How do we differentiate between which desire to accept and which to reject?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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how do we differentiate between which desire to choose and which desire to reject actually, I gave an example in the morning about how if I get a whatsapp message with a link I don’t just immediately click the link and read that I check who is the sender of this link does this person send good links or this person just spams my mail spams my messages, based on that we decide whether to look at that link or not so like that, when any desire comes up in our mind rather than immediately acting on the desire, where is the desire coming from or rather, ok now I am feeling hungry but I just took my last meal one hour ago there is no reason why I should be feeling hungry I ate enough also there is no reason for me to feel hungry right now so there is hunger and there is pseudo-hunger so hunger is biological pseudo-hunger is psychological what happens is, the difference between hunger and pseudo-hunger is primarily in terms of two things its untimeliness and specificness that means, if we consider food like a fuel for the body if I fuel my car, and with that car I expect that I should be able to drive for 500 miles but after 100 miles only, my fuel tank is empty then that means, something is wrong over here the fuel meter is defective there is fuel in it, but it is showing defective so if suddenly after having a proper meal, we start feeling hunger it is likely that that is a that is pseudo-hunger, that is not hunger and second is specificness specificness means, I am hungry for gulab jamun well, hunger is simply for food if its specific, its not exactly hunger there is nothing wrong in eating gulab jamun I am simply making the point that there is a biological need of the body and a psychological need of the mind its not that every single desire of the mind has to be rejected you know, if I feel like eating a particular item we can eat it, we all have our preferences but there has to be a discerning based on dharma so whenever a desire pops up in the mind where is the desire coming from? Is this a reasonable desire? is this something which can be satisfied, needs to be satisfied or is this an arbitrary desire which I don’t need to satisfy so that we have to evaluate using our intelligence just because a desire has popped up in the mind, my mind doesn’t mean I have to act on it I have to discern does this answer your question?