Desire is good, desire is bad - The paradox of desire
There would be no marketing, or even capitalism without desire. Trigger warning: I delve into the Hindu scriptures to understand the paradox of desire.
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I just got back from a 10-day break in Japan.
I came back with my desire for matcha, fluffy pancakes, and soba satiated, my desire to cocoon into my normal clockwork routine, refreshed, and a dirty matcha, like desire to start writing in this little corner of the internet again, laced with guilt for not having written in a month.
I want. I want. I want.
Funny how our brains keep playing Tetris with desires, fitting them into the already cramped latticework of our lives.
If you think about it, marketing feeds off and fuels our desire. Marketing tells us that sunscreen can keep us looking younger longer (it does), that liquid detergent is more potent than powder (it is) and that anyone who is not using AI will soon be left behind (probably yes, probably no).
Desire is a good thing because it keeps industries humming, creates jobs, and, quite frankly, keeps us on our toes and away from lounging all day in bed. Each morning, we get out of bed and plan our day around desires as big as Unicorn CEO and as small as the perfect Civil Lines Chole Bhature. Imagine if we did not have any desire. Our lives would be empty because we would not strive for anything.
But desire is also a bad thing because it makes us greedy and insecure. After all, we don’t have perfect Korean glass skin. We will surely go to hell because we have flouted all the Catholic ‘thou shalt not’ commandments. It is our desire for more, more, more that has turned us into a shallow consumerist society, celebrating our pets’ birthdays with organic dog cake (cake for dogs, not cake made out of puppies), burping out empty calories and driving around choked Labubu landfills on the way to the golf course.
The whole world is grappling with the paradox of desire.
Desire is good for capitalism, and it gives us purpose. But bad for the planet, personal growth and our souls.
To get some clarity, I summoned the Lindy Effect to find out the origin of desire. Lindy effect means that any idea’s future lifespan is at least as long as it has already been in circulation. I have written about the Lindy Effect before (here, here and here).
Turns out, ancient Hindu scriptures (probably can’t get older than that on the Lindy scale) say that there is no life force without desire.
Without desire, there is no life force.
Desire is here to stay for a long, long time because it has been in circulation for as long as the life force1 itself has existed.
So much so that the supreme divine feminine energy was birthed to renew desire!
Here’s the story that’s found in the Bhramand Purana, an ancient Hindu scripture.
Sati marries Lord Shiva against the wishes of her father, Daksha. Daksha thinks his favourite daughter could have done better than this unwashed, ash-smeared, tiger-skin-wearing loner who lived up on Mt.Kailash.
Daksha holds a grudge like a mouse with a piece of cheese, so when he organises a Yagna, he does not invite his daughter and son-in-law. Sati feels hurt, but still goes for the auspicious occasion, hoping her father will relent and invite Lord Shiva too.
Daksha’s heart does not soften. Instead, he rages against his son-in-law. Sati, humiliated, feels she can’t face her husband now, so she self-immolates.
Lord Shiva goes crazy with grief and starts dancing the Tandava, Sati’s body in his arms.
This rage will surely destroy the universe. So Lord Vishnu uses his Sudarshan Chakra to cut up Sati’s body into parts so that Shiva can come to terms with his loss. I bet Lord Vishu thought, “na rahegi body, ne rahega grief ka reminder!” (when there will be no body, there will be no reminder of grief!)
The body breaks into many parts, and these parts become the 51 Shakti Pithas.
Most of us in India would know the story up to this part. But what happens after that is fascinating and relevant to the point I am making about desire.
Lord Shiva is so full of remorse that he goes into a deep penance and renounces his duties. Without Shiva, the universe gets unbalanced. Asuras2 take over and start getting stronger than the Gods. The Gods send Manmatha (Kamdeva-Lord of love and desire) to wake Shiva up.
Shiva, still angry, now gets even more enraged because his meditation has been interrupted, and he destroys Manmatha on the spot.
With Manmatha gone, desire itself goes up in smoke. Without desire, there is nothing. No growth, no action, no future. From the ashes of Kamdeva, Bhandasura is born.
When good desire is destroyed, bad desire is born.
Unlike Kama, who represents desire that cherishes others to reproduce itself, Bhanda represents distorted, aggressive, selfish lust. His power was acquisitive. Which means that whenever he made war on an enemy, half his opponent’s power would be transferred directly to Bhanda.
Without a balance of good and bad desire, there is no universe.
To restore the universal balance, all the Gods come together and they perform a Yagna to reignite desire. From this Yagna, the Divine Feminine energy - Sri Lalita Tripura Sundari3 emerges.
It is said that the Goddess then split into two – Kameshwara (Purusha) and Kameshwari (Prakriti) and recreated the universe as it was before.
Good desire is ‘Bhoga.’
Bhoga (Sanskrit: भोग, bhóga) means "to experience, consume, enjoy pleasure."
According to the scriptures, Bhoga is a key part of human life for two reasons.
One, it is believed that souls take on human form to enjoy worldly desires. Because souls are energy beings, they don’t have the 5 senses and sexual organs that humans have. This keeps them from enjoying sensory and sensual experiences. So one of the purposes of human life is to enjoy it fully and completely, without guilt.
Two, there are two paths to achieve moksha4 — bhoga and yoga. Bhoga works like a multi-level game. As we experience one pleasure, we overcome our desire for it and move to the next level. There comes a time when we realise all our desires have been met and we don’t need or want anything more.
That’s when we become one with the universal energy.
I remember all of us cousins used to play Monopoly during summer vacation. I used to be engaged and motivated to play as long as I was striving against a scare bank balance. But the minute I started winning - I had put up the most houses and hotels, and all I had to do was collect rent, I lost interest and wanted to play a different, more challenging game. That’s what the multi-level path of Bhoga looks like.
This path, in MBA terms, is Maslow’s Hierarchy. As our physiological needs are met, we move on to safety and security and so on.
If desire per se is good, and it even keeps the life force in motion, should we go crazy and do whatever we desire?
Good desire is blissful, bad desire is asuric
Are narcissists, serial killers, and dictators walking the path of Bhoga? Is genocide good? Was Hitler simply on a lower level of desire, and we should have waited for him to ‘get bored’ and move on to more noble desires?
There is a caveat to desire. The caveat points to the nature of desire and the intent behind it. Desire can be blissful or asuric.
Desire that is not on the path of moksha is excessive, hurtful to others and the self. i.e. it is asuric in nature - driven by ego, pride and ignorance. Like Bhandasura.
The right kind of desire feels blissful, sweet, and pleasurable. The scriptures call the path of bhoga, "unending bliss in the state of liberation." Not "unending bliss in the state of asuric tendencies" — the wrong kind of desire feels acquisitive, and it sours after a while.
Goddess Lalitha gives us signals on how to balance the good and bad desires within us.
Noose, goad, sugarcane bow and flower arrows
Goddess Lalitha weilds a noose, a goad and a sugarcane bow with five flower arrows. All metaphors that we have to decode.
The noose represents attachment. It is ok to desire, but don’t get too attached to the object of desire.
The goad represents repulsion. Just as a goad is used to steer an elephant, the goddess guides our will away from bad desire, towards good desire.
The goad and noose are about mastery over the internal world — pushing forward and pulling back as needed.
The sugarcane bow represents the mind, and the flower arrows represent the five senses. The sugarcane is sweet, indicating that control over the mind should be achieved gently and with sweetness, not force. The arrows made of flowers symbolise sensory pleasures. While they can be enjoyed, remember, they are ephemeral.
The bow and arrows are about channelling desires rather than denying them.
Turns out, the paradox of desire is real and age-old. The answer boils down to a lifelong quest for balance.
Thanks for reading and I will see you next week.
I use the term Life force in a secular way. It is the universal consciousness, energy, quantum field, the higher power, God or Gods. Whatever you believe is the invisible force underpinning life and our existence.
Anti-God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asura
Sri Lalita Tripura Sundari means ‘the most beautiful in all three worlds.”