Change
recollection from selective to comprehensive and deceptive to protective by
Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 02
Alcoholics, for a few moments of pleasure, undergo the
indignity of slurred speech, incoherent behavior and overall foolishness that
takes a heavy toll on time, money, health, love and life itself.
When alcoholics are sober, they are often painfully aware of
this toll. But when the next urge to drink attacks them, their memory
malfunctions, giving them vivid recollection of the fleeting initial pleasure
and giving near-zero recollection of the lasting eventual misery. Such selective
recollection is deceptive, dangerously deceptive, for it perpetuates their
alcohol addiction.
To protect us from such deceptive recollection, scripture
gives the full and unvarnished picture of worldly pleasures.
The Bhagavad-gita (02.63) states that such malfunctioning of
the memory stems from delusion – the delusion that overwhelms those who
unguardedly contemplate on tempting objects. The Gita (02.62-63) gives the
eight-stage trajectory of thoughts that begins in contemplation and ends in
self-destruction. So when alcoholics contemplate on drinking, the resulting
desire snowballs into a delusion that pushes back the memories hostile to
drinking and pushes forward memories conducive to drinking.
Such deceptive recollection entraps not just alcoholics, but
all of us, according to our attachment. And the innate selectivity of our
recollection is aggravated by today’s culture that depicts worldly pleasures
selectively. The Gita (18.38) states that worldly pleasures are like nectar in
the beginning, but poison in the end. The culture aggressively glamorizes the
initial nectar and artfully conceals the eventual poison, , thus worsening the
deception.
To protect us from such deceptive recollection, scripture
gives the full and unvarnished picture of worldly pleasures. When we complement
serious scriptural study with conscientious contemplation on how our own
experiences with worldly pleasures ended in misery, our conviction about their
overall miserable nature strengthens. Thereafter, whenever temptations attack
us, we can fight it off with our scripture-based and experience-boosted
recollection.
Thus serious scriptural study transforms our memory from
selective to comprehensive and from deceptive to protective.
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