Bhagavatam-daily 97 – 11.08.13 – Sexual discipline is not fanatical but essential for the spiritually purposeful

Thank you the brahmana is instructing Maharaj Yadu and is telling what he has learnt from various gurus so here he speaks about what one can learn from an elephant the renunciate even with one’s feet yuvati is a young woman one should not touch even with one’s foot and one should not touch even darvin even a wooden doll of a young woman and how touch can entangle he is explaining with the example from nature of an elephant by touch kareeva baddhet kareeva the elephant becomes bound kareenya kareenya is a she-elephant by contact with her her body so now elephant is a very powerful animal and when the elephant becomes furious it can just in its trunk toss a human being far away with its tusk it can gore a human being to death under its feet it can crush a human being to death so its difficult to catch an elephant and especially in the past when now people poachers may have guns with which to shoot or put a elephant to sleep but in the past although there were celestial astras those were primarily with kshatriyas but hunters or those who wanted to trap elephants for whatever purposes they usually would not have this kind of astras so they would use the most sophisticated astra in one sense the most common and yet the most dangerous astra and that is astra of sexual attraction so they would send a elephant a she-elephant close to a he-elephant and when the she-elephant would just go and touch the he-elephant now both the he and she-elephant are so giant and we may not even see the giant proportions we may not think of the elephants in sensual terms but that touch would sensually inflame the he-elephant the she-elephant would be trained to just touch the elephant and then go away and start running and the he-elephant would get maddened by that touch and wanting more of the touch wanting to after having got a whiff of sensual gratification wanting it full so wanting to catch the he-elephant wanting to catch the she-elephant would run after the she-elephant and the she-elephant would know, would be trained in such a way to know that there is a ditch where the elephant will fall and because she would know she would bypass that ditch and the he-elephant would fall in the anxiety, in the blind anxiety to somehow reach the she-elephant, would charge and fall right into the ditch and would get caught so far from catching the she-elephant the he-elephant would still get caught now so for the desire of the she-elephant is the touch of her body the touch would bound will cause bondage, now this is the example of nature and two points are made over here which underscore the extreme gravity of the principle being taught normally touching with the leg the leg is not considered to be a particularly sensual organ especially the foot something which is unimportant, we touch it with our foot and then we push it away or something like that, so but even touching with the foot, that means it’s a distant touch, something which we want to touch, we may touch with our hands and lift it up and cherish it carefully, but something with the leg it is almost like a negligent touch so even such a negligent touch should be avoided and and even such a negligent touch with a woman especially a young woman, yuvati it is not just three, but a young woman it is mentioned over here so even with a wooden image of a young woman one should not touch now actually today’s media is such that man and woman touching each other are constantly being depicted and glamorized and often there are sensually titillating sounds and sighs and oohs and ahhs which all glamorize the contact of the male and the female the male and the female bodies so hundreds and thousands of movies depict this and hundreds and thousands of novels depict this whether it is visual or textual but contact is so much glamorized and further we live in a society where there is inevitably a lot of mixing among the genders in the workplace and while moving around, commuting so this may seem not only impractical but also fanatical but the point here is that if we are going to keep impracticality as a criteria, then the renunciate’s life itself may seem impractical now isn’t it the sexual drive, the natural drive so and that is the drive which ensures that the humanity perpetuates so to give up sexual drive itself is impractical but the point here is that what is practical and what is not practical depends on what is one’s definition of success a chess player sometimes a person becomes a chess champion that person right from the early childhood from the age of 3 or 4 or 5 just focuses on spending hours and hours and hours in front of the chess board not doing most of the things that children do and if we tell that person that how for a child sitting in front of a chess board like that for hours and hours is not natural but then the parents if they are determined say well it is not natural that everyone becomes a chess champion, we want our child to become a chess champion and later on say the child becomes a chess champion and the child remembers this is what I used to do so to some extent if we want to achieve anything glorious we have to go beyond the social society’s conceptions of what is natural and to some extent every great success requires some amount of fanaticism so without being fanatically focused, now fanatical the word has a very jarringly negative connotation in terms of intolerance towards others, so for example one religion wants to destroy another religion but we are not talking about fanaticism in that term we are talking about fanaticism in terms of fanatical focus, so success requires success in any laudable success in any field requires a fanatical focus and similarly in spiritual life where we are trying to focus our consciousness on Krishna there at that time we require a fanatical focus on Krishna and that fanatical focus means we have to rigidly minimize distractions, now how we may be able to apply this in today’s situation that will vary according to time, place, circumstance but rather than rejecting this principle as impractical of fanatical, rejecting this point we have to look at the underlying purpose and ensure that we also understand and internalize that purpose according to our time, place, circumstance few things can distract the human mind as much as the fantasies of sexual titillation and with the whole technological facilities opening up a whole new universe of more and more glamorized and more and more fantasized ways of enjoyment, it’s very difficult to stay sexually sober to maintain one’s basic level of sense control also but by remembering that such a principle that what the renunciates in the past were expected was this level, so we can recognize that whatever sexual boundaries we need to maintain for protecting ourselves even if they are considered to be fanatical by people in society we shouldn’t be embarrassed about it, we don’t have to be proud or arrogant about what we are doing but we need to protect our devotion and we need to protect our spiritual orientation of our consciousness and to the extent we minimize distractions by recognizing the destructiveness of those distractions to that extent we will be able to absorb ourselves in higher happiness and rather than seeing this as a sign of fanaticism, we will see that actually how this is a sign of positive valuing of the treasure of bhakti, that remembrance of Krishna is so joyful that just as if somebody has a very joyful thing that person doesn’t, a very very precious thing that person will take all possible precautions to ensure that the thing is not lost, so similarly our orientation of our consciousness towards Krishna is so joyful and it’s so precious that we want to take all possible, whatever precautions are possible to ensure that it is not lost and that valuing of the transcendent is the essential principle underlying this strong cautioning against the sexual distractions. Thank you.