Desire:
Gauthama Buddha said that desire is the root cause of sorrow, because it could lead to disappointment if the desire is not fulfilled. The Bhagavad Gita says that desire springs from attachment which springs from continually thinking about something. And that desire leads to anger loss of memory, intellect and destruction. Narada Bhakthi Sutras agree with this. This implies that sorrow is a thing to be avoided and therefore desire is to be given up, to avoid that sorrow.
The Bhagavad Gita talks of Nishkama Karma or desire less work. This is a “cool model’ . The society benefits through such an approach and through that the individual benefits. The point is to focus on the ‘process’ or the activity and not on the results.
The Western Corporate talks of drive for results, it talks of greed, of growth for the sake of growth and it yokes people to itself through their greed and fear. This is unhealthy. To me the Western Corporate is incompatible in its fundamentals from the Bhagavad Gita. But once you give up that greed and fear, you also give up any possible achievements in that line. If I don’t desire money, power and glory why would I do a corporate job? Then I cannot have that achievement. Greed is not desire. They are not synonyms.
Is it so important to be free from sorrow? Vivekananda said that he was willing to be born a thousand times to serve his country. He did not desire salvation or moksha (freedom – from the birth and death cycle).
Contentment leads to peace. But desire leads to effort, effort to experience and to achievement. Even a desire for peace or for freedom from sorrow is a desire. Buddha’s desire for the truth was so great that he undertook a huge effort to find it. Slavery is a result of a desire to stay alive even under apalling conditions. Many devotees who desire God are unhappy till they reach that state of oneness. Even a desire for God is a desire. I still have desires. Realistically, I may have desires till I die. So I stand to suffer from not fulfilling my desires because: a) they are impossible desires. b) they are possible – but I don’t know how to fulfill them. c) I know how, but I have failed in my attempt. I may never reach a desireless state – even if I try.
My conclusion : Desire need not be given up. Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to wisdom. Desire leads to effort and effort leads to accomplishment. Because sorrow due to disappointment is not to be avoided, it is to be accepted. It has its place in learning and creativity and new ideas for doing things. And that is life. Renounciation is for those who cannot handle the disappointments that are an inevitable part of living, doing and being.
Insecurity :
Insecurity is generated by a fear of losing something we love or like. A job, money, family, a lover, health or even life itself. The truth is that nothing is permanent, not life nor health nor job nor family and most certainly not wealth. The sun will cool, the earth will spin into the sun, the universe will collapse into itself, a bubble with a different time scale.The alternative to living in insecurity is to live IN the moment. Not “for” the moment. Today you have much that you did not have yesterday and will not have tomorrow. Some things you never will have! (Sept 2004).
(2007-2008) We pray God to grant our wishes.
But where did these wishes come from? Our wishes come from our nature and from our environment. If there was a one – aham – I ( ’us’) and another – tvam – you (God) (Dvaita) we could say that our wishes come from God. We pray God to grant us those wishes that he gives us in the first place. We envy those who ‘get’ their wishes. We pity those who do not. We do not understand those whose wishes are different from us. We hate those whose wishes cause us or others harm. But with all this both the wish and its fulfilment would really be upto God and not upto us.
Values, like wishes, are acquired from environment and nature. Therefore they are acquired from God. So all conflicting desires and values that we see around us come from God. God gives us values, God gives us anger when our values are not upheld, He gives us shame when we do not live upto our own values and pride and admiration when we do live upto them. God gives us our feelings through nature. It is God who gives us the sadness that we feel when we think the situation will not improve. It is emotions that drive our actions. It is God that determines actions. God is intricately tied up with our emotions. God must cause emotion or influence it at least. And in our popular stories and movies.. God is highly influenced by our emotion too.
For prayer to work, our minds must be linked to God. God can give us some thoughts. We can sense sometimes what is happening elsewhere or what will happen later. We can pray for what we wish will happen. God and us can listen to each other. God can influence us through events and thought prompts. We can influence God through prayer. It is God who decides or has already decided what will happen. Action and events are God’s realm not ours. But we can pray God for what we want or need.
Astrology works. So there is fate. Prayer works. So fate can be changed? Is it that a few discrete events are pre-determined and the details can be filled in by us with effort, prayer, boons, curses and Will (Sankalpa)? Markandeya overcame even death with penance and Siva’s grace.
So we should be well-intentioned, pray for success and good things and work for them. And if there is no major pre-determined event that overrules or overrides this., then we can get what we wish for/work for/ pray for/ are blessed with. There is power in words, thoughts, wishes, prayer, effort and blessings.
Karma and Action (Sept 2004)
You could choose to help a hungry man or kick him in the face. Or you could choose to do neither. But if he is due is food or a kick in the face or neither that is what he will receive through you or someone else. Your choice is limited to whether you wish to be the agent of service or agent of retribution. Everything you give comes back to you. Good or Bad. Good and Bad. You can in no way alter what another person gets. (This I have seen from direct experiece – it is my personal conclusion as well as the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita)
People who practice self-restraint set up fewer waves of activity : or good-bad cycles that will come back to them.
People with a love of life and activity, people who equate living with activity : set up a lot of waves. They are always doing things. Things are always happening to them. Things happen to people who do things. This is “karma”.
Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita says : if you act, conscious that you are My agent : then Karma will not stick to you.
The Sahaj Marg Master says : you must act if only to breathe, eat and go to the toilet. Even “not acting” is action : it is the act of not acting. Action is unavoidable. Think that it is the Master who acts through you and it is the Master who experiences the consequences.
The concept is to recognize that we are agents of ideas whose time has come. This frees us from credit and culpability. It frees us from the tremendous burden of our actions.
The Butterfly Effect is the concept of a butterfly that flaps its wings in China either setting off or not setting off a tornado in Kentucky through a series of interlinked meteorological changes. The enormity of the consequence of such an action would weigh heavily on a butterfly if it could think.
All our actions are similarly bound in such complex interconnections that it is impossible to know whether we are doing right or wrong. Will mercy make the receiver lazy and reinforce his negative traits? Is mercy to one cruelty to another? Is a harsh word to an enemy what it takes to kindle his pride and become a great success in life? If we think through all the consequences of our actions: most of us would be paralyzed.
Rishis and Munis act as little as possible. Karmayogis whether they be soldiers or civilians, try to do what they perceive to be their duty and leave the consequences to God.
Others agonise over what they ought to do. They identify what they think are desirable consequences. They act on what they think is a plan to achieve those results. They are amazed when they realize that the basis of their planning was not right, when their good plans go awry and when they realize that the desired results are not so desirable once they are attained.
They realize that they have never enough data to make a good plan and never enough wisdom to select the right goal. This inhibits such people from thought-out action. The consequence is that they end up acting on impulse which could be worse. (For e.g. a person caught in an internal debate of whether it is right to eat or to earn to eat… when overwhelmed by hunger can steal and eat.)
(2007) If God is responsible for our actions and events and not for our thoughts, then we cannot accrue karma for our actions, only for our thoughts. The Bhagavad Gita says that God IS responsible for what you do and what happens to you, but to be free from karma, you must also think so.
If everything that happens is because of God.. then there is no point in thinking and planning. Thinking about what you are going to do is pointless. The Gita’s point exactly. Nothing is in your control – so leave it to God. Since it is God and Nature that compel you to act, be free of responsibiliy and of guilt – both are ego products. A tiger that kills a deer for food is innocent, it is not malevolent or cruel, just hungry and following its instincts. You cannot try it for murder.
This makes us a little sad. Because we want to control things, influence things and change things through our actions. If we can do nothing… then what ’shall’ we do? Bhaja Govindam. Turn our mind to God, away from the minds of humans, away from work.That will give us peace. Work will get done anyway, either through us or others. But we won’t be to attached to it and we have Nishkama Karma.
Why things happen. (Mar 2005) :
Sometimes we ask..Why did this happen to me? When we make a heartfelt prayer, sometimes, surprisingly unpredictable events follow : Consequences of our prayer, events that are wish-enablers. They may not be pleasant and packaged as miracles. They may be unpleasant, painful and packaged as difficulties. But they enable the inner, powerful heartfelt wishes that we have. Some unpleasant events are like the knocks of a sculptor’s chisel designed to make us more beautiful people. Especially those that break our false pride and leave us with a sense of true worth and self-respect.
We form our destinies based on our nature and values. Siddhartha Gauthama may have let go of all his riches in one stroke to find the truth, others may lose their inherited situation more gradually. They may give up respectability to lead a life of dissipation. Dhirubhai Ambani gave up’ his life of inherited poverty and ended up one of the richest industrialists in the country. His values and nature were about wealth creation.
It is not sufficient for a soul to select a birth advantageous to its goal.. if its samskaras and impulses drive it to some other goal.
Where were your born? Where are you now? Can you perceive the choices you made and the actions you took that brought you here? Do you know others who have chosen differently in similar situations? What is the one thing that you would never sacrifice? What is the one thing for which you would sacrifice all other “good things”? That explains the course of your life, that explains why things happen to you that do not happen to other people.
What is the one cause that drives and defines your existence? The reason why do something, stick with something or abstain from doing something? What is it that you love? That is what makes things happen for you.
Attribution of causes (May 2005):
When we think the other guy is hurting me, we feel angry.
When we think this is caused by my samskaras or my fate, we feel resigned to the circumstances but not angry with anyone. What have I done in the past that I suffer so. I cannot escape it.
When we see the hand of God, in the events that happen to us, then we find acceptance of the event. We think what am I supposed to learn, what am I supposed to do, that helps me evolve into that kind of a human being that can take on more serious work, or be closer to God. This is evolution.
One (Mar 2005) :
There is only One soul, One consciousness, One body, and I think only One place (Here) and One time (Now).
This is why the Universe responds to us and we to the Universe.
You can move your finger because you identify with it and vice versa. The same is true of your friends, family and the universe.
Your pain is their pain and their pain is yours. Your wishes are their wishes and their wishes are yours. Your needs are their needs and their needs are yours.
Because, they and you, you and I are one.
Our fear of death, loss, separation and individual suffering are a sense of false identification or limited identification. There is truly no pain or worry for those who identify with the infinite : either on their own account or on any one else’s account.
Our yogic powers are merely our ability to realise the connection between us and others, our union with the rest. That is why they work. It is a stage in enhanced identification.
Earth: On Ecology (2003)
The earth is one living organism. More of the earth’s crust is being converted into human beings and human habitats. This is de-stabilizing the current ecological balance. We are consuming our planet in an effort to modify it to suit our needs and comforts. The old equilibrium was suited to the multiplication of human gene patterns. The new equilibrium may favor the dominance of other gene patterns.
Perhaps the earth is using her “human cells” to transform herself to phase next. Perhaps we have no choice. Perhaps that is our program.
God :
Humans like the “light side” of God. To us God is Truth, God is Light, God is Cleanliness, God is Beauty, God is Love, God is Compassion, God is Life, God is Service, God is Learning, God is Goodness, God is Bliss, God is our Highest Value, God is our Final Goal. God is Just. God is Forgiving. God is punitive. God can save us. God can be prayed to, pleased, loved and realized. And when we do something difficult, God is on Our Side.
96 percent of the universe consists of dark matter. There is in this universe dirt, disease, hatred, death, exploitation, ignorance, badness, misery, apparent injustice. Are these a part of God or of the Anti-God? Is there a war between God and Anti-God? Is there a God above them?
(Jan 2005)
The clamour of my thoughts and emotions is preventing me from listening to God. I know that God is listening to me. I know God not. How may I recognise one that I do not know. I do not even know what realisation means. Who art thee who I seek?
Insecurity :
Insecurity is generated by a fear of losing something we love or like. A job, money, family, a lover, health or even life itself. The truth is that nothing is permanent, not life nor health nor job nor family and most certainly not wealth. The sun will cool, the earth will spin into the sun, the universe will collapse into itself, a bubble with a different time scale.
The alternative to living in insecurity is to live IN the moment. Not “for” the moment. Today you have much that you did not have yesterday and will not have tomorrow. Some things you never will have! (Sept 2004).
