When our environment is filled with sexual temptations, how can we stay unaffected?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
and that comes from so when the environment is filled with many temptations that are contrary to devotional principles so how can we persevere in that time yeah the the environment in today’s Kali Yuga makes life difficult not just for spiritual life but even for material life even materially people can’t be responsible and committed when they are too distracted by things now there are three broad things which can be involved over here that first is that what Krishna says is problem is not perception but contemplation it is not so it is we don’t have to move in this world with closed eyes we can’t but it is when we contemplate on something contemplation means that there is some perception that happens and then we let our desires and emotions get involved and after that is where the trouble starts internally and it goes externally now perceptions don’t matter so much if we don’t invest our emotion now how do we do that basically we all have to know our triggers so if we know that certain things provoke me then it is best to minimize exposure we cannot eliminate exposure but we can minimize it I spoke in Google about a couple of months ago in Silicon Valley so there in Google they have done an experiment that it is mostly sedentary jobs so they found a lot of people their employees were getting obesity and health issues were coming up so they consulted a psychologist and he said that in your cafeteria whatever candies are there whatever sweets are there just cover them with non-transparent paper and they did that and they found over the next 6 months almost 30% the sale of candies went down and the obesity levels and other issues among their employees also went down so now they can’t say that our cafeteria will not sell any candies they are there but they don’t have to be made ultra busy so similarly for us if we know there are certain triggers we can try to minimize our exposure so we can’t eliminate them but we can minimize them it might sometimes involve a little more trouble but it is worth it I was in Delhi and I was addressing a group of people who are from Alcoholics Anonymous and they were connected with devotees practicing bhakti so they said that one of the things is this is your home this is your office and along the way there is a bar and you frequent it then if they keep passing by that bar every day they decide to keep coming so if that is a trigger then they may have to take a longer route it’s trouble but it saves a lot of trouble so now somebody else who is a normal person who has not been an alcoholic for them they may not even notice it so sometimes acknowledging our triggers and guarding ourselves is our responsibility and we think it doesn’t matter now I can do myself no but it will not work so specifically all of us may have different triggers which trouble us so if we can find what those triggers are we can minimize the exposure even if we can’t eliminate it we can minimize it the second thing is that even if we don’t have to think of our our doing the right thing in terms of digital logic whether I do the right thing or the wrong thing sometimes some emotion may come up and we start acting on it and then as soon as we realize it we can stop so sometimes we may decide I want to wake up in the morning and then we wake up and then we think that it’s too tiring let me sleep for 10 minutes more and I sleep for 10 minutes more and after I wake up it’s 1 hour and then the mind sleeps anyway you overslept now oversleep more then we may end up sleeping for 2-3 hours as soon as I wake up as soon as I realize ok at that moment I couldn’t wake up I was tired but as soon as as soon as we realize we have gone on the wrong track we can come back on the right track we don’t have to necessarily think of success on the path of self-improvement only in terms of achieving certain standards success in self-improvement is more a direction than a destination nobody can say that I am fully self-controlled it’s always a journey so we may think oh I wanted to wake up at this time but I have no willpower I failed no it’s not necessarily a failure ok you couldn’t wake up what is the next time you can wake up so if we see it as a direction then even if a particular target is missed we can keep moving in that direction so we don’t have to see it that our doing something wrong is necessarily a failure as soon as we realize we have gone on the wrong track basically when the impulses come the impulses while they come they are very forceful so anger comes sometimes when anger comes for a few minutes it is there at that time I feel like exploding but if I can control at that time it will go away so basically when these impulses come the first step is to keep that stay away from the triggers that means it’s not so easy to indulge it second is when the impulses come they come and then they are going still because of frustration oh I couldn’t do what I wanted to do we get frustrated we go on with it but as soon as the impulse subsides stop stop as soon as we realize this was the wrong thing stop so if we tie our success to a specific standard then it will become a problem because if I fail now let me fail completely so there is a saying in self improvement even if you fail fail well fail well fail well means what ok as soon as you realize come back on the right track and the last thing is that just this steady practice of bhakti will slowly immunize us to worldly temptations by the practice of bhakti as we become purified as we start getting more and more higher taste then the worldly temptations will not trouble us so much that will happen gradually but it is what I said is sometimes the impulses come with the impulse it forces do this do this these two steps I talked is try to avoid the triggers and second is that as soon as you realize that gone wrong come to stop it and the third is by the practice of bhakti what will happen is however we get a higher impulse we get inner strength we get inner happiness and our capacity to resist those impulses increases so if the impulse comes we can resist it more and not only that by the practice of bhakti the impulses themselves will become weaker so both our capacity to resist the impulse and the force of the impulse both will be changed over a period of time so that’s why no matter what happens with respect to specific temptations and specific agitations we keep practicing bhakti and if we keep practicing bhakti very diligently eventually the agitation will go down ok thank you great