Happiness in rasa-lila & in chewing bamboo

[Bhakti Vikasa Swami]

We have often heard of Krsna's rasa-lila with the cowherd girls in Vrndavana.
That is not like ordinary exchanges that take place between these material
bodies. Rather it is an exchange of feelings through spiritual bodies. One has
to be somewhat intelligent to understand this, for a foolish man, who cannot
understand what real happiness is, seeks happiness in this material world. In
India there is the story of a man who did not know what sugarcane was and was
told that it was very sweet to chew. "Oh, what does it look like?" he asked.
"It looks just like a bamboo rod," someone said. So the foolish man began to
chew all kinds of bamboo rods. How can he begin to experience the sweetness of
sugarcane? Similarly, we are trying to get happiness and pleasure, but we are
trying for them by chewing this material body; therefore there is no happiness
and no pleasure. For the time being there may be some little feeling of
pleasure, but that is not actual pleasure, for it is temporary. It is like a
show of lightning which we may see flashing in the sky that may momentarily
seem like lightning, but the real lightning is beyond that. Because a person
does not really know what happiness is, he deviates from real happiness.
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From
On the way to Krsna by Srila Prabhupada
Ch. 1: Throughway to Happiness