Should we use attraction to the beauty of the opposite sex as an impetus to remind us of the beauty of Krishna?

Transcript

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Question from Chandan Paramohan when we see the beautiful form of the opposite sex can we use that sight as a prod to remind ourselves that this is just the beauty of a spark of Krishna then how much more beautiful will Krishna be and in that way gain strength to commit ourselves to devotional service more answer yes and no yes in the sense that it is philosophically true that all beauty emanates from Krishna and in that sense the beauty of any person in this world comes from Krishna so we can understand that this beauty is a reflection of Krishna so we should become attracted to Krishna not to the spark so in that sense in principle it is yes but in practice it is not that we dwell on this beauty to seek inspiration to become attracted to Krishna’s beauty because generally although this beauty is a spark and that is the whole often we don’t see the connection between them as a spark and whole we see for most of us so because for us the spark is not usually a link or a pointer to the whole it is a competitor in the whole that’s why we don’t contemplate on the spark to seek inspiration to contemplate on the whole rather we focus on the whole we try to if at all we are attracted to beauty we focus on Krishna’s beauty we see the beautiful deities we memorize verses of Krishna’s beauty from the scriptures and contemplate on that but unavoidably while living in the material world whenever we are exposed to worldly beauty we can use that as a reminder rather than letting our attraction get focused on that we can use that how much more beautiful Krishna should be but there is a difference between so the worldly beauty is not normally used as a reminder we may use the holy name as a prod for reminding us of Krishna so that is a sadhana for us so because the holy name directly stimulates our memory of Krishna and the holy name doesn’t act as a competitor to Krishna so now generally speaking in the material world the sparks of Krishna can manifest in Tamoguna, Rajoguna, Sapoguna so in Tamoguna when a person takes liquor he experiences a high but that is that drives the person away from it in Rajoguna sexual attraction that is also an experience of God dharmavriddho bhuteshe karmasu bhuvar darshanam they are not contrary to religious principles but that again is usually usually because most of the time people don’t perform it under religious regulation or at least the normal infatuation is quite outside the norms of religion that also acts as a competitor so then there is sattvic sattvic means somebody is extremely intelligent and that intelligence say the intelligence of Albert Einstein or some great authors that may also act as a prod for us but if those people are not devotees then we may be appreciating their intelligence but we may also get carried away by their thoughts and not carried towards Krishna through their intelligence so generally speaking in sattvaguna if there are devotees who are very intelligent then what they speak and how they speak that means their intelligence as well as the product of their intelligence both are one and the same similarly we may have beautiful architecture in the temple or so that the temple architecture the beauty of the architecture as well as the message given by the architecture what will take us towards Krishna so in general we should not seek attraction to worldly objects as an impetus towards going towards Krishna but if anyway we come across those worldly objects then we can use that to remember our Krishna also so what exactly does it mean when we say that the 10th canto is where our heart should be? actually basically that means that our heart should be with Krishna and 10th canto is the place where Krishna is revealed in the most rich and luxuriant way we can say so it’s not necessarily that in the 10th canto we have to go to ras panchad no no in general the vision of God that is revealed in the 10th canto is very sweet and endearing and that can lift us out of our attraction to worldly things so it’s in a broad sense that we should be attracted to Krishna