“He who cherishes desires and his mind dwells with his longings is by his desires born again wherever they lead him but the man who has won all his desires and has found his soul for him, even here in this world vanish away all desires.” ~Mundaka Upanishad
Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, if my desires are not fulfilled, my desires from childhood are still there, they have not been fulfilled. Does that imply that I will be reborn again to have those desires fulfilled?
AP: What does it mean to be reborn? It means, that to fulfill a desire, you have to assume a role corresponding to the fulfillment of that desire. That is rebirth. You see, you might be sitting like a scholar here or a listener here but if you're desirous of, let's say the most common object of desire, a woman; then you will need to change your role from a scholar to a casanova. Every desire requires you to become something else. Therefore, desires and the concept of “myth of rebirth” are very closely linked. To want something is to become that that will chase that something.
To want something is to want it in future and therefore to want something is to condemn yourself to stay put till the future. Do you get it? You are lodged in this place, let's say for four days. On the fourth day, you become desirous of something in the market and the fellow, the shop owner tells you he will deliver it, the good that you desire, to your room - to your doorsteps two days later. Now you were to check out on the fourth day but because you have a desire and the desire is promising to get fulfilled in the future; therefore, you will have to stay put in this hotel for another two days.
That's the thing with desires. They will not allow you to checkout, they will not allow you the checkout that is called liberation. Do you get this? Further, every desire and its promised fulfillment comes to a particular persona. If you want the fulfillment of a desire, you will have to retain that persona, otherwise, the fulfillment would become meaningless. You have ordered a lovely and expensive comb for yourself. It is to arrive a week later. A day after placing the order, you realize that you need freedom from your hair but now you cannot get freedom from your hair because you have promised to yourself and arranged for yourself, a comb to arrive in the future.
Now the comb is of utility only to the haired one, only to the one who is still attached to the hair or to the one to whom the hair are attached; which means, you cannot get rid of this relationship because you have arranged a particular desire for it. Otherwise, you will feel like a fool. The comb has arrived and the hair are gone.
Q: To stress that persona.
AP: You will have to necessarily stress that persona whereas the fact is that desires if left to themselves are rendered meaningless by time. Observe the impulse and the process of desire, do not cater to it for a while and it fades away on its own but if you subscribe to it in the moment of its impact then you have condemned yourself to a long process of confinement. Have you not seen this? Something appeals to you very severely, for let's say two days or two months; if within two days, if within those two months, you take an action for the fulfillment of that desire then that action produces its results and the results produce further actions and now you are in a cycle.
But if for some reason, that period of maximum intensity of the desire whiles away if seen off then you find that the desire has weakened or even disappeared on its own. Desire does not have its own longevity. You provide longevity to desire by associating with it. Leave desire to itself and see how powerless it becomes in no time.
Q: The fear gives it that longevity… “What if I don’t get it? What if…”
AP: Yes. When it is all over you then there are a thousand thoughts favoring it. You do not need to fight those thoughts just see them off, patiently just see them off. It's like a wave striking you. You don't need to fight the wave. You only need to hold your ground. The wave will bout on its own.
Q: Is this the basis of renunciation?
AP: Renunciation is seen and expressed in a slightly different context. Renunciation is to see that that which you have already become attached to, that which you could not, unfortunately, see off is of very little use to you. Not only is it of very little use to you, it is actually damaging your real interests. Having seen that that which you are holding as a valuable companion or asset is actually detrimental to your real interests. You no more want to be with it. You stop gripping it, clutching it, investing your energy in it, that is renunciation. To renounce is to give away the filth in one's life.
Renunciation, by definition, cannot be of something worthwhile. If it is worthwhile, why renounce it? Therefore, to renounce, the precondition is seeing but what would you see? We said, “One sees that the object one is holding on to is not serving his interests.” but to see that, first of all, one must know his real interests. If one is oblivious of his real interests or if one if given to self-deception then even the first step in renunciation cannot be taken. One has to, first of all, see, what one is really hungry for.
It has to be an unambiguous arrival and unambiguous admission, a realization that all that one wants is “peace” and from the point of that realization then one can determine whether the stuff in his life is conducive to peace. What is it that one wants? Peace. One could use some other word as well, you could call it ‘harmony’, you could call it ‘truth’, you could call it ‘freedom’. So one wants peace but the same mind that is hungry for peace is holding on to this, this, this, this, and this; then it becomes obvious to test whether this, this and this help me in my movement into peace. If they do then they are valuable assets, I must worship them. If they don't, what business do I have keeping them? This is renunciation. It's like a dropping off. It is quite passive.
If renunciation requires a lot of determination then it is not renunciation, then it is like the peeling off of one's skin. It would hurt a lot. Renunciation is the dropping off of a dead leaf; not the plucking away of a young flower. It must happen on its own. Renunciation is life-giving. When a dead leaf falls off, it is a life-giving process. Renunciation is not anti-life. A lot of enunciation that we have traditionally seen in the religious domain is anti-life. It is almost like hacking down a green tree. There is an obvious difference between hacking down a green tree and falling off of a dead twig or a yellow leaf.
Q: All desires are wrong?
AP: No, no, no, no. Do not talk of desires. To whom are the desires coming? Who is the desirous one? In fact, the only thing that can save you is desire. Desire is your best friend. Man is born desirous. Those who have known have said, “only desires are born”.
So, how can all desires be wrong? To say that all desires are wrong is to condemn yourself to the domain of perpetual wrongness. Not all desires are wrong. Go to your fundamental desire, that is who you are. How can it be wrong? What is stupid is to be ignorant of the real nature of one's desire. It is ignorance to forget what one really desires. When Saints admonish you for being too desires, what they're really saying is, “Why are you stuck with foolish desires?” Why don't you realize what you are really after? See what you are really after and chase it with all your might.
What else is life? But man has a unique capacity. He might be hungry for food, thirsty for water but find himself chasing stones and sand, that is the kind of desirous activity that the wise ones have warned against. If you want food and water, why are you chasing sand and stones? Why don't you go straight to what you really-really want? Be fully greedy, be really greedy. Our shortcoming is not greed, our shortcoming is our incompleteness. Even our greed is very-very incomplete. We are very clumsily greedy. Like everything about us, our greed is also petty. Let your greed be great.
Let your greed be immense. Do not be easily satisfied. Ask for the fullest, ask for the final. We waste our life running after small little crumbs and obviously they do not satisfy us. Therefore, the chase continues. You cannot stop chasing.
Man is born to act. Man is born unfulfilled. Therefore, he will chase fulfillment. You better chase only that fulfillment.
Instead of chasing this, that, here and there, the knowers, the Saints, the wise ones, the devoted ones, we so much respect and worship were actually very ambitious people and it requires a lot of faith to target the ultimate. It requires you to be in touch with your infinite nature. If you are not in touch with your infinite nature, you cannot target something immense. You will find it beyond belief that the immense is within reach.
You will say, “I am such a little one. How dare I dream of the sky?”
