Bhagavatam-daily 98 – 11.08.14 – Desire divorced from dharma drives us to disaster

Srimad Bhagavatam 11.8.14 One should not approach striyam, a woman pragyah a learned person a person who has knowledge karhichin mrutyumatmanah such approaching may cause karhichin mrutyum death of oneself here atmanah doesn’t refer specifically to the soul but it refers to oneself that is here the body baladhikai sahanyata baladhikai baladhik those who have greater strength sahanyata those people may kill gajair anyair gajoyatha gajair this is elephant is killed by anyair gajoyatha is killed by other elephants so here the avadhut brahmana while describing the lessons he has learned from nature is continuing to describe what he learned from an elephant and he says that sometimes when there is a female elephant who is attractive then an elephant gets attracted to that she elephant but there are other elephants also get attracted and there is a competition which degenerates into a fight and that fight ends in murder so the same thing happens in real life also in real life of course this may be romanticized as a great saga of a hero and a heroine but essentially what is it if we see most movies have some kind of a love triangle now where there is a hero there is a villain and there is a heroine and both the hero and the villain are the heroine so the point underlying this is that both of them fight over the heroine and of course in most movies the hero wins and the villain is killed and then the hero and the heroine have their so called H.E.A. the happily ever after now actually there is neither ever nor happy there is certainly not ever after in this life because life is temporary and happily is also questionable the initial infatuation doesn’t last for long but the important point to recognize here is that what can be cast in a movie simplistically as one person is a hero and the other is a villain and the hero triumphing over the villain that doesn’t work out like that in real life and quite often the villain may win so even if say a one person thinks that oh I am a great hero and this woman has won just for me but then somebody else, very few villains or not many villains think of themselves as villains they rationalize in their own way and they think that what they are doing is perfectly is okay Ravana never thought that he was doing anything sinful many of the times when he would abduct damsels he would think that he was doing them a great favor because he was going to keep them although they were a part of his harem and they were still living in opulence and initially he bragged to Sita and he thought that actually Sita will surely come to me if she understands how opulent I am and how poverty stricken Ram is so he even when he was abducting Sita he didn’t really think very deeply that I am doing something wrong what I like that I take so now the substance of most movies and novels is this conflict over a woman and many people think that getting a beautiful woman is the very goal of life and there is a thrill in the goal of life and the more the challenge or the competition the greater is the fun in that but there are often duels that are fought and sometimes there is fighting that goes on till death over a woman now although at one level somebody may think a woman may be flattered I am so attractive that men are ready to fight for me but then actually it is more more a woman is not really seen as a person is seen as more like a trophy for one’s ego or or a or a balm for one’s senses so there is a objectification of the woman also because when there is the ego coming in or the strong desire coming in then there cannot be there is a strong desire and the desire is largely for bodily gratification that dominates the relationship then there cannot be any deep satisfaction there cannot be any deep relationship also now the technical or the legal term that is used for deaths for murders and crimes amidst romantic tensions is called as the technical term is crimes of passion and crimes of passion are extremely common people become mad now the important thing is it’s not that is it if there is competition for a particular woman does it mean that oh I should be a coward and I should withdraw no the important point is not to let ourselves be misled by ill-informed definitions of terms now we all have to decide which battles we want to fight in our life and now certainly would this verse apply to say Lord Ram is going and attacking Sita attacking Ravana to regain Sita no because at that particular point Ram was her husband and it is the husband’s duty to protect his wife so that sort of protection is something which is a duty and fighting that sort of war was necessary although Lord Ram tried his best to have peace negotiations make Ravana see sense but when Ravana did not see sense Lord Ram had to fight the war but in most cases when people have fights say in colleges and there is a particularly attractive girl and boys fight over the girl or in other situations also now every person has to decide what are the important goals of my life which is the battle that I am going to fight I have my family, my parents, my brothers, my sisters I have my career dreams and I have my goals so is it that for a particular woman I am going to fight with others now now if somebody is a renunciate that’s an entirely different issue but if somebody is not a renunciate it has nothing to do with any woman at all and now this sort of jungle like atmosphere where one man fights for or several men fight for a woman that comes in human society when human beings are dominated and driven by a jungle like consciousness where might is right now the elephants don’t have any scruples in that sense they just want to they are driven by their biological drives and they want a particular mate and they may fight to death for a particular mate so now similarly if we human beings let ourselves be driven just by our biological drives then how are we superior to the animals and this does not mean that everybody has to become a brahmachari or that women are not to be protected yes women certainly need to be protected and protection of women also includes ensuring that there is there is proper arrangement in society for safe and sustainable marriages for them but the point of this verse is that how a person can because of uncontrollable desire put oneself in unnecessary danger and thereby even destroy oneself so a person has to get married then there has to be society a proper arrangement by which the marriage can take place and not that over the marriage a brutal war takes place or brutal and killing happens now we may say that it wasn’t in this what would happen in svayam verse now in svayam verse primarily the idea was of of exhibiting one’s skills so it was normally quite a rule bound exhibition of skills so and there would be dharmic personality dharmic leaders of dharma protect like brahmanas and others present and there in the competition will be done in a regulated way so it is not that dharma artha kama are rejected in the vedic culture but they have to be regulated and harmonized so that there is no disruption of society and no disruption of one’s progress on the spiritual path now if one doesn’t understand it that way then there is disruption so we see that when there is a svayam verse there are rules of who can participate and how they are to be participating now sometimes if some kings were very lusty then they would not be graceful losers and they could fight a war those are exceptions and those exceptions happen because there will be dharmic characters but the overall culture was arranged in such a way that the svayam verse would be done in a rule bound dharmic way and there would be the exhibition of skills and there would be the fine tuning of skills which the kshatriyas would do for such exhibitions so there can be arrangement in which the basic human drives can be satisfied in a dharmic way but when one puts aside all dharmic regulations and just gets driven by desires then that can cause danger and destruction and that is the warning given in this verse