(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 03 April 2015, Durban, South Africa, Ratha Yatra Lecture: Sexuality and Spirituality)
Continued from Wake up, sleeping souls
You know, you fall in love and then you want a child. Yes, it is nice but then you have to think, “What about school? Oh my god, there isn’t the right school for my child. What do I do now? But if we move to this other place, then there my child will get a proper education.”
“Yeah, but darling, we just put down a payment on the house!”
“Yeah, I know, but the child…”
“If we have to move then we will lose some money but anyway, we will move to the other location.”
So, it is a chain of action and reaction that entangles us more and more, and it binds us. As you grow old and grey, the kids are growing up and then you think, “Oh gosh, how am I going to put them through university! And these rascals, they are not serious about university!”
So much struggle! It is a whole network of entanglement. So therefore, the more we take to spirituality and the stronger we get spiritually, the less these material things mean to us. Therefore, we chant every day a minimum of sixteen rounds. Without these sixteen rounds, we cannot follow four regulative principles. Therefore, it begins with chanting Hare Krsna and then comes following four regulative principles.
They go hand in hand but you know, if someone says, “I am following the four principles but I am not chanting,” then all I can say is that it cannot last. It cannot last. It is okay. Nice, but it cannot last. If you do not chant, it cannot last because it is the chanting that lifts us up above the bodily platform. Without the chanting, we stay on the bodily platform and then your resolve to follow four principles is happening in the mind. If you are not chanting and following the principles, then it is a mental decision.
That is weak, balavan indriya-gramo vidvamsam api karsati (Srimad Bhagavatam 9.19.17). It says the senses are so strong that even someone who is learned is struggling. Even when you know, you are struggling. But when you are spiritually surcharged by devotional service, you get mercy. So when you are chanting, you get mercy. That is why the chanting is so important!