Balance your desires to avoid suffering

Good morning friends.  There is a saying that … “Never be satisfied with what you have, always wish for more”.  This is true.  Don’t just be contented for what you have.  You have to aim more and struggle a lot to be able to have your wishes come true.

Materialism and consumerism assume that fulfilling desires and the enjoyment of pleasures are all that is required to make us happy and contented.

We should live happily because once the body is dead and is reduced to ashes; it can never come back to life.

One must enjoy life to the core. What is enjoyment? It is to eat delicious food, seeking the company of the beautiful and young, wearing good clothes and accessories, decorating oneself and experiencing instant gratification wherever possible. 

Indian tradition takes a holistic view of human nature. It argues that material aspects, may be for human existence, do not exhaust the whole of the personality of a human being. It recognizes that besides having physical needs and cravings, we have spiritual aspirations also. Why limit human aspiration to only the physical plane?

The spiritual goal alone differentiate the human being from other forms of life. A man does not aspire for just artha and kama or the economic and the emotional; he also wishes for dharma and moksha , the moral and the spiritual. So it’s not as though we only seek the ephemeral and fleeting, we are inclined also to look for what could be eternal and enduring.

In the Bhagavad Gita , Krishna calls them muddha – fools who are imbued with aasuric or demoniac nature. The Gita describes the mindset of such people: “I wanted this and today I got it. I want that; I shall acquire it tomorrow. All these riches are now mine; soon I shall have more. I have killed this enemy; I will kill all others as well and shall soon conquer the world. I am the ruler of men. I enjoy the things of this world. I am successful strong and happy. I am very wealthy and so nobly born. Who is my equal?”

This mindset gives rise to passion, anger and greed that in turn lead to constant strife within the individual and in his dealings with others.

After analyzing  suffering is not due to chance and caprice. It is because of certain conditions. If these conditions are removed, then suffering, too, ceases to be. Desire is the root cause of suffering.

Ancient seers described that “desires  never satiated by the enjoyment of desires; thereby they only flame forth ever more like fire with butter”. Desires and even their fulfillment, instead of being a source of happiness might spiral so out of control that they become the root cause of suffering.

 

Learn to accept what you can’t change (1)

Good morning friends.  There are times in our life that we have a hard time to accept everything even with some changes.  Yes, I agree with that, it’s not easy to learn to accept what we can’t change.  As intellectually evolved beings, we constantly analyze all events and endeavor to identify the underlying likely cause. This obsession for a cause extends even to actions or events of a past birth.

It compels us to look into outer space and implicate the movement of celestial bodies like stars and planets to serve as plausible causes.

Science has, to a large extent, been able to explain physical phenomena. But finding a cause for every mundane facile event might be taking things a bit too far. When the cause of suffering is diagnosed to be a person, it leaves one with a sense of victimhood. And along with it come anguish, resentment and a deep desire for retribution. This process continues unabated and over time becomes a stockpile of hate.

The feeling of hate, initially restricted to the individual, tends to be highly contageous and one day it could acquire epidemic proportions. All violence, racial discord and inter-personal strife are just manifestations of this perceived ‘victimization’ that is derived from our obsession to somehow fix the blame.

Can our intellect be diverted towards fixing the problem? Can we, at the apex of the evolutionary pyramid, be redeemed from the curse of this blame game? Can’t we accept events as just a pattern emerging in the kaleidoscope of life, the pattern which has no bias or machinations towards any individual being? In reacting lies a sense of insecurity, a sense of threat perception and inevitably a sense of being a victim of conspiracy. This approach only leads to further suffering. Constant threat perception is the genesis of insecurity. Over a period this induces metabolic changes in the body leading to a host of ailments.  - DEEPAK RANADE

The writer is a neurosurgeon. E-mail deepakranade@hotmail.com 

 

Dare to Dream

Good morning friends.  I came across with an article of Marnell Jameson, while im taking my rest.  It’s a good one.  Many can rely on it.  If you were ask what are your dreams?  Are you ready to make them in reality?  It’s never too late. 

Perks of the Mature Mind

Young minds do have a few advantages.  Children tend to memorize more easily, enjoy better motor skills and have more “plastic” brains, a term used to describe the brain’s ability to mold itself to new information and experiences.  But the advantages of the mature mind trump the advantages of youth any day.

People often compare the brain to computer.  It fact, it’s much more like the Internet, a system that links lots of computers, says George Bartzokis, M.D., a psychiatrist and professor of neurology.  Hitting middle age is like going from dial-up to high-speed.  While adults may have a tougher time than youngsters memorizing, once adults get over that hump, they use what they learn better.

Fortunately, this boost in mental ability comes just in time.  When people move through middle age, they often enter a liberating phase.  “They think, if not now, when?”

THE Power of Desire

Being motivated and interested in learning are key for adults.  One of the attributes of later learners is that they give information meaning.  It has more relevance, so they retain it better,”  says Gary Small, M.D., professor of psychiatry and also the author of The Memory Prescription.  When we’re young and in school, so much of what we learn has no relevance.  When we’re older we have the perspective to put information into a useful contest.  That is a distinct advantage.

Love as Absolute

Love with a capital L: That’s the Great Love, love as the source of everything, love as radical unity.  At this level, love is another name for Absolute Reality.  Supreme Consciousness, Brahman, God the Tao, the Source—that vast presence the Shaivite tradition sometimes calls the Heat.  The yoga tradition often describes Absolute Reality as satchidamanda—meaning that it is pure beingness, present everywhere and in everything (sat), that is innately conscious (chit), and that it the essence of joy and love (ananda).

 

As ananda, the Great Love is woven into the fabric of the universe, which of course also puts it at the center of our own being.  Most of us get glimpses of the Great Love at some time in our lives—perhaps in  nature, or with an intimate partner, or in the moment of bonding with our children.  We remember these experiences for year afterward, often for the rest of our lives.

 

It happened like that for me one November evening in 1970.  He was sitting  with a friend in the living room, listening to a Grateful Dead Album, when without warning, an overwhelming experience of joy welled up in him.  The state sprang up seemingly out of nowhere, a sensation of tenderness and ecstasy that seemed to ooze out of the walls and the air, carrying with it a sense that everything was a part of him.

 

This experience inspired a burning desire to get back to it and ultimately became the motive for my spiritual practice.  At the time, however, I did what most of us do when we get a glimpse of unconditional tenderness:  I projected my inner experience onto the person I happened to be with and decided (rather disastrously; as it turned out)  that he was the love of my life and the mate of my soul.