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They can be either friends or foes. So too, the senses. If we allow them to master us, they become our deadly enemies; if we master them, they help us to realize our goal.
The temptation to ignore dharma (right action) grows from egotism and the acceptance of false values. The wish to satisfy the lower desires is the root of disharmony, unrighteousness. This wish takes hold of you slyly, silently, like a thief in the night, or like a comrade come to save you, or like a servant come to aend on you, or like a counselor come to warn you. Oh, wickedness has a thousand tricks to capture your heart. You must be ever alert against the temptation. The wish makes a chink in your consciousness, enters and establishes itself, and then multiplies its brood and eats into the personality you have built up with laborious care. The fort is no longer under your control. You have been reduced to a puppet manipulated by these inner enemies. Whenever you try to rebuild yourself, they undermine the structure, and you have to do it all over again. That is the extent of the harm they do.
Aachment can be used to fix your heart on the Lord. Be fascinated by the overwhelming beauty of His form reflected in all the loveliness of nature. Desire (kama) is not a vice for it is given the status of a goal (purushartha). Develop desire not for the material and the momentary but for the deathless, the indestructible, and for the steady development of faith in the scriptures (Shastras) as a means to this.
There are four F’s that you will have to fix before your aention: follow the Master, face the devil, fight to the end, and finish the goal. Follow the Master means observe dharma. Face the devil means to overcome the temptations that beset you when you try to earn wealth (artha) or the wherewithal to live in comfort. Fight to the end means to struggle ceaselessly; wage
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