Some people question: “If I give up sense enjoyment, as serious spiritual life requires, then what enjoyment will be left in my life?

This hesitation stems from a narrow preconceived definition of sense enjoyment: as the material pleasure derived from the contact of the senses with the sense objects. However, bhakti yoga offers another kind of sense enjoyment – the spiritual fulfillment that comes from using the senses to serve and please Krishna.

Bhakti yoga is sensory spirituality. It involves using our senses in the service of the supreme spiritual reality, Krishna. We use our eyes to behold the beauty of Krishna, the ears to hear his glories, and the tongue to chant his holy names. In the spiritual world – the arena of eternal bhakti, we have spiritual senses with which we can serve Krishna ecstatically. Additionally, even when we are spiritual seekers, bhakti-yoga allows us to rehearse and prepare for that everlasting life of love by using our material senses to serve Krishna. Though these senses are temporary, they can become tools to transcend the temporary. If we use the senses regularly to glorify Krishna and delight in spiritual happiness thereof, then gradually our pleasure-seeking propensity becomes retrained, and redirected from matter to spirit.

This training requires us to give up anti-devotional forms of sense enjoyment because they keep our consciousness trapped at the material level. But the Bhagavad-gita (02.59) reassures us that the restlessness we feel on giving up sense objects ceases when we let ourselves taste the sweetness of Krishna. Therein we relish a better and greater enjoyment than that available through even the best material enjoyment – instead of slaving and scraping for mere drops of pleasure, we get to savor and swim in an ocean of happiness.

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."