Desire

It is very difficult, indeed, to hurt an ever-smiling wise man.*

I read this recently in the Bhagavad Gita. It was in a chapter that discusses the greatest challenge we mere mortals face, desire.

Desire is what causes us to label things as good or bad, happy or sad, right or wrong. If we get what we desire it is good, happy and right. If we do not get our desires fulfilled, then it is bad, sad or wrong.  It is as simple as that.

One could argue that it has more to do with values or morality or social mores, but in the end if we take it down to the bare bones it is about our desire. Desire for an outcome that matches our pictures. Life often does not align with our pictures and when that happens, we become depressed, angry, defeated, bitter or lost. We rail at God or the Universe or the people who have thwarted us.

The creation of victims is ever present and ever constant. “It should have been this or that,” is often the judgement. But it was not the outcome. What is in front of us is the outcome and we can choose to do with it what we want.

Without desire we are free to be in the moment to make the decisions necessary to move on with life. If we stay in the eddy of “should/shouldn’t” we are stuck. Those two words are always about a fantasy of some sort. It should have been……but it is not.

Most of us live in the should/shouldn’t fantasy world. We attempt to conger superheroes to rescue us and change the story. Some amazing feat or miracle will occur and this event with turn out differently. You can work to change an outcome that has occurred, but this event will never turn out differently. It is done. Over. Complete. If you can see it that way, then you can begin to strategize another avenue to pursue to perhaps achieve the outcome you had hoped for in the beginning.  It is all just information gathering, not the end of the world.

The reason that the quote at the top of the page stood out to me, is that I was lucky enough to know such a man. For twenty-six years I witnessed this practice daily. He moved through many storms in that time, but he never stopped smiling. I aspire to that, so here it goes.

Join me!

*God Talks with Arjuna Bhagavad Gita by  Paramahansa Yogananda/Self-Realization Fellowship