For anyone interested in spiritual progress,
gambling is more than just a harmless amusement.
High’s convenience store is bustling with last-minute shoppers picking up odds and ends for a holiday dinner. Having run out of milk, I find myself in the crowded store, standing in a line that wraps around the food aisle. I resign myself to the waiting, and chant the Hare Krsna mantra softly to myself.
An elderly shabbily dressed woman at the counter draws my attention. She’s frantically scratching away at a lottery card Instant Win Bingo. She crumples the card and stuffs it into her coat pocket, then pulls a five dollar bill from her other pocket, demanding another card. Again she feverishly scratches the card with her cracked thumbnail. Sighing in disappointment, she produces another five dollars. She keeps buying cards until she’s out of money, and dejectedly shuffles out of the store.
I imagine that the woman has just spent her Social Security check, hoping for a large return. Yet now she may be left with nothing. Would she have food for the month? Would her rent be paid? I feel sympathy for this small gray-haired woman who has disappeared out into the dreary fog.
By the time I decided to become a devotee of Krsna and aspire for spiritual initiation, I’d already learned from devotees that I’d have to give up certain activities that impede spiritual growth. Those activities, considered the pillars of sinful life, include intoxication, meat-eating, illicit sexual activity, and gambling. Each pollutes our consciousness and is addictive.
Watching the frenzied woman in the convenience store today sparks my desire to understand more about gambling, so I turn to Srila Prabhupada’s books.
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