A Common Theme on Birthday

Have you ever received messages on your birthday along these lines –

May all your desires be fulfilled

or

Bhagwan aapki sabhi icchaein puri kare

I am sure you must have received those messages or may have heard from the elders. I have received them too. And here lies the problem, majority of humans still think and believe that every desire can be fulfilled. Yet, still here we are, giving false hopes to anyone or maybe ourselves too, that our every desire is going to come true.

Ex– A couple years ago, let’s say that Chhole bhature was cooked for lunch in our house. After finishing the meal, i would excitingly say to mummy, ab parso dal baati banana, aur uske 2 din baad butter paneer masala, aur uske 2 din baad dal wali aloo ki tikki etc (all the heavy items). As you can see that i wasn’t in control of my mind and the desires were driving my mind. And i am thankful to mummy that she gave a blind eye/ear to my desires; she used to say “sirf khane par dhyan mat do, pet ka bhi dhyan rakho”.

This is just one area of the life, if you extrapolate this to other areas, then you will realize that we have an ocean of desires; absolutely limitless. And after listening to Swamiji and experiencing the life, i now know that our list of desires is endless and there is no way that our every desire can be fulfilled. 

So now i have decided that whenever someone’s birthday comes, be it a friend, family member etc, i will wish them and make a silent prayer for them, “May you realize the truth about desires.”

I also encourage you to do the same and one day, who knows, our prayers will make a difference.

 

Hurting Someone

Have you ever given a thought that your desires might be hurting someone?

Here’s a brief story from the past:

I was in 8th/9th class (around 2008-09), reactive, immature, living on autopilot etc…. in short, living in ignorance. I was in Army school (i was a civilian btw), some of my army background friends had their personal mobile as well. This generated a feeling of lack in my mind and i started wanting a mobile.

A Vodafone (yes, vodafone) mobile ad was doing the rounds on the TV. And boy, that mobile phone bowled me over. So I ganged up with my cousin and started listing numerous benefits of having the mobile phone to our parents in a bid to convince them to buy us the mobile phone. And it wasn’t your basic feature phone; the Vodafone mobile had attractive looks, a camera, slider etc and what not. And it was priced around Rs 3200-3500, almost double/ triple the cost of the simple phone. I constantly brought forth this matter of buying the mobile phone to my parents, and my cousin did the same to her parents.

Then on a Sunday morning, when my father was shaving, i asked him, “Papa, aaj me aapke saath chalu mobile lene?”; to which he replied, “Beta, aap naya mobile le kar kya karoge?”, then proceeded with his shaving. I honestly didn’t have any answer and remained silent, a little bit disappointed and hurt too. I did not know what happened to me after that incident and i stopped asking for mobile and moved on. I also didn’t know how my father felt at that time. 

And now, when i recall the incident, i realize that there was so much pain and suffering in his voice when he said, “Beta, aap naya mobile le kar kya karoge? “I was hurting him by repeatedly asking him for a mobile. Also today, some children may hurt their parents unknowingly, by asking for expensive materialistic things which they don’t need, or you may be hurting someone by asking them to do something for you which they can’t do given their circumstances. 

 

The Control Mechanism

After observing long enough, i have concluded that our mind uses the desires as a control mechanism against the flow of life. We know for a fact that life isn’t always the same and yet the mind wants to reign supreme over this life and only wants to experience the good things. It desires that every little thing in our day-to-day life should be as it wants or else it will get sad.

 

Raktabija

Here is a beautiful anecdote from Durga Saptashati; mentioned by Swamiji in his book, ‘A Million Thoughts’.

While slaying the demons, Mother Goddess came across a particularly different and difficult type. His name was Raktabija, the one who is born from blood. Raktabija had a special boon. For every drop of his blood that would fall on the ground, one thousand more Raktabijas would manifest, and each new Raktabija would have the same boon. It was practically impossible to exterminate such a demon. As soon as he was attacked, blood would spill and thousands like him would spring forth, creating armies after armies of Raktabija in the battlefield. It was a problem unlike any other that the Goddess had encountered A long battle ensued, after which the companion energies of Mother Goddess decided that just attacking Raktabija wasn’t enough. There had to be someone to gather and drink his blood before it spilled on the ground. A form of the goddess, Ma Kali, emerged from the forehead of the goddess. Before Raktabija’s blood could touch the ground she would lap it up with her lolling tongue. Eventually the forces of goodness triumphed over the demons. Similar is the case with our desires, for Raktbija was nothing but a symbol of desire. For every desire we humans fulfill, a thousand more will take birth. Suppressing them is the same as attacking them. That’s not the solution. Fulfilling them is accepting your defeat at their hands, giving birth to a thousand more. Ma Kali emerging out of Devi’s forehead represents mindfulness. When we are mindful of our thoughts, actions and desire, they subside on their own.

 

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Our mind is a plate on which the delicious and different foods of desires are there. If you eat one delicious food/ fulfill one desire, the plate will expand and the desire like food will increase many folds on the plate. No matter how many times you eat, how much you eat, the mind will always want more and this process will never end until we consciously train and tame our mind to transcend the desires.

 

P.S. – This is my first post on this platform and i am not exactly a writer, so please ignore and excuse the grammatical or otherwise errors. Thank you for your time. 🙂🙂