Corporate Lessons from Mythology – 12

 Is Desire a SIN? Is Desire for materialism

Automatically reduces with biological clock?

In continuation to the earlier blog on Karmic journey- A puzzle, let us try to find on answer to the above first question.

If everyone operates on a need only basis, what is the charm in life? Take the case of a student who aims to come first, a businessman who wants to succeed in his business.

All of them are setting a high ambition. You need to have greed acting as your motivational force. Then how do we live for need alone? That will make our life uninteresting!

Desire, like a fire is a natural source of energy and power. We can harness the energy of fire for productive purposes or we may be burned by it at our option.We may be either consumed by our desire or we may harness it for a noble cause. The choice is ours.

We would not have got the best of the inventions had we not been greedy. The myths like the ones that the world is flat would not have been debunked. On occasions like these, greed is good not just for own life, but for others as well.

When we desire, we have to focus on it and we have to develop the competence to attain it. We need not have to ignore desire and lead a life by compromising on what we got.Need means, “I can and will use the item”. Greed means, ‘I need it all’. Negative greed is “when I somehow need it all at any cost, even if it is denying others”.

We can and must be greedy without exploiting others. A creator’s greed is a boon to the society.We need simplicity but not poverty. Greed should not be excessive, should not deny the rights of others stakeholders. We should not go high on materialism that leads to unethical behavior.

The mythological powers granted to midas led to his own downfall due to his excess greed. There are so many such stories of excess greed. Bhagawat Gita says, ‘As a flame is covered by smoke, a mirror by dust and the foetus by the womb, so is the knowledge covered by the desire.

Desires are essential to life as air to breathe. We should not borrow desires from others. We need to examine our desires with a clear mind so that we filter the unwanted desires.

In short live like a ‘post it sticker’. The post it marks self sticking adhesive stick to the page when required. It comes out clean when we remove it without leaving the traces of the glue.

We need to knew the art of attachment and detachment like the ‘post it sticker’.

Greed is not a sin but pleasure without conscience and wealth without work are the deadly sins. We need to learn to live like a post it sticker.By the way, does the desire for materialism automatically go down with the biological clock?