Breaking the Fetters of Desire

Breaking the Fetters of Desire
An Excerpt from the book by Swami Jyotirmayananda
“The Art of Positive Feeling”

Most human desires are expres­sions of ignorance and imperfection. Therefore, the pursuit of those de­sires is characterized by pain, frustra­tion and failure. A mind infested by desires cannot rest in peace.

Desires are much like a net in which human consciousness is trapped. The bird of the human soul wishes to fly into the regions of freedom, but caught in the net of desires, it suffers untold miseries.

All miseries and afflictions pro­ceed from desires. The external and internal conditions of life are mani­festations of your desires. A person seeking peace, prosperity, Self-real­ization and immortality must learn the art of studying, purifying, and sublimating his desires.

Every unfulfilled and frustrated desire brings to the unconscious an impression of tension. With each impression of tension a portion of willpower is locked up. Thus, the more one desires, the less one’s will is able to execute thoughts into ac­tions. The more one desires, the poorer one becomes with respect to peace and tranquility.

Desire manifests in two forms, unconscious and conscious. Unconscious desires are known as vasanas or subtle desires. Very often people do not know their own subtle incli­nations, and, while they consciously endeavor to build the pillars of peace and raise the mansion of spiritual prosperity and glory, they uncon­sciously create obstacles through the perpetuation of anger, hatred, ego­ism and attachment to worldly val­ues. Torn between these conflicts of the conscious and the unconscious, human will is unable to work effec­tively toward the acceleration of one’s evolution.

The Fisherwomen and the Flowers

Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa told a parable to illustrate the illu­sion created by human desires. Once three fisherwomen were returning home, but, being late, they decided to ask for a place to sleep at a house along the way. The person in the house wanted to be as hospitable as possible, so when he prepared a place for them to sleep he decorated the room with jasmine, rose, queen of the night and other fragrant flowers.

After tossing fitfully from side to side for an hour, one of the fisherwomen said, “What a foul smell! I cannot sleep at all!” Another fisherwoman, having the same prob­lem, said, “I have an idea. Let us put our fishing nets over our noses, and then sprinkle them with water so that we may breathe in the wonderful fragrance of fish and shut out that foul smell.” And so they did, and they all slept peacefully.

Even so, human beings could abide in the fragrant mansion of the Lord amongst divine flowers of vir­tues. However, instead they main­tain the mask of desires and shut out the heavenly fragrance. Instead of resting blissfully in peaceful surrender, they prefer the fishy foulness of worldly vanities.

Do not act like those fisher­women. Learn to renounce your in­ner attachments to worldly things that are mortal and perishable. Learn to be attached to God, the Immortal Being within. Thus you can enjoy the heavenly fragrance that never fades and experience the bliss that never diminishes.

Silence the Hissing Snake of Desire

So many people have no relax­ation in their eyes or peace in their heart. Their lives are filled with grief. Like a snake hissing in the chambers of the heart, unfulfilled desire emits the poison of grief and agony.

One should develop a profound understanding that desires for the world cannot be satisfied by plung­ing into worldly enjoyments. The desire to drink cannot be cured by drinking day and night. The desire to gamble will not cease if you fre­quent casino tables every night. The desire for worldly pleasures will not terminate if you indiscriminately in­dulge in them day and night. The fact is, the more one runs after worldly pleasures, the more one’s desires increase.

A fire burns only more fiercely when oil is poured into it; so too, a desire bursts into insurmountable proportions when you pour worldly impressions into your mind by thoughtlessly pursuing the desire. Lord Krishna describes this situation in the second chapter of the Gita: “By constantly thinking of an object, one becomes attached to the object. From attachment there arises desire. When the desire to possess the object is obstructed, one develops anger. An­ger causes loss of reason. Loss of reason leads to loss of memory, and the loss of memory causes one’s destruction."

While desires spell poverty and pain, aspiration for God-realization brings a harvest of spiritual wealth and joy. Those who are rid of desires and are established in the Self are like an ocean that remains unaffected by the rivers pouring into it. Such is the consciousness of sages, who experience objects and circumstances and yet remain ever-unaffected by them.

Happiness Cannot Be Secured Externally

Human beings always try to reach out and secure whatever people, places and things seem to promise them happiness. In so do­ing, they are tricked again and again by one grand illusion after another. As an example, suppose a friend of yours goes on a vacation to Hawaii. Early in the morning, he sits by the ocean and the sun is shining on the waves, and everything seems so bright and peaceful that his mind becomes calm and he feels overwhelmed with joy.

Lacking training in philosophy, your friend begins to feel that that spot where he sat by the sea is uniquely special and has the power to bring him untarnished happiness at all times. Soon his mind tells him, “You have enough money. Why don’t you buy a property right here? Everyday you could come and sit by the beach and enjoy the beauty as intensely as you are enjoying it now."

Hearing these inner whispers, your friend’s mind flares up with intense desire. He thinks, ‘Without that happiness, life is empty. This is what I must have." Quickly this one idea commands his single-minded concentration. He rushes to areal estate office, starts investigating properties and their values, and then ac­tually purchases a property by the sea.

With the land in hand, he now sets about building a house, furnishing it, and landscaping with all his mental and physical energy and ma­terial resources. With these tasks underway, he then goes again to sit beside the sea at sunrise. Does he enjoy the beauty as he did in his first experience?

Much to his dismay, as he sits watching the waves he starts to think about all the red-tape he has had to cut through to get the property; about how much money is left in the bank and how he is going to pay the mortgages; about how he is going to avoid the damage caused by the salty wind that comes to his house and destroys all his metallic fixtures; about what to do when the next storm comes; about how to defend his house against robbers and vandals. With all these thoughts, he discovers that he has lost all his happiness and seren­ity!

Your friend could have avoided all that work and ensuing disappoint­ment with a little philosophical un­derstanding. Happiness doesn’t come from outside. Each time your mind becomes calm and you feel happy, it is because the joy of the Self within is reflecting in the lake of your mind. Enjoy your happy experiences, but always remind yourself that the joy came from within your own heart, from within your innermost Self, which is God. In devotional terms, remind yourself that all comes to you from God. In Vedantic terms, re­mind yourself that all is God, noth­ing but God. You are yourself noth­ing but the Divine Self, and it is by turning to your own inner Self that you experience happiness.

When you experience a mo­ment of joyous contentment in life, do not obey your senses blindly as if they were the master with a whip and you were only a slave. Give yourself some breathing room, a moment for reflection. Understand that the happiness that you experience in the realm of senses is a kind of illusion and do not rush to try to secure it forever.

If you must pursue objects, do it knowingly. Understand profoundly that happiness is not coming from them. If you keep company with a thief knowingly, then there is little harm. If you keep company with a thief unknowingly, then you are go­ing to be hurt intensively.

The Rich Man and the Thief

A humorous story is told about a rich man who was traveling on a train. After departure, another man entered into the same compartment. He was a thief and the rich man knew it. Soon the rich man made friends with the thief without revealing to the thief that he knew about his criminal intentions.

Each time the rich man had to go out, he secretly placed his money under the pillow of the thief. When the thief found himself alone, he looked around everywhere for the money, but, try as he might, he couldn’t find it.

Time passed, the journey ended, and it was time for the men to go their separate ways. The thief, with humility, approached the rich man and said, “What a wonder! I saw your money, and whenever you went out I searched everywhere for it, but I couldn’t find it. Please tell me your secret!” The rich man said, “You are a thief, but not a psychologist. I knew that you would look everywhere but under your very own nose. So I hid the money under your pillow."

The lesson to learn from this story is that if you are in the company of a thief, you must be more clever than he is so as not to be hurt. The objects of the world are like thieves. If we let them, they rob us of our peace of mind by leading us to be­lieve that they are the source of hap­piness and that they will stay with us forever. However, if you are wise you recognize that happiness does not come from objects, and that objects are perishable and impermanent. Knowing these facts, you begin to control your desires.

Then what happens to that en­ergy of desire? It turns in to an energy of Divine love. Instead of desiring objects, you desire mental peace and Liberation. Ката, when controlled and sublimated, becomes Divine love. It becomes mumukshutwa — aspira­tion for attaining Self-realization.

Chemically speaking, diamonds and coal are both nothing but carbon, but there is a big difference between the two. Desire for the world is like coal. Desire for attaining God- realization is like a diamond. Worldly desire can be transformed into spiri­tual aspiration — just as mere coal is transformed into diamonds — when a constant effort is directed to con­trol kama and to redirect it in a proper way.

The Trammels of Ninety-Nine

Another parable is told to dem­onstrate how desire is the great enemy of peace:

There was once a blacksmith who labored hard, but enjoyed his work immensely and always sang joyfully as he worked. When his rich neighbor heard that singing, he be­came extremely jealous. “How can it be,” he thought to himself, “that with all my wealth, I can’t even sleep due to worries and anxi­ety, and yet my poor neigh­bor is always so happy? Though he works so hard, hammering his iron sheets close to a hot fire, still he enjoys his life and his work!” Un­able to bear this situation a moment longer, the jealous neighbor thought and thought, and then came up with a simple plan.

Putting his scheme into effect, the neighbor secretly threw a bag containing ninety-nine dollars into the shop of the blacksmith. When the blacksmith entered his shop, he found the bag and wondered how it had got there. Unable to solve the mystery, he decided to keep the money and make good use of it.

Then the idea came into his mind, “It is only one dollar less than a hundred. It would have been nice if it was a hundred.” So the next day he worked hard and, instead of just earning one dollar, he brought the total up to one hundred and twenty four. Then he thought to himself, “If the amount I had was one dollar more, it would be an even math­ematical amount.” So the next day he worked hard again, and the pat­tern continued: always needing a little more to make a nice round figure.

As the days passed, the black­smith lost the peace and joy with which he used to work and there were no more songs. Of course, the neighbor was delighted, because his plan had worked out just as he had hoped!

One day the blacksmith sud­denly realized that he was becoming sick and weak and restless. Then he thought to himself, “All the trouble started from that ninety-nine.” With a great sense of relief, he gathered that money and threw it over to the rich man’s place, thinking that he could surely make good use of it.

In the Hindi language, there is a proverb that was inspired by this story: “Do not be entangled by ninety-nine.” The moment you get caught by the illusion of needing more of something to be happy you become entangled — like the blacksmith — in a joyless pursuit.

Desires for things which are perishable are full of vanity. Desire Self-realization alone. Desire the development of spiritual values and virtues. Desire the betterment of humanity. Desire to become desireless.

Don’t Be Trapped by Your Desires

In some parts of India, mon­keys are trapped by a clever device. A jar with a narrow neck is filled with fruit and placed in a spot that mon­keys frequent. Being interested in the fruit, a monkey puts his hand into the jar and grabs the fruit. Then having made his hand into a fist, he cannot take his hand out since the neck of the jar is too narrow. He can easily let the fruit go and release his hand, but he lacks this sense due to his desire to possess the fruit, and is caught.

Even so, human consciousness puts its hand into the narrow jar of egoism in order to catch the fruits of worldly enjoyments with the fingers of desire. Open your hand and let the fruit go. You will be released from the narrow prison of embodi­ment. You will realize, “I am all that exists. I am the eternal, infinite Truth.”

Renounce worldly desires by serving humanity, by developing devotion and by practicing profound enquiry. Let your mind be a channel of Divine Will. Perform actions with a sense of dedication to God.

When your heart if purified, it will become filled with sublime desires — desires that are expressions of Divine Will for the good of humanity. These desires do not bind or entrap the soul. Rather, they are like heavenly flowers blowing freely in the breeze, spreading their sub­lime fragrance everywhere.

“International Yoga Guide” Vol. 34, NO. 12, August 1997

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