Fighting desire

(originally posted elsewhere on Friday, June 18, 2004)

For one, why? For another, how? Why is a question that is as difficult to answer as is the how! I'll take a simpler route by assuming that the reason you are reading this topic is you know the answer to why. You're reading it to know how. Be whatever the desire, a person intends to derive pleasure off the results. The aim is pleasure, thats what one seeks. As one can very much see the law of averages, the world is pretty balanced with everything. And with that, as much as a person chases pleasure, the pain seeks back too. Giving up desire to be pleased is sufficient to keep the pain away. The balance is maintained while the quanta is neutral. It seems feasible, doesn't it?

Well, I feel desire could be good or bad depending on how intense is the desire, the purpose, and whether one feels the consequences of the desire are the results of one's own doings. Lets take this piecemeal. According to the Gita (Bhagavadgita), there is no result thats been achieved by anyone apart from God. Thats easily quoted by *karmanye vaadhikaarasthe maaphaleshu kadhaachana... * Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj, in his Advaitic style, says that the desire needs to be strong to achieve anything. All exists or happens because things are as they are... the Universe is as it is. That is, the desire is not an individual phenomenon, it arises because the Universe or the Universal energy desires so. If its strong enough to be executed, it is done. There are Westerners who have portrayed it in a different manner. Like Richard Bach's Illusion wherein the story of Messiah has things like swimming in land, walking on water or through the wall. These may well be someone's own desires that are met in the form of illusions. It could also be seen that, not only could the things witnessed by Bach be illusions, but also the very fact that he met a Messiah is one! The movie series Matrix has a similar myth about the rabbit hole. This brings us to something that we are aware of being quoted as *Brahma sathya jagat mithyaa* Its said that the world itself is an Illusion.

You may be wondering where does the topic on desire meet the one on illusion? It does. It does because the desire itself is an illusion. The fact that the world doesn't exist and that there isn't any multiplicity/dualism points to a fact that there is no causality. If there isn't a cause, the desire can't be too, and there isn't an action that needs doing. An action appears to be acting since the causality appears to be the cause. Both are illusions in the mind, that itself doesn't exist!

Its a journey from nothingness to nothingness. So moksha or liberation doesn't seem to be a goal that one travels towards. Its something that exists and is uncovered. Till then, as Steve Jobs says, *the journey is the reward*.