Edward’s Diary Entry 38 – Virtue 17: Non-Covetousness (Aloluptvam)

Such is the nature of desire that it perpetuates itself and grows stronger when pleased. So the discriminating man concerned to know himself or the intelligent woman doing the same will observe his or her senses. “Liking or disliking” is developed due to natural inclinations of the mindstuff when we are still children. We can see that our childish likes may have changed, our teenage likes too. Likes and dislikes in our 20s, 30s and 40s. But until I can refrain from doing something I like, or do something I don’t like, how can I be free? Likes are like languages. We learn them before we are even cognizant of ourselves – in our unconscious childhood years. And so our likes and our use of language condition our minds into thinking that that is simply the way we are. But it’s not true. We are wound up that way, that’s all. Whoever defends likes and dislikes is fooling himself, because he will inevitably change at some point – even if it’s just because of another like that arise and gets superimposed on an old one. And so in Exodus 20:17 we hear the Jews admonishing their people “not to covet”, millennia after Gita described the Sattwic man as being “not greedy” thanks to the cultivation of this Virtue. The definition runs as follows: “The senses are not affected or excited when they come into contact with their respective objects; the senses are withdrawn from the objects of the senses, just as the limbs of the tortoise are withdrawn by it into its own shell. Combine freedom and restraint, which a tortoise adopts, so it should not be difficult for a human being… When a tortoise sees no danger, it puts its appendages out and freely moves about, but at the first indication of danger, it draws its limbs into its shell. Similarly, let your senses range freely when there is no apprehension of danger, but come away from a place that seems dangerous to you…” But here, again, we come back to the same thesis – it is not possible to control the senses without Self-Awareness, without attention, without some degree of observation of the mind by the mind. So our first step is to Look, Listen, Notice, Be Aware and simply Be Conscious. The initial energy to do this comes from refusing to act moment to moment to our personality’s likes and dislikes. The more unconsciousness is detained, the more self-aware and conscious we become. Until the vacuum is created in the mind, the Universe can’t abhor it and fill it with something more useful and more intelligent than a simple conditioned response, the inertia of the past wrongly breaking in on the Present.