Bhagavatam-daily 102 – 11.08.18 – Don’t underestimate the danger of sonic temptation

Marching forward in our spiritual life thank you the brahmana is continuing his instruction to Maharaj Yadu and here he’s telling what one can learn from the deer that how sound vibration how the ears can trap us now he is to talk that principle in the previous verse and in this verse is illustrating that principle through a historical narrative so by dancing using instruments for singing for music and by singing women what did this woman do is all this what they were singing and reciting was mundane so by that related to sense gratification they broadcast that they cultivated that they cultivated the desire for sense gratification in the heart of Prishayashringi all of them they brought him under control in what way like a play thing Prishayashringi who was the son of Murugi this is a story which comes quite often in the Puranas it is a reference to more often than systematically delineated but let’s look at the story and what it how it relates to the context so Murugi was a great sage who had seen how attachment to women and subsequently if the woman turns out to be unfaithful and the woman betrays the man then there is enormous misery so he thought in order to keep my son protected from the misery caused by attachment to women by infatuation with women I will not expose him to women at all so he placed him in a forest where there were no women around anywhere and Prishayashringi the son grew up without any conception of any women at all and he was living like this his name was Prishayashringa Prishayashringa means horn so he had a horn on his forehead and normally horns are associated with demons but he had a horn and still he was he looked very beautiful because overall his character was beautiful and the appearance was also beautiful so he was handsome you could say now he was living as a perfect brahmachari and in the nearby kingdom of Maharaj Rompa he this kingdom was suffering a severe drought and the brahmins told him that if there is a pure brahmachari who has never who has never spilled his vital fluid then and if such a person steps on this kingdom then by his touching the earth the earth will become sanctified the whole area will become sanctified and the curse the curse like bad karma which is which is causing this drought will be countered and there will be rains now they said there’s such a who is such a brahmachari they said it’s a Prishayashringi now how to get Prishayashringi there was the question so when the sage heard when the king heard about how his father had kept him protected he made a plan and he got the most beautiful damsels dancing girls and others along with his own daughter to dress as munis so when they dressed as munis they they dressed not as muni kanyas but as muni kumaras so they dressed in almost something like a male dress and they went there through the hermitage where Prishayashringi was doing his austerities and Prishayashringi had never seen women before and as they were these women were moving along he heard their chatting he heard their singing he heard the chatting that itself captivated him and then these damsels they started singing and dancing and that way the more he heard that sound the more he was captivated he had never heard the sound of a female voice what to speak of a female voice singing and what to speak of a female voice singing along with dancing and with musical instruments so he practically stood no chance of resisting that temptation and here it is said that he became practically like a play thing Kridanako was so captivated by them that he immediately he went and talked with them and became captivated and then they said that we have to go now he when will you come back again and he soon came so much under their spell that he said i cannot live without you and he went with them and then he entered the kingdom and then the drought was mitigated as soon as he entered the kingdom so the point of the story for us is that without getting into the supernatural elements of how whether somebody’s stepping into a kingdom can actually give rains you know the subtle powers of the universe are not accessible to people who are in gross consciousness in Kalyuga so rather than focusing on that let us focus on the principle that is relevant even today for us that Rishikesh Ringgi was tempted first and foremost by the sounds of the voices of the singing of by the these dances so similarly when we hear worldly songs they can be kept they captivate us and in that way we may be fixed in our enunciation and often we associate illusion with the eyes and normally we talk about spiritual knowledge coming through the ears and while this is true but we need also to remember that even material illusion can come through the ears and sometimes when material illusion comes through the ears we are not so much on guard because we think oh my eyes are not going in the wrong direction I am not seeing things which are sense gratificatory but we know that even if you are hearing things which are sense gratificatory that is also going to lead to illusion to bondage and therefore we need to resist and counter it and the best way to counter it is by keeping a safe distance from it so when we understand the danger then we can resist the danger Rishikesh Ringgi just as he was a sage but he was captivated through the ears most of us you know we are actually neophytes at least I am a neophyte struggling against worldly desires and the more we if we expose ourselves to mundane songs then the desires will captivate us and they will drag us and trap us the way the Rishikesh Ringgi got trapped. Now we may not be able to avoid mundane songs entirely because sometimes we live in cities and neighbors may play loud music and although there are laws which regulate the playing of loud music and the resulting sound pollution but sometimes on some on some occasions of celebrations a new year or marriage or other such festive occasions for materials they may have loud music going on so we may not be able to avoid exposure to loud music or mundane music also but the point is that we can minimize it as much as possible and thereby show Krishna a desire that I do not want to indulge in this please protect me and beyond that we can also show Krishna by our actions that we want to keep our consciousness spiritual so as much as possible if we immerse our consciousness in spiritual sounds when we have the opportunity and when we don’t have that opportunity we try to create spiritual sounds as much as possible ourselves nowadays we have the just as the technology can give access to illusion technology can also give us access to illumination so we can surround ourselves with spiritual sounds through using technology we can have kirtans and lectures and recitations of verses on our phones or on some other devices iPods or whatever in that way protect us surround ourselves and protect ourselves with spiritual sound vibration thank you