THREE LEVELS OF DESIRES🔗

We handle desires at three levels. In the first level, we have too many desires that are always self-contradicting. Even if there are only two desires, they will contradict each other. In the second level, there is only one object. You fulfill that but still feel emptiness. You do not feel completely fulfilled. In the third level, there is no object, there is just overflowing energy. Desire without any object is bliss. In kids energy overflows as desires.

Pure desire is desire without any object. It is overflowing energy for no reason. Pure desire is actually just an overflowing, that's all. It is a causeless overflowing. When you further purify this with awareness, you come to the stage of satori; you get a glimpse of samadhi; that is, you are in a state of pure awareness. You reach this not by suppressing, but by being aware, by purifying it.

What is the root cause of desire? We feel we have to achieve something, some goal in life all the time. We feel we need to fulfill the purpose of life. All desires are to reach towards what we think is the goal of life at that moment. That brings us to the important issue of renunciation…

DO NOT RENOUNCE FOR THE S AKE OF REWARD

I have seen people who renounce drinking because they hear that in heaven, they are served much better liquor. This is part of the promises that are made to them. It is believed that in heaven you will have dancing maidens and you get different kinds of liquor and music. These people are fantasizing about heaven and renouncing this world! Of course in a way, it is good that they don't do these things here! But I always tell them, renouncing purely for enlightenment is renunciation; renouncing for some other desire is not renunciation. It is a bargain, a business.

A small story:

One man thought to himself, 'If I undertake austerities here and renounce everything, I may get all the best things in heaven.' So he was practicing all kinds of austerities, and became a big guru with many disciples and followers. One day, he died and reached heaven.

One of his disciples who was always with him thought, 'How can I live without my guru?' So he also died and reached heaven.

While he searched for his guru in heaven, he was thinking, 'My guru led such an austere life that he must have got the best rewards. He must be enjoying all the beautiful heavenly women and all the liquor that is served here. He must be really singing and dancing and enjoying this eternal pleasure.'

Suddenly, he saw the guru sitting next to a beautiful woman, probably a famous actress! He was sitting with her, drinking and enjoying. He approached his guru and said, 'Master! I am so happy to see your austerity well rewarded. O! What a gift she is for you!'

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At that point, the girl immediately intervened and said, 'Stop! I am not the gift for your guru; he is the punishment for me!'

So do not expect any heavenly pleasures while renouncing! See, even in day to day life, if you meditate with the thought that you will have more power to enjoy pleasures later, that you will have other benefits, you are again using meditation as a utility.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE?

This is a million-dollar question!

The answer to this is:

The whole of Existence, the whole universe, is purposeless!

Of course, it would be very shocking to hear this. From a very young age, we are taught and socially conditioned to believe that life has got some purpose. We are made to run towards some goal, towards some purpose, all the time.

'What is life without purpose?' you may ask. Any activity, let alone one's entire life, has to have a purpose, a definition, and an end point, to make it meaningful. That purpose is what drives us, motivates us and provides energy to carry on with our dayto-day activities.

So to hear a statement such as 'Life has no purpose', might confuse you. You would say, 'All our lives, we have been brought up to believe that we are here for a purpose.' This is because at every stage of our lives, a different purpose is drilled into our heads and we are made to work towards that purpose. As children, we are expected to do well in school. Once grown up, we are supposed to be married happily, and bring up children.

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During each phase in our lives, we have specific templates, specific guidelines, that society and our families have set up for us. So you might now ask, 'How can we let them down? How can we believe that all these expectations are wrong, and that there is no purpose to life?' You might feel that I am trying to turn your whole life upside down!

The more you run towards a goal, the more you are considered to be a successful person. More the speed, more you are respected; more the speed, more the rewards. From your birth, again and again, society teaches you that life has got some purpose, that life has some goal. Life without purpose seems meaningless to us. We cannot even comprehend such a possibility.

Just understand that this is only what you have been brought up to believe, and nothing else. This is not the truth of Existence. Life does not need any defined goal to make living worthwhile, meaningful and happy. In fact, the absence of purpose makes our life meaningful. The absence of goals makes living worthwhile.

The universe or Nature has no purpose. It just is. It exists. A river runs downhill towards the ocean because it is its nature to run downhill. It is not because it has a purpose to meet the ocean. Our life too, has no purpose. We were not born for a purpose. We were born to live, to enjoy life and to be happy. Instead, we set ourselves up for unhappiness by setting goals for ourselves. And almost always, these goals are based on fantasies, not on realities. In the process, we stop enjoying real life.

The more you run towards goals, the more you miss life itself, because when you run, you miss the wonderful touch of the earth beneath your feet!

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The man who is continuously bothered about the goal will never be able to enjoy his life. He continuously lives in the future and ignores the present. When we are in the present moment, the 'here and now', we do not need a goal to guide us.

Just awareness of the present moment will automatically lead us to do what needs to be done at that point in time. When the present moment is taken care of with awareness, the future gets resolved by itself. As long as the path is right, whatever destination we reach will be right. We do not need to define the destination; the right path defines its own destination.

When we don't live with awareness in the present moment, our mind starts straying towards either the past or the future. That is the problem. We constantly worry about the future. We constantly think of the past, relate it to our future and define our expectations based on what we have missed in the past, or what we believe will provide us happiness in the future.

For example, when you are studying, you always think, 'When I have a job, my life will be happy.' When you have your job you think, 'After marriage my life will be happy.' After marriage, you think, 'When I have kids and my own house, my life will be blissful.' After you have kids and your own house, you think, 'When my kids grow up and support themselves, all my responsibilities will be over, and I will be peaceful and happy.' By the time your kids are settled, by the time your responsibilities are over, when you want to relax, your being is conditioned so much, that you can't relax!

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A small story:

The emperor of a city came out from his palace for his morning walk. While he was walking, he met a beggar and asked the beggar, 'What do you want?'

The beggar laughed at the emperor and said, 'You are asking me if you can fulfill my desire?'

The King was offended by the beggar and said, 'What is it? Just tell me and I can fulfill your desire.'

The beggar told the emperor, 'Think twice before you promise anything.' This was no ordinary beggar! He was the emperor's spiritual master from the king's past life. In the previous birth, the emperor missed the goal of enlightenment so the master promised to return to awaken the emperor in the next life.

But the king had forgotten all this completely. Nobody remembers past lives.

In his arrogance, the emperor insisted to the beggar, 'I will fulfill anything you ask for. What is your desire that I cannot fulfill it? I am a very powerful emperor.'

The beggar said, 'My desire is a very simple one. Do you see this begging bowl? Can you fill this bowl with something?'

The emperor called one of his ministers and told him, 'Fill this man's begging bowl with money.'

The minister went, got some money and put it in the bowl. Soon it disappeared! Again he put in some money and again it disappeared. No matter how much or how often money was put in, the begging bowl remained empty.

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The news of this spread throughout the whole capital, and a huge crowd gathered near the palace. The emperor's prestige was now at stake. He told his ministers, 'Even if the whole kingdom is lost, I am ready for it, but I cannot be defeated by this beggar.' Pearls, diamonds, emeralds, and his treasuries were being offered, all lost into the begging bowl.

As evening arrived the people stood and watched in utter silence. The king fell at the feet of the beggar and admitted his defeat. He said, 'You are right. I cannot manage this simple thing! Before you leave please tell me one thing,what is the begging bowl made of?'

The beggar laughed at the emperor and said, 'There is no secret. It is made from the same stuff as everyone's mind. It is simply made up of human desire!'

When you understand deeply that the mind is like the begging bowl that can never be filled, it can have a great, healing effect. This understanding can transform your life completely.

Let us get into the mechanism of desire. First, there is a great excitement, a great thrill and a feeling of adventure. We feel a great kick about the deisre. It could be a new car, a new house, increased bank balance…anything. But suddenly, there are moments when everything becomes meaningless!

What happens after some time? Our mind has dematerialized the whole thing. The car is standing in the garage, but there is no excitement anymore. The excitement was only in getting it. The desire is fulfilled, the car is in the garage, the money is in the bank account, but the excitement has disappeared. Again

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the emptiness is there, ready to eat us up. Again we have to create another desire to escape this abyss.

This is how we move from one desire to another desire. This is how one remains a beggar. Our whole life proves it again and again. If we observe the subtleties of it we will see that every desire only frustrates. The day we understand that desire will fail to satisfy us, then comes the turning point in our life.

Most of us need to get stressed out before we can relax. We don't know what it is to relax. When I tell people to relax during the meditation workshops, they ask me, 'Swamiji, please give us a few guidelines how to relax!'

The tension of running behind something has become part of our being. It has become part of our conditioning. After that, resting will not be rest anymore; it will not be relaxation anymore. Happiness is where we are. It is not where we think we should be. It is good to have an idea about where we should be, in terms of business strategies, but it is not a good idea to have our happiness invested in it. The two are clearly exclusive. What happens to your goals is a separate thread. What you ARE is a separate thread. If you are able to separate the two, relaxing will never be a problem. It is only because you have tied happiness and your goals together, that you need to run behind the goals at the cost of your real happiness.

And one more thing: when you are too caught up in your goals, you might be shutting yourself out to so many beautiful things that are going on around you simply because you don't have the time to stop and look at them!

Another small story:

A life-long city man, tired of the rat race, decided that he was going to give up and move to the country. He wanted to become a chicken farmer. He found a nice, used chicken farm, and bought it. It turned out that his next door neighbor was also a chicken farmer.

The neighbor visited him one day and said, 'Chicken farming isn't easy. I will help you get started; I will give you 100 chicks to start with.

The city man was thrilled. Two weeks later, the neighbor stopped by to see how things were going. The city man said. 'Not too good. All 100 chickens died.'

The neighbor said, 'Oh, I can't believe that. I've never had any trouble with my chickens. I will give you 100 more.

Another two weeks went by, and the neighbor stopped in again. The city man said, 'You are not going to believe this, but the second 100 chickens died too.'

Astounded, the neighbor asked, 'What went wrong? What did you do to them?'

'Well,' said the city man, 'I'm not sure whether I'm planting them too deep or not far enough apart.'

Just imagine! The city man was actually planting the chicks! This is what happens when you are stuck with ideas and goals. You miss the many more beautiful ways in which things are done.

Be very clear that life has meaning but no purpose. Enjoy the path and the goal is reached!

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Your very nature is bliss. Experiencing that every moment is the path and the goal. and

THE ALCHEMY: FROM DESIRE TO COMPASSION

We may wonder why we exist when there is no goal to work for or look forward to.

We have to understand an important thing. When desire disappears, the energy behind the desire still remains. Man as such is energy. That should not be forgotten. We have always been trained to think that man is matter.

The first line of the Isa Vasya Upanishad is 'Īśa vāsyam idam sarvam' - All that exists is energy. Desire is also a form of energy. That is why you can turn one desire into another. The desire energy at one point may be a manifestation of greed; in another moment, the same energy may transform into anger. In another case, it may transform into depression.

Energy cannot be destroyed. It can only be transformed. This is what science also says.What happens when we transcend desire? It cannot now be manifested as greed or fear or anger, which are all due to external causes. The whole energy manifests itself as pure causeless compassion! You cannot create compassion. It happens because of transformation of energy. Then the whole energy starts overflowing causelessly! That is the beauty and definition for compassion. It is the causeless overflowing of energy. It is causeless because there is no cause like greed or fear or anger or anything. It just IS.

THE POWER OF AWARENESS

An important thing to understand is that desire can exist only in unconsciousness. Only when you are unaware can desire exist.

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Look inside yourself when you have a desire or when you are angry or depressed. Look clearly at what is rising in you, what is happening inside you. The moment you look at the desire objectively, with awareness, you will see that the desire simply loses power; it just dissolves!