Brahmacharia

The term ‘brahmacharia’ has always been misunderstood with celibacy, which only means to abstain from sexual intercourse. But ‘brahmacharia’ never insists that one should be abstained from engaging in sexual intercourse. It only means that one has to fix the minimum at every level of experience, including sexual intercourse. Anything that leads to excess can always lead us to competition, conflict, crisis and destruction. Therefore, a person at every state of experience has to strictly observe the norms of the minimum. As it has already been explained, the advaita philosophy believes in the minimum rather than the maximum. Then, in every stage of human experience, one has to comply with the norms of the minimum as a prelude to maintain peace and harmony. In this sense, the philosophy of advaita raises a question that what is that practical step that can maintain peace and harmony in the present day world. The market economy believes that peace and harmony can be purchased from the market. It propagates the concept of accumulation of the maximum to maintain and guarantee peace and harmony in human life. Now it is a foregone conclusion that nothing in the external world can provide happiness unless we are not able to generate happiness in ourselves. But a new commodity in the market is capable of guaranteeing happiness only if it has got the capacity to generate the same by itself. Advaita asks everyone to learn the lessons of sustenance on earth from the birds in the sky. The Biblical aphorism specifically says that “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” (Mathew 6:26) No bird in the whole universe ever eats anything more than the minimum requirement. How abundant be the supply of the food grains in fields, every bird says that you share that has been year marked for by the philosophy of the minimum that is inherent in Nature. In this sense, the advaita is a system of thought that is inherent in Nature as a system of order.