Ask a child what he wants, and he will tell you with certainty that he wants to clear NEET, CLAT, or UPSC. Ask a businessman, and he will tell you with certainty that he wants to expand, set up another factory, or earn money. Ask a bureaucrat, and he will tell you that he wants to reach the topmost position in the organisation. Ask a politician, and he will say that he wants to become a minister. But where do all these desires come from?

Of course, from the ecosystem. Had Ravan been born in the present age, he would not have wanted to build a city of gold; rather, he might have wanted to control the world of AI and, through it, the minds of all humanity. Had Duryodhana been born in the present-day world, he might have wanted to become an unquestioned dictator of a country. But the question is actually not about the form; rather, it’s about the substance. Why does Ravan develop a desire to control all three Lokas while Rama develops Vairagya? Why does Duryodhana want to take what is rightfully due to the Pandavas, while Arjuna feels reluctant to fight the Kauravas even after that gross injustice? Why do some people devote their lives to fighting for a country’s freedom while so many others are happy to sell their own country for personal gain? Why did Buddha leave his kingdom while many of us spend our entire lives just buying a flat?

There is no straight answer to this question. We played with so many friends as children. Today we are not in contact with many of them. As children, we might have dreamed of spending our entire lives with them. Why did this change take place? Because we outgrew that ecosystem. We got exposure to big cities, went to universities and made new friends, got married and had kids, and that’s how we have new desires now. Basically, we realised how limited the place we came from was. What if our present worldview is also very limited, and our desires for whatever we want are also a result of that limited awareness?

The cat looks at the bird as if it were just a meal. Can it listen to the music like that old lady? The cat will have to break free of its fixation on food. I don’t know why Rama had Vairagya, or why Siddhartha left the kingdom, while almost everybody around them behaved like a cat. Probably they could see through. When Buddha saw people suffering from disease and old age, he did not turn a blind eye. He thought it over. He wanted to find a solution to the world’s suffering. We see so much suffering around us, too. Then, what do we do? We just give a ten-rupee note to the beggar and expect a big smile on his face to make us feel that we have done our bit in this world.

Buddha also could have stopped there. He could have donated money to the needy and could have been happy. But he could see through. He had the “intelligence” to see the futility of these temporary solutions, and that’s why he wasn’t interested in them. That’s why he devoted his entire life to finding a solution to human misery. Many scientists devote their lives to understanding nature’s deep secrets. When we see how short the life of pleasures is, we no longer care about them; instead, we pursue something profound. Unless we see that, we will keep pursuing the endless mirage of pleasures and keep getting disillusioned. We just need to take a break from that endless stupidity and see reality. Once we see reality, we can’t be fooled by illusion.