We all are prone to bouts of selfish indulgence, wherein the urge for pleasure overwhelms our spiritual devotion and our moral principles. After such lapses, we often resolve to never again succumb, to not even think about those pleasures, leave alone indulge in them. Yet some time later, the sad history repeats itself.

Why are we unable to stick to our resolutions?

Because we are following the wrong process.

We are trying to empty the heart of selfish desires, a process akin to creating a vacuum – very difficult to attain and even more difficult to sustain.

We are intrinsically pleasure seeking and can’t live without satisfaction of some sort or the other. By our willpower, we may be able to delay gratification for some time, but eventually the urge for pleasure becomes insistent and finally irresistible.

The Bhagavad-gita (02.59) underscores this when it declares that those who resolve to give up sensual pleasures still remain tormented by the urge for those pleasures – unless they find a higher happiness.  Two verses later, the Gita (02.61) points to that higher happiness: connecting with the supreme reservoir of all pleasure, Krishna, by fixing the mind on him.

We can’t connect with Krishna mechanically, the way we connect an electronic device with a power source. Why? Because both Krishna and we are conscious beings, not insentient things.

What connects us with Krishna is desire. Paradoxically, the very thing that usually takes us away from him can take us towards him if we develop the desire for him. By associating with advanced spiritualists who delight in loving and serving Krishna selflessly, we feel inspired to similarly love and serve him. When we cherish such selfless desires and fill our heart with them, then selfish desires get crowded out – permanently.

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 02 Text 59

"Though the embodied soul may be restricted from sense enjoyment, the taste for sense objects remains. But, ceasing such engagements by experiencing a higher taste, he is fixed in consciousness."