Prabhu: Sometimes we find ourselves attracted to young women, just minding their own business and walking by and going somewhere, and this attraction is disturbing, to us and to the women. How can that go away?

HH BVPS Mahārāja: You have a few options, basically what we were saying before. One is, is it your duty? Is it your austerity to be involved with that young girl who just walked by? If it is not, then that is one aspect, so that is your grossest aspect. It has nothing to do with me, it is somebody else’s austerity, not mine. The point is, if you want it, you have to pay for it. You got to feed it, you got to buy a sari, you got to do the whole thing. So it is not your austerity, it is not your duty, that is one level.

The other level is, what are you going to get from it? Because unless you are dealing on the platform of duty you are not going to come to the platform of naiṣkarmya. If you don’t come to the platform of naiṣkarmya you are not going to advance in devotional service, you are not going to get out of the material world and you are not going to develop love for Kṛṣṇa.

 The other thing is that they are medium for one of Kṛṣṇa’s aspect of energy, that aspect of beauty. They are carrying that. And then you have senses that can perceive that and appreciate that. All it is is Kṛṣṇa’s potency of appreciating that and Kṛṣṇa’s potency of being that are contacting each other. If you think that I am the controller and enjoyer then you will try to enjoy this contact, if you are not then it has nothing to do with you. Like the postman, he is given a letter. So it has nothing to do with you, it is just the energies moving.

 So the energy is moving and it has nothing to do with you, so there is nothing to enjoy here. Two, I have no duty towards this girl therefore I don’t get involved. So, in this way you just keep walking and they keep walking. And it also works on older girls also, or on maha-prasada that you are not supposed to eat, or that you are not supposed to eat on a fast day, it is the same principle.

Prabhu: It could work also effectively if one can shift for a moment that period of time, the momentum, to 50 years ahead. 

HH BVPS Mahārāja: Yes, but I am saying, renunciation is done on the whole point of just knowing what is actually there. Then you also have the things, if it is grossly more there. Of what it is you are getting attracted by, because the medium for the beauty is actually still made out of mucus, bile and air. The problem is, it is just arranged nicely.

Bhaktijana said in his famous quote... He was saying, that one nice looking girl went by, and one of the brahmacārīs said, 'Ahh, that is just stool and urine,' and all this kind of stuff, and Bhaktijana said: 'Yeah, but she got all the stool at the right places.' The point is, it is still what it is. By contemplating actually what you are dealing with then it also loses something. Because the whole point of interacting with it is not, what you are going to get from it? Because then you are the controller and enjoyer. It is what are your duties towards this, so since you have no duties towards this you don’t get involved. 

So all these other things are to contemplate. So you have all these tools to work with: your duties, the jñāna-aspect of what is there, what is the benefit and what is not the benefit, what you are actually dealing with, then you have your Kṛṣṇa consciousness, how that is connected to Kṛṣṇa or not. Because as soon as you understand that it is actually Kṛṣṇa... If that much attraction is there through dead matter, it is dead matter but it is Kṛṣṇa’s potency that makes it attractive. And Kṛṣṇa says, this is a spark of His splendor, this isn’t even the full thing. That means then how attractive is Kṛṣṇa? In that way it can all be connected. 

(From Lecture on Śrī Īśopaniṣad, Bhaktivedānta Academy, Śrīdhāma Māyāpura)

Photo: HH Guṇagrahi Dāsa Gosvāmī, HH Bhaktividyā Pūrṇa Svāmī, HH BB Govinda Svāmī in Poland 1995, photo by Padmākṣa Dāsa, used with permission.