Ramayana series 2 – Ravana’s recklessness – Attachment makes us overvalue things

[Talk at Phoenix, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
And today I will speak on the theme from the Ramayana, of how Ravana had ten heads and zero brains. So the idea is that all of us have certain amount of intelligence. And that intelligence is not just in terms of the capacity to process information.
The essence of intelligence is not in how we analyse data. Most of what IQ is measured today is about analysing information, remembering, recollecting, grouping, segregating. But the essence of intelligence is seen in making decisions.
How we live our life. The Ramayana is a book which depicts how different people act in different ways. In fact, if we see in the Ramayana, no one is actually a very foolish person.
Ravana is also very intelligent. Ravana, interestingly enough, is born from Brahmin parents. Now he was a son of a sage.
So if you consider lineage, it’s quite a respected lineage. And he had a great capacity to perform austerities. And thereafter, by performing all those austerities, he got extraordinary powers.
At some times in our lives, we all get questions. When we go through our lives, we observe ourselves, we observe others. And we see some people behave in terrible ways.
Outrageous, unconscionable ways. We may see it in our immediate community around us. We may see it quite frequently in the broad news, which we keep hearing.
Nowadays, there are news outlets which look for the most sensational news in terms of the most horrifying news and convey it. Terrible events do happen. So when we see such things, we get the question, how can anyone act like this? So sometimes there are people who just shoot and kill randomly innocent people.
There is a big fear in America, here in schools, that some random shooters might enter. So what makes people act in the way they do? That is a question which we all get. And sometimes we ourselves, we may catch, we find ourselves doing something which is unacceptable.
Why did I do that? What made me do that? So we will analyse Ravan from this psychological perspective to understand some universal human behavioural insights. Ravan has, as I said, he had great strength and he had great capacity for austerity. So by which he pleased Shiva.
In fact, if we go to the Kashi Vishwanath temple, there is a set of prayers which are offered regularly to Kashi Vishwanath and they are called as Ravan Stuti. It is not the praise of Ravan, it is praise by Ravan. So it is the praise that Ravan has offered to Shiva.
And he was learned in that sense. And by that learning, he got the power, he pleased Shiva and he got great power from him. Now after he got great power, he was somehow he, in general, whenever there is power, there is the possibility of abuse of power.
So we have desires which are internal driving forces for us. And then we have external resources for fulfilling those desires. Say somebody may want to go to, maybe I want to go to Disneyland, I want to go here, I want to go there.
Now there are desires which are inside. And then there are resources which are outside. So sometimes, if somebody doesn’t have some resources, then they may not be able to fulfil some desires.
Say we want to go and do this or do that, but we just don’t have the resources for that. We get the resources, we may fulfil those desires. However, in some cases, there are some terrible desires that are there within all of us.
And then when the resources are not there, that’s how we stay regulated. But if the resources come up, then people start doing terrible things. One of the greatest civilising forces in society is society’s faith in God.
The belief that I am accountable to some higher power for my actions, that is what keeps people civilised in some ways. Now of course, there is nothing necessarily that will always keep people civilised. People may imagine God to be a person who hates the people whom I hate.
And when people imagine God to be like that, they may use belief in God to attack and kill others. So actually, what we believe in, who we believe in, the object of belief is important, but the consciousness of the believer is also important. So just the belief in God in itself may or may not civilise people.
So Ravan, he believed that Shiva was powerful and he praised Shiva. He got power from Shiva, but once he got that power from Shiva, he started abusing it. He started abusing it to plunder people.
He started abusing it to abduct anyone, any women who caught his fancy. And he started wreaking terror wherever he went. So now while he was doing all this, there are desires and there are resources.
So the existential dilemma for all of us is that the resources are always finite. And most people try to seek happiness by increasing the resources available to them. So we think that the unfulfilled desires are the cause of unhappiness.
Oh, I want to have a big house. I want to have a big car. I want to have this.
I want to have that. And these desires, as long as they are unfulfilled, we feel this is the cause of my unhappiness. And we work outwards, externally to increase the resources available to us so that we can fulfil the desires and thereby we can become happy.
That is one way of seeking happiness. Another way of seeking happiness could be to evaluate our own desires. Are these really important for me? Will fulfilling these desires really lead to happiness? It is not that we have to reject all desires, but if we don’t evaluate our desires consciously, if we don’t select our desires consciously, the desires will be selected unconsciously.
Even if somebody has a lot of wealth, still all of us have a finite amount of time. So if we want to relax for 2-3 hours, that’s the leisure time we have. Now, there are different kinds of leisures.
We might read some uplifting literature. We might just watch some movies. We might just gossip with someone.
We might just go to sleep. There are many ways in which we can use our leisure time. If we don’t consciously select our desires, the desires will be selected unconsciously.
And whatever resources we have, we will use those resources for fulfilling some desires. So even a person who has huge amount of resources, still unless they process their desires and select their desires, they cannot actually find happiness. The difference is that, a significant point with respect to this is, there is internal desire and there is external resource for fulfilling that desire.
And most of us, we spend our energy on getting more and more resources so that we can fulfil the desires. And we don’t often process, we don’t spend much time in processing which desire needs to be fulfilled. Now it’s interesting that different desires they arise with different force within us.
So for example, if say there is a cricket match going on. I say, I want to watch this cricket match. That’s a desire.
For somebody who is a very strong cricket fan, that desire will rise very forcefully within them. But for somebody, ok, cricket is just ok, let’s see what happens. No great interest, but it’s not that I’m somebody diverse to cricket also.
I like to stay updated of what is happening. So then if you miss a match, it’s not a big deal. For somebody it is a big deal.
So desires arise within us with different intensities. But it’s significant that the intensity of the desire within us is not proportionate to the intensity of the happiness that comes externally from fulfilling that desire. Sometimes I feel very strongly, I want to do this.
The desire is very forceful, but after doing it also, ok, what’s the big deal? There is not much pleasure through it. So this is where intelligence comes into the picture. Somebody may be doing some important studies for an exam and suddenly they get the desire.
I want to see what’s latest on my Facebook page. Or what else? You get a notification that somebody has updated their cover photo on Facebook. What photo have they put now? Well ok, you can see it without harm in seeing it.
But it’s not that you have to see it right now when you are doing some very important work. But sometimes the intensity of the desire that comes up, that is not always proportional to the importance of that particular activity. How much it matters, how much of value it has.
So when we become strongly attached to something, what does attachment actually mean? Attachment simply means that we start valuing something far more than its actual value. Everything has value. But when somebody is attached to something, we value it far more than its actual value.
So somebody is extremely attached to cricket. I was travelling in America, there was a devotee who was a traffic cop. And he was telling me that he has to pull up different kinds of people who commit different traffic crimes.
So he told me there was a boy who was a young teenager, just got a new licence and he was driving a car. And he was a baseball fan. So he had his phone on which the baseball updates were coming and kept the phone in front of him.
While driving the car. And then somehow, while driving, something happened in the baseball game, his attention went over there and that very moment he was driving through a school district. And a child stepped in the road.
So he braked, and fortunately the child was not severely wounded, but the child was knocked down. And he got into a lot of legal trouble because of that. So basically, now, when somebody is attached, the importance of one’s own life, the importance of other people’s lives, that is so much more as compared to an update of a baseball match.
But when we start valuing something far more than its actual value, that is when there is attachment. So sometimes in psychology and in psychology of economics, there are two terms that are used. There is value and there is price.
Price is what we are ready to pay to get something. Value is how much it adds something to our life. So the price of something and the value of something are not the same.
So when we are attached, we become ready to pay a price that is far greater than the value of that object to which we are attached. And when this happens, then we can become extremely imbalanced. This is what happened to Ravan.
So Ravan, he is, different characters in scripture signify different lessons or different human strengths or weaknesses. They are historical characters. They existed, but through their life, certain character traits can be understood.
So Ravan is conventionally seen as the personification of lust. So when he became infatuated with Sita, at that time, he just lost sense of everything else. So it’s interesting how his intelligence was initially at least with respect to this, it was sober and again it became aggravated.
So I’ll analyse this in three broad steps to understand when, see for all of us, lust is just one kind of desire. It can be greed, it can be anger, it can be any kind of craving. So whenever a desire starts rising, as I said, any desire starts growing disproportionately, then it rises, rises, it becomes an attachment.
And when it becomes an attachment, then we start neglecting other important things just to fulfil that one thing. So we start paying far greater price than the value of what we are going to get out of it. So when this sort of distortion starts happening in our lives, how does it happen? And what are the times when we can stop it from happening? So if we consider his case or the case of Ravan, initially he didn’t even know about Sita, he didn’t know about Ram, because he knew about Ayodhya kingdom, and he knew that there was a king, but there was an ancestor of Dashrath whom he had defeated.
And since that time, more or less, the kingdom of Ayodhya was considered to be already having been conquered by Ravan. So he didn’t consider it much of a challenge. So he didn’t even know or care who was ruling over there.
So basically at that time, the rule was such that he had his own kingdom, which is in Lanka, and then he had an extended territory, which was in India, till Janasthan was his kingdom. Now, along with that, there were the Vanaras who were living in Kishkindha. And he had an alliance with them.
So Vali and later on, he was friends with Vali. And they had an agreement by which the Vanaras would live in a particular part of the forest and the Rakshas would live in another part of the forest. And till Janasthan was his place.
Now beyond that, he had defeated those kings and he had already proved his superiority. He had also defeated Indra and Svarga. But he did not shift his kingdom to Svarga.
He was comfortable. He just made Lanka more and more prosperous. So there are different kinds of conquerors.
Some conquerors, like in Indian history, the British came to India, they conquered. But if you look at British chronicles of India, most of them thought that going to India is a punishment. Because it is so hot, there are so many diseases.
And although they made a lot of money by plundering India, but still they never really emigrated to India. That’s why the number of Anglo-American, Anglican Indians are very few. Britishers who became Indians.
If you see, many Islamic invaders came to India. Some of them came on plunderous attacks in Mandat. But quite a few of them emigrated and decided to base themselves in India.
So Ravan was the kind of person who just plundered, ravaged the kingdom and then come back. And he had his own kingdom. So when his outpost of Janasthan was devastated, so first Akampan came to him.
Akampan was one of the only general who survived from the outpost of Janasthan, which he had, where Kharadusha and Trishula all of them were there. They all were defeated and destroyed. But Akampan fled.
And his name was Akampan, but when he came in front of Ravan, he was doing Kampan. He was shivering. What happened? And when Ravan heard that his whole outpost had been destroyed, he said, who dare destroy something like this? He says, who is courting their death by attacking my outpost and my own brothers? So he said it was a human being.
What? Was that human being assisted by all the gods? He said, no, he was all alone. How is it possible? He says, I will take revenge. I will destroy him.
So Akampan said, please don’t do this. Please don’t do this because his power is too great. And then, see, everybody whenever they tell their story, nobody really tells in their story how they did anything wrong.
It is said that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan. When things go wrong, that person did like this, that person did like this, that person did like this. So Akampan, he told the story in such a way, he actually told how Ram is extremely powerful and he said, Ravan was about to go and attack.
Then Vibhishan checked him. He said, wait a minute. He says, why did the confrontation take place? Then he described that actually Sripankar came and complained.
Why did he complain? Sripankar’s part didn’t come up only. So why did the confrontation take place? He says that Ram was living in his hermitage and we went and Kardosha went and attacked. If we ourselves went and attacked him then we can’t blame him for defeating.
He was only defending himself. And Akampan also said that actually he is extremely powerful. He is one person who has destroyed everyone.
And then Vibhishan also reminded Ravan that you have that benediction of not being killed by anyone but humans are not included in that. So then hearing this, his anger came down. Now his anger came down so then Sripankar came over there.
Sripankar, when she came, she was furious. She started deriding Ravan. What are you doing just sitting on this throne when your own citizen and your own sister has been dishonoured and disfigured? And she saw her nose had been cut off.
And when she chastised him like this, he was angry. Who has done this to you? I will cut off his head. Cut off your nose and cut off his head.
And as soon as she heard this, she became very happy. She said actually it was this wretched Ayodhya prince Ram who did this. Now as soon as Ravan heard the word Ram, his temperature cooled down.
And he decided not to do much about it. But then when Sripankar saw this, Sripankar immediately changed tack. In every relationship, when we live with people or when we know people well, every relationship at one level is a power struggle.
Every person is trying to control the other person. Sometimes the control can be for good, sometimes the control can be for bad. Sometimes parents want to guide their children, so parents want to control their children to some extent.
So in every relationship there is a power struggle. And in that power struggle, people try to find out how can I press the other person’s buttons. What that means is that all of us have certain weaknesses.
And if something is spoken about, something which we are very attached to or vulnerable about, immediately we explore. So pressing the buttons, it comes from a mechanical metaphor like a machine. You press a button then the machine will function in a particular way.
So we all have free will, so we are not like machines. But still we all also have certain conditionings. We are wired in particular ways.
And if somebody loves to say we want to go out to see a new town or something like that. We are there. I am very tired, I don’t want to see.
But then if somebody loves to shop, there is a big shopping mall over here. Let’s go now. So what happens? If anything we are attached to then if somebody knows that we are attached to that, they press those buttons.
So Shurpanakha knew which button of Ramana to press. And he said, Ramana, why I had gone there? Because when I saw Ram, Lakshman, when I saw them, there was this extremely beautiful woman Sita. And I felt that she is just right to be your queen.
I went there just to get her for you. Actually, she had no thought of Ravana when she went there. When she went there, she actually was captivated by Ram and she wanted Ram as her husband.
As at least her lover. So she took on a very attractive garb and went and propositioned Ram. And then Ram said actually, I am already married to Sita.
She is married first to me, so you will have to become the second wife. And she looked around and saw Lakshman. And when Ram saw her looking at Lakshman, Ram actually initially was very playful about it.
He did not want to hurt her or dismiss her. Just playfully says, look at Lakshman. He saw her looking at Lakshman.
So, there is a difference between love and lust. Many aspects of difference. But when it is lust, the object becomes very indiscriminate.
You just want someone to gratify. So, she had no actual affection for Ram. As soon as she saw Lakshman, what about him? He is single right now.
So immediately she went to Lakshman. She started putting her vials on him and charming him. Lakshman said, Lakshman caught Ram’s mood of playfulness.
Lakshman said that actually, I am here as a servant of Ram. So, if you become my wife, you will have to not only serve me, but serve Ram and Sita, every one of us. This will not work for you.
First Ram had refused her. Then Lakshman had refused her. And both of them tried to make it very gentle without really making her feel rejected.
But she started looking here, looking there. Somehow in her mind she thought, actually both of them are rejecting me because of Sita. And then suddenly she just pounced on Sita with no warning.
At one moment she was looking such a beautiful woman and next moment she used her whole demonic might to strangle Sita. And then things became serious this way. Then at that time, Ram told her, Lakshman stop her.
And Lakshman stopped her by chopping off her nose. Now, in general, in the broad Vedic culture, women are not to be attacked. The first challenge which Ram had faced was, the first demon who was faced was a demoness.
That was Tataka. And Ram didn’t want to kill her at all. And Tataka was coming more and more and more.
And she was burning up the hermitage of Vishwamitra. And at that time Vishwamitra told Ram that don’t see her as a woman. She is a demoness.
She is first of all a demon and she is acting in demonic ways. Yes, there is a Kshatriya code that you should not attack women. But in this case, she is acting in a demonic way.
Then Ram decided at that time to kill her. So now for Shurpanakha to try to kill Sita, it was a serious crime. At least attempted a crime.
So then Lakshman stopped her. Lakshman could have cut off her head also. Lakshman did not do that.
Lakshman cut off her nose. So now the idea here was that, why had she come to Ram or Lakshman? Because she was very proud of her attractiveness. So sometimes if somebody has a resource, then they try to gratify their desire.
That resource is taken away, then that source of pride, that source of arrogance, that source that I can do whatever I want, let me also go away with that. So now she, when she went back to Ram, to Ravan rather, what did he say? Actually I had gone to get Sita. It’s a complete distortion.
It is, so everybody tells their story from their perspective. And they tell their story in such a way, the same event is happening, but that event is processed in everybody’s head in such a way, that in everybody’s head, the outer event is happening, but the outer event comes as an inner drama. And in their inner drama, they are the star.
So they are the star. And everybody else is an extra. So she tried to reinterpret events in such a way that, I have done this for you.
Now as soon as Ravan heard about Sita, his eyes flared up. And Ravan, Sivarpanakha saw this. And she started describing the beauty of Sita.
And as soon as she started doing that, so Ravan started getting more and more agitated. So Sivarpanakha is the original founder of the pornography industry. She used all her wily skills to incite Ravan’s desires.
And as the desire started growing and growing and growing, and Ravan’s intelligence just went off. He just, by the time Sivarpanakha finished, he said, I have to get her, get Sita at all costs. Then he made, generally, we are meant to use our intelligence to restrain our unhealthy desires.
But if the desires become too strong, then we start using the intelligence not to restrain the desires, but to rationalise the desires. Rationalise means that we try to prove how actually it is right. So rationalise, the spelling of rationalise is R-A-T-I-O-N-A-L L-I-E-S.
Rationalise. Rationalise. So we use our intelligence, our rationality to somehow prove that what we are doing is right.
So now how did Ravan convince himself that what he was doing was right? He thought, when Sivarpanakha described how beautiful she is, how she is the daughter of the kingdom of Janak, of Janak Maharaj, King Janak, then she started thinking that actually such a princess is not meant to live in the forest. So if I bring her to my palace, then I am doing good to her. I am doing good to her.
I will give her the comfort that she is meant to have. And that’s why I am not going to the full story, but when he eventually abducts Sita and gets her back, he is discouraged first by Marich. He doesn’t listen to that.
Then Marich, he forces him to join in his scheme. Then after that, when Jatayu tries to stop him, Jatayu first tries to give him good intelligence. He says, Ram is powerful.
Don’t abduct his wife, otherwise you will be destroyed. Then when he doesn’t listen to that, he tries to at least trigger his sense of honour. He says that at least be a man.
Don’t take away Sita in the absence of Ram. Fight with Ram and then take her. Otherwise you will be called a coward.
But what he does is he rationalises the action. He thinks that actually this Ram I want to make him suffer and die. So he has his own idea and Shurpanakha helps him get that idea.
Shurpanakha says, you are living across this ocean. Ram will never be able to come here. So Ram is very attached to his wife.
And if you take her away from him, then he will just pine away and die in separation. He thinks that he is getting revenge against Ram for both Shurpanakha as well as the destruction of Kharadushan. This is the way I will make him suffer.
And finally he gets past Jatayu, very brutally wounds Jatayu. And when he comes to Lanka, the first thing that he does is that he takes Sita on a tour of his palace. He shows.
He takes her to all the palaces. Now when Raman goes over there, he does not take the Pushpak Viman first. He has the Pushpak plane which he has got from Kuvera.
But he takes his own chariot and goes. But then he shows her the Pushpak Viman. He says, this is what I conquered when I defeated Kuvera.
This is what I got when I defeated Indra. This is what I got when I did this, when I did that. So he is so convinced himself that what he is doing is right.
In fact, even before, when he takes on the mask or he takes on the garb of a holy person to do an extremely unholy thing, but when he takes on that garb, after Sita comes out of her hut, out of Lakshma Rekha, or when she just comes out of her hut and talking with her, what he tries to do is, he, his whole plan is that if I can get Sita alone, without Ram’s presence, then I will win her over. And then he, initially what he does is, he just does typically what a boy may do when he is trying to woo a girl. He starts by praising Sita’s beauty.
And Sita is very taken aback initially. Because she does not expect this kind of words from a person who is dressed like a holy person. She is taken aback and then, when he sees that Sita is not flattered by his words, then he thinks, what’s happening? And then he changes his form.
And he reveals, he says, I am no ordinary person. I am Ravan. He says, I have conquered this much, this, this, this, this.
This is how powerful I am. This is how healthy, how wealthy I am. And then, like if a boy wants to woo a girl, he will praise her beauty, he will praise his own wealth and then he will trash the competition.
So, then he starts trashing Ram. So, when he starts trashing Ram by saying, Ram, he is a beggar. You know, his own brother exiled him and he couldn’t do anything.
So, what can he give for you? Now, with each of these actions, Sita is becoming more and more alarmed. First, when she hears Ravan, this holy-seeming man, praise her beauty, describe her beauty, she is uncomfortable. When she hears that he is Ravan, she becomes alarmed.
This Rakshasa has come here. She is actually disgusted also. This Rakshas, this demon has come in the form of a holy person.
And then, after that, when he starts criticising Ram, she becomes angry. And Ravan can see that Sita is not at all interested in him. And at that time, Ravan decides to use force.
And he decides to forcibly abduct her. But his whole plan is that he thinks that once Sita actually sees my wealth, sees my power, then she will give herself to me. But, when he takes her on a tour of his whole palace, showing her everything, Sita is not even looking at it.
She has no interest in it. So, here, all this time, he just neglects all that good advice he has got. Then, after that, when Sita refuses all his advances, then he, she even refuses to stay in his palace.
She says that, while my lord is living in the forest, I will not live in a palace. And then, finally, he agrees to put her in his own garden, Ashokavatika. And while she is staying there, then, Hanuman comes there.
Hanuman comes in and single-handedly, first he warns, Hanuman also first wins over the heart of Sita, tells about Ram, and then he, whenever any service is to be done, we first do the service, if we want to do some extra service. Now, first we do the service, and then we do some extra service also. If, say, there is a programme, and we are told to cook rice for the programme.
Say, you know, I think I will cook sweet rice. That’s good. Sweet rice is good.
But if we cook sweet rice and don’t cook rice only, then there will be no staple food there. So, first do the necessary service, then do some extra service. So, don’t do the extra service first.
So, Hanuman does the necessary service first. He communicates to Sita, gets Ram’s message to Sita and gets her message. And then he is about to go back.
He decides to give, meet Ravan, assess his strength and give him a warning. And then he starts just disrupting Ravana’s forest. And not only disrupting, he actually destroys several regiments of Ravana’s soldiers, including Ravana’s son, Akshay also.
And then when Ravan is, finally Indrajith arrests him and gets him there, Hanuman delivers a very stern warning, reminding Ravan that, actually, you don’t have immunity from humans, and you don’t have immunity from monkeys also. So, when Ravan tries to burn his tail, Hanuman uses that very tail to burn half of Lanka. And after that, again Vibhishan comes and speaks to him.
He says, just see the power of one monkey. Hanuman, he also doesn’t want the war to take place. War can be avoided without confrontation, without confrontation, if Sita can be returned back.
That would be best. So, when Lanka is burning, Hanuman expands himself into a giant form. And behind him, his tail is burning.
And then he speaks in a huge, thunderous voice. And he says that, soon thousands of monkeys, like me, will come to Lanka. And he adds, among all the monkeys, servants of Sugriva, I am the least powerful.
So, he uses even intimidation. Intimidation, actually, there is a principle in warfare called deterrence. Deterrence means that, if we know the other person is very powerful, then we won’t attack the other person.
So, if we think the other person doesn’t have much power, somebody who is very aggressive may attack the other person. So, deterrence is also very important. It’s like if two countries are hostile, say India-Pakistan have hostility.
You see, in 1960s, 1970s, a lot of wars happened between India and Pakistan. Two, three wars happened. 1980s also, something has happened.
But after that, no major wars have happened. Little bit always cross-border incursion. One reason for that, there could be many reasons, but one reason is that, if both sides have nuclear weapons, then that serves as a deterrent.
If you attack us, then we will use this. If you attack us, we will use this. So, Hanuman was using the power of deterrence over there.
He said, don’t do this. This is our power. But Ravana did not listen to anything.
And ultimately, his destruction became inevitable. And even in the war, one by one by one, every one of his generals was killed. And yet, he did not do anything.
He did not give up his desire. And eventually, that very desire became the cause of his destruction. So, now, I’ll conclude with a three-point analysis, that here, when we have a particular desire, and it’s not that we can possibly give up all desires, but we need to be able to analyse our desires.
How important is this? And what is the value that I’m going to get by fulfilling this desire? And what is the price that I have to pay for this desire? For Ravana, as a king, now for gratifying his own personal desires, he sent his whole army, his whole kingdom on the path of destruction. That is horribly irresponsible on his part. So, when we get certain desires, it’s important for us to use our intelligence to do this analysis.
This is the price I have to pay for this, and this is the value I’m going to get out of it. And for evaluating this, for our intelligence to be firm enough to do this analysis, we need to have our own intelligence nourished regularly by some source that is not contaminated by such desires. That means, if somebody is an alcoholic, and they already paid a lot of price for their alcoholism, and then, if they also meet with another friend who is an alcoholic, and let’s take a drink.
No, I don’t want to drink. One drink, nothing happens. So, what happens? That person is minimising the price you’ll have to pay for it.
If they want to become free from alcohol, they have to associate someone whose analysis of price and value is not contaminated by desire. So, that is where scripture and those learned in scripture come into our life in a very important way. When we regularly study scripture by hearing and by reading, then our intelligence is nourished in a more objective way.
And then that nourished intelligence can do a more objective analysis. Otherwise, our analysis becomes very subjectively distorted. And beyond this broad framework of scriptural study, scriptural study is not just about memorising verses.
It is about changing our value system. It is about understanding what is truly valuable. And second is association.
Association is even if there are specific desires which come up, there may not be a specific guideline which is given in scripture for that particular desire. But we may not be able to understand the price, we may not be able to understand the value objectively. So, if we have someone who is a friend whom we can connect with, then we can talk with them.
If something is very, we feel strongly driven to do something, it is not that we have to reject it, but we need to evaluate it. And for all of us, we need to have certain boundaries. Because sometimes, what will be the price of a particular desire, we can’t know in advance.
Okay, I just need to do this and then I will get this. But then, some desires to fulfil them, the desire starts off like a, there is a story of Lilliputians, tiny dwarfs. The desire starts off like a dwarf and it becomes like a giant.
We think fulfilling desires is very easy. When we start fulfilling, it starts becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. So then, we all need certain boundaries.
Boundaries means, yes, for fulfilling this desire, I may do this, this, but this is what I am not going to do. Beyond this line, I am not going to cross. So, when I speak in companies, just a couple of days ago, Ishwar Gorankar, Shri Piya Mataji had arranged a wonderful programme in Intel.
More than 120 people came for that programme. It is the biggest corporate programme I have done till now across the world. So, it is wonderful.
So, when I speak in corporate companies, people often, there, everything is about ambition. In corporate, you have to grow, you have to be on the top, you have to succeed. So, how can we talk about, about, say, self-control or self-discipline in a context where everybody is talking about ambition and having bigger desires and fulfilling bigger desires.
So, there I explain that, the boundaries I talk in terms of ethics. So, when our ambition makes us cross the limit of ethics, that is when it becomes greed. Ambition is not bad, greed is bad.
And the differentiation between them is ethics. So, when we are ambitious, we work hard, we learn, we learn, we contribute, and we grow. That is just natural.
But when the ambition makes us cross ethical boundaries, then that becomes greed, that becomes destructive. So, no desire in itself is a bad desire. But when that desire crosses boundaries or that desire makes us do actions which cross ethical boundaries, that is when the desire becomes especially bad.
So, with our intelligence, with our association, and with our own sense of boundaries, which we may get from our cultural upbringing, we may get from our scriptural study, which we may get from our social association, now we have to have that sense of boundaries. And that way, we can protect ourselves from our desires, from distorting us or degrading us. And bhakti is not just about protecting ourselves from our desires.
Bhakti is about protecting ourselves by our desires. That means bhakti involves developing spiritual desires. And when the spiritual desire to serve Krishna is there in our life, to serve the Lord is there, and that desire fills our consciousness.
Let me hear more about Krishna. Let me do more seva to Krishna. Let me do more, chant his name.
Let me worship him more. Let me use my talents in a mode of service to him. And when that desire fills our consciousness, then the other desires which may degrade us or divert us, they themselves get driven out of our consciousness.
They can’t have that much hold on us. So ultimately, bhakti is not just about giving up desires. It is about taking up higher desires, taking up devotional desires.
And when we have that value, then whatever negativities might be there in our lives, we’ll be able to become purified of them. So I’ll summarise what I spoke today. I spoke on the topic of how our desires, how Ravana, he had ten heads but he had no brains.
That means he had intelligence in terms of doing austerity, offering prayers to Shiva, managing an army so that he could defeat opponents, ruling a kingdom. But he did not have the intelligence in terms of taking proper decisions with respect to processing his desires. So intelligence is not just information processing, but it is decision making.
And our decision making is often very much related with the kinds of desires we have. So all of us, we feel dissatisfied because we have many desires that are unfulfilled. And we work outwards to increase the resources by which we can fulfil the desires.
But we can never have enough resources by which we can fulfil all our desires. So the amount of energy we spend in increasing the resources, maybe wealth or power or position, whatever, if we put in some amount of energy to process our desires, then we’ll be able to direct our energy more effectively. Just because a desire is felt intensely does not mean that fulfilling it will give us proportionate happiness.
So this distortion in how strongly we feel a desire and how much satisfaction we get from that desire fulfilment, that is, we can say that there’s a price we have to pay for fulfilling a desire and the value we get by getting the desired object. So these two do not match. Sometimes, most of the times you could say.
And attachment means that we value the desired object far more than its actual value. So when we are attached we become ready to pay an exorbitant price for something whose value may be insignificant. And this can happen to anyone with any kind of desire.
We discussed from Ravana’s character how it happened with him with respect to lust. So he started off, he did not even know about Ram or Sita much. But when he heard about Ram first, he thought of taking revenge.
But when he heard about Ram’s prowess he just gave up the desire. Even when he heard about Shurpanakha being dishonoured and Shurpanakha challenging his sense of honour still his desire was under recognition. Because at that time he had fear of Ram.
So fear of Ram’s prowess. I talked about how fear of God, that there is, I’m accountable to a God, it is one of the greatest civilising forces in human history. Of course how we conceive God is important.
If we conceive God as just an extension of our ego, a person who hates whom we hate, then that may make us do terrible things in the name of God also. But in general, belief in a just God helps us control our lower desires. But when Shurpanakha manipulated the reality, she had gone to just fulfil her own lower desires.
But she presented it as if she was doing it all for Ravan’s sake. And her lust was triggered and he lost all his intelligence. He forgot that he had no immunity from humans.
He neglected the demonstration of power which Ram had given when he had single-handedly defeated all his army at Janasthan. And he went along with a cowardly plan to sidetrack Ram and abduct Sita. He thought that, he was so full of himself that he thought how can any woman refuse him.
He thought he would boo Sita. Just by his own words, in praising her beauty in explaining his wealth and power and trashing Ram, that didn’t work. He abducted her and then he showed her his palace.
Even when that didn’t work, he didn’t give up. He threatened her. And then when Hanuman came, Hanuman gave him strong words of advice and then a fearsome display of power by destroying half of Lanka.
And even he tried to deter warfare by intimidation. But still, Ravan was so blinded by lust that he just couldn’t he just didn’t give up that desire. So he paid a heavy price, horribly heavy price for something which he could never have got.
The value which he got from that was nothing. So, for us when desires start growing disproportionately, we need to check them first of all by our general intelligence. By which we can evaluate that how much is the price and how much is the value.
And if some area, some desires are such that we are not able to be so objective because we are too close to the situation, we are too attached then we need some trustworthy friends or guide whom we can talk with and they can help us to get a more objective perspective. And if we decide to pursue a particular desire also, then we need to set our own boundaries. Okay, I’ll try to get this, but these other boundaries I’ll not cross.
So, no desire in itself is bad but if the desire makes us cross ethical boundaries, boundaries of dharma, then it becomes bad. So, ambition is natural in human life. But when ambition makes us cross ethical boundaries, it becomes greed, it becomes destructive.
Ultimately, bhakti is not just about protecting ourselves from desires, but it’s about protecting ourselves by desires. We become purified and empowered by our devotional desire to serve Krishna and thus we move forward in our life becoming freed, purified of our lower desires. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. Any questions or comments? Yes, please. So, you said that about uncontrolled desire, so once you set boundaries for that, so doing that desire again and again won’t it increase your desire to do more about it? Okay, good question.
So, then how do you control Yeah, so does indulging in a desire simply lead to the strengthened desire? It depends. It’s not that all indulgence will lead to aggravation of the desire. The standard example given for this is a scratching of an itch.
When we scratch an itch, then we have a rash on the body and we scratch it. Then that rash worsens. And I said that therefore it’s best not to scratch it at all.
But it’s not that all scratches say we might just feel an itching sensation on our head and we scratch a little bit. No, it’s not that after that we are going to get compulsive scratches because of that. It’s when already there is a rash on the body.
When already there is a rash and then we scratch that. Then that is when the rash worsens, the itch worsens and things become terrible after that. So, like that there are normal human desires which everyone has.
And it’s not that the normal human desires can be given up or should be given up. All of us like certain foods to eat. So, is it that because I like a particular food item that if I eat it once, then I am going to eat it 50 times or 100 times or 5000 times? Well, at least not immediately.
I may eat it over the course of my life. I may eat it many times. But it is not necessary that every single desire by its indulgence is necessarily going to grow.
It depends on the context. So, it’s like somebody who has a healthy skin, scratching a rash doesn’t make a problem. But somebody who has a diseased skin, scratching something has a problem.
So, we can’t just say I’ll neglect all desires. Nor can we say I’ll accept all desires. We have to understand our consciousness.
We have to understand our strengths. We have to understand our weaknesses. And based on that, we evaluate.
So, if somebody is an alcoholic or has been an alcoholic and if they are buying a new house and they buy a house right next to a bar now, they may say, I’m not going to drink. Well, but they already have the diseased skin over there. So, then every time they pass by the bar, the desire will come.
But somebody who has not had that, who has not never drunk that, has no interest in drinking, even if they pass by a bar they may not feel much. So, basically, which desire in this case, there is no indulgence in the desire. This is proximity to the possibility of indulgence.
But even that, for some people they will get agitated by that. Some people will not get agitated. So, each of us has to process our particular situation and then decide whether I need to indulge in this desire or I need to it is generally, when there is there are three situations.
One is one doesn’t feel a desire strongly and doesn’t indulge in it, neglects it and moves on with their life, doing something more important. The other is one has a desire, one indulges in it and one moves on with life. That desire doesn’t obsess someone.
The other is, third is that one has a desire one indulges in it and it catches the person. And then it just becomes so strong that it becomes disproportionate. So, in general, the greater the structure in our life, the lesser is the rupture that desire can cause in our life.
The greater the structure. Structure means say, if we have a responsible job, if we have family obligations, if we are a part of a spiritual community, then our life becomes more structured. And then there are certain things which are good and we are expected to do them also.
Even if some unhealthy desire comes up within us, there is not much room within our life to fulfil that desire. But if somebody has been brought up in a broken family and now they are living all alone and they are just going from one job to another, they have gone from one relationship to another and there is very little structure in their life. Then if a particular desire comes up that desire, they have no obligation to come out of themselves.
So, sometimes people, when they just start if somebody has nothing to do, they start surfing the net and five minutes, ten minutes, one hour, five hours, ten hours. There is a boy in Thailand, he was surfing the net for 72 hours continuously. And he forgot even to drink water.
Just sitting there surfing for 72 hours, he almost got something like a stroke and fainted. And he collapsed on the ground and his neighbour was there. What happened? They rushed him to a hospital.
And he survived that. So, if somebody is just on vacation, nothing to do, no structure, then you can get so deluded. So, we have to ourselves see our situation and process the desire accordingly.
Any other questions? We started saying that Ravana is an intelligent man, right? So, Ravana did not use intelligence or did not work? Good question. So, did Ravana not use his intelligence or did his intelligence not work? It’s both ways. Intelligence is a resource.
So, it’s like say, somebody is using a computer. And if they know that they spend a lot of time on surfing the net and many times people get some filters not some software to regulate what all sites they visit. Now, suppose somebody has that kind of filter.
But if they don’t activate that filter only, then they have the filter but they are not using it. Or sometimes, there are certain programmes which you can use that you have a particular filter but you block that filter. It is there, it is active but you use some other programme to block it or to bypass it.
So, similarly for Ravana, he did have intelligence. But something else started working more forcefully. And if you consider, always there is an inner conflict going on between us.
Not always in a very intense way but, I want to do this, I want to do that. And something may be a good thing to do, something may be a bad thing to do. When this tug of war is going on within us, it’s not that there is just one winner and the other becomes a loser.
Say, the mind is filled with desires, the intelligence is filled with wisdom. So, sometimes the intelligence wins and when we discipline the desire. But sometimes the mind wins.
Now, in that case, it’s not that the intelligence is just killed or sidelined. Sometimes, in an army, if the army conquers the opposite army’s soldiers, then the opposing army uses the soldiers of this army as human shields. If anybody attacks, they will be attacked.
That is bad itself. But worse still, sometimes, if the opposing army provokes or incites a captured soldier, and the captured soldier starts fighting on the side of the opposite army, then it’s even worse. It’s even worse.
In JNK, there was a report recently, there was some general, not a general, soldier in the Indian army. He disappeared for a few days and the Indian soldiers were searching, where has he gone? Has he been killed? And they found on his Facebook, he has become a militant now. And using the Indian army’s weapons to fight as a militant.
So, that’s where the soldier who is supposed to fight against an army starts fighting for that army. So, similarly, if the desire becomes very strong, then the intelligence not only doesn’t stop the desire, but intelligence becomes a tool to fulfil the desire. So, when the desire from the mind becomes very strong, then the desire starts capturing the intelligence.
Not just capturing, but converting the intelligence. That’s why Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that, Indriyāṇi mano buddhir asyādiṣṭhānam ucyate. In the 3rd chapter, 40th verse, Krishna says that, selfish desire is situated in the senses, in the mind and even in the intelligence.
So, in the intelligence, if that desire which is already present, that means we use our intelligence to fulfil that desire. So, we could say our intelligence is like a disputed territory. There is a part of our intelligence which is fighting against the desire, but there is a part of our intelligence which can fight for the desire also.
And if that part is empowered, that part becomes stronger, then we start using our intelligence to justify what we are doing, or to increase the wrong that we are doing. So, in the case of Rāvaṇa, eventually, he started using his intelligence not just to stop, it didn’t stop working in a sense, he started working for his desire. Regarding desire, I think I have a desire to go to some place or a vacation somewhere that costs some lakhs of rupees, if you take it.
Like 5-6 lakhs, that vacation costs that much. At the same time, in your family, a cousin or someone, we have a financial problem, the same amount. Should I have to go spend my money on the vacation or should I have to help my family? So, if we have some financial resources which we can use to go for a vacation or to help somebody, some distant relative who is in need, what should we do? See, all of us have three modes within us, sattva-guṇa, rajo-guṇa and tamo-guṇa.
And based on sattva-guṇa, based on the prominent mode within us, certain actions seem natural to us, they come very easily, they come naturally for us. And certain actions are very difficult for us. So, if somebody is sattva-guṇa, broadly speaking, in these terms, in terms of, say, resources, sattva-guṇa means that whatever we have, let us divide equally.
Rajas means, yes, we will all divide, but I must get the best part. Tamas means, I must get everything. Let everyone else go to hell.
So, Duryodhana was like in tamas. The Pandavas said, let us divide the kingdom fairly. Duryodhana said, I want the whole kingdom.
I will not give you enough to even pierce a tip of a needle through. So, in general, it is best if we function in sattva-guṇa. But if somebody is in rajas, overall, their consciousness, if their consciousness is overall in rajas, in the mode of passion, where there is a lot of desire to do things and have experiences in terms of pleasure, then the agitation that will be caused for them by not fulfilling a particular desire and by offering help to someone instead.
By offering help to someone, if somebody is in sattva, they will get far more satisfaction than whatever pleasure they might get by going out for a trip. But if somebody is in rajas, the agitation of being deprived, that will be so great that whatever satisfaction you might get by helping others, that will just not stay for long. And some people do favours to others and then afterwards, throughout their life, they make the other person feel low down.
I helped you so much. I helped you so much. I have done so much for you.
So, what has happened is that, that help which we gave, instead of actually improving the relationship and bringing two people closer and making a difference in the other person’s life, that actually simply creates a stream. So, in principle, helping those who are in need is good. In practise, we have to see what is the value we get and what is the price we have to pay.
In our life, all of us have finite capacity to do things. Krishna also says, yukta ahara viharasya. So, recreation also is needed, but in a regulated way.
So, nowadays, for entertainment, people can spend millions and millions of dollars. So, that is just too excessive. So, we have to see that if some kind of break or some kind of recreation is vitally needed for us at a particular time, and if not doing that is going to have severe consequences in terms of our own, what we had promised to our family, what was the expectation over there, then we may decide that we cannot offer that much help.
We might offer some little help, but if what we are doing can be deferred for some time and later on we can do it, later on we can do it later, that’s also fine. In general, each one of us has to do this price-value analysis, and that depends on our own psychological disposition as well as the psychological disposition of others around us. And then we can take a decision.
Yeah? You say everything is price and value, but I think if a person, whatever decisions they make come from what they are from the inside, in terms of their character, their personality, you know, how they grew up in their childhood, it comes automatically to others, and some people do their price-cost-benefit analysis See, when I say the price-value analysis, I am not talking about in commercial terms, now for some people it comes naturally, I agree with you. That’s why I started by saying that what is natural for somebody in Sattva is not natural for somebody in Rajas. So helping others is natural for some people.
And if they can help, they should help. The point here is that each one of us has some instinctive intelligence. Some instinctive conscience.
That means just from within you, this is the right thing to do. Then do it. And that is the if we have been gifted that in a very strong and positive way, that’s a great gift.
But we are talking about situations where that is not there. And then how do we develop that? If somebody has had a very good upbringing or a very good cultured situation in their life in the past, by which they have a strong innate sense of right and wrong, and this naturally they will do something with that. And that’s great.
But if that is not there, then that may have to be conscientiously developed. And conscientiously developed doesn’t necessarily mean that we always have to be calculative at each moment. For major decisions, we may not want to rely only on our instincts.
But we may want to second it with our calm reflections. There is instinctive intelligence and there is reflective intelligence. So sometimes we just have to act on the basis of instincts because there is not much time to process.
So that’s what we have to do. And if our past track record, our past gut feeling has worked well for us, our life experiences have worked well for us, going along with our gut feeling, then that’s what we will do. But when we want to develop a particular faculty which we find that we may not have right now, then analysis is helpful.
When we talk about value, I will talk about price and value. Say for example, if we come to a spiritual programme, if we do some japa, we do some puja. Now, we cannot put a financial value to that.
But it purifies us. It gives us some inner strength. Inner calm, inner bliss.
So that is, we may not even be able to tangibly explain it to someone. Why am I doing something like this? If required, we can try to. But there is something which comes for us naturally.
That where there is a history or a track record of a right decision coming instinctively to us, then we can go along with that. We’ll stop here. So thank you very much.
Thank you for coming. Thank you for taking your precious time.