Many Thanks to all our readers during the past 12 months, we would also like to wish you a great New Year. This is a selection of some of our most popular posts during past 12 months.
It’s a great song.[link] But, does desire help or hinder our lives?
Lifeless and Desires
It is said there are 2 types of people without desires – Saints and people who live inert, passive lives. A saint has transcended his personal desires and may be very dynamic and self giving. He lives not to please himself, but for the benefit of others. Others may have no desires, but, then they have no particular aspiration to do anything – apart from perhaps watching daytime TV.
There was a great Spiritual Teacher called Swami Vivekananda – some very serious seekers came to him asking for spiritual instruction – so the Swami told them to go an play and football, he said they would make more progress playing football than studying spiritual theory. What Vivekananda was trying to inculcate was the necessity of dynamism and a need for balance. It is often only after we have realised the limitations of pursuing desires, that we really are ready to turn inward. Transcending desires does not mean becoming inert and lifeless; it is moving from a selfish perspective to a selfless perspective. In this selflessness there may be great dynamism.
Possession and Detachment
When we desire to possess something or someone we create powerful forces of expectation and attachment. The problem with this kind of desire, is that we are invariably disappointed when we fail to possess what we desire. In relationships we desire to feel that a person belongs to us. With this kind of attitude we can soon become jealous, anxious or miserable when the other person fails to reciprocate our feelings. It is a mistake to feel this kind of emotional attachment is in anyway necessary. Rather than desiring a certain outcome, real love will not have expectations. When we develop this attitude of selflessness – free of desire and expectation we give relationships greater freedom and therefore make them stronger. The secret is to avoid desiring / demanding certain outcomes. It is of course, even a bigger mistake to desire a person changes and becomes what we expect them to be; this is even more damaging than our own desires. Here our desires are being played through someone else.
Never Ending Desires
“There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.â€
– George Bernard Shaw
The problem with desires is that they feed on themselves. If the Good Lord, did acquiesce to our desires for a new Mercedez Benz, it would probably just encourage us to start asking for a little more. “O Lord, could you also buy my a private helicopter… e.t.c” The point is that desire is never ending and yet the more we get the more empty we can feel. The solution is not to renounce all possessions and live like a wandering sannyasin. But, we do need to make a conscious decision to be happy with less – to appreciate the benefits of simplicity. – see: The Power of Simplicity
Desire and Aspiration
There are of course very different kinds of desires. On the one hand there is the worldly desire for material goods, name and fame, and on the other hand there is the desire to become a better person, to be more self giving and thoughtful. Sri Chinmoy calls this not desire, but aspiration – the desire to grow in something better, more fulfilling and to discover who we really are.
“A desire-intoxicated man, like Julius Caesar, wants to say to the world: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” An aspiring inspiration-man wants to say to the world: “I came, I loved and I am becoming inseparably one with you.”
Sometimes life feels a pull between two forces – on the one hand we have the life of desire – the Mercedez Benz and worldly appreciation – the other life of aspiration, is to live in the heart and become a better person. The one life gives fleeting pleasures, and at times can seem easier because everyone else is doing it. The other seems to require more self effort. But, the more we seek to become a better person, the more we appreciation the benefits of aspiration and the less we feel the necessity for countless desires. Indeed we often look back and say ‘Why did I have such a strong desire to be a famous footballer when young?” – the lives of famous people are rarely more satisfying and fulfilling than normal people.
Photo by Ranjit Swanson, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries
It is easy to love people we like. It is more challenging to love difficult and awkward people. But, it is the nature of real love, that it encompasses all. Love should not be self serving – and in loving difficult people we learn its real meaning. In the words of Shakespeare (Sonnet 116):
“…Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or Bends with the remover to remove.
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark,
whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.”
But how to love difficult people?
Look Beyond Defects
Feel that a person’s defects and weaknesses are only a partial reflection of his real nature. Feel that behind their exterior personality there is their real self trying to break through. Often difficult people are seeking attention / love in irritating ways. They are like a child struggling to know what the right thing to do is. We don’t have to love their weaknesses, we are trying to love the self hidden underneath.
Our Peace of Mind.
Other people may give us reason to dislike them; we may even start hating them, but what do we gain by hating others? When we hate or condemn others we lose something precious in ourselves. When we judge others, it is often because we have that quality within ourselves.
“Hate is often an obverse form of love.
You hate someone whom you really wish to love but whom you cannot love.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When we love others without judgement it brings our own best qualities to the fore. If we love others, if we seek to see the good – even in difficult people, we will benefit tremendously and gain peace of mind. It is one of the great paradoxes – by loving unselfishly and unconditionally we benefit ourselves.
Love does not Mean Acquiescence
We can love people without agreeing with their bad behaviour. Nor do we have to agree with their demands and unreasonable expectations. Because a mother loves her child, the mother will reprimand the child when he places himself in danger. We can love a person whilst at the same time discouraging them from behaving badly. We can love the person whilst at the same time disliking some things they do.
Empathy
In their own way people are trying to do the right thing. At times, it may not feel like it; however, we can gain a lot through sympathetic understanding. We can try to feel that the mistakes they are making are something that we ourselves have done at various time. When there is a feeling of superiority there is no real love and oneness. But, if we can feel the other person as part of ourself then we will naturally have good will towards them. It is this ability to identify with others which enables a real feeling of love to develop.
Don’t Expect to Change Them
If we feel responsible for changing those whom we love, we will always be doomed to disappointment. Even our own kith and kin are responsible for their own lives. The biggest obstacle to loving difficult people is to think – I will love them, but, they have to become better people first. If we wait for people to become better before loving, then we will be doomed to disappointment. It is because people are imperfect that they need our compassion and understanding. If we can accept people as they are, then even difficult people we can appreciate.
Related Posts:
How To Distinguish Between Love and emotional dependence – The word ‘love’ is perhaps one of the most casually used terms in the English language – so much so that it has become an umbrella term for a whole variety of very different emotions!….
One of the big downfalls that often happens on the path of self-improvement is a bloated sense of pride. Certainly, it helps to look back and gain confidence from what we have achieved so far. However sometimes, after a nice experience or a good spell in life, we can even feel that we have somehow figured everything out on life’s journey, and this kind of complacent feeling can easily lead to our downfall.
Where there’s an up, there’s a down
One of the reasons it is important not to be over elated about any progress you make, is that this idea can be very easily shattered by outer circumstances. One common thing that happens is when someone goes to visit some old friends or relatives, and finds themselves repeating the same negative cycles of behaviour that used to happen before they embarked on their self-improvement journey, despite all the progress they thought they made! A friend told me something humorous she read recently from one of Eckhart Tolle’s books: “If you think you’re enlightened, then go and live with your parents for a week.”
If you attach too much importance to the good times, you’ll attach too much importance to the bad times too, and believe that all your efforts so far were for nought. When it comes to evaluating inner progress, our human mind is a notoriously bad judge. The best thing is just to keep an even keel throughout both good and bad times.
Inner growth and humility go together
Something very interesting happens to people who progress along the road of self-discovery. They may start out by thinking they will obtain these things like ‘inner peace’ or ‘enlightenment’ – however, as they begin to escape from the confines of the limiting mind and live more in the heart, they feel a greater sense of kinship and connection with the world and with their fellow human beings. The focus of everything they so slowly changes from a selfish one to one more geared towards making the world a better place – even their pursuit of enlightenment. Hence when the Buddha sat down at the bodhi tree he vowed to obtain enlightenment not for himself, but for all sentient beings. Real inner growth always goes hand in hand with an increased sense of humility and selflessness. Conversely, an exaggerated sense of pride about one’s achievements tells you quite a lot about the ‘quality’ of those achievements in the first place!
Always have the attitude of a beginner
No matter how far advanced you are along the road of self-discovery, it always pays to have the attitude of a beginner. Every day is a new day, every morning ripe with new possibilities for self-discovery and self-expansion. My own teacher, Sri Chinmoy, meditated for almost seventy years and reached very high levels of meditation, yet he always described himself as ‘the eternal beginner’. No matter what he achieved, every achievement was merely a launchpad for the next step.
“When we start our journey, the first step forward is our goal. As soon as we reach this goal, we achieve perfection. But today’s goal, today’s perfection, is tomorrow’s starting point; and tomorrow’s goal becomes the starting point for the day after tomorrow. Continuous progress is perfection.” – Sri Chinmoy
Having the attitude of a beginner allows you to live in the moment, and get joy from the adventure of self-discovery, instead of anticipating an end result.
Recently, at a public lecture on the theme ‘blueprint for world peace’ I found myself sitting next to a very quiet African man from Burundi. We both took a liking to each other and I gradually learned over the course of several subsequent encounters that he had been one of many refugee children, dispossessed by war and fleeing from murderous armies and tribal militias, that had been the subject of much media attention and outrage. Hounded and decimated by soldiers, killed by wild animals or dying of starvation, these many hundreds of children had dwindled to only a handful of survivors and my new friend whispered of the terrible events that had filled his life and caused the death of his entire family.
Friendships bloom in the unlikeliest of manners and our life paths kept intersecting. On one amusing occasion I invited him to a hotel function that celebrated a happy conclusion to a peace initiative I had been involved with. Nicholai had told me he would be a late arrival, and as his English language was not strong I promised to look out for him. After quite some time had passed I became concerned and began to look for him. Over in an adjacent huge ballroom, corporate types were hosting their own national get-together, a bacchanalian affair where hundreds of suited executives were dining, speech- making and almost climbing over each other to lay siege to a buffet table groaning under mountains of alluring food. A sudden possibility occurred and I scanned their ballroom from the open door – and sure enough there was our lost guest sitting merrily with a group of complete strangers, glass of champagne half-raised to his lips and blithely unaware that he had wandered in to the wrong function and invaded a Civil Engineers soiree. He looked so happy and I wondered whether I should leave him there with his whole new set of friends and dazzling new social possibilities. But I quietly retrieved him and brought him, both of us smiling at life’s vagaries, to our rather less glamorous function.
Nicholai’s heart-rending life had not made him forlorn or melancholy but filled him with gratitude and purpose and a resolve to offer all of himself back to the world to repay his own gift of life. All of the deaths he had seen had deepened him and awakened him spiritually…’death is as close as your breath’ he would tell me. He carried a battered copy of the Dhammapada, the Buddha’s teachings on impermanence, and would whisper to me solemnly : ‘Why are we born? We are born so that we will not have to be born again’. He was speaking of the viewpoint that all life experience, if properly understood, offers us countless opportunities to learn equanimity and end suffering with it’s endless cycles of birth and rebirth.
How much joy we get in the company of those with whom we share an affinity of souls. Nicholai’s life had been stripped of everything that most people spend a lifetime accumulating – in return he had won the great spiritual treasures of desirelessness, simplicity, gratitude and spiritual awakening. He reminded me of a story I had heard from the life of Sri Krishna:
– stopping for a night at the simple cottage of a very poor devotee, whose only worldly possession was a cow, Krishna and his dear disciple Arjuna are treated with care and great kindness by the old lady who does not recognize who they are. In the morning Arjuna requests Krishna to reward their host for her selflessness and sacrifice and He agrees – he will take away the life of her cow! How can you be so cruel, asks Arjuna in dismay. Krishna replies, now she loves both me and her cow, but soon she will only have me and I will be the only thing left to her. She will rely solely on me, and in this way she will soon become one with me and live always in my heart. Then I will take care of her every need.
In our own quest for happiness we so often look to the impermanent and outer things of life – later we come to understand that happiness is not another person or place or circumstance or acquisition but a state of desirelessness, an inner achievement, a life of simplicity or devotion to God, the offering of oneself to a higher cause, egolessness and inner contentment. ‘Simplicity is an advanced course’ wrote my own teacher Sri Chinmoy. Indeed.
Nicholai’s wife died of gunshot wounds and whispered to him- ‘don’t be sad…go far away and start again…’ My own wife died of a lingering illness and I have only a last aphorism she wrote on a piece of paper, the handwriting spidery and wobbling with effort, a quotation by Sri Chinmoy: ‘Obstructions loom large, within, without. Yet, like a kite I shall rise without fail and fly against the wind’.
Death and sadness and loss teach us our life lessons and form an integral, indispensable part of our compassion for others and our own enlightenment. Nicholai makes me smile when he says to me: “I’m not sad any longer when someone dies – his suffering in this life is over. If you want to be sad, be sad when people are born: ’Oh, no, they’ve come again. They’re going to suffer and die again!’ “ He quotes the Thai master Ajanh Chah – “ we don’t meditate to see Heaven, but to end sufferingâ€.
This is a guest post by Jogyata Dallas. Jogyata lives in Auckland, where he frequently gives meditation classes for the Sri Chinmoy Centre. see: Auckland Meditation
The growth of the internet has created many opportunities and also many challenges. Through the internet I have been able to work from home writing about things I enjoy. The internet has also enable an effective outlet for writing such as this blog. Yet, although the internet has many advantages it also presents many difficulties, not least it is easy to waste time when on the internet. In a way I am glad to have had a perspective of life before the invention of the internet / email and even computers. Yes, we really did survive without the internet and computers – it’s hard to imagine now, but I think we were even really quite happy 🙂
The Addictive nature of the Internet
There is something about the internet that makes it difficult to switch off. There is always our email / RSS feed / statistics / games to play / News to check. The problem is that the internet can easily become a time filler. We start off with the intention of doing something productive, but quite soon, we have spent many hours of filling in our time and have nothing to show for it – apart from a slightly guilty conscience. To avoid this I try to follow these steps.
Have a clear purpose when using the computer
Keep a record of what you are actually doing (or not doing as the case may be)
Set fixed periods to switch off the computer.
Not every 10 minutes break has to be filled by turning on the computer.
Take day / weekend off. I often travel at the weekend, I may take a laptop, but, I’m usually grateful for the opportunity to spend a day or two without the computer / internet. When I do turn on the computer on Monday, you realise that it is actually fine not to check your email for a day or two – it certainly isn’t necessary to check every hour or so, which I sometimes end up doing.
Multitasking and getting nothing Done
So often on the computer I am trying to do several things at once. Maybe I have several tabs open, and even 2-3 browsers open. You can flit from one task to another, and you forget what you started. I do my shopping online; recently I created an order but because I was multitasking so much I forgot to send the order – so it was all wasted. If a program is very slow to load, then it is good to open another tab and do more something else. But, there is great power in focus, and this is lost when we try to do several things at once. Part of the problem is that we try chasing super-productivity – trying not to waste even a second. But, this kind of productivity target can be counter productive; we lose focus and don’t do the job as well as we should. It is also stressful to try and do several things at once. Now if a page takes a few seconds to load I try to be patient or think about what I will be doing next. All I know is that when I start multitasking, my brain can’t cope.
The Pseudo Life
The internet encourages instant messaging, discussing on forums e.t.c. There is nothing wrong with these in moderation. But, communicating electronically can never replace the benefit of speaking and meeting people in person. When there is a real connection with people, it is much more powerful than an electronic communication.
Information Overload
The internet has a seemingly infinite quantity of information. One piece of information leads to another. The more information we gain the more we start to seek. Yet, mental information can never give us true satisfaction. We overload our mind with information and opinion, but, it does not give us illumination. The acquisition of information does not change us nor does it change the world. To make effective change we need to be spurred to action, not just read about things that could do with changing. I think one of the keys to happiness is living in the heart and getting away from the judgemental mind. If we spend too much time reading the injustices of the world, we will not be able to change them, and we will not be cultivating happiness.
