DESIRES FULFILLED

DESIRES FULFILLED

 

 

Baba said, "For a greedy man there is no peace, neither contentment, nor certainty (steadiness). If there be even a little trace of greed in mind, all the Sadhanas (spiritual endeavors) are of no avail" in Sri Sai Satcharitra, chapter XVIII & XIX

 

Once, a journalist asked Mahatma Gandhi how to attain happiness. Gandhi answered, "When you don't have any desires, then you will be happy."

 

Normally, you think, "When I attain God, then I will be happy," but to be practical, you have to recognize that when you don't have any desires, it means that you have fulfilled all your desires, and then you are happy.

 

But you should also develop a sense of discrimination and understanding about what desires are right or helpful for your purpose. You should entertain only those desires that you can fulfill and that are right for you. If you have developed that capacity to discriminate between your desires, then you don't entertain those desires that are injurious to you and drive you crazy or create a state of helplessness. Unfulfilled desires within you will always lead to a state of unhappiness.

 

You should have some desires as a human being; you cannot live totally without desires. But those desires should be filtered by the sense of discrimination within you. Your buddhi, intelligence, has the function of judging, deciding, and discriminating which desires are useful.

 

You should learn to develop that function within yourself. Then, decrease your desires. It is the useless desires that create problems for you, not appropriate or helpful desires.

 

 

 

 

 

(Swami Rama, The Art of Joyful Living )