Fork in the Road of Desire-Fulfillment

In Advaita Vedanta there is ceaseless talk on the nature and effects of desire. It verily is the root of the “second arrow” – the first arrow being the real blow, and the second is our reaction to the first. In pain, we have the desire of alleviation. When it does not cease, the second arrow produces itself, like a shadow of the first. The goal is to reduce this second arrow.

When you interpret the world through the lens of desire, situations become extremely enjoyable to observe as you will have an innate understanding to their meta-unfolding (e.g., why is the argument being carried out the way it is?). For good example, yesterday I ordered breakfast take-out at a diner on St. Catherine street. Uber Eats drivers came in and out in a nonstop fury. The waitresses were being worked, and the one who served me was bagging and tagging all orders coming from Uber Eats. She kept a smile and was on the go.

A particular Uber Eats driver walked up as she handed him the food bag for his delivery order. The man quickly grabbed the bag and raised dissatisfaction when he said, “Why did you hand me the bag in this way, simply throwing it at me? You should put it down properly in-front of me!” He appears to be upset that the bag was roughly deposited without the proper bag dance. As a close-proximity witness, I can attest she did nothing wrong.

Now let us delineate the man’s desire assuming his behaviour is honest and he is not acting out of pure instigation (which then his high-level desire would be to instigate). He desires to be given the bag in a certain way. But, this is merely his high-level desire. Who really cannot see the meta-desire here? The man wants to be recognized and treated in accordance to his principles and view of himself – however arbitrary they may be – all banging out in the halls of the ego.

Ego and desire are closely linked, as the ego is the “I” to whom the fruits of desire are promised. Ego serves and eats promises in the form of expectation, and as it feeds it becomes bigger. By not satisfying this man’s desire, we see him become, as promised by the ladder of fall, anger stricken with consequent complete loss of control. (Ladder of Fall: Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2 Verse 62-63; please listen to the explanation by Swami Chinmayananda below)

Now the woman who is being accused must defend herself, tripping off her own desire; to not be falsely accused of bad work in a place she is doing her best to serve (which she exclaimed many times, “I am doing my job properly!”). This man dumped a bucket of cold water on that desire and thus both went into a progressively more ludicrous shouting match.

I kept my reactivity low through measured breathing as my mind was afire with things to say and my heart beating fast. Eventually the man left, reluctantly. The waitress was understandably flustered and out of control as she began to explain herself to her co-workers. Desire is quite the cat, sleepy and quiet one minute, and taking off like a dart soon after. With her ego ablaze, begging to be heard and to defend itself and to be right, it lights up this very world with anger and confusion. So, to relax the distressed waitress, one must simply satisfy the ego’s desire to be understood, and that is what I did. I reached into my wallet for a $20 and handed it to her. Please note here the money itself is not the important object to her, but rather it is the significance of the act which is perceived as the world in recognition of her (which is really recognition of her ego) that matters most. A $5 would likely have had less of an effect, however, as heavy desires and ego need more substantial proof to calm itself. She responded with wide open eyes, “FOR ME?…” She thanked me as I left. It had nothing to do with money – I spoke directly to her ego, feeding its desire to be heard and it finally feigns a humble “FOR ME?”… You the ego wanted it all along, don’t act so surprised once you get it. 

I am not sure she had noticed what took her up, but in a matter of single minutes she was taken from a state of calm and mundane smiles, to extreme upset, to emotional delight. This is what happens when you ride the waves of desire; you end up riding the outcomes of them – both good and bad. It is very difficult to rise above this, but first and foremost you must acknowledge that this does and can happen – and thus the first important step is knowledge, and the second is to accept that knowledge (to acknowledge).

Now what is understood and what next interests me are two and the same, yet with one subtle difference. I understand that desire unfulfilled leads to anger (i.e., the ladder of fall), but why does desire unfulfilled lead to anger? This is an extremely powerful question and I will propose a rather grim reason for it. 

I think the reason unfulfilled desire leads to anger and frustration is because dealing with the fact that the world may not go our way is much more difficult than simply short-circuiting to becoming upset about it. The reason we want the world to go our way is because at the root of things, we want life to remain and not be taken away from us and this will be the foundational desire never fulfilled – the admittance and acceptance of real chaos and death. Until that moment, we try to test reality and see if it will bend under our sway, and when it doesn’t we take the easy way out and make a sharp left-turn from reality street and end up in the anger that ran, panting and sweating, to “help” deal with that deviation. “We just had something not go our way – reality deviated from my expectation – that might mean that I do not have ultimate control of the oncoming chaos… Let’s not go there – anger and frustration, please distract me from this.”

The foundational desire of the ego is to desire; when it asks of the future (expectation) it keeps it (the future) alive with potential for itself (the ego). Desires will never stop coming, either. Some are fulfilled and when this happens the ego receives acknowledgement from the outside world that it is worthy of its generated desires. Other times, they go unfulfilled and instead of tipping its hat to the chaos of the world, saying “I accept this is reality, better luck for me next time”, it takes a sharp left-turn and in consequence becomes angry. 

Basically the problem is chaos, which means that we haven’t accepted the uncertainty of the future which further hints at little to no spiritual knowledge or study as the goal of the study of the philosophy of life is to quieten these reactions. Thus the problem that forces us to spirituality begins with ignorance. This is grim. Once you understand desire and how you can get above worrying about unfulfilled realities, the little pinpricks of life, like not having a bag handed to you properly, do not turn into a highly unnecessary poisoning of your surroundings.

This sharp left-turn at the fork of unfulfillment and the further delving into the bizarre lands of anger is a dangerous pattern of action. I want you to contemplate on the people you know who are constantly upset – who have almost an ability to become angry at will – and you will likely sense they are not standing firmly in reality. Their entire life has been left-turns away from reality. Eventually, they no longer make left-turns as they are permanently settled into a state of mind where anger is all-pervading. This can be you and me.

One way to overcome this is to have goals and desires but not be taken at the moment they are unfulfilled; this is difficult because there is still an a-priori expectation of fulfillment, and at the moment of unfulfillment you must grip the steering wheel hard to not swerve left. The greater technique is to do away with the expectation of fulfillment before reaching for the desire, to just do the necessary work towards the desire while having accepted, a-priori, any unfoldment of the future that may render it unfulfilled. Doesn’t this create a weak, unwilling, or lazy person? If we recommend letting go of expectations, then why don’t we just give up all striving as well, since we don’t even want any particular outcome to happen? Well, I would say, it is actually impossible for this to make us lazy. Those who permit themselves to be lazy at the hands of philosophy are misunderstanding it (unless your philosophy is hedonism). This frame of mind is much more effortful and difficult and thus a lazy or unwilling person would not even attempt it. This is the argument which arises from the unwilling. In truth, it creates a person with a quieter mind who is able to more effectively work towards their goals which perplexingly increases the likelihood of goal-fulfillment. Thus, paradoxically, the release of fulfillment-expectation is the optimal behaviour for achieving fulfillment of expectations. From experience, practicing this over long spans of time creates drastic change and I urge you to at least consider it.

If you would like more information on the techniques for removing the fixation on expectations, please research the concept of Karma Yoga.