Tendencies

Quite often I speak of desires, making one possessive of things and people, and how they are hurdles in the spiritual path. With such thinking, one usually concludes that being desireless is the goal. During the recent satsanga, one point came back to mind that even when one becomes desireless, the task doesn't end into chitta shuddhi all by itself. To draw a parallel, if one thinks he's got a clean slate in the waking state considering the action-word-thought trio, he can't be so sure unless his dream state is equally clean! Working through this analogue, if some passion during waking state is termed as a desire, that during the dream state- resting to resurface as desire- is a tendency. This selfsame behaviour of a tendency poses a threat of make-believe desireless state, which can *unknowingly* popup anytime and fructify into full-fledged desire! Many of us misunderstand such a state as shuddha chitta and it turns out as a major pitfall in sAdhana.

Tendencies are the roots if desires are the trunk of the tree of individuality/ creation. Chopping down the entire tree into desirelessness is a futile end if the roots are still present. Some of them may not grow into a tree again, but they still are holding onto the ground, binding one into the world.

But more appropriately, the tendencies go further than the root-analogy; they are factually the seeds of creation, since they run not into dream alone, but into deep-sleep! nityapralaya of an individual is no different than pralaya of entire creation, in that the vAsanas or tendencies are stored away in seed form to grow into the creation during the next cycle. Its just that the individual's creation starts on the jIva moving into dream and waking states from deep sleep. Without tendencies, there can be no creative desire and working towards the end of desirelessness is meaningless. One had rather die bodily and mentally, effortlessly, than work hard to conquer desires and stop there! Only a mumukshu will truly take to the end of uprooting the tendencies and burning the seeds so that not even a sprout of desire breaks open! Working towards this noblest and highest of goals needs watching oneself even during the dream, literally as our regular phraseology goes "... not even in my wildest dreams... ".

om tat sat