Tuesday, June 20, 2006
GITA 108 DAYS - DAY 10
10. Recognize the lust that appears in disguise
We have to win the war within us against lust, etc., which are born out of ourselves. The lust can appear itself disguised in different ways and one should kill it by carefully analyzing its origin.
The lust in us will present itself along with various value notions. One person may start helping a widowed neighbor with a fatherly attitude while assisting and extending security. Another person may help a destitute lady on the street with an attitude of a big brother. But upon careful analysis, we may recognize that it was the lust that manifested itself in fatherly and brotherly disguise. So we must observe and analyze our emotions such as sympathy and love to realize where they are leading us.
In the war front, Arjuna was seeing five generations of people who are dear to him: grand fathers, fathers, friends and acquaintance of his age, children and grand children. These are all representatives of different attitudes an individual have in him. We are not ready to end these attitudes because they are so dear to us and we don’t want to destroy the emotions that are pleasing to us. We may even declare that “I will seek good fortunes (punya) that come from noble actions - except when that involves destroying my favorite activities because they please me”.
We should be ready to cut and remove what is not suitable in us. In fact a scuplturer is not adding anything new to make a sculpture. He merely removes the portions of the stone that are not suitable and thus the stone evolves into a divine, worshipful form. When we kill all our unsuitable emotions and attitudes, we will also evolve to become worshipful human beings.
We have to win the war within us against lust, etc., which are born out of ourselves. The lust can appear itself disguised in different ways and one should kill it by carefully analyzing its origin.
The lust in us will present itself along with various value notions. One person may start helping a widowed neighbor with a fatherly attitude while assisting and extending security. Another person may help a destitute lady on the street with an attitude of a big brother. But upon careful analysis, we may recognize that it was the lust that manifested itself in fatherly and brotherly disguise. So we must observe and analyze our emotions such as sympathy and love to realize where they are leading us.
In the war front, Arjuna was seeing five generations of people who are dear to him: grand fathers, fathers, friends and acquaintance of his age, children and grand children. These are all representatives of different attitudes an individual have in him. We are not ready to end these attitudes because they are so dear to us and we don’t want to destroy the emotions that are pleasing to us. We may even declare that “I will seek good fortunes (punya) that come from noble actions - except when that involves destroying my favorite activities because they please me”.
We should be ready to cut and remove what is not suitable in us. In fact a scuplturer is not adding anything new to make a sculpture. He merely removes the portions of the stone that are not suitable and thus the stone evolves into a divine, worshipful form. When we kill all our unsuitable emotions and attitudes, we will also evolve to become worshipful human beings.
# posted by Sukumar Canada @ 8:36 PM 
