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Gorgeous bodies! || Acharya Prashant, archives (2020)
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5 years ago
Provocation
Conditioning
Objectification
Women's Attire
Mental Illness
Responsibility
Spiritual Education
Description

Acharya Prashant addresses the allegation that seeing a woman in revealing clothing can be a disturbance, distraction, or even a provocation. He questions how much one can or should insulate themselves from the world and where the limits of what one wants to see or not see are drawn. He argues that if one claims a woman's legs or thighs are provocative today, there is nothing to prevent them from saying her ankles or fingernails are provocative tomorrow, ultimately demanding she be covered from head to toe. The speaker emphasizes that "body is body, skin is skin, flesh is flesh, and blood and bones are blood and bones," suggesting that the provocation is a matter of conditioning, not an inherent quality of the body. To illustrate his point, he references Victorian England, where even the legs of tables and chairs were covered because legs were not supposed to be displayed. He posits that this is a matter of conditioning, as one can be conditioned to find anything erotic. The speaker extends this line of reasoning, arguing that this logic will not stop even if a woman is fully draped. The next step would be to claim that the mere sight of the feminine figure is provocative, leading to the demand that women should not be allowed in public. The argument could escalate to the point where the very thought of a woman is considered a provocation, leading to the absurd conclusion that women should not be allowed to exist. Acharya Prashant describes this mindset as a form of "mental illness" and "inner perversion," stating that those who are so easily provoked are "sick" and in need of "rigorous counseling." He directly challenges such individuals, asking, "Is it really so that you cannot stand the sight of a bare arm or thigh or back or cleavage? Is it really so very explosive to you? What kind of a person are you?" He suggests that if one had any spiritual education or had visited a crematorium to understand the reality of the body—that it is just bones, skin, and blood—they would lose all fascination. He concludes that there is hardly anything so alluring in the bare body of a human being and that a proper understanding would dissolve this obsession.