(ignorance, desire and action)
by Swami Sivananda
by Swami Sivananda
Avidya (ignorance), Kama (desire) and Karma (action) are the knots (Hridaya Granthis) that have tied the deluded Jiva (individual) to this Samsara (wheel of birth and death).
In the light of Vedanta philosophy, desire is born of Avidya or ignorance. There are neither desires, nor cravings, nor longings in Brahman. It is ever pure and transcendent. It is not touched by even a trace of desire. It is absolutely free from Maya or Mala (impurities of desire).
From the Avidya Sakti desire arises to enjoy the external objects of desire. As soon as man was enveloped by the veil of ignorance, he forgot his essential blissful nature and began to run after sensual objects to seek his pleasure through the avenues of the senses. He began to exert, to do selfish Karmas, to realise his objects of desire. He lost his original freedom and became bound.
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The chain of Samsara
~ Atman Nityananda
1. Experience gives us pleasure,
2. Memorized pleasure becomes lust,
3. Lust becomes desire,
4. Desire becomes an urge or an impulse that prompts us to action,
4. Action leads us to experience,
5.Experience gives us pleasure,
1. Memorized pleasure becomes lust.
2. Lust becomes desire.....
and this chain goes on without a break.
After some time our behaviour of seeking pleasure through certain sensory stimulus becomes habitual and attachment and greed are developed as well. That means we suffer when we cannot have this pleasure and we want more and more of this pleasure.
There is also multiplication of every kind of pleasure. We seek variety of sexual partners and various ways to multiply sex pleasure, we seek variety of food pleasure, drink pleasure and so on.
There is no end in the insatiable thirst of lust for more, greater, more intensive and different kind of pleasures. Lust using imagination discovers innumerable ways to multiply pleasure. Pornography and glutton-food industry are the most obvious examples.
Addiction is the culmination of the conditioned mechanical pattern of pleasure, lust and attachment.
This vicious circle of:
Pleasurable experience-lust-desire-action-pleasurable experience-lust-desire-action-pleasurable experience......
goes on in eternity or stops when due to suffering we decide to destroy this this chain by sincere, regular, systematic, daily sadhana (spiritual practice).
Rajas and tamas gunas, imagination, identification, projection, superimposition are the components of Samsara or bondage.
Tamas makes the mind dull, fool, obscured, inattentive, without discernment, and thus unable to see things correctly and rajas makes the mind extroverted, passionate, restless and attached to the objects.
Sattva, self-awareness, detachment, dispassion, discrimination or discernment, dispassionate self-observation, disidentification, conscious attention, concentration, self-enquiry, reflection, prayer, Japa nama and meditation are the components of liberation.