A MAN OF STABLE WISDOM
1.Desirelessness
Arjuna asked Krishna: “What are the characteristics of a person who has attained calm wisdom and is established in union with God? How does he speak, sit, and walk?” (2. 54)
Answering the question, Krishna highlighted the need to cast away all one’s desires and remain satisfied in himself and of himself to develop stable wisdom. What happens to ordinary people is that we, by nature, crave things to fulfill our desires. From where does the desire originate? From our innate vasanas. The Krishna wisdom has to be understood like this: If you can train your mind in such a way that you can subdue your vasanas that go after the desires, you can attain steady wisdom.
Almost all the spiritual traditions view desire as a critical constraining factor to evolve spiritually; it is identified as the cause of suffering and illusion in life. Desire has to be dispassionately understood without entertaining it or rejecting it. From such an understanding arises peace and happiness. Look at Buddha’s famous four Noble Truths: The first one is: ‘All life is suffering. Birth, death, getting what you want, getting what you don’t want- all involve suffering. Buddha’s second Noble Truth says: ‘The cause of suffering is craving’. So, the third one suggests ‘to give up suffering’. And the fourth Noble Truth gives the ‘eight-fold path to give up craving’. Buddha says that our desire for innately impermanent things leads to frustration and perpetual discontentment. Human beings will be able to get nirvana, or liberation, only by freeing themselves from greed, hatred, and delusion.
Sri Yukteswar
Yukteswar warned that unless we destroy our wrong desires, they will remain with us even after death., that is, after the astral body gets separated from its physical casing. The karmic law requires that every human wish find ultimate fulfillment. It means, desire is the chain that binds man to the re-incarnational wheel, reminds the Master of Paramhansa Yogananda, who further observes the adhesive force by which the three types of bodies — physical or fleshy, the astral, and the causal — are held together as desire! The activating power of unfulfilled desires is thus at the root of all the slavery or suffering of man. The desires are rooted in egotism and sensual pleasures. The mere existence of a living body suggests that its manifestation is caused by unfulfilled desires.
Swami Chinmayananda
Desirelessness by itself is not a sign of perfection, points out Swami Chimayananda. You can create a desireless state by embracing total inertia and incompetency. But it will only denote a state of stupor and is, needless to add, negative. True desirelessness arises from a state of awareness that craving or longing for sense objects ultimately will lead to suffering. Desirelessness becomes the touchstone of a Man of Perfection only when it arises from the discovery of hidden sovereignty in an ampler dimension of Consciousness — the Self, avers the Swami.
Such a person will have a solid internal locus of control. He is a master in and of himself. And he is also a master of the outer world of contentions. The Gita (2. 56) says: ‘He, whose consciousness is unshaken by affliction and is not excited by good fortune, who no longer hungers for earthly affection and is without fear and anger, such a man deserves to be considered a muni of steady discrimination’. The word muni means one who has dissolved his ego-consciousness, having withdrawn it from the distorted testimony of the senses. The said Verse further highlights that a person devoid of attachment, fear, and anger is a man of stable wisdom.
· He has a pure, untainted consciousness and is completely detached from sensual pleasures. He has no craving, longing, or attachment to worldly objects. Why does the mind get attracted to something material? Because it is impelled by an underlying vasana for it. Conquer that vasana, and the attachment will be defeated.
· When the attachment towards something is intense, it brings along the eagerness to possess it or protect it. And this normally spawns fear — the fear of failure or loss. More the attachment, more the fear. When the vasana that triggers the whole phenomenon of attachment and desire is ended, the whole issue gets wiped out. If there’s no attachment, where’s the scope for fear?
· Anger is produced by frustrated desire. Once the vasana is eliminated, causing the automatic removal of attachment and its concomitant fear, there is no room for anger to arise.
The ‘Arjuna disease’ in the Mahabharata was caused by the hero’s attachment with his kith and kin in the enemy camp. Krishna, his mentor, and charioteer, successfully counseled him to overcome the same and develop detachment.
Enlightenment
Dharma Master Cheng Yeu was asked: “How to live without desire?”
The Master said: “Living without desire requires transcendence. However, without enlightenment, one cannot transcend. Without enlightenment, it is inevitable for one to get trapped in a complicated interpersonal relationship and be controlled by lust, fame, and fortune. Transcendence and enlightenment can be achieved through learning and education, which expands our vision”. Enlightenment means, the mind is without attachment and is pure and clear, and that is our innate wisdom. “….when our minds are not shackled by fame and fortune, and we do not discern (sic) between others and ourselves, nor be troubled by gains and losses, we will be able to move towards our goal without any obstacles”.
The challenge of cultivating the Bodhisattva’s path lies in eradicating our attachment to our ego. In the Gita, we find Lord Krishna helping Arjuna to eradicate the ego-ridden attachment and achieve enlightenment.
To be conscious is to be desirous
Desirelessness is self-contradictory in conception and self-crippling in execution (www.gitadaily.com). It is self-contradictory because when you aim at reaching a desireless state, that itself constitutes a desire to be achieved — that of having no desire. This self-contradiction extends beyond the logical to the existential. As humans, we are conscious beings, and when our inner consciousness perceives things in the material world, some of them appeal to us to such an extent that it generates a desire within us to possess them. In other words, to be conscious is to be desirous. That being the case, trying to become desireless is against our nature as it rejects or represses an innate feature of our very being.
We are told that desire, belief, and expectation are the cornerstones for success in any field. To achieve any worthy goal in life, you should, first of all, have an earnest desire, the Management experts tell us. Desire works as the fuel to accomplish things, and in its absence, others might deem it impossible to realize the goals. Achievement — material or spiritual –calls for having a strong desire within. Against this backdrop, eradicating the desire to embark on our spiritual journey is tantamount to self-crippling for starting a new marathon.
Now, let us consider this possible option: Can we aim to desire less, instead of staying fully desireless? Maybe we can. But here again, you desire less because you perceive desire as negative and unworthy- something that has to be minimized as it cannot be summarily eliminated. Such an approach will again be self-defeating in nature, as your consciousness will not buy into the ‘half-cooked’ or crippled desire. We need to see desire positively only, and desiring less will not help make it that way. So, what’s the alternative?
Instead of rejecting the desire or taking the stand that less is more for desire, re-direct it. How to do that? By exercising our freedom and power to choose what to desire, we can re-channelize the same for better and meaningful things, which are capable of uplifting and enriching us spiritually. As Gita says, the endlessness of desire per se is not the real problem. The real issue is to find a worthy end towards which such endless desires can be re-directed, and eternal pleasure in the temporary ends in misery can be derived (5.22). The best among many such things, the Gita wisdom points out, is the Ultimate Reality, the all-attractive Supreme Person, Krishna. Bhakti-Yoga practice nurtures our desire for the Lord (12. 09).
Osho on desirelessness
Once, a man started worshipping Lord Shiva. He worshipped and worshipped, prayed, and prayed for years together. One day, Shiva appeared to him and said: “I’m pleased with your penance. You can ask for three boons from me”.
Now was the problem. The man had been worshipping non-stop for so long that he had, by now, lost track of the purpose for which he started it. The worship had become an obsession to him and as a result, he forgot everything else, including his goal. So, he said: “Lord, let me think what I should seek from you”.
He pondered seriously for some time and asked for a gift, which was granted immediately. Soon he felt that what he chose to take and got was not the thing he wanted the most. He remembered that he was angry with his wife and wanted to eliminate her somehow. So he said: “Kill my wife, who is a nuisance to me”.
Immediately, the wife was dead (This can happen to any husband or any wife. They live together, fighting and hating each other. But their mutual hate is not absolute. They also love each other. The human mind is dichotomous; you love the person and you also hate the same person. It is always 50–50). The moment the wife fell dead, awareness dawned on the man that he loved her very much, and so he said: “Lord, please revive her, I do love her”. So, the second boon got wasted! Thus, two of the three boons that he earned after such a long period of penance were set at naught — the first one was a wrong choice, and the second was nullified.
Now, just one more could be procured. He said: “Please give me some time to think about my final gift as I cannot afford to make any more mistakes and waste all my efforts”.
Shiva said he would wait for the devotee’s decision. Years passed like that. Nothing was heard from the man. The Lord appeared to him again and again to fulfill his promise. The man was puzzled and he could not sleep. Unable to decide on the last boon on offer, he was almost on the verge of turning insane. He went and consulted many wise persons, who suggested various things, none of which, however, appealed to the man. Finally, during the Lord’s next appearance, he told Shiva: “Lord, I’m unable to make a choice and am going mad on account of this indecision. Have mercy on me and tell me what I should take from you for a boon”.
And what Shiva told the man should be an eye-opener for all people. He said: “There can be only one wish, one desire, which is worth having and pursuing. Ask for desirelessness; nothing else is worthwhile. Whatsoever you ask and get, the next moment you will want something else, even just the opposite of the first”.
A major problem with desire is that it is never ending in nature. The Gita warns us that unrestrained desire can be our eternal enemy (3. 39).
What’s in it for us?
** Vasana leads to desires, desires cause attachment, and from attachment comes suffering.
** Once the craving gets eliminated, suffering will cease to exist.
**According to Karmayoga, every human wish will find an ultimate fulfillment, in the present life or later.
**Desire is the chain that binds us to the re-incarnational wheel.
** Desirelessness, a state arising from the awareness that craving perforce leads to suffering, is a sign of a Man of Perfection.
**Such a person will be devoid of attachment, fear, and anger; he is the man of stable wisdom.
**Unrestrained desire is man’s eternal enemy.
- * An enlightened person understands that desires have to get re-channelized towards worthy ends — things which will uplift and enrich one spiritually.
(To be continued)
