Read this recent question-and-answer session with meditation master Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, discussing the mind, desire, and dispassion.
Audience members discuss with Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar the topics of desire, manifesting one’s desires, and the impact different types of desires have in your life and on the world. Read some of their conversation here:
Staying alert and present
Q: How can we keep the mind attentive and present, even while doing an effortless activity?
Gurudev: The mind wanders because of too many desires and too many things to do. If your mind is focused, it doesn’t wander. But if you have 100 things to do, it gets scattered. At this time, you simply have to prioritize. What do you need to do?
First, take a look at your priorities. Then, things will fall into place.
The second is meditation. When your mind is all over the place, do bellows breath and SKY [Sudarshan Kriya]. After that, you’ll see that the mind settles down.
Dispassion can also help the mind to be centered. You have some dispassion every night you go to bed, willingly or unwillingly. Otherwise, you can’t sleep. If you’re obsessed with any passion, you’ll suffer from insomnia. A degree of dispassion helps you to let go of everything and go to sleep.
We do this consciously sometimes, but unconsciously, we understand that the curtain will come down. The game will end one day. That knowledge suddenly gives you another level of awareness. “What are my priorities? What should I do now? Okay, I’ll do these things, and if it works, fine. If it doesn’t work, that’s fine, too.”
That’s what dispassion is. We say, “I give up.” You give up when you’re frustrated. But without getting frustrated, you could just feel that you’re going to give something up. At that moment, you’re in touch with the vast energy source within you.
Giving up without getting frustrated and agitated is a happy give-up. It may appear difficult, but I tell you, it’s the most beautiful thing to do.
Fulfillment of desire
Q: If we have fewer desires, is there a higher chance of them being fulfilled? How does this work?
Gurudev: With fewer things to do, you’ll do them attentively and put 100% of your energy and focus into them.
When you have many things to do, you need that much energy, that broad awareness and consciousness. If enlightened, you can do a million things without getting bogged down by anything.
The three gunas and desire
Editor’s note: The three gunas are qualities in nature and consciousness. Tamo guna expresses itself as inertia, dullness, anger, and hatred. Rajo guna expresses itself as restlessness, activity, and too many desires. Sato guna expresses itself as joy, happiness, clarity, and knowledge.
Q: How do the three gunas impact our desires?
Gurudev: Desire is all three gunas. Desire cannot be without gunas. It has to be one of them. If it’s a desire for the welfare of everybody, that everyone should be happy, that’s sato guna.
If the desire is only, I should be better, and my enemy should fall, or he should have a problem, that’s rajo guna. Tamo guna is when you want benefits but feel the other guy shouldn’t get that. That’s a tamo guna desire.
A rajo guna desire is competitiveness, saying, “I want to do better, and others should go down.”
Sato guna desire is when you want to excel and help everybody. There could also be combinations of gunas, such as rajo guna and sato guna. That’s good.
But if the rajo guna and tamo guna come together, that’s very dangerous. That’s what cruel people do. They become extra active. They don’t realize what’s right and wrong. They don’t even know why they do what they do.
People engage in terrorism due to a tamo guna desire. It is an intense desire to destroy. What’s happening in wars is tamo guna desire.
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