Bhagavatam-daily 185 – 11.10.27 – Obsession with pleasure causes degeneration of character

Bhagavatam 11.10.27 here now Krishna changes the direction and now he will speak about the vikas till now he has spoken about the karmis or the karmakandis who pursue sense gratification but in accordance with dharma now he talks about those who pursue sense gratification by giving up dharma if one gets gets engaged in adharma how? because of bad association or or because of one’s own uncontrolled senses then person becomes it’s almost like the soul of the person is made of lust the person considers the essence of life to be sexual gratification and then person becomes miserly and greedy and the person becomes a woman hunter and the person commits violence to other living beings the path of adharma is very broad in the bible it is said that the path to heaven of course heaven there is considered to be as God equal to the word of God the path to heaven is narrow whereas the path to hell the path away from God is very broad what that means is that on a narrow path one has to walk carefully whereas on a broad path one can just go easily without much effort so like that to go on the path by which we elevate our consciousness we need to tread carefully we need to be always conscious of what I am doing why am I doing a narrow path there is constant course correction required otherwise we will fall off the path so like that on spiritual path we need course correction constantly to stay on the path in contrast here the path of degradation is talked about which there are in one sense many ways to degradation there are many here two primary ways in which you may get degraded is talked about by external influence or by inner impressions so yadi adharmaratah sangat so adharmaratah how does the person get involved in adharma it can be by sangat asatam by asatasang by the association of materialistic people those who are engaged in asata untrue or illusory or vaajite indriyaha by one’s own uncontrolled senses that means external sometimes say we get into social circle wherein people are doing all sorts of adharmic activities and because of peer pressure or because of such because of such association we start getting into those activities and we go to adharma or sometimes our own senses go wide so in the first case when it is sangat asatasang one may not have one’s very strong desires but social compulsion makes one do it social pressure makes one do it and then one gets attached after sometime or it can be vaajite indriyaha if our own senses are uncontrolled then often we ourselves go into the sense gratification and either way whether it is because of internal impressions due to which our senses go wide or because of it is external expectations because of being in wrong social circles adharmaratha become adharmaratha and then the degeneration of character happens quite rapidly once one treads the path of adharma once one gives up the protection of dharma then kamatma then the only purpose of life the essence of life becomes kamatma kamatma the word comes in the bhagavad gita also there krishna refers to actually the karma kandis kamatma in 2.42 2.43 krishna used the word kamatma so now atma atma usually refers to the soul but atma essentially means self so kamatma means those whose self is lust lust they consider that the essence my very existence is defined by the enjoyment of lust kamatma and when one wants to enjoy thus and one wants to enjoy sexually then naturally the result of such thing is that sexual enjoyment doesn’t come free so becomes very miserly anything that does not use sense gratification the person is not at all ready to spend any time or energy or money on that the person becomes miserly not helping others in any way and not krupada also refers to of course one who doesn’t spend time and energy on the spiritual side of life so one becomes very miserly stingy because all the money one wants to hold for wants to use for gratifying one’s senses and although one holds on to money one also wants more and more money the more we hold on to money the more money gets a hold on us that means the attachment increases more and more and then one becomes greedy more and more and more nothing no matter how much a person has that is not enough he wants more and more then straino naturally is all this greed is if one is kamaatma has a desire for enjoyment naturally a person becomes a woman hunter now the word stree is used in a generic sense so for men it will be women but for everyone it will be whatever is a sexual partner for women it will be men and similar so straino bhuta vihim sakaha so one becomes a woman hunter the eyes became like sex seeking objects there is constantly looking for some gratifying forms which one can enjoy and the whole life becomes defined by the pursuit of such pleasures by seeking the company of women and when adharmaratha is there then there is no consideration that that there should be some following of matrimonial matrimonial vows so the person engages in extramarital affairs,premarital affairs and all kinds of things the pursuit of becomes a woman hunter even pursuing one’s career,earning money all that is just like a side show for the real business of searching for women and developing a relationship with them so there is even in the hunt you know trying to find a woman and trying to seduce the woman and then to make the woman submit to oneself the person thinks oh this all shows how clever i am,how expert i am and bhuta vihim sakaha and in this pursuit of pleasure one commits violence to others one becomes insensitive to others feelings how one is trampling others feelings how one’s pursuit of sense gratification is hurting others one doesn’t think about that itself so especially when people become lusty then they excessively lusty then they forcibly violate the objects that they think will give them pleasure and that is brutal bhuta vihim sakaha so the path of adharma not only will lead to hell later as we will talk about in this in the series of verses but that makes when people are adharmata they make even this world like hell because of their their loss of character their degenerated depraved character they become moving radiators of misery who simply exploit others for their own pleasure and such a dissipated life will have disastrous consequences as we will talk about in the next verses