How desire is both the lock and the key — Desire Management series 5
Suppose we are locked in a prison. Suppose further that the lock doubles as a key — say, it is touch locks that if operated [...]
How to communicate effectively – an example from the Bhagavad-gita
Suppose we are guiding someone about how to take a complicated treatment that involves various medicines at various times. In one sense, every step of [...]
Our entanglement is caused not by our attachment, but by our detachment
As spiritual beginners, we may think that our attachments cause our entanglement. Such thinking doesn’t probe deep enough – it fails to ask: Why are [...]
Devotion defangs and domesticates our desires
Desires are often thought of as enemies for seekers because they entangle us in material things. The Bhagavad-gita (13.22) stresses that the desire to enjoy [...]
The mind may be a drinker, but the intelligence doesn’t have to be a bartender
Suppose a compulsive drinker enters a bar and orders drinks. The bartender may be obliged to obey, but if the drinker orders a well-wishing friend [...]
The essence of liberation is not transportation but transformation
Seekers sometimes worry whether at the end of their lives they will be liberated and thus attain Krishna’s abode. While such a worry is definitely [...]
Spiritual perfection requires detachment from our own body, what to speak of others’ bodies
Contemporary culture revels in glamorizing sex through myriad mind-grabbing means. This pervasive glamorization sometimes even seeps into spiritual circles, wherein appear slogans such as sambhoga [...]
Without devotion, renunciation comes painfully; with devotion, even liberation comes joyfully
“To avoid karmic bondage, renounce the world.” This widespread notion governs Arjuna’s reasoning at the start of the Bhagavad-gita. However, the Gita recommends an alternative [...]
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 [...]
Liberation is not just about what we are released from but also about what we are released to
Patients admitted in a hospital long to be discharged so that they can return home and be with their loved ones. Even while staying in [...]
If we let all that happens matter, then we don’t let all that matters happen
We sometimes make small things unnecessarily big. When we are on our way to office, unseasonal rains delay us and upset our schedule for the [...]
Are we rejecting the eternal because the temporary has rejected us?
When we face misfortunes that seem impossible to cope with, we may get the question: “I am trying to be a good person and a [...]