Avoid selfishness in life

Our mind is very speedy. It cannot be controlled easily. This fact was well known by Samartha Ramdas Swami. So, in his ninth Shloka, he tries to explain that we need to control that speedy mind and need to let it travel from being selfish to understanding the self. This journey is difficult because our mind easily gets attracted to the worldly desires which cause selfishness. When we get attracted to selfishness, we forget to value our “self”. 

    Self is Aatman! It is not about our body, it is our soul. Our soul is non-destroyable. It is continuous. But when would we understand this? We would understand this when we let go of our selfishness. Why would we do so? Because, selfishness causes damage to our “self”. When worldly desires try to equip our life, we run behind fulfilling them. When we couldn’t fulfill them, we feel bad and sorrow surrounds us from all the sides. 

    When we are in sorrow, we tend to take bad decisions. When we keep the worldly desires and selfishness aside, we get connected to the self and we find the real and pure happiness there. We get connected to Aatman that is the divinity. We understand that worldly desires give happiness for certain time but the path of divinity is the permanent happiness. Many a times people expect that they would get something from the property of their ancestors. But this kind of property and possession never lasts longer. 

    Samartha asks everyone to leave this expectation aside to stay away from sins.  When we keep desires and they don’t get fulfilled then there would be only one thing that is going to happen, you would be surrounded by sadness. To avoid this, Samartha is warning the mind to stay away from selfish desires.