The Enemy—Lust

The symbol of ill fortune is bondage to lust. As was stated at the beginning, all conditioned souls are impelled to action, but how they will act is their fragmental independence. Now we see that the soul can either surrender to Krsna or to lust, for in verse thirty-six Arjuna complains that he feels sometimes impelled to sin even against his will, and Krsna says, "It is lust only, Arjuna, which is born of contact with the material modes of passion and later transformed into wrath, and which is the all-devouring, sinful enemy of this world." Actually this lust is a reflection of our dormant love for Krsna, but because the individual soul has chosen not to cultivate that love for Krsna, that same propensity is pervertedly exhibiting itself as lust. And that lust means sex enjoyment. Sex enjoyment is the bondage to the material world, for no man can do without it, and the more he gets the more tightly he becomes bound by material nature. The Manu-smrti tells us that lust cannot be satisfied by any amount of sense enjoyment, anymore than a fire can be put out by a constant supply of gasoline. In the state penitentiary criminals are kept in check by iron bars, and similarly, those who misuse their fragmental independence are tightly shackled by sex desire, which is forever binding them to material existence. Once having exerted his independence against the Lord, the conditioned soul has no further independence. So here Arjuna speaks of being impelled unwillingly, and elsewhere Krsna says that all living beings are working helplessly under the spell of His maya.

Some foolish people therefore conclude that Krsna is the origin of sin and that the living being has not moral agency and responsibility, and therefore one may go on as he pleases. But that does not follow any more than that the prison warden is responsible for the acts of the criminals under his charge. As wi11 be more elaborately explained in the Sixteenth Chapter, the living entity is being forced to act according to the modes of material nature, but still he is free. And what is that freedom? Freedom to become Krsna conscious, freedom to awaken from the slumber of forgetfulness induced by lust. "Therefore, O Arjuna, best of the Bharatas, in the very beginning curb the great symbol of sin (lust) by regulating the senses, and slay this destroyer of knowledge and self-realization" (3.41). So our choice is limited, and this is proof that we are fragments of Krsna. Krsna is the supreme independent; we have some independence, but we are not supremely independent. We can surrender to Krsna or we can surrender to His inferior energy and be forever kicked like a football by the agents of material nature, lust and anger. So how can we complete our term of material nature and transform that lust into love? Both lust and wrath can be turned into Krsna consciousness by expert guidance, and that process is called bhakti-yoga or Krsna consciousness, and it is exemplified by Hanuman, who transformed wrath into service for Lord Rama by visiting destruction on the demons of Lahka for the satisfaction of the Lord. And by the grace of the gopis, lust attained the highest perfection of love of Krsna in the bowers of Vrndavana. So the great secret of success is Krsna. Whatever is related to Him becomes perfect, and whatever is disjointed becomes useless and ugly. Acts performed for sense enjoyment are material; acts performed for the Lord are spiritual. Krsna makes the difference.