Suppose a person who is dragged by a noose around the neck feels relieved when that dragging stops, and mistakes that relief to be pleasure.

Such is the predicament of the addicted. The Bhagavad-gita (16.12) cautions that desires act like nooses. Consider alcohol addicts. Their craving is like a noose that drags them unmercifully towards alcohol. Even if they have acquired a taste for alcoholic drinks, still as they drink repeatedly, familiarity depletes the pleasure till it becomes negligible. Additionally, their repeated indulgence thickens the noose, thereby making the craving intense, even intolerable. When they indulge, the relief from the craving is tangible – and they mistake that relief to be pleasure.

However, this relief is agonizingly temporary. Soon after that drink, the craving starts dragging them towards one more drink, and one more, and one more still. Even if they stop somehow, the craving starts dragging them again after a few hours. Sometimes even while they are suffering from a hangover, they are dragged towards the very thing that caused the hangover.

Tragically, this whole suffering is self-inflicted. They have put the noose of desire around their neck by choosing to drink and have strengthened the noose with each successive binge.

What applies to alcoholics may well apply to us if our attachments are severe.

Thankfully, we can break free from the noose of our attachments by striving determinedly to remember Krishna. His remembrance acts as a firm support to resist the drag and as a sharp sword to cut the noose. Because the noose keeps falling on us repeatedly, we need to remember him regularly. Such remembrance grants inner satisfaction and strength to resist the outer temptation. Gradually, as we become internally strengthened and purified, the noose of worldly desires gets severed permanently, and we become joyfully absorbed in Krishna.


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