Page:Bengal Vaishnavism - Bipin Chandra Pal.djvu/49

84 BENGAL VAISHNAVISM natural desires and appetites of the flesh, but their regulation. This regulation is absolute- ly essential, in fact, for even the very enjoy- ment of these appetites and desires. But even this regulation, though it must form the very plinth and foundation of the spiritual life, must fail of its purpose unless it has as its objective, spiritualisation or idealisa- tion. Bengal Yaishnavism pursues this process of idealisation and spiritualisation of all our sense-activities, culminating in the realisation of the Anandam of the Lord Himself in and through our relations of love and service. For this idealisation it is essential that the devotee should establish his complete master5' over his senses and free himself from the domina- tion of sense-contacts and the sense-life over his inner spiritual life. This is an essential pre- condition of the pursuit of the way of BhaJcti or Love of God, which is the objective of our Yaishnavic culture. It repudiates absolute asceticism, which really is not detachment or vairagya but is found at the ultimate analysis to be even a worse form of attachment itself, which results from a consciousness of con- flict and not the realisation of that higher synthesis wherein there is neither good nor evil but both are subsumed as spokes in the