In Buddhist tradition, it’s believed that a monk should not perceive material objects or people with a longing to possess them, as one will have to keep coming back until that longing is quenched. And this may take many lifetimes.
On the path to liberation, balance is important. The whole effort of spiritual sadhana is to attain a state of stillness and balance within oneself.
A negative emotion creates an imbalance (disturbance) in your chakras. When a desire goes unfulfilled, it affects the Svadhisthana chakra, which is the centre of emotions, desire, pleasure and creativity.
Why is balance so important?
Because only when all the chakras in your body are in a state of alignment, harmony and fully active (i.e. without any blockages), can your energies or the kundalini, rise to reach its final destination.
Story Time
I heard this in one of Osho’s discourses:
Once, Ramakrishna asks one of his close disciples to arrange a silk robe, gold ring and a hookah. The baffled disciple, trusting Ramakrishna’s unconventional teaching methods, went about gathering what his master had asked for.
Finally, one evening when no one was around, Ramakrishna asked the disciple to set up a chair on the banks of Ganga to smoke the hookah.
The disciple followed the instructions and hid in the bushes to see why Ramakrishna would smoke hookah when he preaches against it, let alone desire something as petty as a gold ring or a silk robe, which meant nothing to him.
Ramakrishna came out of his ashram, wearing his newly knit silk robe and a flashy gold ring like a king, and walked to the riverbank. He took a few puffs from the hookah and started coughing. This went on for some time. Then, speaking out loud to himself, he said, “Do it, Rama, so you won’t have to come next time to fulfill this naïve desire.”
After a few minutes, he stood up, broke the hookah, took off the robe and the gold ring, threw everything in the river and walked back to the ashram.
The confused disciple couldn’t hold himself back and asked Ramakrishna what had just happened. Ramakrishna responds with a gentle smile, saying he had a dream: he was wearing a silk robe, a gold ring, smoking hookah on the banks of the Ganga. It must have been a desire from a past life. And if he doesn’t fulfil it, he will have to come back again.
In a similar story about desires, Sri M shares a rather sweet incident in his book Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master. He and Babaji were traveling deep in the Himalayas when he suddenly started craving a dosa, but he never expressed this desire to the master. To his surprise, after several days of silent longing, Babaji asked him to go to a specific restaurant in a nearby town and have a dosa. Sri M went and ate to his heart’s content.
Every human being has desires, however ambitious, extravagant or mundane they may be. It doesn’t matter what life throws at us, some desires are hard to overcome. We hold on to our longings until they’re fulfilled. Such is the nature of mind, of human desire.
In most cultures, we even ask a dying person for their last wish. Ever wondered why?
Desire Isn’t the Problem. Suppressing It Is.
For a spiritual seeker longing for liberation, it becomes important to be free from all desires, including the desire to have no desire, before they can truly move on. Lingering on them or fighting them only amplifies their presence, because there’s no subtraction or division in the human brain, only addition and multiplication.
It’s irrelevant where we gather our desires from. But once they’ve made home in our minds, it is only wise to get over with them and move on.
Unless you fulfil your desires, there’s no mukti.
However, it’s equally important not to indulge in binging on junk, sugar, or substances just because you crave them, especially if the craving returns every couple of days.
There’s a difference between a desire and an addiction. And what about desires that stem from a deeper yearning?
Which brings me to an important aspect to fulfill desires: manifestation.
If you generate a thought in your mind consciously and if it is single-pointed, it will find its way in the world. It will manifest itself naturally.
Sadhguru
Throughout ancient texts, we have countless stories of yogis manifesting their thoughts into reality, often so effortlessly that it feels mystical. That’s why many masters emphasize being mindful of your thoughts. They’ve called the mind Kalpavriksha, the wishing tree of manifestation.
There is enough scientific and anecdotal evidence to prove that manifestation works.
Yet, most people fail to manifest not because their desires are wrong, but because they never empower their thoughts with energy and emotion and they approach desire from a place of lack.
Sadhguru has designed powerful meditative tools, available as online programs, to help you fulfill your desires. When applied with sincerity and commitment, these tools establish your long-cherished desires in the mindscape, helping you manifest desires which might otherwise seem distant and unattainable.
Because only when all the seeds of desire are burnt and no longer exist, the transcendence or liberation becomes possible.
And the same holds true for unfulfilled promises, but that’s subject for another blog.