Is it easier to go from aversion to renunciation than from attachment to renunciation?
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So is it easier to go from aversion to renunciation rather than from attachment to renunciation? Relatively speaking, you can say yes.
It is, to some extent, when we realize the hollowness of sense pleasure, that we start exploring something higher. So, yeah, in that sense, we do need some amount of detachment from worldly objects or some amount of recognition that worldly objects will not give me pleasure. That’s why we look for something higher.
So, I would say that is more a matter of realization than aversion. So realization that, okay, this doesn’t give me pleasure. Let me look for something higher.
Experience also. Experience, knowledge, both ways it is possible. Some people may hear and learn.
Some people may have experience and they learn by that. But the thing is that the realization will not stay unless there is intellectual conviction, unless there is devotional purification. So, aversion, if you look at it that way, say, I mean, I’m just, because I’m coming from America, so it’s a different context.
So, there are people, there are many people who have never had experience of healthy family life. They never had any really models of good relationships. But they come to bhakti because they were like alone and they didn’t have anything in this world and they connected with Krishna.
But then they often find it difficult to develop healthy relationships even with devotees. So, if somebody has had, they have come from a culture of healthy relationships, then, in a sense, to cut off all those relationships is difficult. But they know how to belong.
They know how to form relationships, how to take responsibilities. So, people who never, sometimes when people never had healthy relationships, they are like very I-centered. Others didn’t care for me, so I don’t care for them.
So, then even when they come to bhakti, they also still stay I-centered. But those who were a little more concerned about others, earlier they might have been materially concerned, now they are spiritual, now they get concerned about spiritual. So, we could say that those deeper material relationships which they had, they become a greater bond to cut.
That has no material relationships means that they are lesser bond to cut. But then those deeper material relationships also means that they have the capacity to know what to do to form relationships. Then they can actually form relationships, healthy relationships in devotional life also.
Or conversely, somebody who was very averse in general to taking up responsibilities. Somebody who did not do well in studies, did not do well in their material life, and not well because they were misfit or they were not talented, just because they didn’t have the ethos of commitment. They come to spiritual life also, they just remain lazy.
They remain averse to responsibility, they are shirking of work, shirking of service. But if somebody was committed and responsible in the past, they are materially successful because they are committed and dedicated. They come to spiritual life and they use their commitment and dedication.
So, broadly speaking, I feel that there is nothing material which is a pure advantage or a pure curse. So, aversion may be a better starting point for practicing bhakti. But aversion may be more harmful as a sustaining force.
So, on the other hand, attachment, which in a sense is another form of commitment, it’s just another way of looking at it. Attachment may make the starting point more difficult. But that culture of taking up responsibility or being committed, that can help one to sustain one’s spiritual life better.
So, we have to just move forward from where we are. Attached or averse, we just try to turn towards Krishna.