Comparison is the seed, jealousy is the fruit!🔗

We always compare ourselves with others, and more often than not we feel what others have or what they have achieved is more than what we have, and we start feeling jealous. When we are not able to bear others' excellence, we get jealous. Comparison is the seed and jealousy is the fruit!

Comparison and jealousy are both actually nonexistent! We create them ourselves and talk endlessly on how to overcome them. Comparison is like a shadow without an object. There is no basis for the concept of comparison. It is

Comparison is the seed and jealousy is the fruit*!* purely a figment of our imagination.

A small story:

One man was part of a music group that gave live shows all over the world.

In one particular show, he decided to wear a black wig while singing a few songs and a red wig while singing the other songs.

He alternated the wigs and finished the first half of the program.

During the intermission, the show director came up to him in the dressing room and told him, 'Sir, we request you to wear only the red wig for the remaining part of the show.'

The man was surprised and asked him why. The director replied, 'The people like the red haired singer's voice a lot better than the black haired singer's!'

We are so busy comparing all the time that we never see things as they are! Our mind is so caught up in comparison that it misses what actually is. If we drop the comparing attitude, we will be able to see things as they are.

What is comparison?

Which are the major areas where we normally compare?

Beauty Swamiji….

Wealth….

Name and fame…

Power, prestige…

Knowledge…

Health…

Alright, these are the areas where we normally compare ourselves with others. We can group these under four major categories: money, knowledge, beauty which includes health, and status. All our problems, all our complexes can be covered under these four categories, am I right?

Now…let us say that you queue up all the people in the world in ascending order of money. You are also part of that queue. Where would you think you would be?

Somewhere in the middle Swamiji…

Exactly! You would be somewhere in the middle. You would not even be able to count the number of people on either side of you in the queue.

And the people might have to keep shifting their places also because the amount of money that they have keeps changing every minute! Now, you have to decide if you are going to look at the length of queue in front of you and feel jealous or look at the length of queue behind you and feel grateful! It is in your hands.

You very well know that nothing can be told about where you are in the queue, but the thought disturbs you all the time! We are haunted by a phenomenon that does not really exist! The comparison has a purely negative existence!

Let me explain to you what I mean by negative existence. Take this bell here that is beside me. If I want to remove this bell, I can simply take it and leave it outside the room and it will not be here any more, am I right? This bell has a positive existence and so it is possible for me to do this. Now, let us say there is darkness in this room. Is it possible for you to take the darkness and keep it out? No.

But if I bring light into this room, the darkness will disappear on its own, right? This is because darkness does not have a positive existence; it has a negative existence. Because it has a negative existence, we cannot remove it directly like the bell.

In the same way, comparison does not have a positive existence. It exists only in our minds. It happens only when we exercise a certain thought in our mind. Because comparison does not exist in reality, you cannot overcome it by simply asking it to go away. You can overcome it by bringing in an understanding about it, just like bringing in light to dispel the darkness.

In Sanskrit, the word illusion is translated as maya.

We say, ya ma iti maya, which means that which does not exist is maya!

That which does not exist, but which continuously disturbs! That is the property of illusion!

Comparison is pure illusion.

Stop borrowing desires!

When I tell people about the queue of people, they tell me, 'Swamiji, it is better not to look at any side of the queue.' I ask them, 'Why? Why should you fear to look?' The fact that you are afraid to look itself shows that you are running

Comparison does not have a positive existence. It exists only in our minds. away from your own mind. If you can look, but not be affected by what you see, then you have found the right way!

When you are able to look at everything, what you have and what others have and feel fulfillment all the time, then you are fine with it.

I am deliberately not using the word 'contentment'. People often say, 'Learn to be contented.' You can never learn to be contented. Contentment will flower when you understand the negative existence of comparison and jealousy. It will flower when you feel a deep gratitude for whatever is being showered on you every minute. It cannot be imposed from outside.

When you are on your own at home, you will think that it is enough if you have a home and car for yourself. You will feel relaxed with this thought. You will feel moments of gratitude and fulfillment. After some time, when you step out of your house

Contentment will flower when you understand the negative existence of comparison and jealousy. in your car, and stop by at a traffic light, what happens? A Mercedes Benz pulls up beside your car…and your mind flips over its thinking. It starts thinking that your car is just no good. It starts thinking that it is high time that you bought a new car, if not a Mercedes Benz.

Just a few minutes earlier you were happy with your own things, but now what happened? You are starting to work out a new desire, a 'borrowed desire'. Be very clear that this is not your own desire. It is the desire of the owner of the Benz car. This is how you start working out others' desires in your mind as a result of comparison and jealousy.

Take another example: You may never have felt the need for a refrigerator in your house, but if your neighbor buys a refrigerator, immediately you will feel that you cannot do without it! Immediately you will find all the reasons in the world why you need a refrigerator. All these days you were managing without a refrigerator! Nothing has changed, but what has happened? Your mind has stepped in with comparison.

Borrowed desires happen so subtly in our mind, that is why although they are continuously happening, we continue to say that we are not bothered about the others!

A small story:

One man returned to his neighborhood after almost 10 years.

He went around the neighborhood with his friend.

He was surprised to see the many changes in the place.

He commented to this friend, 'Prosperity has changed the face of this whole neighborhood!'

The friend replied, 'No, not prosperity, just plain jealousy.'

We are all the time trying to beat the other. When you are after borrowed desires, you will never stop, because when you are on the verge of realizing any one of them, another borrowed desire will come up from somewhere and you will be on track once more!

You keep running because you are centered, not within yourself, but on something outside. Your center is on other people; and their center is elsewhere, not inside themselves! Imagine how much you have to run, how much you have to pull and push according to the mass sway of off-centric thoughts and emotions! You become a puppet.

I tell you: Every time you want something, sit by yourself and think if you really want it or you want it because someone else had it. Do an honest analysis of each of your desires when they surface. Drop all your prestige problems and do a self-analysis. If you can't drop your prestige when you are alone, how will you drop it when you are with people?

If you are able to live out only your desires, you will die a peaceful death, full of satisfaction even if it is on the platform. If you live your whole life with borrowed desires, you will never see real fulfillment and even if you are living in a marble house, you will have a prolonged death, pulling and pushing, unable to get liberated from your unfulfilled desires.

In Jainism, there is a belief that when you are born, the entire quantity of food and energy that you will need during your lifetime is sent along with you. This is a way of saying that whatever your true requirements in this birth are, Existence equips you with the energy to fulfill them before even sending you to planet Earth.

But when you start using this energy to realize borrowed desires, you start feeling that nothing has been given to you; that nothing is enough. You feel tired, exhausted and frustrated that nothing is happening.

There is a difference between needs and wants. Your needs are already taken care of in some way. It is possible to satisfy your needs, but it becomes impossible to satisfy your wants because they are changing all the time.

For example: Let us say that you go to the shop to buy a fan for your house. But on the way you meet some friends on the road, who tell you that they are going to buy some other things in other shops. Immediately, you are tempted to go with them to buy them and so you change your track and go and buy along with them. Then you find that you don't have enough money to buy your fan!

In some places in Bharat there will be monkey trainers who make a living out of training monkeys.

They will carry a stick with them and use it to prod

It is possible to satisfy your needs*, but it becomes impossible to satisfy your* wants because they are changing all the time. the monkey to do whatever they want it to do.

They will wave the stick and shout, 'Dance Rama! Dance!' and the

monkey will dance!

Then they will say, 'Turn cart wheels Rama! Turn cartwheels!' And the monkey will turn cartwheels.

The monkey will simply dance to the tunes of the stick.

Like this, we allow a stick called comparison to run our lives. We dance to its tunes, doing things that are not our own but that are dictated by the stick.

We are constantly in the rat race. And the thing about being in the rat race is, even if you win, you are only a rat!

But somehow, late in life, at some point of time, you understand that even success in the rat race doesn't give you a sense of fulfillment. Even success leads to a deep sense of discontentment, because, while you may have fulfilled all the material desires in the outer world, you have ignored your being all the time.

The call of discontentment is from your being. When you understand that, you

We allow a stick called comparison to run our lives. We dance to its tunes, doing things that are not our own but that are dictated by the stick. turn towards spirituality. But when you don't understand that, you turn towards depression, because you don't know where you are missing it. You don't know where the thread is. You don't know what went wrong.

What more do you want?

I can tell you from my experience: Existence is always showering upon us. There is such abundance! But we are so well trained in the discipline of discontentment that we have become insensitive to what we receive. We always want more.

A small story:

One man was doing rigorous penance in the jungle for God to appear.

God appeared before him. He told the man to ask what he wanted.

The man was overjoyed and said that he was a landlord and had lost all his wealth and that he wished to become wealthy again. God took pity on him and said that the following day, if the man ran from dawn to dusk, all the area covered by him would be his.

The man was extremely happy.

The next day he started running even before dawn.

He ran as fast as he could.

Close to noon, hunger beckoned but he didn't pay heed and kept running.

Early in the evening, thirst and fatigue gripped him but he was goaded on by the thought of the neighboring landlord who owned many acres of land. Pictures of all his wealthy contemporaries came to him and he ran on.

A little before sunset, he felt giddy and weak but managed a few more steps.

At twilight, he faltered…and fell dead.

This is how we all live our lives. We run the race without even stopping to think why we are running! We run because everyone else is running! Shankaracharya beautifully describes this as 'thatha kim, thatha kim.' meaning 'what next, what next.' We are all the time thinking 'what next'.

Another small story:

One man was found crying at the doorstep of his house.

His friend asked him what the matter was. He said, 'My grand aunt has died leaving all her wealth to me.'

The friend was puzzled and said, 'But she was really old and besides she has left all her wealth to you. Why are you crying?'

The man replied, 'You don't know… the week before that, my uncle died and left all his wealth to me.'

The friend was puzzled and asked, 'Why are you crying then?'

The man continued, 'And the week before that, my aunt passed away and left all her wealth to me.'

The friend could not understand why all this was causing him to cry.

He asked, 'Please tell me why you are crying for all this?'

The man said, 'There are no more relatives who will die and leave me wealth!'

Of course, this is an exaggerated story, but we are like this. We don't feel happy with all the things that we have.

For just 24 hours, from morning till night, just imagine that you have lost your eyesight. Try going about your work keeping your eyes closed. In just a few minutes, you will understand the difficulty. It will be such a relief to open your eyes and see the world again. You will probably then thank God for your eyesight!

Do you ever compare yourself with people who don't have eyesight and thank God that you have been given eyesight? No! Why not? Because whatever has been given to you is always taken for granted. That is the reason. You think, 'It is anywhere there, let us go to what next.'