How can I overcome my attraction to watch every detail of my favorite actress?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
I am attracted to spend time on watching every detail about my favorite actress. Can you please suggest how I can overcome this subtle addiction? Is it a subtle addiction? There is a natural attraction of the human heart and the human eyes to beauty. That attraction itself is not unnatural.
And that attraction itself is not undesirable. But there is a way in which it is fulfilled in a healthy way. I was at a university.
And sometimes people have provocative captions on their t-shirts. So this student had a caption, 90% of the world’s women are beautiful. The remaining 10% are in my college.
What it meant was that, actually we see in the media all doctored images. Made up images. And people look extremely attractive over there.
And as compared to that, when we look in real life, nobody is that attractive. Now, this is simply a way in which dissatisfaction is created within us. So, Krishna Prabhupada writes in the 17th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, text 16, that satisfaction is not just an emotion.
Satisfaction is also a decision. I am paraphrasing what he says. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that satisfaction is an austerity of the mind.
What that means is, the more we contemplate on sense objects, the more our mind gets agitated. It doesn’t lead to satisfaction, it leads to dissatisfaction. But the more we contemplate on those objects, whichever it may be, it may not be form, it can be anything else.
Whatever it is that we contemplate on, our agitation increases more and more. And when the agitation increases more and more, no matter what we have, we will not be satisfied. Satisfaction will come not just by acquiring what we desire.
Satisfaction will come only when we appreciate what we have. Even if I acquire something that I desire, the world is always going to show me other attractive things. And then I will keep desiring that, keep desiring that, keep desiring that.
They say, the problem with the rat race is, that even if you win the rat race, still you remain a rat. That means, in any situation I am in, there are certain things which I have, and certain things which I don’t have. If I am going to look at what I don’t have, I will be dissatisfied.
If I look at what I have, I will be satisfied. Now, I may think, I don’t have this, when I get that, I will become satisfied. Yes, hypothetically it seems right.
I don’t have it, because I am dissatisfied. Once I get it, I will be satisfied. But the problem is, not just what we have.
When we keep looking at the things which we don’t have, that itself becomes a habit. And no matter how much I have, my mind will look at what I don’t have, and I will become dissatisfied. So we need to consciously cultivate the habit of looking at what we have, and therein cultivate satisfaction.
Say, suppose we have prasad after this program. Don’t suppose, I think prasad is there. But, suppose there is a special kind of prasadam arrangement, that everybody is going to get different items.
So, what is in your plate is different from my plate, is different from what is in her plate. Now, I have got delicacies in my plate, but if I start looking, Oh, he has got that. Oh, he has got that.
Oh, she has got that. Now, as I keep looking at what is there in everyone else’s plate, even if there is a feast in my plate, I will be dissatisfied. Why? Because I am not looking at what I have.
So, satisfaction can come only when we learn to focus on what we have, and appreciate that. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to acquire more. But, if we think that acquisition will give us satisfaction, that is an illusion.
The satisfaction will come only by the change of disposition. Just by acquisition, Oh, I get the best car. By the time I get the best car, what happens is, some other car has come which is looking better.
And that will be a perpetual dissatisfaction. Oscar Wilde, who is a British playwright, he said, that fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to change it every six months. So, what is considered fashionable today, after six months, it’s old-fashioned.
And for a person who prides themselves on being fashionable, there is no insult more painful than being called old-fashioned. It’s intolerable. So, in a culture where attractive objects are paraded before us from various sides, unless we learn to focus on what we have, we will never know satisfaction.
So, irrespective of specifically which desires we pursue or which desires we resist, the important principle is that we need to recognize that if at all we are ever to get satisfaction, we need to change our disposition and focus on what we have.