The essential disease is that the mind is identifying with this body as the self. The essential disease is that we have forgotten our true spiritual nature. We are eternal, we are full of knowledge and we are full of bliss. It is our nature to be happy sac-cid-ananda. We must have that happiness some where. The only real way to give up bad habits is to replace them with good habits. In order to have that determination and strength to do that it is necessary that we have association that will enliven us and protect us. What you associate with that what you become like..that is the law of nature. A simple example we can see in this connection is that if you put iron rod in fire after sometime in association with fire it becomes red and hot like a fire, similarly if the same iron rod if you put in ice after some time it becomes ice cold like ice due to in association with ice. Every parent their greatest concern if they love their children is who and what they are associating with. If the child is associating with prostitute, drug addicts then the child is going to become addicted to sex and drugs its inevitable. If the child is associating with saintly people then their is every chance every facility for a child to become happy and saintly. One can change a bad habit to a good habit due to association and one can also change a good habit to a bad habit due to association. What we are talking about is of transformation you cannot negate your desires you cannot simply negate your addictions but you can transform them. They must be transformed, transformed into something positive. Here is a story of boy we found in scriptures of a great saint Narada Muni who was maid servent but due to association with transcendentalists he becomes transcentalist too. A saintly person has said if we really want to deal with the true problems of lifes within us we must clean our hearts. When we clean our hearts we naturally clean our habits. But also as we try to clean our habits that helps us clean our hearts.
Culture really means invoking certain habitual life styles in people existence. Who and what we associate with is the very important decision that we can make in our lifes because we will be influenced and affected by that in our future will depend upon that. In association with spiritual minded people there is the great determination to overcome the propensity provice. Just like alchohal anonimous, gamblee anonimous, anger anonimous.. and so many other anonimoses they depend on each other for support in a similar way we must have the association of saintly peole who give us the support to actually uproot the weeds: selfishness, lust, envy, anger, greed, pride, illusion these are the weeds which keep coming and pushing us back into evil activities. Until one develop the higher taste it is very difficult to give up our lower conditional habits.
Lord Krsna also says in Bhagavad Gita we must conquer the lower self with the higher self. So in proper association in a good association we learn how to replace the bad habits with the good habits.
The great responsibility of a parent is to give their children spiritual habits so that there was not that vacuum which they have to fill with these materilistic bad habits.
