Gita prescribes giving up ego and Desires and recoomends pursuit of Salvation or the Bliss of Liberation. But isn't pusuit of Salvation or Liberation or God a Selfish Desire? Some brilliant minds wonder, struck by the words we use and their different connotations.
Liberation/ Salvation/ Moksha/
Merging with God are all selfish, even if believers of Gita may
object to the use of the term desire and selfish pursuit with these great objectives of life. Words have different connotations and different persons do not like all these conotations.
That Salvation is a desire and a selfish desire does not
in any way create problem for me. All desires are desires and
all desires are looking forward to self satisfaction from the fulfillment of desire. But there is a great difference. The path to liberation and the attainment
of liberastion is of a different class/ category than all other desires/ objectives of
human beings. When one is on the path of liberation, any other desire is a constraint. All other desires are for sensual pleasures. Striving for
liberation calls for giving up all sensual desires. All other desires when fulfilled satisfies ego. When liberation takes place ego vanishes. The path to liberation is to shed ego and submit to God Almighty.
Desire for Salvation requires giving up all other desires. Those who have one or more sensual desires may also have desire for getting God's power to
some extent atleast in order to be able to satisfy some other sensual desires. All other desires are driven by ego: desire foir salvation requires
driving out ego. When one is trying to drive out ego, he is being anti-Selfish.
The desire for Salvation is calling one to give up self-interest or self-satisfaction through enjoyment of sensual pleasure through actions driven by ego and the gunas/ properties of the body, mind and ego. Even when someone is worshipping God, or giving alms to the
poor or helping the weak or tryinng to be perfect in his work or praying for protection / comfort, he may be doing this to satisfy his ego and enjoy the sensual pride of being a great
man or a pious man or a famous man or a man accumulating Punnya or wealth. But this
is not the desire for Salvation or liberation or achieving God. Only when someone is worshipping God, or giving alms to the poor or helping the weak or tryinng to be perfect in his work only and exclusively for the sake of trying to concentrate on the thought of God, as actions to live a life of equanimity,
as step to give up all desires, is he treading the path to fulfill the desire for Salvation.
It is clear and simple to understand this essential difference between the ego-driven, sensual desire- killing objective of Salvation and all sense- gratifying, ego-bolstering objectives.
It does not really matter whether I call the objective of Salvation (in the sense that it has been defined in Gita) as a selfish pursuit of desire. Words can confuse. If I happen to know the difference, I am fortunate. Gita says those who travel the path of Salvation is rare: those who attain salvation is even much more rare. Rarity does not signify common selfish desire as we usually understand.
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