When I was getting my first introduction to Spirituality, either because of my biased listening or because of speaker's intentional communication, spirituality and materialism were polar concepts for me. I thought I had to choose one or the other. Mostly, spirituality was tied to talks about God and how desires are mother of all bad things that happen to us. So materialism was understood as quagmire that pulls you deep under - away from Joy.
Now coming to my recent realization - If you think about it, India was most prosperous when it had strong spiritual and cultural values. Even today, when discussion comes to what we have contributed to the world and what are we today known for - it comes to spirituality and culture. In all honesty we have to confess that most of the credit for India being spiritual and cultural goes to our golden past. That means, spiritualism and materialism did exist in harmony and no reason whey they can not coexist today.
In Dalai Lama's words in 'Art of Happiness', "The natural flow of life is towards Happiness". So we all are seeking Joy. We all want peace and also want materialistic wealth to fulfill our desires. None of that is bad. But do we want want a lot of money but no peace? In all honesty how many of us will be able to live in peace even if we have no materialistic wealth in the modern times? Therefore, for a Joyful Life we need to create a balance between our desires to obtain prosperity and our efforts to live a peaceful life. Our ancient wisdom (developed over hundreds of year) has some golden nuggets for us in the form of Dharam Shastra or Science of Desire Management. Its essence is to guide us to fulfill legitimate desires by legitimate means without getting enslaved by them and ultimately learning to outgrow them to attain total fulfillment. Most of us in the process of fulfilling desires either develop stronger of the same or new desires. So we never feel fulfilled. Having no desires will result in the whole world turning ascetic, which is also not practical. The middle path solution is "Desire Management".
All desires originate from desire to get happiness. So how to live in ProJoy state? Which desires should be fulfilled and when? I will sum up this blog with 7 Sutras of Desire Management to achieve ProJoy. Based on the readers' response, I will then further expand on them.
Sutra 1: Let go of illegitimate desires: Desires that result in adharma and sorrow
Sutra 2: Do not fulfill legitimate desires with illegitimate means
Sutra 3: Fulfill legitimate desires with legitimate means
Sutra 4: Cultivate desires for selfless action
Sutra 5: Let go attachment to the result
Sutra 6: Achieve ProJoy while being righteous
Sutra 7: Meditate on your desires & see if they shrink below your means - result ProJoy.
I wish you all a ProJoy Living !!!
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