Krishna Identifies The Source Of Self – Destructive Desire Gita 3.37

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you.
Krishna’s answer is quite elaborate. And it is almost like a war action plan that Krishna gives. This is, it’s a sobering section, but it’s also very empowering, illuminating and empowering section.
Let’s look at it. So, let’s look at what Krishna is saying here. The first thing he says is, it is Kama, Sanskrit word Kama.
Now, a common translation of Kama is lust. And lust is generally translated as sexual desire. But lust, or generally when we use the word Kama, it can refer to any overpowering desire.
So, somebody can have lust for power, as they say. So, while the sexual dimension is there, in this section, if you see, Krishna does not focus too much on the sexual dimension. What he talks about, the broad principles can apply to any overpowering desire that eventually becomes self-destructive.
So, he says that it is Kama. Now, we can have, we all have many strong desires. Sometimes they can be very strong, as if they seem overpowering.
So, somebody sees, okay, I see some food, I want to eat that food. Now, that desire, even made it so overpowering, it may not be destructive. Okay, I want to eat a particular kind of food.
That does not necessarily mean that I am going to eat that food so much that I am going to get stomach upset, or I am going to eat so much dessert that I am going to get immediately a diabetic attack, or something like that. But, he is saying something more, that this particular desire, Kamaesha, Krodhesha, so every desire generally needs to have boundaries. So, okay, I want to eat good food, but in moderation, a reasonable quantity.
I want to buy new stuff, okay, but moderation. But, when the desire becomes so strong, so powerful, that all that is there is afterwards rage against boundaries. That’s why Kama and Krodha, that rage is Krodha.
So, now, why? Why can I not have more? Children sometimes throw tantrum. Mother says, okay, you can take one cookie. Why only one? I want a dozen cookies.
So, now, when a child throws a tantrum, it’s understandable. Child is not intelligent enough. But, when adults throw tantrums, they don’t just throw tantrums, they can actually act in destructive ways.
So, that is where the power of desire leads to rage. And, after the rage against boundaries, then there is the violation, the rejection of boundaries. And, that is when things become really destructive.
So, at one level, if you take specifically about sexual desire also, it is, our sexuality is a part of our humanity. It is a part of our embodied condition. Now, there are across history and geography, that means throughout culture, throughout time and throughout various cultures, there have always been some boundaries.
Even if you consider today’s culture to be very liberal, still there is a boundary of consent. So, there are always boundaries to sexuality. But, when one rejects those boundaries, then the result, what happens is, Krishna says over here, it becomes two things, devouring and sinful.
Mahashano Mahapapna, greatly devouring and greatly sinful. Now, the word sin is not particularly popular or cool in today’s world. People say, don’t use the word sin.
One postmodern author says, it is sinful to use the word sinful. But, the point is that there is an understanding that there are certain things which are harmful. So, it’s ironic that while in the religious sense, people say don’t use the word sinful, but in a popular book on English grammar, it’s called the sins of punctuation.
That means how you should not punctuate. So, sinful means basically wrong. It could be wrong because it’s harmful in whatever ways.
So, the point is that we all have a tendency to indulge. But, the tendency to indulge, when it goes beyond boundaries, then it can be highly destructive. So, we could say sinful is more in a moral sense where a person may do terrible things.
But, now devouring can also be in a practical sense. Say, for example, somebody becomes an alcoholic and he just can’t resist alcoholism. Then that alcoholism, for example, how can it be greatly devouring? Prabhupada translates it as all devouring.
It can devour their income. It can devour their dignity. Alcoholic doesn’t behave in the most respectful or respectable of ways.
It can even destroy their livelihood. If they can’t keep a job because they’re so drunk, it can destroy their relationships. Then, when they’re drunk too much, it can destroy their humanity.
Somebody who is drunk and desperate for drinking, they may just erupt from others. They may hurt others. It can destroy everything.
Of course, it will destroy their spirituality. That’s one of the first casualties of any unwarranted indulgence. So, the point is, it’s all devouring.
It’s highly devouring. And therefore, Krishna says, this is the Iha Vairenam. It’s the enemy in this world.
Now, there are impressions inside us. And those impressions prompt us towards certain actions. So, for example, we have eaten some delicious food in the past.
And that memory is there inside us. And then, whenever we come to know that food is available here, we want to eat it. So, Krishna will talk about this more, about the mechanism by which lust becomes all devouring.
Karma becomes destructive. So, if we consider the inner impressions, we have certain impressions of pleasure. And we also have some impressions of trouble.
Trouble in the sense that, oh, suppose somebody is alcoholic. Last time I drank so much, I had a terrible hangover. So, if they remember the hangover, then they will stay within boundaries.
But if they remember just the high and they forget the hangover, then they will think, okay, let’s drink again. Who cares? It won’t happen to me. But the idea is, at a basic level, we are all pleasure-seeking.
And because we are pleasure-seekers, so wherever we believe pleasure is available, we just feel, we believe it’s our right to be happy. And it’s true, we all have a right to be happy. But at the same time, this right needs to be directed to the right way to be happy.
And that is what spiritual wisdom tells us. However, what happens is our impressions, which are there within us, they often prompt us towards indulgences, which are often, the indulgences themselves are unhealthy. And our indulgence in them is also disproportionate.
So, either of these, because we feel that we want pleasure, we have a right to pleasure. And he says, okay, no, don’t enjoy so much. Why should I not enjoy so much? But there is a better, a higher, a richer, a healthier way to find happiness.
But our impressions, they push us towards unhealthier ways. Because those impressions are already there within us. And they are also triggered by the world outside.
Krishna uses the word Rajoguna Samudbhavaha. Rajoguna is the mode of passion. What that means is that if our environment, if it’s filled with passion, the situations we are in, or even the dispositions we have cultivated, then it’s like we are putting ourselves in an inflammable situation.
We are inflammable. And then just we need one spark. Actually, we don’t need the spark, but it just needs one spark to light a huge fire.
So, if our outer world, outer situation is inflammable, our inner situation is inflammable. So, when you talk about the God-shaped hole in the heart is, if we are already feeling bored or frustrated or down, and then some enjoyment comes up, I just want it, I want it, I want it more and more and more. So, if the environment, if the outer environment is inflammable, that means outside, say, everybody’s feasting, everybody’s partying, everybody’s drinking, everybody is engaged in sexual revelry.
And then when we find ourselves in that environment or we put ourselves in that environment, then the fire, that just small spark can blaze into a huge fire. That’s how this verse is talking about this enemy as desire without boundaries, or desire that rages against boundaries, craving that, that doesn’t push against, that just forces itself over boundaries. You know, you can consider the boundaries, they are protective, but they can seem restrictive.
So, now Krishna will talk about this in future verses, about how our knowledge acquiring apparatus gets sabotaged. And that’s when what is meant for our protection seems to be like a restriction, or even it can seem like a deprivation. Why can’t I have this? Who are you to stop me from having it? Later Krishna will talk about how this, the role of our intelligence is extremely important in combating, or in at least curbing such unbounded desire.
Biology will lead to certain desires, we can say. That’s fair enough. So, we have the desire to eat, we may have the desire to mate, but if you see biology also gives us boundaries.
We have finite capacity in our belly to eat. We all have finite capacity for sexual indulgence. But when say somebody becomes morbidly obese, what is happening is that you could say the psychology is actually overpowering the biology.
The body may say, yeah, enough. The belly may start belching or the belly may start swelling and then the person says, oh, I want more, the mind says more and more and more. So, it’s almost as if this desire becomes so much that you can say it’s physical desire, but it’s physical desire that goes against our physical well-being also.
So, boundaries are there provided by the body. The body creates desires, you could say, but the body also provides boundaries to those desires. So, this is where physical pleasure, that’s what we are seeking, but that physical pleasure becomes even physically destructive.
Say, for example, you can talk about food. Food is a physical pleasure in the sense that we eat it with our body. But then it can lead to a host of health issues if a person is not careful.
Similarly, sex is a physical pleasure, but there are so many sexually transmitted diseases that can come up. So, the biology itself provides us natural boundaries, but the craving breaks down. When you’re talking about boundaries, the boundaries that craving tries to break down, that we rage against, the boundaries could be simply biological or physical.
The boundaries could be cultural. The boundaries could be legal. The boundaries could be financial.
That means biological boundaries and cultural boundaries could be that. This is not the way we function in our society. Who cares? Legal boundaries.
You’ll be punished by the law. I’m clever enough to get out of it. Financial.
I just don’t have money to enjoy. Okay, then I’ll steal or rob. So, our existential situation gives us various boundaries, but the desire rages against boundaries.
Specifically, it’s an out-of-control craving within the mind. So, now Krishna is saying with significance earlier, Iha Vahirenam is enemy Iha in this world. So, now this link between enemy in this world or it can be translated as enemy of this world.
So, it’s an enemy in this world means we are in a perpetual state of warfare. That there is, if we knew that say somebody was out to destroy us, if say we came to know that somebody has put some money and hired a mercenary and they are out to kill us, they are waiting for an opportunity and we would have to be alert constantly. So, this is how we are in a state of perpetual warfare.
That is a state. There are cravings that are out to destroy us. So, that could be enemy in this world.
It’s there for us. And it’s significant that Krishna is speaking this on a battlefield to Arjuna and Krishna is saying this is your enemy. That is common.
Now, he is on the other side in the army. There are big, big warriors and yet Krishna is not pointing to any of those enemies. Krishna is saying this is the enemy.
So, what is emphasizing the inner war is actually the bigger war. Some of us may be in situations where we may sometimes have to fight a physical war also. But most of us, especially if we live in a reasonably well-managed society, then we don’t really have to get into physical fights or physical wars.
But the inner war is something which is a bigger war. It’s an inescapable war. Bigger in the sense that everybody has to fight it.
The exact boundaries in which people have to fight it may vary. So, an alcoholic may have no moral or ethical compunctions about drinking. But they may have financial limitations.
They have to fight against those. Everybody has to fight. And now, if you take the word enemy of this world, that means it is a universal enemy.
Such uncontrolled craving can take the whole world down. Not just the individual down, but it can be universally deadly. One individual with such craving, more and more individuals with such craving, the individual can be destroyed and even the world can be destroyed by that.
So, Krishna is a very sobering verse overall which points out the danger of such self-destructive desire. I will summarize what we discussed today. The first point of verse is in 3.36 that there is the self-destructive force within us.
Self-destructive force which makes us act as if unwillingly. Even when we are unwilling, we feel as if we are forced. So, what is that? That’s the question by Arjuna.
And then Krishna’s answer is in 3.37. So, we discussed many points in that. It is desire that rages against boundaries. That is what is the enemy.
And Krishna gives multiple features of, multiple characteristics of this. He says that, all the remaining points are about 3.37 itself. But he says that such a desire that rages against boundaries, that it becomes, if we put ourselves in an inflammable situation or disposition, condition or disposition, that’s like Rajoguna, then we are even more vulnerable.
And when it takes charge, it can be greatly devouring. It can devour our dignity, our humanity, our financial stability. And it can be greatly sinful.
So, both from an ethical and a practical, social, practical perspective, it can be extremely dangerous. And Krishna says lastly that this is, so it’s one level we discussed this point about how this is our longing for pleasure, which is right for us. It goes misdirected.
Misdirected means two things. It goes in unhealthy directions or it goes towards disproportionate degrees. And if this is the enemy, we all have an enemy.
It can be of this world or in this world, both ways. That means we are all in a state of perpetual warfare. And even on the battlefield, Krishna is telling Arjuna that this inner war is actually the bigger war that he needs to be ready to fight.
And that we all need to be ready to fight. Thank you.