Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 16

The source of misery is not frustration of desire but domination by desireby Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 16

When we don’t get something that we want and feel miserable, we attribute that misery to the frustration of our desire. But might such an attribution be myopic?

Suppose desire for alcohol drives an alcoholic out of bed in the middle of the night. He goes to a nearby bar, but finds to his irritation that its alcohol stock is over. Attributing his misery to the frustration of his desire, he decides to find some other bar. But as he comes out of the bar and looks around, he notices the closed lights in the nearby houses. He gets an epiphany: “While everyone is sleeping peacefully in their beds, I am wandering around at this unearthly hour, being dragged out of bed and halfway across town. I am miserable not because of not getting alcohol but because of desiring it.”

I am miserable not because of not getting alcohol but because of desiring it.

This example illustrates that while frustration of desire is the immediate cause of misery, a more fundamental cause is domination by desire. Pertinently, the Bhagavad-gita (16.12: asha-pasha) refers to desires as shackles.

Only when we identify the cause of misery accurately can we counter it fruitfully. As long as the alcoholic thinks that his misery is due to not getting alcohol, he will spend his energy trying to get it. But once he understands that his misery is due to having the desire for it, he will invest energy on breaking free from that desire.

We may not be alcoholics, but we too have desires that we will be better off without. Instead of spending our energy on struggling to fulfill desires, if we invest that energy – or even a fraction of that energy – on purifying ourselves of unnecessary desires by practicing devotional service, we will become free from much of the misery presently afflicting us.