Lust doesn’t just bind us – it also makes us fight to tie the ropes that bind us

If someone were being bound by ropes, that person would naturally fight against those tying the ropes. But suppose that person fights instead against those trying to untie the ropes. We would rightly consider such behavior crazy.

Yet this is how people behave when bound by lust. Lust is frequently thought of as a source of enjoyment, so why is it said to bind?

Lust addicts become blind to dignity, morality and civility as they feverishly seek sexual gratification, sinking sometimes even to brutality and bestiality.

Because it makes a biological function degenerate into a psychological compulsion. The resulting obsession makes lust addicts blind to dignity, morality and civility as they feverishly seek sexual gratification, sinking sometimes even to brutality and bestiality. Lust also drags people into behaviors that invite mortifying and debilitating diseases. Moreover, it keeps them deprived of the unlimited devotional happiness available at the spiritual level of consciousness. And it drags them deeper into the miserable cycle of birth and death

Lust doesn’t just bind dreadfully, but also deludes insidiously – it makes people mistake regulation of lust to be deprivation of freedom. Those thus deluded fight against spiritual mentors who strive to protect them from lust’s bondage. By pejoratively labeling such mentors as old-fashioned killjoys and self-appointed moral police, lust addicts deride and dismiss them.

No wonder the Bhagavad-gita (03.39) cautions us against lust, declaring it to be our eternal enemy (nitya-vairi) that covers our knowledge (avritam jnanam). By its delusions, lust makes us use our own energy against us – instead of fighting against lust, we fight against the moral and spiritual regulations meant to protect us.

How can we break free from lust’s bondage?

By equipping ourselves with Gita wisdom, we can see through its diabolical delusions. And by cultivating remembrance of Krishna, we can relish higher devotional happiness that progressively makes lower sensual pleasures unnecessary and unappealing.