Words from the Master

If you are able to live out only your desires, you will die a peaceful death, full of satisfaction even if it is on the platform. If you live your whole life with borrowed desires, you would never have seen real fulfillment and even if you are living in a marble house, you will have a prolonged death, pulling and pushing, unable to get liberated from your unfulfilled borrowed desires.

In Jainism, there is a belief that when you are born, the entire quantity of food and energy that you will need during your lifetime is sent along with you. This is a way of saying that whatever your true requirements in this birth are, Existence equips you with the energy to fulfill them before sending you to planet Earth.

But when you start using this energy to realize borrowed desires, you start feeling that nothing has been given to you; that nothing is enough. You feel tired, exhausted and frustrated that nothing is happening. This is how the problem starts.

You see: There is a difference between needs and wants. Your needs are already taken care of in some way. It is possible to satisfy your needs, but it becomes impossible to satisfy your wants because they are changing and unclear all the time. Every time one want or desire is fulfilled, a hundred more come up.

It is our nature to desire endlessly, because continuously we are seeing what others are having and wanting all that for ourselves. You may not own up to this fact at the outset, but if you deeply analyze yourself, you will see that this is true. Your mind plays so cunningly and passively that you will not own up to this at the first instance.

For example: You go to the shop to buy a fan for your house. But on the way you meet some friends on the road, who tell you that they are going to buy some other things in other shops. Immediately, you are tempted to buy them and so you change your track and go and buy along with them. Then you find that you don’t have enough money to buy your fan!

If you start comparing and living out others’ desires, you will land yourself in deep trouble because you will not know where you stand. Always measure yourself with your own meter, never with others’ meters. It is the most foolish and dangerous thing to do.

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This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.