From: dkarma@pro-nbs.acme.fred.org (Druta Karma)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Becoming aware
Date: 5 Oct 1992 13:09:43 -0700
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In <1992Oct1.160255.21582@qiclab.scn.rain.com> radams@cerritos.edu writes:

>One may be doing it for the Supreme but if there was no pleasure in it - in
>and of itself - people would choose to please the Supreme in other ways.
>There is a reason Mother Nature made sex pleasurable. If the act were nothing
>more than a sacrificial dirge, nobody would bother (or too few to propagate
>the human species). 

There is a pleasure connected with sex in order to insure procreation. But
that pleasure is also available to the cats and dogs. And if one is attached
to that level of pleasure, then one remains in the cycle of birth and death,
because in order to enjoy the pleasure of genital contact, one has to have a
material body. And the material body is subject to birth, death, old age, and
disease. So the pleasure of material genital sex is intimately tangled up with
the miseries of birth, death, old age, and disease. 

According to the bhakti-yoga system and teachings (as found in Bhagavad-gita,
Shrimad-Bhagavatam, Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, etc., etc.,) material sex desire
is a perverted reflection of the eternal soul's loving relationship with the
Supreme Soul, Krishna. This loving relationship is experienced as rasa, which
is a Sanskrit word meaning taste or mellow. Each soul has a particular rasa
that it exchanges with Krishna in the sac-cid-ananda state. Sat means eternal
existence, cit means full knowledge, and ananda means full pleasure. This
pleasure is endless, unmixed with pain, and ever increasing. Material sex life
is brief, mixed with unpleasantness, and the more you try to enjoy it the less
enjoyable it becomes due to physical limitations, and the eventual onset of
old age, disease, and death. Krishna is a Sanskrit word that has many
meanings, among them "all-attractive" and "reservoir of pleasure." The soul is
constitutionally meant to enjoy its particular rasa with Krishna, and there
are 5 types of rasas: 1. santa, or passive adoration; 2. dasya, or service; 3
sakhya, or friendship; 4. vatsalya, or parental; 5 madhurya, orconjugal. And
then there are various subrasas that may be mixed with these primary rasas.
But the main point is that there is a mutually pleasurable exchange of rasa
between Krishna and each individual soul. When souls break off this natural
spiritual rasa, they attempt to manifest their pleasure potency for their own
selfish satisfaction. This is something that cannot take place in Krishna's
spiritual abode, so Krishna makes a world where the souls who want to
experience selfish pleasure can do so. The original spiritual body of the
living entity cannot be used for this purpose. This spiritual body with its
spiritual senses is designed strictly for exchanging transcendental rasa with
Krishna. So Krishna provides material bodies for the souls so that they can
attempt to display their pleasure potency through the material senses.

These bodies are produced by sexual reproduction, and this is designed to have
some pleasure connected with it. Otherwise, as you say, no one would
voluntarily reproduce. 

This material world is sometimes called in the Vedas "maithunya agaram" which
means "the prison of sex." 

There are various levels of material sex. On the level of the higher demigods,
the material bodies are made of subtle elements, and their bodies are said to
be thousands of times more beautiful than those of earthly humans. Their
lifespans are also much greater. As far as sex goes, it is described in
various Vedic literatures that the demigods may engage in sex without fear of
pregnancy. Also, although the demigods must leave their bodies and take new
ones, there is no old age. So a demigoddess may engage in sex for her entire
life, and then at the very end will bear a child.

There are certain sacrifices mentioned in the Vedas that one can perform so
that one can attain the position of a demigod and enjoy that heavenly sex
pleasure. By performing these sacrifices one gets a store of good karma, and
by that good karma, one goes to one of the heavenly planets, and there one may
enjoy until one's stock of good karma runs out. Then one must return to this
earthly planet. 

Here on this earthly planet, perhaps because of memories of the demigod style
of enjoyment, many people try to recreate that situation. That is the
significance of abortion, contraception, plastic surgery, etc. People want to
enjoy sex like the demigods. But it is a losing proposition. It is impossible
to actually enjoy like that in an earth-human body. And because one doesn't
perform the required sacrifices, one doesn't get to experience that in one's
next life. Rather, because of gross addiction to sex pleasure, in the absence
of real higher awareness, one may get placed in a body where sex life is more
easily available. The various animal bodies serve this purpose. There are many
animals that can have sex more powerfully, for longer, and more often than
humans.

But the defect of all these sexual opportunities is that one has to stay in
some kind of material body, be it of demigod, human, or animal. And one
remains in the cycle of birth and death. And basically it is sex desire that
keeps us there. 

According to the bhakti-yoga system, the real pleasure of the soul can be
reawakened by the process of devotional service. Devotional service awakens
the soul's original love for Krishna. This transcendental love is not an
activity of the material body. Some take it like that, and they are
technically called prakrta-sahajiyas, which means those who are confused about
material lust and the soul's original spiritual love for God. Anyway, to keep
this short, the process of bhakti-yoga means redirecting our tendency to seek
pleasure in loving relationships back to its original object. The ideal state
is to completely abstain from bodily sex. But if this is not possible, then
the sex urge can be employed in a restricted fashion, in the manner I
described. If that is done, that counts as devotional service. Any sex outside
those bounds counts as material, and will keep one in a material body, in the
material world, in the cycle of birth and death.

So in this sense, bhakti-yoga is about refining one's taste in pleasure. The
pleasure of devotional service leads to eternality, transcendental knowledge,
and ever-increasing spiritual pleasure in one's rasa with Krishna. The
pleasure of material sex, while certainly a pleasure, is mixed with certain
unpleasant additives which the discriminating pleasure seeker prefers to
avoid altogether.
>

Druta Karma
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