CHAPTER 16, TEXT 21: There are three gates leading to this hell – lust, anger and greed. Every sane man should give these up, for they lead to the degradation of the soul.
One evening many years ago, I was traveling on a bus. The driver of the bus, an elderly, spiritual man, was having a conversation with another traveler, and I eavesdropped on their conversation.
The man asked, "What is the function of the soul?"
The traveler was silent. My ears perked up and I leaned in to hear the man answer his own question:
"To desire. The function of the soul is to desire,"
Those simple words rang with an eternal truth, and they have echoed in my mind in the many years since. Interesting, no? I can still remember the deep blue evening light, the headlights from oncoming vehicles, the silhouettes of spiky trees as they rushed by. Those words anchor me to that time and space: The function of the soul is to desire.
I have seen this eternal truth play out in my life and in the world.
When the soul is in touch with material energy, that eternal propensity to desire transforms into lust. Trying to satisfy the soul's eternal, spiritual desires with temporary, material things is a recipe for frustration, drama, and pain. I speak from experience, here, and I'm sure anyone reading this post would say the same.
In this verse of the Gita, Krishna is saying that there are three gates leading to hell - lust, anger, and greed. Prabhupad emphasizes, though, that lust is the origin: "One tries to satisfy his lust, and when he cannot, anger and greed arise." Note that Prabhupad writes that one "tries" to satisfy lust, but he "cannot" - it is simply impossible to satisfy lust, like trying to put out a raging fire by feeding it logs soaked with gasoline. It is eventual that one will get to the point of anger and an even more inflamed greed. In verse 12 of this chapter, Krishna describes that an ungodly person is "bound by a network of hundreds of thousands of desires" which is not an exaggeration. Hundreds of thousands of desires may even be an understatement. Those desires lead to the degradation of the soul, as Krishna says in this verse.
Why? Where does lust come from, this raging fire of desire?
The soul.
The function of the soul is to desire.
To quench this fire of desire IS impossible, because to do so would snuff out our very existence.
The key, then, is to understand that this nature to desire something and someone, always, is divine. Originally, the soul desires to love and be loved, and ultimately to love God and be loved by God.
The whole process of bhakti yoga is about taking those tendencies of the soul offering them to Krishna. In this way the soul is not degraded, but uplifted.
Desire Krishna. Desire to serve, desire to connect, desire to love.
Full purport here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/16/21/
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