H.H. Bhakti Caru Swami - SEMINAR ON BRAHMACARYA Part 1

[Guest guest]

This 3 class seminar was given from 28 to 30 dec in Radhadesh - Belgium by

H.H. Bhakti Caru Swami.

 

I hope you like it. All credit goes to my senior godbrother Sriman

Candrasekhar Acharya das.

 

your servant,

Vinod-bihari das brahmacari

 

SEMINAR ON BRAHMACARYA

LESSON 1:

 

The topic for seminar is sensitive, but it is important that we have a

proper of what brahmacarya actually is because spiritual life rests on it.

The word itself will clarify:

Brahman means spiritual reality, and acaran means to practice, to act upon.

To act in order to be situated on the spiritual platform is brahmacarya. The

gGeek definition is not really brahmacarya. Celibacy alone is not

brahmacarya, which is actually a far broader concept.

 

..We are spirit souls. To become situated in that identity is brahmacarya.

According to Srila Prabhupada's teachings, even the householders are

brahmacaries. So ISKCON is a movement to make people brahmacaris, man or

woman, married or not, everyone should become a brahmacari. That's why we

decided to conduct this seminar on this topic.

 

..We have 2 identities: physical and spiritual. The body is material and the

soul spiritual. The body remains alive only as long as the soul is in the

body. The soul keeps the body alive. When we say I, we mean the soul. But we

identify with our body, which is the source of our bondage. The soul is the

source of consciousness. When it is projected through the nervous system,

one thinks that one is the body and acts in a detrimental way to our

spiritual identity. He is a spiritual soul, but he identifies himself with

matter and becomes materialized. When a mosquito bites him, he thinks, "the

mosquito is biting me." When the body feels pleasure, he identifies with it.

 

In Bhagavad Gita, Krsna describes the body as a dress that one puts on and

takes off. If you are wearing a dress and someone pinches your dress, do you

feel pain? The body, however, has intricate nervous system which ends in the

senses. The senses feel and send messages to the brain which registers it.

The sensation is carried on to the brain to be registered. Actually, the

body is a lump of matter; it is the soul which identifies with the body and

its pains and pleasures, which he resents and appreciates respectively.

 

The lump of matter called body is subject to the desire for sense

gratification, eating, sleeping, mating and defending. These are common to

the animals. They are very strong propensities. Now in winter, all the

animals are wondering, where is food? Where is food? Then sleep, then

defending from calamities. Then maithun, mating, copulation.

 

These propensities are called animal propensities. Man is a civilized animal

who lives in cities and villages in houses and defends with nuclear weapons.

The man is also doing the same way, but in a civilized way. Animals are

controlled by nature's arrangements when it comes to mating whereas a man is

free to copulate whenever he wants.

 

This freedom to mate any time he wants has been given to him to overcome the

urge, not to indulge in it.

 

The urge is there by nature's arrangement, a need for procreation to

maintain the situation. It is a very painful affair, so nature has arranged

pleasure. But the real purpose is allure people so that procreation can

continue. That is the purpose of mating, or copulation.

 

Unfortunately, humans have given up the procreation aspect and engage in

this process simply for some pleasure. Therefore it is important to remember

the purpose of mating and not get deviated. We must become aware of the

purpose of our spiritual practice.

 

 

Because of bad association, people are being drawn to this activity.

 

In the material world, for everything you have to pay a price.

The price is the loss of one's vitality: Virya or shukra, or semen. What is

semen? It is the essence of life energy which comes originally from the

soul. Matter in the form of food becomes transformed in different elements

of body, activated by the soul. The 3 most important systems in the body are

the respitory system, circulatory system which pumps blood about 75 times a

minute, and digestion system, which burns the food and extracts the rasas,

or juices, from the food which then transforms into 7 different elements: 1.

Rasas, 2.blood which tranforms into flesh, from which comes fat, from which

comes bone, from which comes bone marrow, from which comes semen.

So the finest element is semen. It is the storehouse of vital

energy. All vitality comes from this element. Therefore it is called Virya,

which means strength. Interesting, isn'it? The strength of a man rests in

this vital energy which spreads throughout the body. Just like butter is the

essence of milk that is spread throughout milk and when churned it comes

out, similarly, when someone becomes agitated by sexual desire, it comes out

in the form of semen. What happens then? What about the milk when the butter

is taken out? It becomes thin. Similarly, a man becomes devoid of vitality

when he engages in unrestricted sex.

 

We can notice that all great men usually stay away from sexual indulgence. I

was reading an article about the Olympic trainers telling their athletes,

"no sex for one month before your competition."

 

Butter churned out of milk being similar to someone loosing one's vitality

through sexual indulgence is an important analogy.

 

Sex indulgence is strictly reserved for householders, and that only for

procreation. They must remember that the purpose of their getting together

is simply for the sake of procreation, not for anything else. If men and

women, husband and wife, restrict sex to mere procreation, then that is

brahmacarya. Therefore brahmacary doesn't only mean celibate but to be

situated on the spiritual platform.

 

 

What is this very very strong sex desire and most difficult hurdle to cross

over? When we follow the 4 regs, after a while the 3 other are easy to give

up, but sex desire just increases! Therefore we should be aware that it is

the hardest struggle. It is the chain by which a living entity is chained to

the material world. It is a prison house named maithuna-agara, a prison of

sex desire. As long as sex desire is there in the heart, we will not be able

to be free. It is caused by maya, and the more we try to get free, the more

she will tighten the shackle. It is said that before a living entity is

about to leave this material nature, maya-devi herself comes and says, "why

are you leaving? Stay here and enjoy with me." At that time, Sanatana

Goswami recommends that one say, "please bless me that I can serve your

brother." Maya is Krsna 's sister. So we should always pray to her that we

never deviate to the platform of sense gratification.

 

Ultimately, what is it? In our Vedic scriptures it is described that

although sex desire is there and is difficult to cross, it is ultimately

just an itch. If you scratch, you get pleasure. It is an itch-and-scratch

pleasure. It gives illusory pleasure and a real disastrous effect on one's

spiritual life. One must guard oneself from this pitfall.

 

Yogis try to suppress it. Suppression not a solution. One must overcome this

desire by getting the higher taste. When the husband and wife get a child,

their mutual attraction becomes centered on their child and the carnal

desire disappears. Similarly, when a living entity loves Krsna , then it is

easy for him to overcome sex desire by the higher taste of love of Krsna

which makes the whole business disgusting. To begin with it is disgusting,

but nature has made it pleasurable out of necessity.

 

The first illusion is to think that we are our bodies. When we identify with

the body, the male body becomes attracted to a female body, and vice-versa.

But we are not this body! We are part-and-parcel of Krsna, connected to Him

through love that brings us closer to Him. When love is projected to

something in the material nature, it is called lust, not love. When this

love is directed to Krsna , then only is it actually love, or devotion. The

expression of love is in doing something for the pleasure of the object of

love. That activity is called devotional service. The more we do for Krsna ,

the more our love for Him becomes intensified. It is reciprocal: a devotee

loves Krsna , and Krsna reciprocates multifold. That joy of reciprocation

is what we all are really looking for.

 

We all are here to achieve that goal. And when we achieve it, then all the

sex life will become secondary business, as Yamunacarya pointed out when he

said that his lips curl in distaste and he spits at the thought. Ultimately

the thought will not even come to us. Today, we don't think of, for example,

a sand castle that we always meditated on as a child. Similarly, as we grow

up, we will forget sex desire.

 

The most important factor is for the men, being the aggressors, to respect

women. Therefore Vedic injuction is for a man to respect a woman as a

mother. In a society where they don't know how to respect women, that

society is useless. Today's society is simply exploiting women. Whereas

Srila Prabhupada has created a spiritual society where men will learn to

give the highest respect to women. If we want a wonderful society throughout

the world, we have to establish this spiritual culture. Thank you very much.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

 

Answer: there is no copulation in the spiritual world, but there is an

exchange of love, but it is not expressed through copulation. So our love

for Krsna in the spiritual world is perverted way here in the form of sex

life. So there is union, but not sex. From this point we cannot understand.

For example, Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu is Radha and Krsna together.

Theoretically, we can understand that when Radha and Krsna embrace, they

become Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. That personality has come down to give us

the highest love, not sexual indulgence. Sunrise and sunset may look alike,

but they are completely different.

 

Question: The Bhagavatam says that as time goes on, the sex desire goes

away. But you said that the urge gets stronger.

 

Answer: Initially, one does not feel so strong for sex because the milk is

already free from butter. But as the Virya gets more and more, the urge

becomes stronger. But also when the love for Krsna increases, he feels such

joy that he doesn't feel for the sex urge.

 

 

Question: can sex desire come out in the form of other desires such as

desire to eat too much.

 

Answer: Yes, therefore artificial repression is not what we prescribe;

rather, we prescribe a natural

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