Suppose a person who runs a ferryboat gets caught in a storm because they don’t know that the sea tends to be stormy in that season. If that were the first time they were caught unawares, their lapse would be understandable and condonable. However, if they were caught unawares repeatedly, such regular lapses would be unacceptable and condemnable. 

Gita wisdom explains that we all are souls navigating our way through the ocean of material existence where storms of sensual temptation often occur. In this ocean, most storms are triggered by us. How? By our contemplation on tempting objects. Such contemplation activates and aggravates our worldly desires till they become stormy, drowning us in delusion and degradation.

If we didn’t know the danger of such contemplation and were swept away by a storm, that lapse would be condonable. But scripture repeatedly warns us about the danger of sensual contemplation. For example, the Bhagavad-gita (02.67) cautions that just as a stormy wind sweeps away a boat, the stormy desire generated when we contemplate tempting objects sweeps us away. 

Despite such warnings, we sometimes contemplate sense objects nonchalantly, believing that we can get the pleasure of titillation while avoiding the trouble of delusion and degradation. Such foolhardiness sweeps us away, sooner or later. And if we get swept away repeatedly, our nonchalance would be condemnable, for we would have courted our own corruption. 

That’s why we need to carefully avoid giving undue attention to tempting objects. And since we are always conscious of something, the only effective way to stop giving our attention to a particular thing is by giving our attention to something else. And the best object to give our attention to is the all-pure, all-potent, all-loving ultimate reality, Krishna. 

By absorption in Krishna, we gradually become immune to sensual temptation.

 

Think it over:

  • How can stormy desires sweep us away?
  • How do we ourselves trigger the storm of desire? 
  • Which storm do you often trigger? How can you avoid doing so?

 

***

02.67  As a strong wind sweeps away a boat on the water, even one of the roaming senses on which the mind focuses can carry away a man’s intelligence.

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