Struggling With Desire
May 7th, 2008 by padma
Well, what can I say…I am a passionate man. Although I have a wide variety of interests, there are a few things I am very passionate about, such as promoting vegetarianism, animal rights (I’m not a crazy Peta Freak), health and fitness, and values such as peace, compassion, honesty, integrity, and hope. I have realized that in order to really make an impact, (I mean more than a single man helping one person at a time) I would need the income necessary to branch out and form my own charity. However, the crux of this problem is that to create income I am required to spend a large amount of time trying to develop financing and capital. Now, at face value this doesn’t seem so bad because it is just the way the world works. However, I have found that as I focus more of my intent onto the path of wealth generation, it becomes very easy to get “sucked in” to the game of chasing the almighty dollar.
What may have started as an honest quest to generate wealth for a good cause, quickly turned into a cause strictly for wealth itself. I did not even notice the transition because it happened so stealthily. After months and months of working my tail off chasing the dollar, I finally came to my senses and realized what had happened. It was one of those Voila! moments. So now, I understand why my struggles became struggles rather than successes. I’ve thought long and hard about this process and I think I may have found a few insights into how this happens and the effects it has:
- My focus created my intent, which created a whirlwind of cause and effect that altered my course.
- My course become less “pure” and more “greedy” and thus I found negative outcomes, including emotional struggles and exhaustion.
- I started to wonder where my energy and exitment disappeared to and came to this moment.
So it seems that our focus does manifest itself into real-life outcomes, which in this case happened to be a shift from a noble cause to one based on desire. Instead of letting the positive intent guide me, my desire to create money for my cause outweighed the thoughts of the cause itself, which in turn caused the paradigm shift. Once the shift occured and the positive aspect of the intention was lost, the desire was able to wrap itself around my mind and take over.
The problem with desire is that it is a fire that cannot be put out on our own. It feeds off of our energy and requires more and more fuel to keep burning. Soon, it consumes us and becomes who we are…that is if we don’t stop it. If left unchecked, desire can literally change our physical, mental, and emotional selves permanently! The best example of this I can give is if you have ever felt like you didn’t recognize yourself or your actions conflict with your thoughts, also called Cognitive Dissonance. This eventually manifests into all sorts of psychological problems that are beyond the scope of this blog.
In the end, we can stop this and take back control of our lives, like I am doing today. The key is to build up our inner strength so that we recognize these attacks earlier and nip them in the bud before it gets out of hand. I think that as we continue to practice this, just like anything else, we will become better at doing it.
So yes, The Dharma Foundation will still be founded for all the causes I listed above and more, but until then I’d love for you to share the things you are passionate about and your stories of fighting against desire.
Stay on track and keep living your dharma 
