Craving

Crave for a thing and you will get it.  Renounce the craving, the object will follow you by itself.
Swami Sivananda (Brainy Quote)

I am still working on connections and understanding this idea of wanting. I was surprised yesterday to discover  from the dharma talk I listened to that , "desire" was actually the first of the three realms in which a person can be reborn according to Buddhist and Hindu tradition. Of course, according to these beliefs a person is said to reincarnate and reincarnate until they reach full enlightenment in a life time. Within the "Desire Realm" are said to be several sub realms or "Lokas" that a person can be born into...from that of much too comfortable Gods, to envious warriors, hungry ghosts, angry, aggressive hellions, stupid, ignorant animals and finally  doubting, passionate and desiring humans. The point is...that when a person is reborn into a "Desire Realm' they are not yet fully enlightened.  The closest to nirvana would be the human realm if one is able to transform passion, doubt and desire into faith, that is. (O'Brien, 2018)

Whether the Three realms are interpreted literally as a text on cosmology or as a view of inner evolution, they can teach us a lot about our own individual desire. Desire is equated with a lack of wakefulness, wisdom, truth achieved in a life time. All of these loosely depict the human journey, do they not?  For those few of us, who have little to no suffering in our lives...who get born into states of advantage and power we can  often be so comfortable in that state, that we see no need to enlighten.  We may erroneously see ourselves as already enlightened beings, "special" and "chosen". Or we may be warriors, threatened by the accomplishments of others and in our envy seek to attack so we can have what they have. So ensnared by our envy and our need to have what the other has here on this plane we do not have the time or energy to search for a way out through awakening.  (I will speak to the Hungry Ghost realm in the next paragraph).  We can be trapped by the fires of hell and anger leading us to attack aggressively others because of this anger. This fiery anger is so consuming we cannot see beyond it to the peace nirvana would offer. Or we can be ignorant animals...stupidly believing this is all there is.  Then as humans...we must transform our doubt, passion and desire into something that will help us reach enlightenment. 

 One  of the sub realms described in ancient Buddhist texts  that graphically  depicts how "desire' prevents someone from reaching Nirvana and putting an end to samsara...the endless wheel of birth, rebirth, and suffering, once and for all is the third.  In the "Hungry Ghost'' realm, beings are reborn into entities that have a large hungry belly and only a pinhole for a mouth and a long narrow neck not equipped for swallowing.  This image creates a wonderful allegory to human craving which can lead us on a fruitless and ceaseless journey of seeking to attain enough to put an end to a hunger and thirst we can just not satisfied by external means. This is the realm where we see addiction, obsession and compulsion. 

I guess what some of the Buddhist and Yogic texts are alluding to, is that desire can lead us on an endless search to attain more from  the external world, that will only take us farther away from our true purpose here...to awaken. Is that not what so many other teachings express?

All these teachings reinforce that what we really, really want is to awaken and go home, whether we know it or not.

Hmm!

All is well!

O'Brien, Barbara ( 2018) Six Realms of Desire. Learn Religions.Org. https://www.learnreligions.com/the-realms-of-desire-449740

Plum Village ( June 2019) Eight Realizations of Great Beings/dharma talk from Br. Phap Hai.Deer Park. Part 4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw8dXB5SylI