The desire to gratify one’s own senses is kāma [lust], but the desire to please the senses of Lord Kṛṣṇa is prema [love].
Caitanya Caṛitāmṛta Ādi-Līla 4.165
If, as we learn, prema—the perfect love of God—is the highest form of being, the ultimate goal, and the very meaning of our lives, how are we to understand the impure, everyday desires we so often feel?
In addition to the many gifts and virtues inherited from the Abrahamic religions, traditions of spiritual life have long carried the burden of asceticism—the practice of renouncing worldly pleasures. The assumed nobility of austerities such as fasting, celibacy, vows of poverty, and solitude runs deep in Western religious practice, and finds its own distinct forms in Eastern traditions as well.
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