What is that which forces me to act in ways that I do not want to ? Asks Arjuna to Lord Krsna 5000 years ago and surprisingly the same question is hovering over the minds of people today. Then what is it?
Why do I get angry over my friend for silly reasons?
Why do I get irritated on my parents which disturbs them and me mentally?
Why do I end up getting into wasting hours on worthless videos?
To this Lord Krsna replies that “It is lust only, Arjuna, which is born of contact with the material mode of passion and later transformed into wrath, and which is the all-devouring sinful enemy of this world ” (BG 3.37) .
So we can understand by the words of Lord Krsna that the cause of lust is the mode of Passion or Rajo Guna. and by basic logic it is evident that getting out of Rajo guna has to be the solution for getting out of lust.
But here is the catch, getting out of Rajo guna is surely the solution but according to the Bhagwad gita we always remain in the three modes of material nature which are Sattva Guna (Mode of goodness), Rajo Guna (Mode of passion) and Tamo Guna (Mode of ignorance).
Just like if you are under the ground, you get out of the earth and come to the water, and from the water you still come out and place yourself in the atmosphere that is air, in the same way after getting out of Rajo guna we need to elevate ourselves to the mode of Goodness or Satva Guna.
By the experience of spiritualists and evidences of our scriptures we see that the process of eliminating lust from our lives is not a piece of cake.
Many great saints have fallen down by the heavy force of lust in Vedic times, Yet, not to be discouraged, it is not impossible to deal with this deadly enemy in our lives.
To make things easier, our practical solution for dealing with lust is broken down to FOUR practical steps which you can apply in your daily lives.
STOP CONSUMING LUST
We all know about the GIGO rule ie. Garbage in Garbage out. Simply we need to cut down all the things that enter in our mind which are fuels for increasing the fire of lust inside.
Lord Krsna says in Bhagwad Gita 2.62.
dhyāyato viṣayān puṁsaḥ saṅgas teṣūpajāyate saṅgāt sañjāyate kāmaḥ kāmāt krodho ’bhijāyate
“While contemplating the objects of the senses, a person develops attachment for them, and from such attachment lust develops, and from lust anger arises.”
By preventing our sight to fall on provoking content like pornography, adult movies and vulgarity on billboards and even looking at the opposite sex by a vision of enjoyment counts as contemplating on the objects of senses.
By the chronology of this verse we see that this is the first step out of four to stop our degradation to transforming our behaviour to that like of wild animals.
Interestingly this is the major part of the whole process and it is the only thing that is in our control voluntarily.
When you stop contemplating on the objects of the senses, attachment for them gradually decreases and when attachment decreases, lust cools down - leading to the termination of anger.
Thus, watching obscene content is the main problem for the current generation. To be more precise it is pornography which is practically a few clicks away from the device you are reading this blog.
So for preventing this poison from getting into our consciousness it is better to directly cut down the usage of our electronic devices that are equipped with internet, and be very professional in their use, and for a more safer side getting a parental control application or accountability check application would be very helpful
2) GIVE UP BAD ASSOCIATION
By the advice of previous acharyas in the Vedic era we consider the giving up of the association of people who look at the opposite gender as mere objects of sense enjoyment, talk about lusty subject matters, and consider enjoying with the opposite sex to be the flavour of happiness as the second step for the dealing with our enemy. Why?
Because even if you are situated in pure consciousness , getting in the vibes of these kind of people will get you in balance with their degraded level of consciousness with time.
For example if you sit in a classroom with a lady teacher teaching you some subject, you may not even imagine as seeing your own teacher in a ulterior way, of course she has the position of your own mother or even superior to that as she is responsible for passing you knowledge.
But these demoniac minded people sitting in the backside will pass such gross comments which will slide into your ears and disturb you from the inside and force you to some how think about that picture created by the words of these kind of people.
See how the mere listening of the statements of such people affect your consciousness? This might look little strong in picture but you can yourself see by the example given above how the mind is very ready for distractions .
3) GET THE RIGHT ASSOCIATION
So is it that we need to get into the forest and sit alone under a tree? NO, just like we give up unhealthy and junk food and take up to a nutritious and a heathy diet to improve our health or to get rid and treat some disease in our body.
The same way after giving up bad association it becomes the next connecting move to get the right association to treat this disease of lust. But what if most of the people around us are of the kind mentioned in the previous step.
In most of the cases this is rare that all the people will be of a bad influence, we should try to make people our friends who are professional in their dealings and consider spirituality as the medicine of the problems of their lives.
To be more specific people who read the Bhagwad gita and try to apply its teachings to their lives which is indeed the best medicine you will find for every problem in this age
Even if you do not find such people around you there are many websites and Youtube channels which share teachings of the Bhagwad gita on their channels and upload content related to it on their websites.
Out of them we the Team of Gitaquest are one who are trying our best to save the youth of India from getting into the terrible world of obscenity which lead to most of the mental problems.
For the best impact you may check out the Bhagwad gita course which is free of cost and you may even find friends there as the sessions are interactive and you get into a batch with people from all around the country who share the same interest like yours. This may come out to be the best use of the internet
4) INCREASE Sattva Guna
Again jumping back to the start of our blog into the transition of ourselves in the modes of material nature, the final stroke for getting ourselves geared up to deal with lust is that we establish ourselves on the mode of goodness as we already saw.
Lord Krsna is advising that the mode of passion is the core reason for the pumping of lust, it is obvious that giving up of Rajo guna and taking upto the Sattva guna is the sum and substance of the matter.
So what is the best solution for developing the mode of goodness?
Reading of scriptures like Bhagwad gita is said to be the best method of developing Sattva guna, in the Bhagwad gita itself Lord Krsna explains in the later chapters the specific factors of work, food, sacrifice etc. in the three modes of material nature
The other aid for boosting Sattva guna is meditation, more or less meditation is very important for the journey of a spiritualist.
There are many kinds of methods of meditation which include the asanas in the Hatha yoga system, just the simple periodic breathing of air in and out of the nostrils, and attentively chanting the mantras for a fixed number of times, getting yourselves equipped with one of these methods will prove to be helpful for your spiritual journey.
