In a war, the enemy is not just passively waiting to be attacked by us, nor is it hyper-angrily racing to attack us. If the enemy is intelligent, then it is strategically scheming to attack two main points: either the most valuable points or the most vulnerable points.
Attacking the most valuable points, such as power plants or other key infrastructures, ensures that our capacity to function is crippled. Attacking the most vulnerable parts ensures that we suffer severe wounds. If there is a point that is both valuable and vulnerable, it is almost guaranteed to be targeted and targeted ferociously, even viciously.
We are all fighting a war against temptation. Temptations don’t just exist passively in the outside world or race indiscriminately into our consciousness, though those aspects are present in a limited sense. The more holistic understanding is that there is an illusory energy called Maya, whose explicit purpose is to bring us down, especially when we try to rise toward a life of higher values, deeper meaning, and ultimately the greatest purpose of serving Krishna and serving everyone in relation to Krishna.
Maya uses temptations as its missiles to target deep within our consciousness. These missiles are often precision-guided with live navigational data, in the sense that Maya knows our consciousness precisely. Maya also knows how our consciousness goes up and down continuously and uses both these sets of data for targeting us.
A target that is both valuable and vulnerable is our intelligence. If it is brought down, or worse, subverted, we can not only be slowed down or stopped but even enslaved.
Our intelligence is valuable because it is our first and last defense in the war against temptation. It is the first defense in the sense that it is our intelligence that reminds us there is danger in a world that often seems harmless or even joyful. It is intelligence that protects us from being gullible. Our intelligence is also our last defense in the sense that, even when temptation has entered our consciousness and we are entertaining the possibility of indulging in it—or even when we have actually indulged in it—it is our intelligence that keeps us within some sensible boundaries of morality or decency. When our intelligence falls as the last defense, there is no predicting how far we will fall or how much depravity we will indulge in during the fall’s duration.
Our intelligence is also vulnerable, because the world often presents us with distorted and perverted logic and reasoning. It makes us believe that the unthinkable, in terms of indulgence, is actually irresistible. The world rationalizes, telling us rational lies. The world’s temptations don’t just target our minds by triggering desires within us. They also target our intelligence by infecting it with deceptive and self-destructive forms of logic and reasoning.
That’s why we need, absolutely and as a foundational priority, to guard our intelligence if we are to guard ourselves in our war against temptation. And to guard our intelligence, we need to regularly study wisdom texts like the Bhagavad-gita (16.24), which reinforce and refine our intelligence’s capacity to discern reality from illusion. When intelligence is reinforced, it becomes stronger. When it is refined, it becomes sharper. Stronger intelligence withstands forceful attacks, and sharper intelligence withstands sneakier, swifter attacks.
The more endeavor we invest in ensuring that we study scripture diligently, the less effort we will have to expend in the war against temptation. With a reinforced and refined intelligence, we will be able to best resist temptation entirely, or second-best, reduce how far it makes us fall, and third-best, recover faster after it has made us fall. We have been tempted.
Summary:
In a war, the enemy especially targets assets that are either valuable or vulnerable, or ideally both. In our war against temptation, our intelligence is especially valuable as our first and last defense, and especially vulnerable because the world is filled with deceptive arguments meant to make illusions seem like reality.
Temptations are used as precision-guided missiles with live navigational data by the illusory energy, Maya, whose explicit mission is to bring us down.
To guard our most valuable and vulnerable asset, which is our intelligence, we need to study wisdom texts like the Bhagavad-gita, thereby reinforcing our intelligence to withstand stronger attacks and refining it to withstand sneakier, subtler attacks.
Think it over:
- How are our temptations like precision-guided missiles?
- What is our most valuable and vulnerable asset, and why?
- How can we strengthen our intelligence? What can a strengthened intelligence do for us?
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16.24 One should therefore understand what is duty and what is not duty by the regulations of the scriptures. Knowing such rules and regulations, one should act so that he may gradually be elevated.
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