Desires

Introduction
According to Buddhist teachings, desire is the cause of all suffering, pain, and sorrow. Only by extinguishing all desires can a person attain ultimate happiness, or Nirvana. However according to some modern philosophers, desire is the fundamental motivation of all human action. At the outset, these statements may seem contradictory. However, both of them are true based on our perspective and inclination.

Definition of Desire

Desire is a sense of longing for a person or object or hoping for an outcome. Desire is not an emotion. Desires can be good or bad. The more intense the desires are the more effect they have on the outcome.

Source of Desires

Desires arise from our attachments and associations. Once we realize that we have a desire, we should analyze what is the desire for, what we need to do to fulfill the desire, and what we may lose while fulfilling the desire. For example, we desire for more money by taking a position as consultant. It surely brings more money, however it will involve constant travel and reduced family time.

Classification of Desires
Desires can be classified broadly into three types. Physical desires, emotional desires and intellectual desires.

• Physical desires are hunger, thirst etc. When we are hungry, we desire food. When we are thirsty, we desire drinks. When we smell aroma of coffee, we desire to have coffee. When we see a picture of ice cream, we desire to eat ice cream. We desire food, sometimes even if we are not truly hungry.
• Emotional desires are our desire for love and affection, our desire for appreciation and acknowledgment. Desire for revenge, hoping for bad outcome for others are examples of bad desires.
  
• Intellectual desires are our desire for success, career growth, achievement, service to the society, charity work etc.
  

Teachings from Bhagawad Geeta

Ancient Hindu teachings, The Bhagawad Geeta teaches us, like the smoke covers the fire, like the dust covers the mirror, like the womb covers the embryo, desires cover the truth. To truly be blissful, we have to extinguish all our desires, bad as well as good. Higher the intensity of desire, higher the effort needed in extinguishing the desire. By blowing air with little effort, the smoke can be blown away and radiant fire can be uncovered. It will take little more effort, to dust off and see the shining mirror. However, it takes a lot of hard work and patience for 9 months, for the embryo to grow into a baby.

Conclusion

Desires are seldom fulfilled. As soon as one desire is fulfilled, a new and more potent desire replaces the old one. Unfulfilled desires cause anger, dissatisfaction and sorrow. If desires cannot be avoided then let's have selfless desires, which not only serve us, they serve the society as well. Desires are always a step ahead of achievements.

The meaning of Love

What is Love?
Love, it's a very powerful word. It brings peace and harmony to this chaotic world. With love many a people have brought peace to the world.

The word love has many meanings and manifestations. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes. Due to this diversity of meanings, it is difficult to define love. As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Love involves concern for the other person's welfare and feeling.

Philosophically, where Anger is like fire, Love is like Ice. It is cold, calm and strong and brings coolness to the surrounding. Most often when we love others, others will love back and peace will permeate in the environment.

Examples of different meanings of love:
I love my spouse (romantic love, intimacy, commitment, attachment)
I love my parents (respect, devotion)
I love my children (affection)
I love God (devotion)
I love Tennis, I love Movies, I love my car (impersonal love, attachment)
I love my job (commitment)

What is not Love?
Let's also understand what is not love.
Infatuation: A teenager falls in love with another teenager. Many kids and young adults feel crazy about Hollywood stars, Musicians, Singers etc. That is not love, but infatuation. Infatuation is the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned love; addictive love. Infatuation usually occurs at the beginning of a relationship. Usually infatuation lasts for shorter period of time. Longer lasting form of infatuation is called Limerence, which can have pathological consequences.

Passion is an emotion of feeling very strongly about a person.
Friendship between two people may exist and might be liking each others attributes, characters, but it is not love.

Manifestations of Love
Various manifestations of love are self (narcissistic) love, romantic (erotic) love, filial love and divine (agapic) love.
Love for self is the lowest form of love, and believe it or not is one of the strongest. We as humans love ourselves first. Even if we love others, the root cause would be to have reciprocation. To recount a story, King of Kosala Pasenadi and Queen Mallika were both disciples of Buddha. One day the king casually asked the queen, who does she love the most, expecting his name to be mentioned. But to his surprise, queen said that she loved herself the most. Normally, any other king would have banished the queen for saying such. But king said, strangely even I had the same realization during my mediation today that I love myself the most.

Love most often means the romantic love between people. This kind of love is necessary primarily for progeny. This kind of love lasts for short amount of time. There are many memorable and tragic stories between people. Love between these people and their sacrifice is memorable. Some such pairs are Romeo Juliet, Laila Majnu, Heer Ranjha and their love seem to be eternal. The Taj Mahal in India is one of the greatest symbol of love. Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was so much grief stricken by his third wife Mumtaj Mahal's passing away, that he immediately started to build a tomb in her memory and today people from all corners of the world visit Taj Mahal as a symbol of love.

Filial love or love for family is the next kind of love. This kind of love builds strong families, and good societies. One story from Hindu Mythological story Ramayan recounts that King Dasaratha could not bear the separation of his eldest son Rama and died with grief. Another story from Mahabharata, the blind King Dhrutarashtra was so much attached to his wicked son Duryodhan that he allowed the war between the family members and in turn was the cause for the destruction of entire Kaurava clan. It is believed that Humayun the eldest son of Mughal emperor Babur was sickly ill. Babur with love for his son, circled his bed and cried out to God to take his life and spare Humayun's life. Historians dispute this claim, however it shows the strength of love for children.

Divine love is the most important and highly regarded love. People following Judaism, Christianity and Islam belive in Abraham their patriarch. With divine love, he was about to sacrifice his own son as an offering to God. Meerabai, one of the famous devotees of Lord Krishna, once drank poison as proof of her devotion to God. Divine love is infinite, unconditional and pure. When we are able to display this love even in traces, will serve a great deal to the society. Compassion, forgiveness are some of the forms of this divine love.

Conclusion:
One of the most important longing for all human beings is to love others and be loved by others.
For some love for self is the strongest, for some love for family is the strongest and for some love for God is the strongest.
Selfless and unconditional love is the purest love of all.

Persian Poem

Even after all this time

The sun never says to the earth "you owe me".

Look what happens with a Love like that!

- It lights the whole Sky. (Hafiz)

Anger and It's Control

Anger and It's Control - CC Manual - Project#2 (Organize)
By Venu Swamy Kovela (September 7th 2008)



Anger and it's nature:
Anger is an emotional state of mind, where in our mental equilibrium is disturbed and our mind is agitated. It can range from mild annoyance, irritation to violent rage.

Anger is like fire (philosophically), it burns within and burns anything that comes to its contact. If it finds dry brush or wind, it becomes much more violent and if it finds moisture it slows down. Similarly when we are angry, we not only burn/agitate ourselves, we agitate everyone who is around. If the person in front of us talking back at us, we get much more angry. But, when we are in the company of noble people or children, we tend to calm down little bit.

Why do we become angry?
Bhagawat Geeta (one of the ancient Hindu scripture) teaches us that when our desires are not fulfilled we get angry. Either something happened which we do not want to happen or something we wanted to that did not happen. Behind each angry instance, we will find that there is some wish that is unfulfilled.
We think that the cause is someone else, something outside of us. We get angry to make that happen, we try to teach a lesson, we try to correct someone.

What happens when we are angry?
Physically, when we are angry, our breathing becomes heavy, our heart beats faster, our blood pressure goes up, our voice becomes loud and it trembles, and our brain stimulates release of certain chemicals such as adrenaline and Noradrenaline. It's one way of our brain to prepare us for flight or fight response.

Bhagawat Geeta also teaches that when we are angry, we lose our memory, which in turn diminishes our intellect, which in turn fails to discriminate between the right and wrong. This leads us to say or do lots of bad things, we damage ourselves, we hurt feelings of our near and dears, we destroy our relationships.

Most often we regret later after the damage is done. We want to correct others, but the result is counter productive. Even if we say something absolutely correct while angry, the result is negative and the desired affects are obtained.

How do we control Anger?
Holy Quran (Holy teachings from Islam) teaches us, that when we are angry we should drink a glass of water. If we are standing, we should try sitting down. If that didnt help, lie down. If that didn't help then keep quiet for sometime.

Following are few more suggestions:
Take few deep breaths.
Count upto 10.
Forgive others.

Personal tips:
First and foremost realize that anger is bad.
Resolve in our own mind that we are not going to get angry.
Even if we get angry, have the awareness that we are angry at that moment.
Resolve that we will calm down as soon as we realize.
Tell ourselves that by remaining angry, the outcome is counter productive.
Think about maintaining good relationships.
Think about all good things about the person.

Conclusion:
Realize that anger builds in stages from annoyances to rage. Minor dissatisfactions and disappointments if not resolved sooner, gets accumulated and becomes stockpiles. And suddenly all the issues comes to the forefront and adds fuel to your anger. Hence, if we care about the relationship, we should resolve the issues immediately and not keep anything unresolved. We should forgive more.

Cone Example:
When we get angry, we regain our composure surely and certainly. But some of us are like the cone with the pointed side is on the ground, minor disturbance will disturb its equilibrium and it takes some outside support for it to stand. Some of us are like the cone which lies on its side. Little bit of disturbance, rolls the cone side to side but comes to rest after sometime. And some of us are like the cone with its base on the ground and no matter what happens the cone does not get disturbed. All of us are in this range, and obviously we should try to be like the cone on it's base.

Welcome Message

Welcome to Speak & Lead Toastmasters Club!

Our mission is "Speak and Lead!".

Speak & Lead club is chartered in May 2008 with 21 members. We are a very enthusiastic group of people and our objective is to improve Communication skills through various speech projects and Leadership skills through various roles such as Club officers, Toast Master of the day, Table Topics Master, Grammarian, Timer, Ah counter etc.

We meet between 3 PM and 5 PM on Sundays, at 16540 Aston Street (Irvine Business Center), Irvine, California.