SOME THOUGHTS ON ATMA--73

[Guest guest]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

 

Loving SAI RAMs. Unfulfilled desires cause agitation and anger. If desire is fulfilled, it causes greed. In the Hindu scriptures, there is a story. Lord Brahma was distributing gifts to people. Everyone came to the creator with a vessel which He would fill up with money or other gifts. One man came with a peculiar vessel which was covered by a cloth. Strangely enough, the vessel was taking more and more and never seemd to get full. When at last Lord Brahma insisted on examining the vessel, the man removed the cloth to reveal a human skull!!!. It was never satisfied. The question that comes to our mind is , " how can we overcome greed? " Adi Sankaracharya says in his famous Bhaja Govindam, " Pl. think. You want more and more wealth,but what is the result of it? This wealth is calamitous! " When we desire wealth for a righteous purpose , then there is nothing wrong with it. But when people want more and more for their own aggrandizement, self-gratification etc. then the desire becomes greed. Need and greed are two different things. Need has limits, but greed has none. When we sit to eat, we reach a point when we say, " Enough! How much more can I eat? " But we all know what happens when there is greed in our minds. Greed for money, power or pleasure corrupts, and ' absolute power corrupts absolutely'. Mahatma Gandhi used to say, " In this world there is enough to fulfill the need of all, but not the greed of even one. " An individual full of greed becomes a very discontented person and ironically he becomes a beggar for happiness from the outside world. " Greed is conquered by contentment " , says Sankaracharya in his Bhaja Govindam. One of most useful advices given to us by Sankaracharya is: " Perform your duties and then with whatever you get as a result of that karma, which is the blessing (prasad) of the Lord, be happy with it " . Greed will not affect a person if he learns to enjoy the world with a spirit of detachment and sacrifice (tena tyaktena Bhunjeetha) as the Isavasya Upanishad

puts it.

 

Jealousy or envy is also a modification of desire. We become jealous of another person ,if he gets something that we desire. Depending upon the nature and intensity of our own desire and ambition we develop various jealousies. I will not be jealous of a politician as long as I have no political ambition. Nor am I jealous of a sanyasi since I have desire for renunciation.

 

Let me share with you a story in this connection. Once a greedy person and an envious person were living together. When the greedy man got more money, the envious man also wanted more. One day the greedy man was missing from the house and the envious man went in search of him and found him performing penance in the forest. The envious man also started doing penance since he did not want the greedy man to become greater than himself. Lord Siva was pleased with their penance and appeared before them saying, " I am very happy with you both. Therefore, I will grant you a boon. However, there is one condition; only one of you may ask for something and, the other man will automatically get double that amount. " Naturally, both men wanted the other to ask first. Lord Siva said, " You have two more minutes to decide. " when the time was about to expire, the envious person spoke up and said, " Oh Lord, I want this boon. Make me blind in one eye! " That is why it is said that greed makes you blind. The nature of a greedy person is to want more and more. The nature of an envious person is to think, " Why this person is getting ahead of me? I must pull him down. " In Samskrit language the word for envy, matsarah, comes from mattah sarati, meaning " he goes ahead of me " . Greed wants more and more,even to the extent of acquiring other people`s wealth. Jealousy thinks, " It`s allright if I do not get what I want, but the other person must suffer and not get it either. All this is only the play of desire.

 

(to be continued)

G.Balasubramanian