants too much physical pleasure on only, then what will happen is, they will go away from the emotional pleasure, the relational pleasure, let’s not call it emotional, relational pleasure.
Because if one is simply seeking physical pleasure, then one will start thinking, so why be with the same person, and that is the same thing. Of course, if somebody goes with another person also, ultimately, biologically, it is the same thing. But at least the mind has that, can have that illusion that there is something new.
So what had happened is when the physical pleasure alone is sought, there is enormous loneliness and insecurity. There is at a biological, sociological level, Harvard Medical School and many other schools have studied how actually the so-called free love had a long-term result. Many of these people who have one-night stands and are just indiscriminate in their sexual activity end up feeling very lonely and insecure.
They know that I am using others and others are using me. Ultimately, no one cares for each other. So even on the spiritual side, one has to, if one seeks the physical pleasure alone, then one will have to lose out on the relational pleasure.
And if one has to seek the relational pleasure, then one has to eventually outgrow the physical pleasure. That means that one needs to initially, there is a lot of attraction will be there at a physical level, but eventually what needs to happen is that one recognises that there is much more to life. And if the relationship develops, then one starts seeing the other person not just as a source of physical gratification, but as a life partner.
And this is where something could be now in romantic movies, they talk about happily ever after, but there is no ever after because we are all going to die. In the Christian church, they have the idea till death do us part, that till the point of death, we will be together. So that is possible only when one prioritises the relational pleasure over the physical pleasure.
So Prabhupada talks about how in this purport that if somebody is seeking only physical pleasure, then there is, if that is the sole expectation with which one is entering into the relationship, then there will be separation, there will be devastation in that. So there may be physical pleasure, but over a period of time, the relational pleasure that needs to become greater. Now, the problem here may come up, that is that as we spend time, a lot of time with the other person, we start finding that, oh, that person has so many different sides.
And there are so many sides that I don’t like. And then even the relational pleasure starts becoming difficult. We find that there are so many incompatibilities.
There was an American comedian who said that my wife and I, he said, we live in different rooms, we drive different cars, we watch different TVs, we eat our food at different tables, we enter and exit the house through different doors. We are doing everything possible to keep our marriage together. Now, there is no marriage there at all.
The marriage is just a hollow institution where there’s no relational connection. So the point I’m making is that one may seek a relational connection, but then the problem here might come is that we may say there are too many differences, there will be incompatibility. Now, incompatibility, sometimes it can come from nature, but much more it comes from expectations.
That brings us to the point of, so why spirituality? I still doubt, till now I talked about why sex. So why spirituality? To ultimately be human beings. When we say humans and animals, humans versus animals, there is science, especially biology, which says that we are just the same, that we are just evolved animals, that’s all.
They’re nothing but animals. Then there is Christianity, which holds the idea that we are the only beings with souls. Their idea is that animals don’t have souls, or at least they don’t have the kind of souls that we human beings have, which are the souls that can know God and love God.
So now human-animals relationship or difference, whatever you want to say, we’re talking about here. So in between is the understanding that we are both same and different. Akhinte Bhedabhed applies over here also.
How are we same? We are same in the sense that we also have to take care of our body. There are body’s urges, there are body’s needs. These have to be taken care of.
However, we are different because we have an evolved consciousness. And because of this evolved consciousness, what happens is, we seek pleasure. And the pleasure that we seek is more than what the body can provide.
What the body can naturally provide, we humans seek more pleasure than that. And that is why we try to eat food so much. Cows eat the same grass all the time.
We seek more and more pleasure. And what happens is, if we do not know about spirituality, then we seek more pleasure at the physical level than what body can provide naturally. We try to artificially extend the pleasure.
So when we seek more pleasure than what the body can provide, we can go two ways. One is, we can go technological or we can go spiritual. Technological means what? That when the body’s capacity to enjoy decreases, take some pills, try to use various things to increase one’s capacity to enjoy.
So there is this drug called Viagra, which people use to try to increase their sexual potency. Jaydev Maharaj wrote an article called, he said, human beings don’t need Viagra. What they need is Vairagya.
That we need to eventually outgrow this craving for bodily pleasure. We want more pleasure than what the body gives. And how will we find that more pleasure? By looking for pleasure beyond the body.
And that is at the level of the soul. So this brings us to find spiritual happiness. So there is, you could say, physical happiness.
I’m using the word physical over here and differentiate from material because the relational emotional happiness can be material and spiritual. We look at that. Now physical happiness comes through gratification.
Prabhupada uses the word sense gratification, but any kind of gratification that gives physical pleasure. Now spiritual happiness comes through purification. Purification means that there are many cravings within us.
So what happens is, we can say we are purification. So we are souls in physical bodies. We are the body and we are the soul.
Now the soul can ride higher towards spiritual happiness. But the body goes towards physical happiness. So now what we need to do is that around the soul there is the mind.
And this mind is filled with many impressions. Now those impressions can either drag us down or those impressions can lift us up. So purification essentially means we replace the mind’s impressions.
So that instead of looking for physical pleasures, we start looking for higher spiritual happiness. So it is only this that can satisfy us. Why? A simple reason is twofold.
Why only spiritual happiness can satisfy us? One reason is the quantity. Quantity means that it alone will be lasting. Even if somebody says who has seen the spiritual world and who has seen God in the spiritual world and what happiness they’re going to find.
So that’s why I’m not using the word everlasting. If one becomes spiritually evolved, even in this life they can find some happiness by inner contemplation, by absorption in the divine. And even modern science is talking more and more about the benefits of meditation.
Like the world yoga day has become very famous. The Indian government has proposed that we should have a world meditation day. And December 21st, which is the day of the winter solstice, has now been declared the world meditation day.
A lot of celebrations are being prompted for both inner peace and outer peace. So the idea is even at this level in this world, if there’s a little purification, one can experience deeper satisfaction. So spiritual happiness is actually greater in quantity.
And it is greater means it will last longer. And it is deeper in quality. Quality means what? It will actually be more meaningful.
Over a period of time, even if a person has a lot of sensual physical pleasure, they’ll just get exhausted. They’ll get bored with it. It just becomes so meaningless.
That’s why when people keep seeking this meaningless pleasure, then they have to seek it in more and more extreme ways. But when there’s deeper in quality means it connects with our core. It goes deep into us and goes beyond our physical layers, our mental layers to the deepest core of who we are and activates the soul’s potentiality for happiness.
Spiritual happiness is much greater. And that achieving that lasting happiness, which is greater in quantity and that much more meaningful happiness, which is deeper in quality, richer in quality, that is the purpose of life. So now that brings us to talk much more about spirituality.
But let’s come to the concluding part now that how can these two go together? That how can sexuality and spirituality go together? So this is where the key comes up that. Broadly speaking. We could put it in many ways, but let’s put it this way.
At the materialistic level, there is only sexuality and some people may claim that, oh, you can be sexual and spiritual. But that’s a very superficial, sentimental kind of spirituality because the consciousness gets locked in the body due to spirituality. When the consciousness is locked in the body, one cannot really perceive spiritual reality as Krishna talks about it in 2.44. Now, on the other hand, some people say we will pursue only spirituality.
Now, this is possible for a few people and across the world’s tradition and especially in the Vedic tradition, there was the renounced order. It is also expected that everyone eventually take to a renunciation. And now only spirituality, it may seem impractical for most people.
So. For a few people, it may be possible, but for most people, it can seem so impractical that if that is made the standard of spirituality, then most people will say spirituality is not for me. Now, the Bhagavatam does seem to sometimes make statements that there has to be only spirituality and one has to give up all sexual pleasure.
And yes, there is some truth to that at the ultimate level when one gets purified. At the same time, we need to remember that the Bhagavatam is spoken to a person who is about to die and he’s already around the world and therefore the Bhagavatam focusses on telling Parikshit Maharaj stories that will enable him to become absorbed single-mindedly in Krishna. So, now for most people, there will be a certain level of sexuality and there will be a certain level of spirituality.
So, now in the last part, I’ll talk about the final part, how these two, can they go together? To what extent can they go together? So, Krishna in seven-point tense says, But the thing is for both of these to go together, it has to be regulated. If it’s unregulated, then it’s impossible for a person to have sexuality and spirituality together. Now, on the other side, if you want to consider spirituality, the spirituality has to be engaged with the world, if the two are to go together.
That means that if a person is either naturally very renounced or artificially disengaging themselves from the world, then it will be difficult for both these aspects to go together. There has to be a certain recognition that I am engaging in the world and because I’m engaging in the world, so I have to take responsibility. I was visiting UK recently and I was at one devotee’s home.
He said that, you know, tomorrow is my wife’s wedding anniversary. I said, what do you mean your wife’s wedding anniversary? Isn’t it your wedding anniversary? He said, all this is your sentiment. I don’t believe in all this.
I didn’t say anything at that time. But then after that, he said, you know, actually my wife is not at all interested in spirituality. She does not support me.
And I think Krishna has given me a very disagreeable wife, just so that I can become detached from material life. He’s quite a young person. He just had a child.
He said, people don’t jump to such conclusions. You know, sometimes we imagine that Krishna is teaching us the lesson that we, it’s like, what a desire we equate with Krishna’s lesson. That means, say, I don’t want to be responsible.
And I say, oh, Krishna is teaching me that lesson. Now, is it like that? Now, I was visiting their homes. I talked with his wife.
She’s very intelligent. She’s also, I found quite interested in spirituality. But then I found was that he, she had some concerns or complaints about him.
And he basically said that he was, as a husband, there are some basic responsibilities and basic courtesies, basic expressions of affection and care that were there. And he was not doing any of those things. And because he felt that he was treating him so coldly, he was treating her so coldly.
And naturally, then she was also becoming bitter. So I said, Prabhu, whenever there are problems, in the Nyaya Shastra, it is described, Nyaya Vedic logic, whenever there are problems, and we are looking for the cause of the problems, when we seek the cause, we should always move first from the drushta to the adrushta. Drushta means what is visible, what is understandable to us by our intelligence.
And then, if it doesn’t make sense with our intelligence, then we move towards invisible causes. So, if, say, the Pandava’s house was burnt, the fire, now they could say, oh, this fire was just arrangement of destiny. But no, Vidura had warned them.
And they saw that actually Purochan was making all the arrangements to set them on fire. So, when the actual fire occurred, then you did not have destiny or this particular person’s cause. So, sometimes, if we focus too much on spirituality, then we may neglect the relational aspects.
And then that can make our life more difficult than it needs to. Prabhupada says that it’s a matter of expectations. Many people come into a relationship with expectations.
If the expectation of pleasure, we come with the expectation of pleasure, then what will happen is we will get frustration. However, we could go to the other extreme and expect misery. Then that can also lead to frustration.
If we go towards the other extreme and say, oh, this whole, it can become like a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, the reality, however, is somewhere in between. The reality is that there are some distress.
The reality is there is some misery, there is some distress that is unchangeable or unavoidable. Just by being in the material world, each individual is a different individual, and we will have different understandings. It’s unchangeable, but there is also changeable or reducible.
So, we can say there is irreducible misery. Just two people being different will create some problems, but there is reducible misery. Reducible misery means that we need to understand each other’s functions in such a way that this misery gets reduced.
Krishna points out in 12.15 where he says, so I read this verse to this devotee and I told him that, see what does Krishna say over here? So, Krishna says in any relationship what will happen is I will disturb you and you will disturb me and together we create a disturbed home and then a disturbed world. But we don’t have to do that. Krishna says those devotees are dear to him because you don’t disturb others and those who don’t be disturbed by others.
So, how do we do this? To come to this level, we need to understand that when we are forming a relationship that the purpose of the relationship at one level we may start the relationship with the idea of gratification. But ultimately it is the purpose of the relationship is also to assist us in our evolution. Evolution means that we both grow spiritually.
So, the purpose of ISKCON is to bring all people closer to each other and closer to Krishna. There’s a relationship over here. The relationship is healthy.
Two things will happen. One is that the two people will come closer and they will move higher. Move higher means the proposes come closer to each other and come closer to Krishna.
So, when we understand that the relationships that we develop at the spiritual level, those are important. Earlier, I talked about the alliance between the physical and emotional pleasure. Now, let’s put it, let’s bring in the spiritual part to it that when there is a spiritual connection, when we start seeing each other not just as there is a physical connection, there is an emotional connection, and there is a spiritual connection.
So, when there is a physical connection, we just see each other as objects, as objects for gratification, objects for accumulating our hormones and gratifying ourselves. When we see the emotional connection, then at that time we have, we see the other person as a shelter. The other person should understand me.
The other person should do this for me. Why are they not doing this for me? But when we see a spiritual connection, then we see that we are each other means to be supports for getting the supreme shelter. The husband does not think that I am going to give shelter to my wife, and the wife does not think that I am going to seek shelter in my husband, but rather both of them understand that we are here to seek the supreme shelter.
So, when this is happening, then even if there is some diminution in the emotional connection, there is some diminution in the physical pleasure, those things won’t matter because both of them will be pursuing that connection with Krishna. And when that connection with Krishna is there, then both of them, as they come closer to Krishna, so I have my relationship with you, you have a relationship with me, but I have my relationship with Krishna, you have a relationship with Krishna, and relating with you helps me to become closer to Krishna, and relating with you also helps me to become closer to Krishna. And this way, there can be spiritual foundation for the overall relationship in such a way that both people can come closer to each other and ultimately come closer to Krishna and ultimately attain.
So, I’ll summarise what I discussed today. Our topic was sexuality and spirituality. Can they go together? Or how can they go together? The first point I discussed was how? Why sex? So, we discussed at a basic level, for all species, the purpose is procreation.
Now, there is also some physical pleasure over there, there is recreation. Now, we discussed how these two can go towards the extreme, where there is only procreation and only recreation, and both can become problematic. Now, especially in humans, even at a biological level, for procreation to happen, there has to be not just the physical union, but also the relational union.
Why relational union? Because there has to be a pair bonding. So, because human progeny need much more care than animal progeny. So, we discussed how, if there is no relational bonding, then even at a physical level, there are problems.
So, there is this whole idea of free love. Only thing it led to is loneliness. So, now, if somebody seeks only physical pleasure, then they will think, why should I be only with the same person? If somebody is only emotional, only relational pleasure, the problem will be the other person might disappoint us, and we may lose out.
So, now we might think, why should I be with this person alone? So, then we discussed that we humans also need to have a spiritual dimension to our life. So, why spirituality? Because we seek pleasure, and that is more than what the body can offer. Animals can eat the food that nature provides and be content, but we want more and more varieties of food, more and more gratification in food.
So, we can seek this through technology, but that will ultimately be parted, but the body is limited. Instead, we seek this to spirituality. Understand that there is a layer of being to us which is much deeper.
Spiritual pleasure is greater in quantity because it lasts longer, and it is greater in quality because it goes deeper to our core. Now, how can we bring sexuality and spirituality together? So, that was the last part where we discussed that the purpose is that ultimately we are together not just for procreation, because procreation requires pair bonding, but we are together ultimately for purification. Now, purification means that there is a soul, so there is the body, there is the soul.
The soul wants to rise upward, the body drags us downwards, and where we will go will depend on the impressions in the mind. So, we need to, in the human form of life, we want to change the impressions. So, these impressions, are they taking us upward or are they taking us downwards? Purification means the upward impressions, upward taking impressions are strengthened, and for that purpose, during our life journey, we seek a spiritual partner.
So, normally when we form a relationship, there may be some distance, but by spiritual growth, we come closer to each other, and we come closer to Krishna. So, come closer and go higher. That is the characteristic of a healthy relationship, and to the extent we understand that with what is the expectation we commit, with the purpose, if the purpose is self-gratification, if we are, generally men will seek physical gratification, they will get bored, women will seek relational gratification, and they will feel dissatisfied.
If it’s either gratification of the purpose, then that will lead to frustration sooner or later. But if you understand the purpose is evolution, that I want to evolve in my relationship with Krishna. So, when we seek physical pleasure, when we seek relational pleasure, we seek physical pleasure, men will see women as an object, when we seek relational pleasure, women will see man as a shelter.
But ultimately, when we seek spiritual pleasure, we understand that we are supports for each other, so that we can get to the supreme shelter. That is what the Krishna consciousness process as given in the Bhagavatam is ultimately meant to take us towards. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments? Hare Krishna and dear Babaji, thank you so much for your so blissful and very enlightening class, and so practical to utilise it. Yes, we see a couple of devotees have raised.
Anuradha Mataji, can you please go ahead with your question? Thank you, Mataji. Hare Krishna, Prabhu. It’s a very, very tough thing to strike a balance.
I was thinking, like we have like in our movement and talking for myself also, when we are introduced to Krishna consciousness, we want to leave everything. I want to leave everything for Krishna. And that time, to a certain extent, it goes and then again fails because of the anarthas or the, you know, the karma and things like that.
The bija is still there. And so it comes back and eventually fall for it. So, you know, where is, when do this tyaga bhoga, tyaga bhoga continuously goes on.
And we see even in our movement, our seniors, they have done so much for Prabhupada, but at certain point they go, go, they go back to the old habit. So how, I mean, I don’t know. I find it is like a, like never ending quest to find where is the balance with some certainty.
Of course, we don’t, cannot know it for sure. That’s what I understand. And please correct me if I’m wrong, but if there is any certainty where I know that what I’m doing is, this is what I’m this is what I’m supposed to do.
Not too much of tyaga and not too much of bhoga, but, you know, somewhere I’m striking a balance. Yeah. I think the key is that our spirituality needs to be sustainable.
We talk about sustainable environments and sustainable growth, but often the spirituality that we practise is unsustainable. So that means we practise standards that are not sustainable over the long run. So what happened was our movement began the first generation as largely a monastic movement.
Monastic movement means that everybody lived in a monastery. Becoming a devotee meant moving into the temple. That was the understanding at that time.
So now most of our devotees are not living in temples, but we have a generational jet lag. That means that the standard that were expected of monastics in the first generation are made the standard that are expected of everyone, even those who are congregation devotees. And that’s not sustainable.
That is not sustainable even for monastics in the previous generation. What to speak of us? So I think this is something which every individual has to decide on their own. That means in our, okay, why is my screen not being seen over here? Okay.
Anyway, I’ll just speak it. In our spiritual life, there are bonds and there are boundaries. Bond means that we want to connect with Krishna.
And boundaries means how much will I engage in other things while I’m connecting with him. Now, boundaries are required everywhere. Even if somebody has a non-spiritual relationship, just if somebody wants to have a sustainable relationship at a material level also, a man-woman need to have some boundaries when they function.
Otherwise, adultery is one of the biggest causes of family breakdowns. The boundaries are required everywhere. Nobody can live without boundaries.
The thing is that what boundaries will work for an individual, that has to be decided by the individual. Neither my Shiksha Guru nor my Diksha Guru can live in my place. They don’t have my mind.
I have my mind and I have to deal with my mind. They can help me. But Prabhupada says each one of us has to fly our own plane.
But that can be seen in two ways. One is that it is our responsibility. Nobody can grow spiritually for us.
But it also means that we know what enemies we are facing. And sometimes the enemies may be so much that we can’t move forward. We have to take a step backward.
Lie low for some time. So we have to fight our own war means that we have to decide how much we can fight at a particular amount of time. So Prabhupada says in the 18th chapter of the Govinda Purport that the purpose of marriage is to make the mind peaceful so that we can focus on spiritual life.
Now we say the mind never becomes peaceful. Well, that is true at one level. But at another level what it means is that the mind is constantly agitated.
It can be agitated like say if you are fasting on Ekadashi. Now if we eat too much food then what happens is the mind is agitated because the greed for food is constantly consuming our mind. On the other hand, if we eat too little food then also our mind gets agitated.
So now how much food is too much food? And how much food is too little food? Each person has to find out on their own. Nobody else can tell. You don’t eat more than two chapatis.
Everybody has a different metabolism. So the idea that we say the amount of calories we take in and how many calories we consume, that how much we are taking in, how much we are consuming, how much we are exhausting, that is something each one of us has to find out. They want to be that mathematical in the process.
My point is like that with all our bodily urges, each one of us has to find out what is sustainable and function accordingly. So just like when we eat food there is a range. The highest level could be that we eat food which is cooked by devotees, which is offered by devotees, which is maybe farmed and harvested by devotees, offered to the deities and we take the food.
And we could also have food that is bought commercially, offered in the mine and taken if we had to go to some corporate dinner or somewhere like that and we have to go there and we have to eat something. We will not, even if we go there, we will not eat meat. So not eating meat is like the basic level of standard.
So from there to eating food that is only offered for Krishna. So like that, you know, we can have various levels. There is sex within marriage, which is generally what should a Prabhupada talk about whenever he defined illicit sex at initiation ceremonies.
Prabhupada talks about sex only for procreation in many books and many places, but it’s a spectrum. So one can go towards the higher level but say there is a boundary that is sex outside marriage, no. From there, there’s an incremental level, one will rise gradually.
So the key is sustainability. Now, how do we find out what, how much food is too much, how much food is too little? We use our intelligence and we use our experience. We don’t have to have a one-zero attitude.
It’s a gradual progression and each person has to find out within what boundaries they can function. Does that answer the question? Yes, Prabhu. With that, it’s like just to follow up, I was thinking what will develop our, how do we develop our intelligence, Prabhu, so that we can be our friend, you know, like not that always our Shikshaguru, Dikshaguru will be there to help.
You said my mind is my mind, nobody understands me. So how do we develop our intelligence in such a way that, you know, end of it somehow or the other I can make it. Curiosity.
Replace judgmentality with curiosity. Judgmentality is I’m so fallen, I’m so fallen, I’m so fallen. I’m so advanced, I’m so advanced, I’m so advanced.
Both are being judgemental. One is out of ego, the other is out of insecurity. So if you consider pendulum, an extreme of the pendulum is insecurity.
I’m so fallen, I’m so fallen, I’m so fallen. The other extreme of the pendulum is ego. I’m such an advanced devotee, I’ve read so much preaching, I’ve distributed so many books.
In between these two is humility. And one understanding of humility is simply curiosity. Humility is curiosity.
There are some things about myself I know, and there are many things about myself I do not know. So when we are able to sustain a particular level of renunciation, or when we pathetically fail in sustaining a particular level of renunciation, instead of immediately labelling ourselves, oh, I’m such a great devotee, I’m such a fallen person. Instead of that, just be curious.
Okay, how was I able to do this for so long? What were the factors that worked in my favour? When we succumb, what happened exactly? What was my thought process inside? What was my external situations? So when you say Athato Brahma Jijnasa, that Jijnasa is not just at the So who is the Brahma? The Brahma is Bhagwan, the Brahma is also the Atma. So be curious about ourselves. Observe ourselves.
We hear classes, we take those classes and use that as an additional lens to look at ourselves, to learn more about ourselves so that we can understand what is sustainable for us, what is not sustainable for us. So in one sense, we need to become like a guide for ourselves. The Bhagavatam in the 11th Canto, the Uddhav Gita says, ultimately everyone has to become their own guru.
So the commentators explain over there that it does not mean that we reject our guru, but by learning from our various gurus, it is we who have to learn to become our own guides. And if you were cultivating someone, how would you do that? You would be curious. If we are trying to cultivate a new person and we become judgemental with that person, then we will not be able to cultivate them.
We will put labels on that person and that person will just be locked, imprisoned by those labels. And then eventually, if they can’t bear those labels, either because they’re painful, because they’re too negative, or they’re too exalted, just a serious devotee, probably you have performed a lot of bhakti in your previous life. And that way we expect from that person a very high standard of commitment.
And they can’t do that, they will go away. So if you’re truly guiding someone, you have to be curious. Try to understand where that person is and how we can guide that person.
So similarly, be curious about ourselves. Try to learn. So ultimately, we are parts of Krishna.
So when we study ourselves, we’re actually studying a part of Krishna. And if you don’t do it in an egoistic sense, saying how great I am, just an objective sense that there’s so much we can learn. And that way we can grow in life.
Thank you so much. Very helpful. Thank you very much.
I think we need to stop over here.