'vruddhastavat chinta saktaha'🔗

Once you are old, all you can do is worry. When you are a child, you just spend your time playing. When you are a young man, you chase the opposite sex and develop worries regarding that. As you grow older, there are no sound reasons to worry because you will have finished all your responsibilities. But by that time, worrying would have become a natural thread running in you, so you simply pursue worries without any reason! I am reminded of a joke:

One old man was sitting with his grandson in the garden. He suddenly looked at the grandson and cried, 'Oh God! I can't hear what you are saying!' The boy was surprised and replied, 'But I am not saying anything; I am chewing gum!'

Anyhow, what Sankara said thousands of years ago still holds true today!

The problem is that all these worries have no purpose. And even when they seem to have some purpose, they are really meaningless if you look deeply into them.

-A small story

A young and successful New York investment banker visited his psychiatrist doctor one day for relief from stress. The psychiatrist prescribed a vacation and told him to relax. He also suggested he should go fishing as it is a deep relaxation technique.

The young banker bought himself some nice designer clothes and special fishing shoes, and the most expensive fishing equipment available, including designer bait. He flew to the suggested fishing location and checked into a modern hotel. The next morning, he woke up early and, following the recommendations of the hotel concierge, he walked down to the riverbank. He chose a shady spot, sat down, and started to relax with the fishing rod in his hand and a pipe in his mouth. Minutes passed by, and soon one hour had gone past. He wasn't getting even a nibble.

He was starting to get irritated.

Then he noticed an old man ambling down in worn-out shorts and a worn-out vest, holding a fishing rod made out of some tree twig. The old man settled a few feet away from him downstream. He smiled to himself at the comic picture that he saw of the old man.

As he was still struggling to make his first catch, he suddenly noticed that the old man was catching fish at regular intervals and throwing them back into the river. The banker watched for awhile and got furious. But there was nothing he could do, so he just sat, sulking. Looking up after a while, he noticed the old man smiling at him from where he was. He was shouting out a friendly, 'Hi!'

The old man then walked up to the banker's place. He made a few adjustments to his tackle, replaced the designer bait with some squirming worms he was carrying and soon, the banker too was catching fish!

Excited about the turn of events, the young banker asked the old man what he did for a living. The man replied that he did nothing! He just fished and relaxed. The banker couldn't believe his ears. He started explaining to the man how much he was missing by not working as a professional like him in the big city. He told him that he too could make a lot of money by training people to fish, and that he would be happy to introduce him to a whole bunch of rich people.

The old man asked the banker what he hoped to do after making all his money. The banker said, 'I plan to make lots of money, to marry and to have children.' 'And then?' asked the old man. The banker said, 'I will build a big house and travel on luxurious vacation tours.' 'And then?' asked the old man. 'Oh, I will finally relax and spend all my time fishing,' the young banker said, 'just as I am doing now.' The old man looked at him and said, 'But, that's what I'm already doing now!' We always live with the notion that we need to struggle and worry and we reserve enjoyment and relaxation for old age times. Be very clear, if you live with this attitude, when you are ready to relax, you will not know how to! We also feel that living a hectic life is the only way to spend our youth usefully. We can live a hectic life. There is no problem in that but we need to live with awareness. If we live with awareness, we will not be giving such advice to the old man. We will have such equanimity of mind that these lopsided ideas will not enter us.

If we keep running, our worries only pile up, and depression happens. We forget that in the rat race, even if we win, we remain a rat!

-Another small story

One lady was moving house. She had a number of expensive curios that needed to be well-packed and shifted. She had hired some packers, and she was supervising them carefully. As she was watching the men packing up her belongings, she noticed one of them was handling her expensive antique vase carelessly. She warned him, 'Please be careful, that piece is over a hundred years old.' The man looked at her and understood her anxiety. He said, 'Don't worry ma'am, I will handle it like it's brand new!' Each one's worries are different. Each one's worries are based on his or her perceptions; based on individual desires.

Desire is not harmful in itself. Desires are energy, as long as they are our own deep and genuine desires, but the problem is that most of our desires are borrowed desires; they are the desires of other people. Our desires are born from jealousy and greed and have nothing to do with our real needs. It is said that this universe can cater to the needs of its every single inhabitant; however, it cannot fulfill the desires of even one single person!

Just think of all the things that you wish you had right now and make a list of them. Then, make a list of the things that you already have. Now tell me, of the two lists, which one makes you feel happy, and which one makes you feel sad? The answer is obvious. You feel happy about the list of things that you have and sad about the list of things that you don't have. So why can't we choose to be happy? Instead of worrying about what we don't have, why don't we offer our gratitude to the universe for providing all that we have? Whether we want to continue begging for more or to be thankful for what we have is our own choice. We can choose between happiness and sorrow. It is purely our choice to be sad or happy. We have no one to blame. And even after we have acquired something new, what happens? We are happy, but only for a short period of time because once we have obtained whatever we wanted, it loses its importance; it loses significance to us. It is no longer worthy of great joy. So, again, instead of enjoying it, we fuel our greed and move on to other desires, more possessions, that give us no more enjoyment, no more fulfillment. If we understand that each of us is on a different path, we will understand that it is absolutely meaningless to pick up desires from others. It is a big blunder to pick up others' desires because their desires are themselves not based on their true self but picked up from others! For example, you may not be the type who needs a boyfriend but, unconsciously, when you see your friends having boyfriends, it becomes your own desire to have a boyfriend also. You don't even know that you have picked it up from them. You just watch them and imbibe the desire, that's all. The truth is, having a boyfriend is their desire, not yours. And that desire must have come to them through a series of happenings and interactions in their lives.

But what happens? It has now become your desire. Then you start pursuing it and suffer all that needs to be suffered through that desire. This is how 90 percent of your desires take shape. And one more thing, every time a desire gets fulfilled, the first thing that happens in you is guilt! If you observe yourself closely, you will note this. When your own desire gets fulfilled, there will be fulfillment and no hangover emotion. There will be no trace of that desire left. But when a borrowed desire gets fulfilled, there will not only be no complete fulfillment, but there will also be a trace of guilt.

So, if you look deeply into this process, you will clearly be able to tell from whom and how you imbibed every desire and how you have allowed it to play upon you. Once this starts happening in you, desires will start to drop, and you will not pick up desires from others also.

If you distinguish between your needs and your wants, things will become alright. Once you are able to do this, you will find that you already have what you need! And this is what all the great philosophies have been saying time and again. Awareness of the truth, that we are one with the universe and that the universe bestows upon us exactly what we need when we need it, is enough to go beyond desires.

Meditation is a key that can open this awareness in us. Continuous meditation will open a space within us for these truths to enter. Then there will be no need for any philosophy or book or guide. You will just know from within, that's all.