Desire to Destiny

"You are what your deep driving desire is.

As your deep driving desire is, so is your will.

As your will is, so is your deed.

As your deed is, so is your destiny."

Above verse is from the famous 'Brihadarnyaka' upanishad.

If we can desire anything strongly enough, we can get it.

That may be the reason they say " God does not give us dreams without giving adequate potential to achieve them."

If all this is true, why we find it hard to achieve some things? Others we seem to able to achieve very easily.

Einstein (I believe) famously said "Man can get all that he wants. Can he really will what he wants?"

"Willing to want" - this ties back nicely to the verse from 'Brihadarnyaka' upanishad. "Willing to want" is to DESIRE strongly.

Sri Eknath Easwaran (www.easwaran.org) uses a very simple but powerful metaphor to illustrate the power of desires.

When solar rays are passed through a magnifying glass which can make them converge on a single point, it generates so much heat to burn a piece of paper.

But without such a lens, scattered sun rays may nicely warm us up, but can not set paper on fire.

Our desires, all though very powerful, are very scattered. We are into getting a few pieces of pleasure here, another  few pieces of false-security elsewhere and so on. We have not managed to have all our desires converge to produce the effect we want.

Desire is neither good nor it is bad. It is another form of power. How we manage to transform it is upto us. Electricity can be used to light up a house or burn down the same house.

Similarly our desires can make us or mar us.

Desire is the vital fuel. There is only so much of it. Granted, we all have some extra fuel to let us experiment and experience things and know  for ourselves that they all do not really satisfy us. But, it is expected that we learn from such experiences and their limitations. If we do not but keep repeating same acts time and again, hoping for different results, we are simply wasting away our vital energy. Then when we really need all the fuel to undertake a long journey, we are faced with an empty tank. Let's not get into that situation.

There is another very important aspect to desires. Look at anything you really like. Or even better, look at those things which you used to like very much once and now do not find it  much appealing any more. What happened? Did anything change with object of your original liking? Likely not. Then what? It's your desire. The desire for that object simply vanished. Along with it took away the fascination for that object. Ask people who have quit tobacco or alcohol for good and ask them what changed. They are not able to explain it this way but are like to say 'something gave up.' That something is DESIRE. It's all in the desire. Tobacco is same as it used to be. Alcohol is what it has always been. You had desire for them. And that gave special fascination to those objects.

Success is not a result of some passive combustion. But, it is purposely setting ourselves on fire.

Desire is the fuel. Everything else including our destiny depends on it.

So, the question is - do we consolidate all our desires or let them waste away of thousands of useless pursuits?

Gandhi was known for his witty remarks.

Some reporter asked him "don't you have any ambition?"

Gandhi said "I am the most ambitious person. I would like to reduce myself to ZERO."

Reducing himself to zero was his desire. What he meant to totally remove his EGO. Worthy goal requiring every ounce of desire.

Cheers!

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