Desires of Life! ENGLISH

 Desires of Life!

✒️ Author: Vaidya Hrishikesh Balkrishna Mhetre MD (Ayurveda), MA (Sanskrit) 9422016871 Ayurveda Clinics @ Pune (Sundays) & Nashik (Wednesday)

Food, clothing, and shelter are the 3 main necessities or motivations of life, so we have read!

Kids these days say... Facebook, Insta & WhatsApp🤣!! Or some people say... Mobile, Wi-Fi & Recharge!!!

Ayurveda says that food (ahara), sleep (nidra), and celibacy/regulated sexual conduct (maithuna) are the 3 foundations of life = sub-pillars (upasthambha) = pillars!

Further, the primary author of Ayurveda, Charaka, says that in life there are three *eshanas*, meaning motives, purpose, desires of life... Prana (life force/health), Dhana (wealth), & Paraloka (the afterlife/higher realm)!

Today, I do not think anyone does anything for the afterlife... because merely getting through today's living is such a preoccupation that the afterlife, or effort or motivation or purpose of life from that perspective, simply cannot be!!

Wealth or life—meaning money is needed, and life, existence, life's continuity is needed—is a truth, "so it seems to us."

Looking at what every person does in the crowds of thousands on every Mumbai local platform every day, it does not look like they care at all about life/health (prana)... traveling from one end to the other for two hours in the daily traffic of Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad... seeing this, it does not seem like anyone is working for the sake of life... to look at it, it appears that all this toil, hard work, struggle is being undertaken for just one thing... everyone is working themselves to death solely for the acquisition of wealth, for the craving of wealth.

Then I think that after doing so much struggle, putting in one's heart and soul, expending effort and time... what will they do after obtaining that wealth for which all this frantic striving and effort is underway??? Wealth in itself is nothing... it is not as if one can eat that wealth, drink it, sleep on it, or sit on it and travel; it is not like that! One must do "something" with that wealth, so "what" is to be obtained through the exchange of wealth for which this daily, routine, endless struggle is being undertaken by every single person!?

Even by accumulating wealth according to necessity, or ten times, a hundred times more than needed, what will one do!?!? One cannot eat twenty rotis at once, cannot wear four shirts layered over one another, cannot sit and travel in four cars simultaneously, cannot live in four houses at once!!! ... So is that which can be obtained through wealth one's *eshana* = motives, purpose, desires of life???

Through the utilization of wealth, food, clothing, house, car, jewelry, expensive lifestyle items, and traveling can be obtained/made possible, so then is all of this the purpose, motivation, aim, goal, objective, and fulfillment of life???

Then why are we taught that "Prana, Dhana & Paraloka are the 3 *eshanas*"!!!

It certainly does not appear so... no one is conscious of the physical health needed to sustain life (prana)... to obtain wealth, they do not even care about life, and as for the afterlife, who even wants it in this day and age, it does not seem so; and whatever can be obtained from the wealth for which everything is being done, that is not the fundamental objective, pursuit, aim, or goal of life at all... so this entire statement seems rather muddled/contradictory; meaning, nobody wants the afterlife, nobody cares about life/health, everyone is running after earning wealth, & whatever is to be obtained from that wealth is nowhere mentioned in the 3 *eshanas*!? So should the topic of *eshana* be deleted from the Samhita... anyway, this "mere verbal expression" (*vagvastumatra*) topic has not been described by Sushruta and Vagbhata at all!!!... Or should entirely new *eshanas* be written?