It's quite interesting to observe ourselves and the others. One of the things that appear quite mind-boggling to me is to observe the motivations of different human beings. Some human beings are happy to live a routine life, some want to set up big MNCs, some want to climb the peaks of the toughest peaks, some make their tik-tok videos to get likes on social media, some wish to become beauty queens, some wish to occupy the highest positions of the country, some want to roam around the world, and the author of this post is happy writing this post, Sri Aurobindo was motivated to write Savitri and Life Divine and a number of other books, Shri Satya Narayan Goenka was motivated to set up more and more vipassana centers across the world. and so on. The motivations and wishes are countless and each person is equally convinced of his own motivation.
The human motivations may apparently be of many types. However, all human motivations may be broadly classified into two categories: motivations to "get" something and motivations to "give" something. Some of the hungry and greedy souls just like to stick to the source of their pleasure. They like to get tasty food, have fun, roam around the world, stay at good hotels, and like to be surrounded by the objects of pleasure. Deep down inside the heart, there exists discontentment, and such people are constantly trying to get such contentment in the external objects: one after the other. One restaurant to the other, one movie to the other, one hotel to the other, one tourist place to the other, and the discontentment continues because the source of the discontentment has never been addressed.
Some of these "go-getters" get motivated to seek happiness in something they do not have. Society is full of discontented souls who have formed a number of mental stories which are freely available. The go-getters get trapped in one or the other story. The mental stories of fun in Switzerland, or the pleasure of a big bungalow, or the happiness in a fat pay package, or the thrill of power. The discontented souls form their own mental stories about all these things and set them as targets and keep running after these things for almost the whole of their lives. Such people also remain discontented the whole of their lives and keep running after one another target in anticipation of the joy that never comes. Joy and happiness can never come from the achievement of targets since the source of discontentment has never been addressed. The setting of the targets itself was based on unexamined and unverified lies which almost the whole of the society keeps telling in a very loud voice to somehow hide its hollowness.
The strange part (quite evident if we examine with an open mind) is that the more people get the objects of pleasure or the go-getters achieve the targets, the more motivated they feel to get more. It is because of the simple reason that the more they get these pleasures, the more they form mental stories about the same. They choose the company of people who are equally obsessed with the objects of pleasure and have formed one or the other target to achieve these objects of pleasure. They keep on reinforcing their world view on each other and the mental stories look more and more real. We become a victim of such mass hallucination.
On the other hand, the givers too have infinite motivation to help humanity. Buddha preached Dharma to the people till his last breath. Mahatma Gandhi tried to bring harmony to society till his last breath. Once a person gets connected to his inner self, that inner self gives him infinite strength to help others. This is because he is contended internally and does not seek anything from society or any material object. The utility of different objects in his life is purely functional. There are no mental stories about the pleasure or pain of different objects. He just wished to pass over the joy and bliss that he had experienced to others.
The strangest part in the entire story is that the go-getters and givers both exist in the same society at the same time. Yet, the go-getters are so convinced in their mental stories that they completely disregard the inner journey as time passes for the retired life (that never comes). The givers are also so strongly connected to their inner self that even the mass hallucination of the society in and around pleasures does not affect them. They both co-exist peacefully. The go-getters keep approaching the givers as a time-pass activity or when they pass through the phases of stress or anxiety due to the failure in their endeavor to get the objects of desire when the circumstances puncture their mental stories or when they feel empty even after achieving what they targetted in their life. The givers know that sooner or later, all the go-getters have to pass through the same phase and some of them will definitely get inclined towards the inner journey the way King Ashika got inclined towards the inner journey after the battle of Kalinga.
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