Bhagavatam-daily 106 – 11.08.22 – A saint’s learning from a prostitute demonstrates the world’s utilization even amidst the world’s renunciation

From him we can conquer the tongue and thereby conquer all the senses thank you so here daudit brahmana is continuing to describe what he has learned from his different gurus and now he comes to a most unlikely guru that is a prostitute generally saintly people have nothing to do with prostitutes at the most what they may do is that they may deliver a prostitute and then they are celebrated for that Jesus has said to have delivered Mary Magdalene and Haridas Thakur have delivered the prostitute Lakshahira and like that there are stories of saints who have delivered prostitutes but for a saint to learn from a prostitute is extraordinary now there is a story of Bilvamangal Thakur who learned from Chintamani but then at that time Bilvamangal Thakur was not a saint but he was a materialistic person and she just spoke something which struck him as enlightening so it was not that he was a saint seeking to learn something from a prostitute so the idea that a saint can learn from a prostitute indicates how universal can be the scope of spiritual knowledge so we don’t have to reject the world entirely it’s a David Brahmana is giving a message of which largely centers on world rejection that means he’s talking about how one should not get entangled with a man how one should avoid getting gratifying the tongue being agitated by sense of touch so like overall if we see the message is largely about detachment from the world dancing the world rejecting the world yet he is engaging the world because he is drawing this lesson from the world itself that means there is a simultaneous there is a paradox over here you know to learn the lesson of of rejecting the world we engage the world so it is not that he is learning only from scripture yes he has learned from scripture he has learned from guru and he has learned the insubstantial nature of the material world but then he is reinforcing that learning about the futility of the world from the world itself so even in the renunciation of the world there is utilization of the world and that is the inclusiveness of spirituality especially devotional spirituality you know worldly things if we are infatuated with them and we imagine that these will give me pleasure then they are the sources of entanglement they are the sources of distress they are the of trouble but if we use the worldly things for deepening our spiritual realizations then even if the spiritual realization centers on looking beyond this world we can get that message from the things of this world so few things can illustrate this simultaneous rejection and utilization of the world then the renunciates learning from a prostitute the men in general are attached to women or the normal way that that attachment is fulfilled is by having a wife now men who are degraded they have mistresses or they have paramours or they go to prostitutes where you know the there where in where the bodily contact is divorced entirely from affection so at least in a marriage or relationship there is sex but there is also some affection between the couple when a man has a mistress the relationship is somewhat long term maybe for a few months or whatever few years depending on on the on how long the man feels fascinated by his he’s interested in the mistress but at that time also there is some affection of course the primary thing is gratification but there is some affection so whereas when a man goes to a prostitute then there is only lust over there there is practically no affection or just a person who is sexually agitated needs a lump of flesh in which one can gratify one’s lust so in that sense the a prostitute engaging with a prostitute is usually an act of lust divorced from any affection at all practically speaking now so that means people who are very lusty and don’t care for any relationship they care only for the gratification of lust they go there now on the other hand a person who is a renunciate has controlled and largely conquered lust that’s how the person is able to sustain oneself in the renounced order conquered lust doesn’t mean that lust has been eliminated most often lust stays till the moment of death in the consciousness but one becomes determined enough not to indulge in the in the gratification of the lusty desires so the point here is that these are two extremes so if we consider normal householder life as the standard the renunciate is way way above and the prostitute represents something which is way below so a tool for gratifying people’s lust and that’s a symbol of that and renunciate is a symbol of one who has largely transcended lust at least at the level of indulgence so now for one who is so elevated that it is difficult for most people to imagine that somebody can live without sexual gratification so for someone who is so elevated to learn from someone who is so degraded seems to be extremely improbable when a woman is known as a prostitute there are various sometimes euphemisms used to refer to such a woman may call a woman of the oldest profession or lady of the evening or whatever but still in general at least in most societies still recently such a profession was frowned upon so most respectable people at least in public keep a long distance from a prostitute nobody thinks of learning from a prostitute but here the brahmin is demonstrating that he says that what i learned from a prostitute i’ll tell you so now of course this learning was not from the it was not that he went and associated with the prostitute and asked her give me a Bhagavatam class no it is not like that it was that he observed a life story from the distance and learned from it so now we don’t have to ourselves seek out the degraded sections of society and try to get some lessons from them we can learn from scripture we can learn from our experience but if we just keep our eyes and ears open you know in the news we hear some stories in the world we see certain things happening and if we try to correlate them with what is described in scripture we can learn significantly from that and that’s how we can grow in our life so when we talk about learning learning doesn’t have to end when our scriptural study ends during our day-to-day life also we can keep learning if we keep our eyes and ears open so here so even if our message is to even if the lesson we want to learn is to renounce the world most of us are going to live in the world actually for most of our life even the devotees who renounce the world they also live in the world in the sense that they are actively engaged in the world but even if the message of the world message we are trying is to be detached from the world we don’t hate the world we understand that the world is Krishna’s energy and the world can teach me a lot but if I am going to see the world as an arena for my enjoyment then I objectify it and then my goal is not to learn from it my goal is to dominate it to control it and to bend it to my will so similarly with respect to a prostitute a man who goes to a prostitute to do with her what he wants so that he can enjoy he can’t learn much from her or anything anything substantial anything spiritual from her so in general the attitude of modern science or a modern materialist modern rational outlook we could say was that traditionally nature was thought as a mother who sustains us but sometimes in nature there are calamities and because of that many modern pre-modern thinkers thought that nature is not like a mother she’s like a step mother and eventually the idea there are some thinkers who said that the nature is like a wall and she needs to be buckled and controlled and technology is going to give us the power to control nature but the technological attempts to control nature have backfired and now we have many ecological crisis which have come primarily because of man’s short-sighted and presumptuous attempts to shackle nature so not only is it not possible for us to shackle nature but also when we have that attitude of bending nature to our will we can’t learn from it so in one sense the more we are emotionally entangled in the world the less we can learn from the world because we are so caught in trying to make things in the world happen the way we want that when things happen in some different way we just our main reaction is anger frustration rage and it is not that we can learn from it at all so to the extent we do not have the desire to bend the world to our will I mean to the extent we have some level of detachment from the world to that extent the world can become a arena for instruction for us and we can learn from it so same the other brahmana had no desire to enjoy the prostitute and no desire to bend her to his will for his pleasure so when he had that distance he could learn from it and similarly we too can learn lessons from the world if we are not too caught up in making things happen our way yes we have our plans and we try to execute our plans but if they don’t work we understand okay just one plan ultimately krishna is in control krishna will guide me how to best move forward in my life and let me learn from what how things have worked out and that way we can not only have peace when things don’t go our way but we can also have growth because we will be learning by observing and contemplating about things when they go a different way from what we had desired or planned