Four stages in managing desires — Desire Management series 9
To understand how desire management can progress in our inner world, let’s compare it with how people management may progress in the outer world. Both [...]
Three ways sensual desires imprison us in misery — Desire management series 4
A prison is essentially a place of restriction — a prisoner’s movements are restricted by the prison walls. But if the restrictions are not as [...]
How desire takes control of our life — Desire management series 1
Suppose we get into a car and start it to go somewhere. Suppose further that next time when we get into that car, it starts [...]
If we lack freedom or willpower, what can we do?
When we try to do something worthwhile, if external situations hamper us, we may lament our lack of freedom. Or if internal conditionings hamper us, [...]
How to ensure that our phones are connecting us, not disconnecting us
In today’s fast-moving world, we seek phones to stay connected with our loved ones while we are physically away from them. But when we are [...]
Thinking about worldly things is not attachment, being unable to stop thinking of them is
Attachment is a state of mental bondage wherein our thoughts compulsively gravitate towards the object of our attachment. The Bhagavad-gita (01.01) begins with the words [...]
What we initially indulge in casually, we eventually indulge in compulsively
When contemporary culture tempts us with addictive indulgences such as drinking, it often offers a common rationalization, “Just drink once. It’s no big deal.” However, [...]
Satisfying our longing for the infinite with finite pleasures ends in addiction
We all long for pleasure. And the world promises us pleasure through its myriad material objects. But materialist propaganda downplays the fact that even the [...]
Purity is the key to freedom from misery
Suppose an alcoholic has become sick because of excessive alcohol indulgence. While the disease is a danger that needs treatment, an equal, if not greater, [...]
See through the mind’s troika of denial, misdirection and self-victimization
The mind often sabotages us by making us do foolish things. Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (06.06) cautions that the mind can be our enemy. The mind [...]
We may not be caught for our wrongdoings, but we will be caught by our wrongdoings
Many people think that immoral behavior is ok as long as no one catches them. For example, people from culturally conservative families may think that [...]
Don’t let device aggravate vice
We all have our vices that if given a free run can harm others and harm us too. Keeping such vices under control has been [...]
That which is unwillingly learned is willingly unlearned
When we practice bhakti-yoga, we frequently find ourselves relapsing to worldly anti-devotional indulgences. Why does this happen? Because in the school of devotion we are [...]
Ignorance makes the insufferable seem irresistible
Drunkards suffer terribly due to their addiction – the hangover, the mortification at finding oneself crazed out, the humiliation when one becomes an object of [...]
Indulgence makes our bonds thicker, rougher and tighter
When anti-devotional worldly pleasures tempt and torment us repeatedly, we may feel that indulging in them will bring relief, getting them out of our way. [...]
The vision of the one in everyone grants liberation
Addiction is a result of fragmental vision. Alcoholics see only the pleasure of the drink, not the pain of the consequent hangover. Although they may [...]
Blinded and addicted or illumined and liberated?
Suppose everyone in a country was addicted. With everyone suffering the pulls and falls of addiction, the addiction would seem normal. Because addicts frequently see [...]
How our freedom of thought is lost – and regained
The Bhagavad-gita (2.44) indicates that worldly attachments, especially attachments to sex and money, abduct our consciousness and sabotage our prospects for inner stability. Whenever we [...]