The word ‘order’ can have two meanings: instruction (“You have to take medicine thrice a day — those are the doctor’s orders”) or arrangement (“The order of events for the day are posted on the notice board”). To understand how these two senses of order can help in managing desires, let’s compare desires with people we are to meet.

Suppose during a day we have to meet several people who too are eager to meet us. We may not be in a position to order some of these people — they may be our superiors or equals . Still, we can create some order for our day, by assessing how important those people are and how urgent their issues are. Then even if someone insists aggressively that they want to meet right away, we won’t passively cave in to their demand. 

We can treat our various desires like different people who want to meet us. Some desires may be too strong for us to reject with a flat no order. Still, just because they are insisting doesn’t mean that we give them time first, leave alone give them the most time or all our time. And saying no to them will be much easier if we have already kept in mind other meetings that matter more for us. 

While we may still need willpower to manage some desires, we can manage many other desires by carefully contemplating our priorities. To aid us in such prioritization, we can take guidance from wisdom-texts such as the Bhagavad-gita (16.24) — such guidance is foundational for restraining our destructive desires (16.23).

One-sentence summary:

If we order our desires by arranging them according to intelligent priority, we can manage them without needing to always order them by raw will. 

Think it over:

  • How do the two senses of ‘order’ relate with desire management?
  • List your top ten desires based on their importance and urgency. 
  • Consider three desires that you often cave in to and plan which more important desires you can replace them with. 

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16.24: One should therefore understand what is duty and what is not duty by the regulations of the scriptures. Knowing such rules and regulations, one should act so that he may gradually be elevated.