Layer of Desire
A sage was once asked to show the miracles of the mind. He pointed to a shopkeeper in the market selling honey, who dipped his fingers in the honeypot and then wiped them on the wall of his shop. Suddenly dozens of flies swarmed about the honey, and then a lizard appeared and started to eat the flies, one by one. Just then a cat crept over to the wall and pounced on the lizard and ate it. At the moment, a dog saw the cat and chased it around the shop, and in a furious fight, killed it. Now, that was the shopkeeper’s pet cat and he angrily told his servant to kill the dog. Unfortunately, that was the dog of his customer, who was enraged when he saw the shopkeeper’s servant trying to kill his dog, and he started attacking the shopkeeper with violent blows.
The sage asked, “Now are you satisfied? This is the miracle of the mind- it creates desires of every kind, and you see where they lead. And it does this every moment in every part of the world.”
This indeed is the characteristic of the conscious mind, desire. It has three functions : (1) Sensing; (2) Desire or aversion; (3) Acting …. Sensing the stimuli of the external world through the five sense organs (eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin); having desire or aversion to those stimuli; and acting to materialise that desire or aversion with the five motor organs (hands, feet, vocal cord, sexual and excretory organs).
For example, a child sees (with her eye organ) an ice cream vendor on a hot day, and hears (with her ear organ) the vendor’s enticing bell. A strong yearning to taste that cool sweetness on her tongue fills the child’s mind (desire).
She runs to her father (on her feet organs), whines to him (with her vocal cord organ) to give her some coins, runs back to the vendor, gives him the money (with her hand organ), and grabs the cone and eats it.
Another example : You are sitting under a tree beside a stream. Suddenly you feel (with your skin organ) a furrry object drop onto the back of your neck. A wave of fear and revulsion fills your mind (aversion) as you remember that this area is known for its poisonous spiders.
You jump up and hop about (using your feet organs), frantically brushing the object from your neck (using your hand organs) and crying out incoherently (using your vocal cord organ).
Just consider for a moment your actions during the past hour, during the past day, the past year – your whole life. How many of them were precisely in this pattern: sensations of stimuli of the external world, desire or aversion in reponse to those stimuli, and actions to materialise that desire or aversion? Are not most of the Many eligious traditions throughout the ages have taught that to be “holy” we should not express these physical instincts but despise and repress them. But these instincts are natural and rather than being denied, they should be controlled and channeled.
Human existence is much more than the instinctive drives of the conscious mind, activating the physical body to enjoy the external world through the senses. The materialistic ideologies in the world today, which are based on physical satisfaction and enjoyment, concentrate primarily on the economic aspects of lite. Such ideologies gradually crudify human beings, since they confine human existence merely to the conscious mind, the lowest and crudest level of being, and disregard mental elevation to subtler, more expansive levels. The world needs a socioeconomic theory which recognizes the sublter levels of human existence as well, and seeks to nurture them as well as the gross physical body.** (To be continued next week.)
