Discipline of Actions v/s Fate
Desire / तृष्णा
Desire concerns what someone striving for excellence as a rational being should truly believe is worthy of desire, which for the human beings is that which is truly good, high merit and action motivated by good value.
With the disappointment of our desires and the incurring of our dislike introduces disturbances/ विघ्न, hue and cry/ शोरगुल, misfortunes/ दुर्भाग्य, and calamities/ त्रासदी; and causes sorrow, weeping/ अश्रुपूर्ण and envy/ ईर्ष्या; and renders us angry and jealous, and thus incapable of listening to reason.
We should rather place our hope not in ‘external’ things that are not in our power, but in our own dispositions and moral character. In short, we should limit our desire to virtue and to becoming (to the best of our capacities) examples of ‘excellence/ उत्कृष्ठता’. If we do not do this, the inevitable result is that we will continue to desire what we may fail to obtain or lose once we have it, and in consequence suffer the unhappiness of emotional disquiet (or worse). And as is the common experience of all people at some time or other, when we are in the grip of such emotions we run the risk of becoming blind to the best course of action, even when interpreted in terms of pursuing ‘external’ things.