Websites from the ISKCON Universe
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One of the defining delusions of our society is the equalization of lust with love. People who feel physically attracted to each other assume that are in love. But often their attraction is nothing more than lust.
One of the defining delusions of our society is the equalization of lust with love. People who feel physically attracted to each other assume that are in love. But often their attraction is nothing more than lust – this becomes apparent in due course of time when due to familiarity the hormones are no longer secreted and where one was irresistibly fascinated earlier, one starts feeling bored at best or even irritated if other incompatibilities are discovered.
While there are various ways in which love and lust can be differentiated, one prominent way is in terms of their effects on us. We all have a lower side – something within us that impels us to be selfish, shortsighted, and exploitative. And we also have a higher side – a part of us that wants to be selfless, far-sighted, and sensitive. Lust springs from our lower side and brings that side out further. It makes us want to control and dominate others for the sake of our enjoyment. Thus, lust objectifies others, reducing them to their bodies, and reducing their bodies to contours and crevices meant for our pleasure.
In contrast, love springs from our higher side and brings that side out further. When we love someone, we want to become the best that we can be for the pleasure of that person. Thus, love inspires us to combat and control our lower side.
Of course, lust too wants us to put on a better face for impressing the other person, but because the feeling itself is superficial, coming from our body-mind setup, it doesn’t inspire any positive change below the surface. Rather, it impels us to put on a good façade so that eventually our lower side can get a free hand to dominate and manipulate others for our pleasure. Gita wisdom explains that our higher side corresponds with our spiritual essence, our soul. The soul being a part of God is filled with godly virtues. However, it is presently covered by the body and the mind which are filled with negative impressions from past indulgences. These impressions are the source of our lower side. Prominent among these impressions is lust. While lust promises immense pleasure, it rarely lives up to its promise – despite the fantasy it may fan in our mind, it can do nothing to alter the body’s limited capacity for indulgence. Being thwarted thus, lust goads us into believing that the elusive pleasure will be ours if we just seek newer, baser forms of indulgence. Thus, lust pushes us down the slippery slope of degradation. No wonder the Bhagavad-gita (03.39) warns that lust is an enemy that deludes and degrades us.
Findings in brain research also point to the difference between lust and love. When people feel lust, MRI scans show that those areas of their brain light up that are usually lit when they feel emotions of possessing and controlling, as when they desire to get a new cellphone or a new car. In a contrast, when people feel […]
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CC daily Podcast:
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Bhagavatam-daily Podcast:
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Sunday Feast at Radha Gopinath Temple, Mumbai
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When a wealthy patriarch dies, leaving behind a huge inheritance, frequently succession conflicts break out. While each conflict may have its specific dynamics, they all usually have a common denominator: selfishness. Everyone related with the deceased wants a share of the pie, with the progeny often wanting the biggest piece, if not the whole pie.
The Ramayana depicts a succession conflict between two princes after the death of their father. Strikingly however, this conflict is caused not by selfishness, but by selflessness. Rather than two brothers arguing to get the inheritance for themselves, they argue that the other should accept it. And no, the inheritance is not a white elephant – it is the flourishing kingdom of Ayodhya, one of the most powerful kingdoms in ancient India. As intriguing as the conflict is, just as endearing is its resolution.
A series of shocks
This narrative begins in the prosperous kingdom, with its climactic conflict occurring in the forest of Chitrakuta and the denouement on the outskirts of the capital. The ageing monarch Dasharatha prepares for his eventual retirement by deciding to appoint his oldest son Rama as the prince regent. His youngest wife Kaikeyi, being misled by her maid, sees this succession as an attempt to sideline her and her son Bharata. So using two boons that the king had promised her long ago, she compels him to send Rama on exile for fourteen years and have Bharata declared the prince regent. While the kingdom sinks into an ocean of horror and agony, Rama graciously departs for the forest with his wife Sita and younger brother Lakshmana. Within days the heartbroken king breathes his last. Bharata who was in a relative’s kingdom while this tragedy unfolded is summoned to perform the last rites of his father and to take over the reins of the kingdom.
When Bharata returns, he is struck by a series of shocks – first that his father is dead, second that his brother is in exile, third that his mother is the cause of both these horrors, fourth that his mother has misunderstood him so much that she thinks he will be pleased by her machinations, and fifth that many people, both courtiers and citizens, suspect him to be a co-conspirator with his mother. Steeling himself, he performs for his deceased father the elaborate funeral rites befitting a monarch, while resolving throughout to somehow set right at least some of the grievous wrongs. He decides to go personally to the forest for beseeching Rama to return and accept the throne.
Sincerity removes suspicion
When Bharata expresses his noble resolve to the courtiers, their lingering suspicions about his complicity are dissipated. His selflessness enlivens them, as does the possibility of their beloved Rama’s return. They desire eagerly to accompany Bharata to the forest. He consents gladly, knowing that their presence will reinforce his request. The royal priest Vashishtha goes too, as does the chief minister Sumantra and the three recently widowed royal mothers: Kaushalya, Sumtira and Kaikeyi. Understandably, Bharata has reservations about […]
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(This article, co-authored with Aja Govinda Prabhu, was published in Back to Godhead when the claims of artificial life had been in the news in 2010, but was not published on thespiritualscientist.com, though two separate small articles were published: What is the Vedic perspective on the creation of artificial life? and What is wrong with creating life? As similar news about the claims of the creation of artificial life are again surfacing, this article is being published now.)
“Scientists create artificial life,” declared newspaper headlines around the world in May 2010. Genome pioneer J. Craig Venter, the man behind the sensation, claimed, “This is a philosophical advance as much as a technical advance.”
What exactly did Venter do? He:
Determined the sequence of the DNA in one of the world’s simplest bacteria,
Synthesized a copy of that DNA from components sold by a biological supply company,
Replaced the natural DNA in a living bacterial cell with this synthetic DNA.
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is a long linear molecule found in the nucleus of a cell. Sometimes dubbed as the king of molecules, DNA comprises of genes or biological units of heredity that are passed down from parent to offspring. The complete DNA (also known as the genome) has a few billion chemical bases (bases are specific bio-molecules) paired together into a double helix. The four bases used in DNA (adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine) act like the letters of an alphabet, and the specific sequences of these bases convey information used for building proteins (chemical compounds used by living cells). The actual production of proteins is done by “gene expression” machinery within the cell that makes copies of the DNA and uses the information therein to arrange amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) into the sequence and structure required for the protein under production. Each different gene sequence results in a protein with a distinct structure and shape, and consequently distinct function in the cell.
Venter, like many modern scientists, believes in reductionism: the idea that all the features of a complex system can be explained in terms of or “reduced” down to the properties of its simple components. Reductionist biologists hold that a living organism is like a computer: just as the capacities of the computer can be explained in terms of the capacities of its components, the characteristics, traits, behaviors of livings organisms can be explained in terms of their components, going down ultimately to their genes. As Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins noted, “The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.” Applying the computer analogy to the current experiment, Venter has certainly not created the complete computer. What he has done – introducing a new genetic sequence within a preexisting living organism – is like replacing one chip within a pre-existing computer by another chip. So, even from this reductionist viewpoint, he has not created life. That’s why Caltech biologist and Nobel laureate, David Baltimore, pointed out that Venter has “overplayed the importance” of his results; he “has not created life, only mimicked it.”
What if scientists […]
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Indian thought is sometimes deemed fatalistic, as holding that everything is destined by past karma, thereby leaving little room for human initiative. The bhakti literature, however, offers a far more nuanced and empowering outlook to life.
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