Conquering sensual desire
There is a term in Indian spiritual and religious texts: jitendriya. Since indriya refers to the senses, jitendriya means someone who has conquered the temptations of sense pleasures. In other words, he (it’s almost always a “he” in this context) is an individual of indomitable will-power and is no longer swayed by temptations which sense pleasures offer.
I find this notion laughable. The forces of desire which flow through us are Ma. Anyone who talks of “conquering” desires has the arrogance which comes from ignorance — he does not comprehend what Ma is. Ma is the creator and destroyer of worlds and civilisations.
I have side-stepped desire by realising that the waves of desire which sweep through me are Ma. I can stand apart and see my mind, and sometimes my body, being swept along by the wave. I have experienced waves tsunami-like in their power. I have then seen that it is not desire alone which operates in such waves — all emotions operate this way. The only reason I can stand apart and watch these waves flow through me is because I can see Na tvam deho, na te deho. I see these waves flowing through my body-mind machine, and I am separate from my machine. Once this distance is recognized, the body-mind machine can choose to allow the waves to flow without being swept away. It’s strange, but this is how it seems to work.
So, when many would say “I am angry”, I would say “A wave of anger is flowing through the mind.” The wave is not mine; the mind is not mine; it is all Ma.
The idea of “conquering” sensual desire is laughable.
Desires at other levels
Many of us who are somewhat familiar with vedanta and Upanishads probably do not face serious challenges due to sensual desires, and some of us tend to believe that we are free from the clutches of desire. Some of us who lead simple material lives, eat simple food, have relatively few material possessions, tend to believe this the most. I refer to this as the brahmin’s arrogance. This profile of people are often judgmental and self-righteous, less accepting in their minds, and get quite angry when faced with opposition to their views.
We who have this disposition are the most susceptible to second-level
desires. We want our opinion to be heard and appreciated. We want to be
proven right, and our peers to acknowledge that we were right. We want
to be acknowledged as thought leaders. We want to get confirmation,
even if entirely in private, that our hypothesis was correct. So,
even if we have little desire for public adulation or acknowledgment,
we have strong desires.
These desires are very insidious. I try to be vigilant.
And the last of the desires is the desire for God, for liberation.
The architecture of sensual desire
I learned this straight from one of JK’s talks. Then I learned to see this clearly in operation.
Every sensual desire — the most common being food — has two steps. The first step is the sensory input. I see a fresh karanji or imarti. The second step is a thought about it. The karanji is made of pure ghee. It’ll probably be warm still. The mind has a vivid memory of the juicy filling …
That’s when desire kicks in. It’s a two-step structure. If you can see the two steps separately, then you can recognize the sensory input, which triggers nothing, and the thought immediately after, which triggers the desire. Once you recognize the thought as a separate piece, you can watch it come and let it go. The desire can be side-stepped much more easily.
This architecture seems to apply only to desire which acts through sensory input. Does it work for purely cerebral desires, like the desire for recognition or the desire to have my theory proved right? Not sure.