The War Against Anger and Desire

Self-Inquiry – Self-Assessment:

(1) Mark the 2 or 3 ideas below that are now most important to you.

(2) See especially item #6 (the three shrouds) and respond:

(a) What smoke (mild desires) in life do I need to blow away?

(b) What dust (entrapping desires) do I most need to wipe away?

(c) What deeply buried desires might be darkening my spirit

during this lifetime?

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Krishna replies to Arjuna:

“You asked, ‘What is the awful force that drags us even against our will into selfish deeds?’ Let me explain.

___ 1) Desire is the force that drags you—the selfish desire which rises from your action-oriented nature.

___ 2) Desires are insatiable—a bottomless pit! The more you feed them the more they crave. Desire never says, “Enough!”

___ 3) Anger is always linked with desire, and anger corrupts everything!

___ 4) The desire-anger duo is your insatiable arch-enemy – your most formidable foe here on earth!

___ 5) Desire clouds your spiritual light and buries your power of discrimination.

___ 6) At all levels of spiritual attainment it is desire that shrouds the glow of the Atma, which is one’s inner light.

a. For spiritually advanced people desire is like smoke that covers the flame; it is easily blown away to reveal the light of knowledge.

b. For worldly-caught people desire is like dust that requires diligent wiping so the light can shine.

c. For dull people desire enfolds them as if they were an embryo buried in darkness; only time and a new birth brings light.

___ 7) Wise ones maneuver clear of desire, but even then it dons disguises and sneaks furtively into the mind.

___ 8) Marauding desire has captured, and now firmly occupies all three bodily stations: senses, mind, and intellect.

___ 9) From those three field headquarters desire attacks and murders your wisdom and your discrimination, and shrouds the Atma within.

___10) Attack these marauders! Find the key bastions of these fiercely destructive desires and lay siege!

___11) Recapture your senses, mind, and intellect and use them for divine purposes.

___12) Know the strategic positions you should occupy in this war. Desire holds more firmly to subtle things than to gross. Your senses are more subtle (more refined and harder to notice) than your body; your mind is more subtle than your senses; your intellect is more subtle than your mind.

___13) Far above all of those is the subtlest of all, the Atma—so refined that it is beyond any and all desire!

___14) Occupy this highest of high ground. To realize (to know in your heart) the truth of Atma is the principal strategic position for eradicating the enemy desire.

___15) Self-realization is true spiritual knowing (jnana). This level of wisdom—no matter how faint, filmy, or subtle—is beyond all your lower qualities!

___16) Let your very highest Self (Atma), your true nature, rule. Control your self with your Self!”

– Krishna

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