If you desire wealth…but do not dare to plunge into the struggle for wealth for fear of the world… your mind, nonetheless, will be running day and night after money. So plunge into the world and fulfill all your desires. Until that [time], it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender.
This quote from one of Swami Vivekananda’s lectures really got me thinking.
When we try to suppress our urges, we meet with a lot of internal resistance. Our mind becomes a veritable Kurukshetra battlefield, with one part of us wanting to indulge fully in the senses, and another part making us feel guilty about it. When we try to live a life of austerity and denial, it will only end up making us yearn all the more for the things that we have tried to suppress.
A practical path for us to follow would be to avail of and enjoy the benefits, and bear the burden of sufferings that wealth brings us. After we go through the ‘indulgent’ phase, we will ideally reach the ‘been there, done that’ phase where we will be in the proper mental framework for attaining the state of the sthithapragna – a state of tranquility, peace and calmness. We would be like the lotus in the pond – IN the world but not OF the world.
However, this does not necessarily mean that one should commit all the mistakes in order to realize that they are indeed mistakes. For instance, we all know smoking to be bad for our health. If one indulges in smoking, it will be very difficult for him or her to get out of this bad habit. It would thus be foolish to insist that one has to experience the ill effects of a bad habit to rise above it.
So when we speak of detachment as we do so often in many of our posts, keep in mind that attaining a sense of detachment and rising above such desires is a goal that can be worked on as one makes his or her journey through life. We can indulge with moderation. Over time, we will all rise above our desires and attain that ‘state of calmness, serenity and self-surrender.’
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