Whenever we try to change ourselves for the better, we often feel that we need willpower. And we may think of purification as something other-worldly, something religious or puritanical with little relevance to our daily life or to our quest for self-improvement. But purification is closely related with willpower. To understand their relationship, let’s first get a clearer sense of these two terms.
Willpower refers essentially to our capacity to persist in our healthy desires and to desist from our unhealthy desires. And purification refers essentially to the process whereby our pure or healthy desires become stronger and our impure or unhealthy desires become weaker.
Let’s consider two ways willpower and purification inter-relate:
Purification increases our willpower: When can we say our willpower has increased? When we resolve to do something worthwhile and are able to stick to it. Such worthwhile resolutions begin with healthy desires, be they to become fitter through regular exercising, calmer through regular meditation or wiser through regular reading. Because purification strengthens such healthy desires, we can in a purified state more easily translate those desires into actions. When we are thus better able to do the worthwhile things that we strive to do, we realize to our delight that our willpower has increased.
Purification decreases our need for willpower: When we become purified, our unhealthy desires weaken — self-centered or short-sighted cravings such as those associated with overeating, oversleeping or excessive net surfing no longer pull us as forcefully as they did in the past. Even if those somehow arise due to outer perception or inner recollection, we don’t feel tempted or tormented by them; that’s why, we don’t need much willpower to say no to them.
Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (02.65) states that when we attain the mercy that results in purity (prasada), our inner struggle subsides substantially — and we become joyful.
One-sentence summary:
Purification doesn’t just increase our willpower, it also decreases our need for willpower by reducing and removing the forces that stop us from doing worthwhile things.
Think it over:
- What does purification mean?
- How does purification increase our willpower?
- How does purification decrease the need for willpower?
***
02.65: For one thus satisfied [in Krishna consciousness], the threefold miseries of material existence exist no longer; in such satisfied consciousness, one’s intelligence is soon well established.
To know more about this verse, please click on the image
Leave A Comment