There is a English proverb, "What is play to you is death to me"

Expressions researched:
"what is play to you is death to me"

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures

There is a English proverb, "What is play to you is death to me." So that is the position here. Even if you are glorified, still, you cannot enjoy. You cannot enjoy. Anything, any position. Because this wrong conception of bodily existence is a diseased form of my constitution, so I cannot enjoy.

Lecture on BG Lecture Excerpts 2.44-45, 2.58 -- New York, March 25, 1966:

There is a English proverb, "What is play to you is death to me." So that is the position here. Even if you are glorified, still, you cannot enjoy. You cannot enjoy. Anything, any position. Because this wrong conception of bodily existence is a diseased form of my constitution, so I cannot enjoy. Now, a patient who is suffering from some disease, he is unable to enjoy, but if he forcibly enjoys, then his life becomes risky. He becomes more implicated. Just like... Of course, in your country I know that there is no such disease as typhoid, but India there is a fever called typhoid. Here it is called typhosis, or something like, medical term. That typhoid is disease of intestine. Now, in that disease, any solid food is strictly forbidden. First time is twenty or fourteen days, then twenty-one days, then forty-one days, up to sixty days. He is to live only on glucose water. That's all. Other things is dangerous for him. Now, if that typhoid patient desires to eat some solid food and if somebody, out of compassion, gives him some solid food, then it is death for him because in that condition he cannot enjoy. His enjoyment is forbidden. Therefore, in our diseased condition of this bodily conception of life, if we increase our so-called enjoyment, enjoyment of the body, oh, then we shall be more and more entangled in this conditional life of material existence. If you really want freedom from this material existence and miseries of material existence, then we must minimize the bodily enjoyment. We must minimize. Just like a diseased man is given some liquid food. He is forbidden... He is forbidden to take any food because any food will aggravate his disease, but still, because he has to exist, he is given some glucose water, some barley water, some fruit juice, little. Just... It is also psychological. The patient may think also that "I am eating something. I am eating, not I am starving. I am eating." That is also psychological effect. At the same time, this light food, fruit juice or glucose water, that is easily digested, so there is no harm.