“”As a man’s desire is, so is his destiny. For as his desire is, so is his will; and as his will is, so is his deed; and as his deed is so is his reward, whether good or bad. A man acteth according to the desires to which he clingeth. After death he goeth to the next world bearing in his mind the subtle impressions of his deeds; and, after reaping there the harvest of his deeds, he returneth again to this world of action. Thus he who hath desire continueth subject to rebirth.”- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
Blog #7
I don’t really know that much about death or what happens after, nor do I know a whole lot about the various religious philosophies surrounding it, but I was really drawn to and struck by the above Upanishadic creamy, dreamy morsels of wisdom. This isn’t the first time that Hindu philosophy has garnered my attention. Those Indus Valley folk are fairly sharp and I am often moved to pause by the insights that come from that “other” part of our world.
This whole idea of Self-regulating justice is like, “Wow”. I mean, is this for real… that I am gonna keep trippin’ on this ride until my desires somehow run out? Hmm… me-thinks that I am in big trouble here. At least, if I have purchased the paradigm that this ride is not all that great, and there are times (not many) that I hold fast to that very idea.
My desire-produced karmic wheel of birth and death is receiving lots of impressions, and I don’t see an end in sight anytime soon. Good grief, I am all over the friggin’ place with desire. It oozes out of every single pore of my being and I was always certain that it would be the death of me, not the re-birth of me. Well, how about that for a beautifully wrapped paradox?
It seems, then, that as long as I crave cheeseburgers and Snickers candy bars and martini’s and pretty dresses and traveling to far away lands and curling up with a good book and going to the movies and swimming in the ocean and looking at the mountains and dancing & giggling with my daughter Olivia and practicing and teaching yoga and on and on and on, that I get to live. I get to come back to this place that holds all of the sensory pleasures that I so crave. So, where does that leave me? Well, I guess that leaves me having a darn good time continuously manifesting in nature.
You have to understand that I am generally a “liver of life to the fullest”. You know the type… always smiling and deriving unbelievable amounts of pleasure from the simplest of things. The one that says “why not?” instead of “why?” If I desire something, I just do. It doesn’t matter if I shouldn’t desire it or if it is bad for me or if it somehow just isn’t the “correct” desire to have. Perhaps, I shouldn’t have that espresso and a slice of yummy cheesecake. Perhaps, standing on my head at the beach isn’t like way “cool” (yes it is!). Maybe, desiring to go a movie by myself appears “odd”. Should I not talk of loving-kindness and compassion because it is too “ooey-gooey”? Oh, yea… desiring another martini is totally out of the question because… well, it just is. And, shall I apologize for I desire NOT to have Botox injected into my 49 year old face (I mean, come on people, that is part of the problem not the solution… although, desiring youth is sooo tempting), how un-21st century of me. And, on it goes.
So, you see, I am torn. For the most part, I like it here. On the one hand, I don’t want to stop desiring. I have become addicted to my personal desires and they seem, like it or not, to somehow fill me up. Forget the fact, that they lead to even more desire and ultimately suffering (cause dang it, even the good things don’t last forever and then there is the craving and missing of that which you once had… ouch!). Now truly this is quite a pickle, because in the Yoga Sutras (one of the most respected works ever written on yoga by Patanjali a long, long time ago), the whole goal of practicing yoga techniques (which I do) is to ultimately surrender everything (desires included, and don’t get me started on aversions- like the Botox thing cause that needs to be surrendered as well… is there nothing sacred) in order to come into unity consciousness (samadhi, enlightenment, union). Go figure, cause I also deeply desire coming into unity consciousness. Hmm… another paradox, for The Yoga Sutras are quite clear… even the desire of unity consciousness must be given up. Whew, this is like totally making me sweat.
I desire, which is strictly taboo if unity consciousness is sought. Unity consciousness just so happens to be one of my desires. Unity consciousness requires that I become desireless. Desire-less-ness takes me out of the karmic cycle of birth and death. This would mean no more Hershey’s kisses or other seeming forbidden fruits. So, the conundrum continues because I really like chocolate. Argh… a little help here!
Perhaps I am making it way too complicated. I mean without desire there is no notion of desire-less-ness.
Where would yin be without yang. And, certainly Sita (in Hindu lore she was elevated to equal status with the gods because of her undying love for her husband Rama even in lieu of his rejecting her) would have not been able to follow her dharma (what you were born to do, your path) without Rama (Hindu god and husband of Sita), the earth without the sky is nothing. And no-thing without some-thing just doesn’t make sense.
So, having desires is, perhaps, not so preposterous. And, in fact, seems to be a necessary precursor to desire-less-ness. Maybe, it is the clinging to the desires (and aversions) that is to be perceived as the doer-of- evil here. That, my readers, is it. Watch the desires, even indulge, but beware not to get all gnarled up in them. No prime rib? Okay, give me eggplant instead. Now that is surrender.
Let’s go ahead and plunge head on into our desires. After all, until we experience all there is to experience, we are not able to be done. And, being done is the goal. So, it would seem, if we really want to finally be done (manifesting, that is), we need to indulge our desires. What an insanely ordered conundrum! Let’s attach to it… hahaha.
Well, it seems that I am not dead yet. And, I am certain that I will reincarnate several million-bajillion more times. Okay. I am good with that. Eventually, my desires will run out. And, until then, I can patiently watch them come and go. I can savor the notion that you cannot know and become that which you are in the absence of that which you are not. So, I am, at my deepest, innermost being, not my desires. But, without them, how can I ever really know what I truly am?
Did someone say pizza… count me in.
Desiring and lovingly,
me
Death?,,,,Hmmm,, seems to me The Great Beyond, The Everlasting Unknowable is just a continuation of the Great NOW, except it will be then Now not Now now, that is ,,whenever we each get there.
And exactly what happens there I haven’t clue.
What I do know This Now is:
You are perfect, it is just your job (dharma) to keep changing the definition of perfect.
You are You,
You cannot BE less,
You cannot BE more,
You cannot BE better,
You cannot BE worse,
You are Divinity at the core,
These experiences, desires, hopes, dreams, failings, are shared with ALL, at and in all times.
To lose the desire for desires is to lose sharing of experience with the whole.
Do I believe there will come a time when my Super-consciousness has experienced every experience imaginable and the desire to experience is no more?
Damn, I hope not.
Because, yes even though it hurts at times, the pain of perfection is worth it.
D.
Desires are like emotions, they come, they peak, and they finally, if we don’t feed them, dissolve. In one of your last lines you talk about watching desires come and go, but nothing much more about that–and that, I think, is the interesting part. Because once you do that for a while, you realize that desiring mind is much more attached to the activity of desiring than it is by achieving the object of its desire–be it chocolate, the perfect mate, or enlightenment (which is why we need to give up even the desire for enlightenment and God according to the sutras). The love for desire is also why desiring mind is never satisfied–there are always more desires because we focus on the object of desire rather than desire itself.
You did hit on the first part of working with desire (in my experience)–to enjoy fully the acquisition of the object desired. This helps us to realize that desire peaks at the moment that anticipation and acquisition merge (i.e. the first bite of pizza) and then desire slowly begins to recede and finally dissolves. Attention around this time of merging helps to separate the experience of desiring with the experience of acquiring, which are totally different experiences.
Once these two experiences are distinct in your mind, you can then move into the exquisite experience of desiring itself, and enjoy desire in and of itself, without having to have an object for desire to latch onto. As I see it, desiring mind just wants to desire and really doesn’t care much about the object of desire. So when we move into desiring mind for the sake of experiencing desire itself, desiring then lessens the hold it seems to have on the objects we generally attach it to and we become less driven by our desires.
This doesn’t mean that we stop enjoying–we can enjoy both desiring mind and chocolate. It just means that we attach enjoyment to the direct experience of desire or of eating the chocolate and not to the indirect, unconscious, driving experience of enjoying chocolate as a way of satisfying desiring mind, which, when attached to objects, can never be satisfied.
Hmm… it is my job to to keep changing the definition of perfect, I dont get it.
Hey, there, Sweet One!
I was listening to a webcast about Karma put out by EnlightenNext magazine. I had to listen 3-4 times to soak it what the hell they were talking about.
According to the narrators: Karma is not cause and effect, like stepping on the accelerator pedal pushes a lever that let’s more gas in, that makes for a larger explosion in the engine and you go faster. They said karma is a couple of words that mean something like “Action seeds Results”. So the image is not a linear, mechanical thing, but more like, when you plant a seed, a tree grows, and who knows where it will grow. Yet the seed definitely has some results. Or, as our Thomistic philosophy prof once said, human causality can be multiplied to infinity. Or as Mark Twain said, life is one damn thing after another. To which Gertrude Stein said, Life is not one damn thing after another; it’s the same damn thing over and over.
The gnarly part is knowing whether you are planting yet another seed, or are acting totally out of Kosmic Consciousness and leaving no karmic effects. Which is sort of karmic as well, it seems. Or not.
Or, like in the roman catholic Hail Mary: pray for us sinners (which I take to mean us poor bastards just reeking of karma) NOW and AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH — the two most important moments of our life (or death). But are they really two separate moments? To which, Charlie Brown would just say, AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!
And there is an infinity of possible ‘quotable quotes’ on this topic.
All I know is that lately, my AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH’s are filled with laughter.
No foolin’ (It is April 1st, after all).
Thank you. I am soo glad that you are smart. That is exactly it… bingo. The desiring is what we are addicted to and when we get that which we desire, oops, here comes something else to desire and we will never fulfill all of our desire because that’s not the problem… the act of desiring is. But, here is yet another conundrum, in the act of desiring (verb-action) it is implied that there has to be something to desire (object) and a person to do the desiring (subject) which brings us into separateness (a subject and an object and an act). This separateness or distinction between doer, doing and object is an illusion according to yoga philosophy. When the desired object, the desiree, and the act of desiring are all one, it is believed we have moved into an advanced state of unity consciousness (or it has been acquired. And, now here we are with the acquisition part). Is that which is acquired, no longer desired? I am not so sure about that, but I alluded to it in the blog. And, I am not at all sure that once we have demarcated desiring and acquiring that we are then freed up to experience the desiring in and of itself cause sometime what was acquired is soo good, we want more, not less… hmm?!? What may be apparent is that the action or the act of desiring may be what perpetuated us into existence and also what keeps us in existence. Without it, no experiencing because that implies that there is nothing to experience (object) and no one to do the experiencing (subject). In order to create, we need the act of desiring. Why else would we have to manifest? Would there be manifestation without the desire to know, to experience, to create? The one unmanifest no-thing, perhaps desired to experience itself and bingo bango, here we are. I need to close for now as this is quite a lesson in focused thinking and I desire my third bowl of Captain Krunch cereal… LOL!
Michael, you are a well spring of knowledge and I love the way you take one quote that is filled with insight and then turn right around and top it with another one and both are right on… good lord is there no end to your teaching me stuff? And, good grief (a Charlie Brown favorite quote), That NOW and AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH are not two separate moments is just too exquisite (and so utterly true… can’t be in the NOW and still be alive to duality, so the ego definitively dies when you are fully present… beautiful). I love you man. Keep teaching me, will you… promise!
From Dictionary.com:
The first sentence is their definition,, second is my explanation.
conforming absolutely to the description or definition of an ideal type:
You are IT! not another one like ya!!
excellent or complete beyond practical or theoretical improvement:
You are a most excellent example of creation and are complete in all manners,, you just haven’t remembered it yet. Improvement is a judgment and opinion..ppffttt..
exactly fitting the need in a certain situation or for a certain purpose:
There is NO ONE on Earth that can do you the way you do..
entirely without any flaws, defects, or shortcomings:
You are an expression of Divinity,, need I say more?
accurate, exact, or correct in every detail:
personally I think you are a beautiful person and wouldn’t change anything about you ,,even if I could.
thorough; complete; utter:
Once again, you are you, exactly where you are and doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing, and with whom,,lol
pure or unmixed:
There is no other exactly like you,,you are a one of a kind.
unqualified; absolute:
You are Eternal and Loved and Divine absolutely.
expert; accomplished; proficient.
Once again there is none that can do exactly what you do the way you do it, you are Unique.
unmitigated; out-and-out; of an extreme degree:
UH huh,,that’s you driving with the top down or doing the “perfect” handstand.
So,I noticed that these definitions are dynamic, they evolve and change and grow as our ability to perceive and express evolves and changes and grows.
Therefore, keep growing, digging, finding out what makes you , you.
And it is my hope to be right there with you and all that read this post,, my words are not for Jeri alone,, all of us, each of us needs, at times, to remember we are beautiful expressions of creation.
OH I am so funny,,the above definitions are for the word …Perfect
WOW… AWESOME.
whew!!! this is some heavy sh-t for this early in the morning. it just seems to me we complicate things by over analyzing them. we have a need for desire so why quench it? it makes no sense to me. i agree that the first bite of pizza is the best but i also enjoy the second bite as well. our desires have the potential of being detrimental to us, but sometimes we do them anyway. i actually can be satisfied with the first bite of anything or so i have convinced myself so as to not gain weight. ha!
we get one shot at this, or maybe not, so we should live it to the fullest and not deny ourselves toooo much. life is so complex, yet so simple. we are born and we die and that is all we know for certain. so what do we do in the middle? LIVE!!! we make our own path. yes, we have many roadblocks but that is what makes us who we are. how we decide to cope with what life throws our way determines the outcome. i like to give myself lectures in the mirror. it usually makes me more responsible for my actions and it is a lot cheaper than a therapist. our choices make us who we are. key here is OUR decisions. damn it! it is easier to blame someone else for our woes. huh?
you speak of unity consciousness. i am unsure what that is but it sounds like something i wouldn’t like especially if it doesn’t want me to have desires. what kind of philosophy is that? and isn’t carma the same as “what goes around comes around’”?
who am i to know anything? i am just an old lady that grew up in the 50’s and still have some of the same ideals as i had then. i do, however, believe differently than the dogma i was fed as a child. i have always believed in treating others as i want to be treated and it has gotten me through the last 69 years pretty happily and that is my goal HAPPINESS, and i have it.
this topic is fascinating and will be pursued by intellectuals like you folks until the end of time. you guys go ahead and analyze it all and let me know how it turns out. in the meantime, i will continue to be happy and resume my life as it is and when i die i will come back and tell you all about it. the mystery will be solved. how’s that for simplicity?
Hi Jeri!
I like your comment on NOW and at the HOUR OF OUR DEATH. I was going the other way with it. What if, at the moment of death, we realize that our life was really but an instant, and that it would appear to be just a moment, a NOW. Like, what if some folks get enlightened at the dinner table, it’s too much for them, and their face falls in the spaghetti
! I’ve had some experiences analogous to the instantaneousness (there must be a real word for this) feeling and it is really humbling. It’s just a life, but it’s a life.
Now about desires. I agree with your mom, we can overdo it. Or as Mary (my wife, to those who don’t know me) would say, You guys argue and let me know how it was.
Having said that, here goes: To me, my desires are due to having a body. I like pizza, love sex (or as the movie line, sex is like pizza. Now matter how bad it is, it’s still pretty good), riding in convertibles, swimming, seeing the trees and stuff. There’s no end. But if I didn’t have a body, would I have desires? Do angels get pissed? Do they want to join with each other? Angelic sex?? Who knows. A thousand of ‘em can dance on a pin, so they must dance, at least. (The Greek Orthodox church’s word for Trinity is Perichoreisis (Dancing around)–much better than a geometric figure)
Anyhow, so we have this body, which started out as 2 cells, then, thanks to mom’s desire to eat, 4, 8, 16, and so on. But our bodies are the result of all the food we ate. We turn pizza into a living breathing human – how fantastic is that?
Then our brains, starting at a tabula rasa (let’s leave out past lives, genetic inheritance, etc., etc. — work with me here) and our brains, our basic hard drives, are filled with ’stuff’. Some guru (forget who) said all our thinking is a regurgitation of the past. So when we think, is all we’re doing running our hard drives — how many of our thoughts are original?
So we take all this mental and bodily ’stuff’, and we try to figure ’stuff’ out, and we’ve been doing this for at least 8,000 years that we can trace back. So where the hell are we?
Maybe desire is necessary! If pizza didn’t taste good, would we eat? If sex weren’t so fantastic, would we only think of having kids, feeding them and providing an education and being responsible for the little buggers for at least 18 years? Bedrooms would be empty! To say nothing of motel rooms, airplane bathrooms and underneath the bleachers — well maybe not there.
It seems to be a common experience to discover that our desires or aversions led us to a decision that seemed a good idea at the time, but we realize it was a mistake (the Greek word for ’sin’ is taken from archery, and means “missing the mark.” Why do we (do I) get all mad or weepy or guilty over that? When I taught high school religion, one sophomore boy said, guilt is the feeling you want to do something over again, but do it right this time. Not bad. What I have experienced is that a desire is fun, good, rewarding, and I make the mistake of believing that particular experiences is THE experience, and I want to do it again — and again — and again.
All this to say, to quote from that TV show, there are three words that I find the hardest to say. I DON’T KNOW.
And don’t get me started on subject/object-knower/knowee, Seer/seen. I’m back to Charlie Brown.
TTFN
Thank you Jeri, Kristine, Mom, and Mike. Y’all are making my head hurt, which is actually a good thing. The inane is abundant in this world and in trying to create an alternate reality for myself I am grateful for thinking people, even if I don’t understand anything they say.
I too am struggling a bit with desire these days, which is feeling ok because it means I’m alive! I’ve recently practiced loving detachment in relationship to my son and it is yielding golden nuggets of wisdom and help that are life-changing for both of us. On a different subject and at the same time, I am practicing surrendering not the thing I desire, but surrendering to the desire of the thing which sometimes alleviates the desire and sometimes burns in my core. Am I supposed to find “balance by realigning my dream energy with my daily habits” (Wayne Dyer lingo), or detach with love? What I want is what I want, but as Kristine observed, maybe I am more addicted to desire itself than needing to align my creative energy with the thing. Gosh, if only I could live alone without other people I wouldn’t have any of this desire in the first place. That’s where I get stuck with Buddah and Ghandi. How to love and not love at the same time? I don’t get it yet, but I’m working on it.
Thank you for Yoga! I’m pretty new to it, but like with other things, I fall in love hard and fast!
AMIE,
BEING ALIVE IS DEFINITELY FILLED WITH DESIRE AND I LIKE THE IDEA OF SURRENDERING TO THEM. PERHAPS THERE IS SOMETHING TO BE SAID FOR GUILT-FREE CRAVINGS AND INDULGING THOSE CRAVINGS. SOME LEAD TO EVEN MORE INTENSE DESIRE AND SOME SEEM TO LEAD TO AN END TO THEM. I GUESS, THE TRICK IS LEARNING WHICH IS WHICH OR EVEN BEING ABLE TO WATCH THEM RISE AND FALL WITH A DETACHED, LOVING AWARENESS. WHAT WE WANT AND WHAT WE NEED MAY BE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS, BUT COMING FROM A SPACE OF JOY AND LOVE HELPS. MANIFESTING IN NATURE IS A REALLY NEAT WAY THAT ONE REALITY HAS COME TO KNOW ITSELF, SO I THINK WE WILL BE DESIRING AND MANIFESTING FOR A LONG, LONG TIME. ENJOY!!!
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