Saturday, April 22, 2006
Vikaras
Something that has always stuck with me and something that I learned in early years, was the inability of bhautik humans to control our indriyas and the inability to fight the vikaras - Kam (sexual desires), Krodh (Anger), Moh (Materialism), Maya (Relationships), Aalysa (Laziness) and Pramad (Self importance). Later on, somewhere else I read a story where a learned-being who happened to have mastered his indriyas and resist all of the above vikaras. One day God decided to take his test, and tempted him to give into the vikaras, one by one, in a series of tests. At each test, the learned-being truly passed God’s test. After the final test, God disguised himself/herself as an ordinary person and met him. He told God about the series of incidents that had occurred today, boasting how he successfully managed to resist all temptations. God smiled. The learned-being had truly resisted all temptations, all but, the arrogance of success.
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2 comments:
I love a quote in relation to this analogy:
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
We can ofcourse find examples of both sorts in the world - ones that approve as well as ones that disapprove the quote. Unfortunately, more often than not, it is the later. I found the annoucement made by Warren Buffet yesterday - to give away his entire wealth for good cause - particularly humble and a gravely scarce quality of detachment from material world, truly inspiring.
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