From: dkarma@pro-nbs.acme.fred.org (Druta Karma)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: Re: Sex
Date: 13 Oct 92 19:38:13 GMT
Article-I.D.: ogicse.44080
Distribution: world
Organization: Pro-nbs.acme.fred.org -- San Diego, Ca (619) 571-0152

In <1bb4n3INNguu@sandman.caltech.edu> Roger Adams <RADAMS@cerritos.edu> writes:

>I think the idea you are presenting here is that you offer your food to
>the Lord before you eat it (a custom followed in many religions) and you
>may say "Lord, this food is for Your temple, remove any impurities, I offer
>it to you alone etc. Om Shanti". This does not mean however that you cannot
enjoy the food.


There is a little more to it than that. In the higher stages, one actually
meditates upon preparing the food for the pleasure of Lord Krishna, just as a
lover would prepare a meal for one's beloved, or a mother prepares a nice
special meal for her child Of course, one shares in the meal that one
prepares, but the main pleasure is satisfying the object of one's love. That
is a difficult stage to come to, but that is the goal of pure devotion, which,
by the way, yields the highest happiness. But what you say above is also true,
and it is found in many spiritual traditions, as you say. 

>A good disposition for practicing
>abstinence from something is to have little or no desire for it which comes
>through spiritual practice rather than start with the abstinence and think
>that the desire will disappear by trying to forcibly deny it or ignore it
>(I think we may be in agreement on this).  Yogananda once said that if you
>think of the most enjoyable worldly pleasure and then multiply it by
>millions, it still won't add up to the Bliss of God.

We are definitely in agreement on the best way to attain abstinence. When
people come to our temple, we do not tell them to immediately give up eating
meat, having sex, taking drugs, drinking alcohol, or whatever other material
habits they may have. Rather we encourage them to get into chanting, eating
the delicious vegetarian food offered to Krishna, etc. Then after they have
developed some taste for spiritual happiness attained through those means,
then naturally the taste for material habits decreases.  In the Gita, Lord
Krishna says:

                                vishaya vinivartante
                                 niraharasya dehinah
                                rasa varjam raso py asya
                                  param drstva nivartate

"The embodied soul may be restricted from sense enjoyment, though the taste
for sense objects remains. But, ceasing such engagements by experiencing a
higher taste, he is fixed in consciousness." (2.59). So that is the real
process.

And it does lead to spiritual bliss that surpasses any kind of material
pleasure. In the sixth chapter of the Gita, Krishna says: "In the stage of
perfection called trance, or samadhi, one's mind is completely restrained from
material mental activities by practice of yoga. This perfection is
characterized by one's ability to see the self by the pure mind and to relish
and rejoice in the self. In that joyous state, one is situated in boundless
transcendental happiness, realized through transcendental senses. "


Druta Karma
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