Bhagavatam-daily 123 – 11.08.39 – Use detachment for increasing devotion, not challenging temptation

Of the lord and it is the greatest good fortune thank you 11 8 39 so here uddhava gita the brahmana is speaking about pingala pingala is speaking her realizations and then by that lord upakritam adaya upakritam yes done a upkar a great favor to me and adaya i accept that favor what is that favor she has mentioned that in the previous verses that she has got nirveda detachment shirasa i accepted gratefully on my head upon my head with devotion with gratitude i accept it and refers to mundane materialistic is association i give up materialistic association and that which is actually very is those desires which are misdirected which are bad desires sinful desires durashtak so i will give you a bad association and bad desire which go together bad association bad desires and sharanam rajami i will go into that his shelter i’ll come into his shelter tam adheeswaram unto that person who is the eshwara the supreme lord adheeswara so pingala is saying that i gratefully accept the mercy that he has given me in the form of the attachment and henceforth i will stay away from bad association bad desires and i will go in his shelter fully so here when we get a blessing from the lord the blessing we become blessed not only by accepting the blessing but also by acting on the blessing so some other person could have seen that as not as a blessing but as a curse oh why did my business not go as go as usual but then she saw it as a blessing and now she’s acting on the blessing in two ways what are the two ways in which she is acting first is you know when we become when we become detached at that time we shouldn’t think that that is a license for us for again going into tempting situations thinking that now i am detached so nothing is going to happen to me no so although she is saying that she has become detached but still pingala is speaking over here that i will protect this treasure of detachment by not going into situations which are likely to revive my attachments so i gratefully accept this gift and how do i show my appreciation my gratitude for this gift by not endangering it many times we get some realizations we get some convictions and when we get those convictions we often are grateful yes this is such a insight we sometimes feel of this my life is going to change after i hear this class after i get this insight but sometimes we see that life doesn’t change because we don’t treasure that insight just like if a person is very poor and then suddenly the person becomes wealthy now now that person has definitely become wealthy but that does now wealth is not necessarily a permanent state unless one protects it now if again this person is careless and doesn’t protect the wealth and although the wealth was there at one time after that the wealth is gone because somebody else came and stole it so like that we get a realization that brings renunciation and that is a wealth it is a treasure and when we have it we certainly you can you can and should use it to act with detachment act with determination na bhakti but then it’s not that one day when we get a realization and we feel this is life transforming realization yes it can be lifetime transforming realization but it’s not that our old weaknesses are no longer going to be there they will take a lot they will take a time time to go away and not only that even if they don’t take time to go away you know they are actually gone away still they can come back so we have to protect ourselves from bad association and grama saṅgataḥ tyaktvā I give up bad association because bad association will cause the reawakening or the regeneration of the desires so the desires have become dormant then they will become awakened and if we say the desires are not dormant they are actually gone but they can come back also so grama saṅgataḥ tyaktvā I give up bad association and we see that the same principle Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s instructions to Raghunath Das Goswami that he said that don’t speak on mundane subjects and don’t talk with don’t talk mundane things don’t hear mundane things so now if we see we may wonder why does a person like Raghunath Das Goswami need this kind of instruction he is such a renounced person that he had a fabulous amount of wealth you know like the like heavenly wealth he had and in spite of having that wealth he renounced it all so you know why does such a it may seem such a preliminary instruction oh don’t associate it basically when we speak materialistic things and hear materialistic things that means we are associating with materialistic people so he’s saying that don’t do this well he has already given it up and but then just because we have given it up doesn’t mean that that thing cannot come back to us again so if a instruction of avoiding bad association can apply to a person who is so immensely renounced like Raghunath Das Goswami then how much more will it apply to us we actually our detachment is also if at all there is a detachment the detachment is not very strong Raghunath Das Goswami’s renunciation was said to be like lines on stone once they are etched they are there forever our detachment is often like lines on sand you know just a little bit shaking here and there and the detachment may go so when we get some detachment we have to protect it by avoiding going into situations which will compromise our values then we may say that okay if even after becoming detached I have to avoid the things which I was attached to then what is the meaning of detachment earlier when I had the temptations I had to avoid it avoid those things because I knew I’d fall for the temptation but now I don’t have those temptations then and then if still I have to avoid it then what is the point of it all what is the difference then between having temptation not having temptations the point is that we are freed from inner agitation that is Purusha Shama Mirchati as was mentioned in the previous word that Shama means we get a peaceful mind by this but even though when even after we get peaceful mind that does not mean that the mind is eternally going to stay peaceful the peaceful mind can also become agitated and that’s why earlier there was the danger was much greater when the desire is also there and if outer if we go externally into environment where the temptations objects are there then the likelihood of our succumbing is much greater now in this case the likelihood may be lesser is much lesser because the desire is not there internally but still if we go into externally tempting environment then the desire the tempting environment may inject the desire into us and again there is a possibility that there will be a relapse so therefore although there is Nirveda she still says saying that I’ll give up these desires I’ll give up that association and then what will I do I will go into the shelter of that lord now how will I go into the I like come to or go into the shelter of the lord that is by practicing devotional service we cannot immediately go back to the kingdom of god that will require a lifetime of practice and purification but we can stay within a devotional culture within a devotional environment as much as possible and we can keep ourselves within devotion within the ambit of devotional activities and in that way we protect ourselves so detachment is not a license for foolhardy playing with temptation detachment brings with it the responsibility of protecting the detachment by avoiding tempting situations and by placing ourselves in enhanced strengthening spiritually situations so we use the we once we have detachment we use the detachment not to parade how detached I am that I can go to tempting situations and still stay unaffected rather we use the detachment to become more focused and absorbed in our devotion and purify and strengthen ourselves further and also relish more and more of the higher happiness that comes by undistracted absorption in Krishna so we use detachment not to parade to the world how detached I am but we use the detachment to increase our absorption in Krishna