LAWET

Kaustav Ghosh

The reason of all sorrow is the desire

-Gautam Buddha

Yesterday was an auspicious day, birthday of Gautam Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. We hindus, believed that he is the ninth incarnation of Lord Vishnu. The above mentioned quote was taught to me in my primary school days, but it was too deep to understand its meaning even today.

I have started writing this on 5/5/2023 but it may finish on today. I will share some perspective of pain and spirituality. At least two perspective will be We pray to God to remove our pain and sufferings and protect us. But we never feel that it is us who has been the reason of all our pain. It is us, always us.

You do not believe?

It is our greed, it is our bad habbit, it is our carelessness which ensure so many bodily pain in our life. Is not it. Like over eating of fast food, no control on smoking and drinking; so many examples can be found from our daily life. It is our lack of self control leads us to a disastrous life. Every time we put allegation to God and others forgetting our own act. In fact it is us, our over use of plastics, throwing it here and there has been one of the reason of waterlogging in India. It is the over speeding, over loading of transport vehicle leads us to several accident. Our self centred thinking neither helped us nor will help the nature.

The nature of the desire is not satisfaction, it will never satisfy even if you become the king of the world. It is was, is, will always be the thirst, the desire for more, more and more will hamper our physical and mental health. In fact, in this process people sometimes forget giving up desire can give the ultimate pleasure.

Winning or getting something may not provide you that satisfaction always, it gives you pleasure only when you win after the continuous process of losing/failure. When you gave up on yourself, you welcome sorrow; when you forget yourself and your capabilities and/or positivitis you welcome all types of pain.

Now switching to another perspective and I am writing this even I am feeling like fried in the fire of losing my pet dog, my best companion Kalu. If you read the interview of any saints or read their biography you may find one thing which is commonly said by all- “The suffering is the gift of God. It is the suffering which makes you introspect your act in life, it is the sufferings which make you to start your journey towards spirituality. Like the fire is used to remove unnecessary part from the Gold so that we can have the pure and best version of it, fire of the sufferings do the same with us.”

All the great personalities, prophet came to this world faced great sufferings, even if you see the life of Lord Krishna- from his childhood death was lurking behind, could not marry his love, instead marry them who loves him, was not happy with the act of his son and had to curse him, feel both disgusted and sad to see corruption and other bad elements overshadowing the good qualities of his family member, saw the death of every family member.

In fact there is a common proverb of worshipping lord krishna/Jagannath-

” He, who desire me will be shattered by the sufferings, but even after that if he desires me the Lord will be slave of his slave.” This cannot be interpreted easily, its literal meaning is tricky.

But I can say the desire of finding the ultimate truth which is nothing but attaining God is not similar to the continuous desire of materialistic things.

In Bhagwat Gita Chapter 2 Verse 63 Lord Krishna said-

“From anger, delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost, one falls down again into the material pool.“

We know any amount of falling down is painful.

From the time immemorial all the sages and saints told us pain and pleasure comes one after another like a circle. Nothing will last-neither pain nor pleasure.

Only when we enter into any pain or sufferings, then we start asking questions and try to find out the answer hence we start the journey of spirituality. But millions of people do something different- they go to worshipping place to pray (read complain), put lucrative offerings so that God might nullify the sufferings.

If you carefully examine and analysis you will find people forget everything and become rude, arrogant; indulge themselves in immoral, dishonest act when they enjoy good times. At that time they are far away from reality. This leads to the disastrous fall hence there will be all types of pain.

Another perspective is fear is doubled when you have fear of fear, fear of upcoming pain/loss/ sufferings even if you know philosophically nothing is yours, change is the only constant; even if you know the universal truth of birth and death; even if you know that the fear you are feared about that may need not to be feared because it is vague and absurd.

Many saints also believe that the reason is love of God when you are into pain even if you are pure soul, God wants to liberate you from the circle of Karma soon so that you can quickly start your spiritual journey.

Only thing that matter is selfless service, zero expectation, free from narrow mentality. Otherwise we are trapped into birth-death, pain-pleasure circle.